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    "slug": "vol-2-anthropogenesis",
    "name": "Volume II — Anthropogenesis"
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    "num": 25,
    "slug": "75-additional-fragments-from-a-commentary",
    "title": "ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY",
    "of": 49,
    "words": 6923,
    "text": "## ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY\n\n\nThe Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 1, Ad on St 12\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by\nH. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 423 THE \"BUDDHAS\nOF CONFESSION.\"\n\n##### ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY\nON THE VERSES OF STANZA XII.\n\n**T**HE **MS.** from which these additional\nexplanations are taken belongs to the group called *\"Tongshaktchi\nSangye Songa,\" *or the Records of the \"Thirty-five\nBuddhas of Confession,\" as they are *exoterically *called.\nThese personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist\nreligion \"Buddhas,\" may just as well be called Rishis,\nor Avatars, etc., as they are \"Buddhas who have preceded\nSakyamuni\" only for the Northern followers of the ethics\npreached by Gautama. These great Mahatmas, or Buddhas, are a universal\nand common property: they are *historical *sages *-*-\nat any rate, for all the Occultists who believe in such a hierarchy\nof Sages, the existence of which has been proved to them by the\nlearned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some\nninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,*\nmostly imaginary personages, who are really the personifications\nof the powers of the first-named.** These \"baskets\"\nof the oldest writings on \"palm leaves\" are kept very\nsecret. Each **MS**. has appended to it a short synopsis\nof the history of that sub-race to which the particular \"Buddha-Lha\"\nbelonged. The one special **MS**. from which the\nfragments which follow are extracted, and then rendered into a\nmore comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from\nstone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest day of\nthe Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion\nof the chief continents of the Atlantean race. The day when much,\nif not all, of that which is given here from the archaic records,\nwill be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern symbologists\nwill acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the god Woden, the\nhighest god in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of\nthese thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the\ncontinent to which he and his race belonged, is also one of the\nearliest. So early, in truth, that in the days when tropical nature\nwas to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, one could\ncross almost by dry land from Norway *via *Iceland and\nGreenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson's\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Gautama Buddha, named Shakya Thub-pa, is the *twenty-seventh\n*of the last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the\n*divine dynasties *which instructed mankind.\n\n** Of these \"Buddhas,\" or the \"Enlightened,\"\nthe far distant predecessors of Gautama the Buddha, and who represent,\nwe are taught, once living men, great adepts and Saints, in whom\nthe \"Sons of Wisdom\" had incarnated, and who were, therefore,\nso to speak, minor Avatars of the Celestial Beings -- eleven only\nbelong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the Fifth race, from its\nbeginnings. They are identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 424 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nBay.* Just, as in the palmy days of the Atlantean giants, the\nsons of the \"giants from the East,\" a pilgrim could\nperform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara desert,\nto the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of\nthe waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events\nwhich were never written outside the human memory, but which were\nreligiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from\nrace to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission\n\"within the book volume of the brain,\" and through countless\naeons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written document\nor record. \"That which is part of our souls is eternal,\"\nsays Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our souls than that\nwhich happens at the dawns of our lives? Those lives are countless,\nbut the soul or spirit that animates us throughout these myriads\nof existences is the same; and though \"the book and volume\"\nof the *physical* brain may forget events within the scope\nof one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections\ncan never desert the divine soul within us. Its whispers may be\ntoo soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived\nby our physical senses; yet the shadow of events *that were,*\njust as much as the shadow of the events *that are to come,\n*is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before\nits mind's eye.\n\nIt is this soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe\nin tradition more than in written History, that what is said below\nis all true, and relates to pre-historic facts.\n\nThis is what is written in one passage: --\n\n\"**T**HE **K**INGS OF **L**IGHT\nHAVE DEPARTED IN WRATH. **T**HE SINS OF MEN HAVE\nBECOME SO BLACK THAT **E**ARTH QUIVERS IN HER GREAT\nAGONY. . . . **T**HE AZURE SEATS REMAIN EMPTY. **W**HO\nOF THE **B**ROWN, WHO OF THE **R**ED,\nOR YET AMONG THE **B**LACK (*races*),*\n*CAN SIT IN THE SEATS OF THE** B**LESSED, THE\n**S**EATS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MERCY! **W**HO\nCAN ASSUME THE FLOWER OF POWER, THE PLANT OF THE GOLDEN STEM AND\nTHE AZURE BLOSSOM?\"\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds\nin the U. S. of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this\nidentity that led some American archaeologists to suggest that\nNorwegian mariners had *discovered *America some one thousand\nyears ago. (*Vide* Holmboe's *Traces de Bouddhisme en\nNorvege, *p. 23). There is no doubt that America is that \"far\ndistant land into which pious men and heavy storms had transferred\nthe sacred doctrine,\" as a Chinese writer suggested by his\ndescription to Neumann. But neither Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm,\nnor the American archaeologists, have guessed the right age of\nthe mounds, or the tumuli. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered\nthe land that their long-forgotten forefathers believed to have\nperished in the general submersion, does not conflict with that\nother fact that the *Secret Doctrine *of the land which\nwas the cradle of physical man, and of the Fifth Race, had found\nits way into the so-called *New World *ages and ages before\nthe \"Sacred Doctrine\" of Buddhism.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 425 THE OLDEST RECORDS ABOUT ATLANTIS.\n\nThe \"Kings of Light\" is the name given in all old records\nto the Sovereigns of the divine Dynasties. The \"azure seats\"\nare translated \"celestial thrones\" in certain documents.\nThe \"flower of power\" is now the Lotus; what it may\nhave been at that period, who can tell.\n\nThe writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate\nof his people. They had become bereft of their \"azure\"\n(celestial) kings, and \"they of the *Deva *hue,\"\nthe moon-like complexion, and \"they of the refulgent (golden)\nface\" have gone \"to the land of bliss, the land of metal\nand fire\"; or -- agreeably with the rules of symbolism --\nto the lands lying North and East, from whence \"the great\nwaters have been swept away, sucked in by the earth and dissipated\nin the air.\" The wise races had perceived \"the black\nstorm-dragons, called down by the dragons of wisdom\" -- and\n\"had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent\nLand\" -- the great ancient adepts, presumably; those the\nHindus refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata\nManu.\n\nThey \"of the yellow hue\" are the forefathers of those\nwhom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese\nand other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other\nthan Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they\nlived and died until the separation of the nations. But this \"separation\"\ndid not take place either in the localities assigned for it by\nmodern science, nor in the way the Aryans are shown to have divided\nand separated by Mr. Max Muller and other *Aryanists. *Nearly\ntwo-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period.\nThe yellow-faced giants of the post-Atlantean day, had ample time,\nthroughout this forced confinement to one part of the world, and\nwith the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture\nin it, to branch off during a period of nearly 700,000 years into\nthe most heterogeneous and diversified types. The same is shown\nin Africa; nowhere does a more extraordinary variability of types\nexist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish\nraces; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans\nhave never left their continent for several hundred thousands\nof years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear\nand other lands to re-emerge instead; and if the African tribes\nwere to separate and scatter on the face of the earth, it is they\nwho, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk\nof the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of\nour highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one\nisland, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would\nfall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given\nfor dividing humanity into *superior *and *inferior\n*races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 426 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nSuch are the statements made and facts given in the archaic records.\nCollating and comparing them with some modern theories of Evolution,\n*minus natural selection* (*Vide *\"Physiological\nSelection\" by G. J. Romanes, **F.R.S.**), these\nstatements appear quite reasonable and logical.* Thus, while the\nAryans are the descendants of the *yellow *Adams, the gigantic\nand highly civilized tlanto-Aryan race, the Semites -- and the\nJews along with them -- are those of the red Adam; and both de\nQuatrefages and the writers of the Mosaic *Genesis *are\nright. For, could chapter v. of the First Book of Moses be compared\nwith the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from\nAdam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, of course under\ndifferent names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being\nturned into periods, the whole being shown symbolical and allegorical.\nIn the **MS**. under consideration many and frequent\nare the references to the great knowledge and civilization of\nthe Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and\nthe nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race,\nthe Lemuro-Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned\n\"with their high civilizations and gods\" (*\"Esoteric\nBuddhism,\" *p. 65), how much more may the same be said\nof the Atlanteans!\n\nIt is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge\nof \"the bundle of wonderful things,\" the *Sabha *and*\nMayasabha, *mentioned in the Mahabharata, the gift of Mayasur\nto the Pandavas. It is from them that they learnt aeronautics,\n*Viwan Vidya *(the \"knowledge of flying in air-vehicles\"),\nand, therefore, their great arts of meteorography and meteorology.\nIt is from them, again, that the Aryans inherited their most valuable\nscience of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of\nchemistry, or rather alchemy, of mineralogy, geology, physics\nand astronomy.\n\nSeveral times the writer has put to herself the question: \"Is\nthe story of Exodus -- in its details at least -- as narrated\nin the Old Testament, original? Or is it, like the story of Moses\nhimself and many others, simply another version of the legends\ntold of the Atlanteans?\" For who, upon hearing the story\ntold of the latter, will fail to perceive the great similarity\nof the fundamental features? The anger of \"God\" at the\nobduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the \"chosen\" ones,\nto spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their \"jewels\nof silver and jewels of gold\" (Exod. xi.); and finally the\nEgyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea (xiv.). For\nhere is a fragment of the earlier story from the Commentary: --\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* *Vide *the first pages of Part **III**.,\n**S**CIENCE AND THE **S**ECRET **D**OCTRINE\n**C**ONTRASTED.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 427 THE DOOM OF ATLANTIS.\n\n. . . *\"And the 'great King of the dazzling Face,' the\nchief of all the* *Yellow-faced, was sad, seeing the sins\nof the Black-faced.*\n\n*\"He sent his air-vehicles* (Viwan)* to all his\nbrother-chiefs *(chiefs of other nations and tribes) *with\npious men within, saying: 'Prepare. Arise* *ye men of the\ngood law, and cross the land while *(yet)* dry.'*\n\n*'The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are\nnearing* *the land. One night and two days only shall the\nLords of the Dark Face* (the Sorcerers) *live on this patient\nland. She is doomed, and they have to* *descend with her.\nThe nether Lords of the Fires *(the Gnomes and fire Elementals)\n*are preparing their magic Agneyastra *(fire-weapons worked\nby magic). *But the Lords of the Dark Eye *(\"Evil\nEye\") *are stronger* *than they *(the Elementals)\n*and they are the slaves of the mighty ones.* *They\nare versed in Ashtar *(Vidya, the highest magical knowledge).*\n*Come and use yours *(i.e., your magic powers, in order\nto counteract those of the Sorcerers). *Let every lord of the\nDazzling Face *(an adept of the White Magic) *cause the\nViwan of every lord of the Dark Face to come* *into his\nhands *(or possession), *lest any *(of the Sorcerers)\n*should by its* *means escape from the waters, avoid\nthe rod of the Four, *(Karmic deities) *and save his wicked'\n*(followers, or people).\n\n*'May every yellow face send sleep from himself *(mesmerize?)\n*to every* *black face. May even they *(the Sorcerers)\n*avoid pain and suffering.* *May every man true to the\nSolar Gods bind *(paralyze)* every man under* *the\nlunar gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny.*\n\n*'And may every yellow face offer of his life-water* (blood)*\nto the* *speaking animal of a black face, lest he awaken\nhis master.***\n\n*'The hour has struck, the black night is ready, etc., etc.*\n\n*. . . . . . . . . .* . . . . .\n\n*'Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of\nthe great* *Four.***** May the Kings of light return.'*\n\"\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Wrote the late Brahmachari Bawa, a Yogi of great renown and\nholiness: \"Extensive works on *Ashtar Vidya *and such\nother sciences were at different times compiled in the languages\nof the times. But the Sanskrit originals were lost at the time\nof the partial deluge of our country.\" . . . (*See Theosophist\n*of June, 1880, \"Some Things the Aryans Knew.\")\nFor *Agneyastra, *see Wilson's *Specimens of the Hindu\nTheatre, *I., p. 297.\n\n** Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way\nto Frankenstein's creation, which spoke and warned his master\nof every approaching danger. The master was a \"black magician,\"\nthe mechanical animal was informed by a *djin, *an Elemental,\naccording to the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could\ndestroy him. *Vide* Part **II**., xxvii.,\n\"Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic.\"\n\n*** The four Karmic gods, called the Four Maharajahs in the Stanzas.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 428 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\n*\"The great King fell upon his dazzling Face and wept*.\n. . .\n\n*\"When the Kings assembled the waters had already moved*.\n. . .\n\n\"(But) *the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They\nwere beyond* *the water mark. Their Kings reached them\nin their Viwans, and led them* *on to the lands of Fire\nand Metal *(East and North).\"\n\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\n\nStill, in another passage, it is said: --\n\n\" . . . *. Stars *(meteors)* showered on the lands\nof the* *black* *Faces;* *but they slept.*\n\n*\"The speaking beasts *(the magic watchers) *kept\nquiet.*\n\n*\"The nether lords waited for orders, but they came not,\nfor their* *masters slept.*\n\n*\"The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end\nof the Earth* *to the other. High lands remained, the bottom\nof the Earth *(the lands of the antipodes) *remained dry.\nThere dwelt those who escaped; the men of* *the yellow-faces\nand of the straight eye *(the frank and sincere people).\n\n*\"When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought\nthemselves* *of their Viwans in order to escape from the\nrising waters, they found* *them gone.\"*\n\nThen a passage shows some of the more powerful magicians of the\n\"Dark Face\" -- who awoke earlier than the others --\npursuing those who had \"spoilt them\" and who were in\nthe rear-guard, for -- *\"the nations* *that were\nled away, were as thick as the stars of the milky way,\" *says\na more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.\n\n*\"Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the\nSons of men,* *led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their\nfolds, and spreading out,* *expanded like a running stream\nof sweet waters*. . . . . . *many of the faint-hearted\namong them perished on their way. But most were saved.\"*\n\nYet the pursuers, \"whose heads and chests soared high above\nthe water,\" chased them \"for three lunar terms\"\nuntil finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the\nlast man, the soil sinking under their feet and the earth engulfing\nthose who had desecrated her.\n\nThis sounds a good deal like the original material upon which\nthe similar story in *Exodus *was built many hundred thousands\nof years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth,\nchildhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, is now\nshown to have been adapted from the Chaldean narrative about Sargon.\nAnd if so, the Assyrian tile in the British Museum being a good\nproof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the Egyptians of\ntheir jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The\ngigantic magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the \"lords of the\nDark Face,\" may have become in the later narrative the Egyptian\nMagi, and the yellow-faced nations of\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 429 SHADOWY MEMENTOS OF THE PAST.\n\nthe Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the \"chosen people.\"\n. . . One more statement has to be made: There have been several\nDivine Dynasties -- a series for every Root Race beginning with\nthe Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity.\nThe last Seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldean\nrecords belong to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called\nAryan, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with\nraces to which Ethnology gives other names. It would be impossible,\nin view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further\ninto the description of the Atlanteans, in whom the whole East\nbelieves as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose\nexistence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they\nhave denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of\nHomer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of\nthe Atlanteans was greater even than that of the Egyptians. It\nis their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's Atlantis,\nwhich built the first Pyramids in the country, and that certainly\nbefore the advent of the \"Eastern AEthiopians,\" as Herodotus\ncalls the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the statement\nmade by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that \"there\nare also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it\nis said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which\nthey divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places\nlest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost.\"\n\nThese men who \"divined the coming of floods\" were not\nEgyptians, who never had any, except the periodical rising of\nthe Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans,\nwe maintain. Those races which are dimly suspected by Science,\nand thinking of which Mr. Ch. Gould, the well-known geologist,\nsays: \"Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great\nmuseum of nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its\nantechambers? Does the written history of man, comprising a few\nthousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence?\nOr have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds\nof thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea\nand of China, shadowy mementos of pre-historic man, handed down\nby tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing\nlands from others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato,\nmay have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe\nwhich destroyed them with all their civilization\" (*\"Mythical\nMonsters,\"* *p*. 19).\n\nAfter this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a\nMaster who wrote, several years before these words were penned\nby Mr. Gould: -- \"The Fourth Race had its periods of the\nhighest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations\nare nothing com-\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 430 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\npared to the civilizations that began with the Third Race\"\n-- after its separation.\n\nBut if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences\nare denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that\nbetween the great civilizations of antiquity, such as those of\nEgypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance\nand barbarism ever since the beginning of the Christian era up\nto our modern civilization; during which period all recollection\nof these traditions was lost. As said in *Isis Unveiled: *\"Why\nshould we forget that, ages before the prow of the adventurous\nGenoese clove the Western waters, the Phoenician vessels had circumnavigated\nthe globe, and spread civilization in regions now silent and deserted?\nWhat archaeologist will dare assert that the same hand which planned\nthe Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling\nto oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did *not* erect\nthe monumental Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia? or trace the hieroglyphics\non the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village, newly\ndiscovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin? or those on the\nruins of Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics\nwe treasure in our museums -- last mementos of the long 'lost\narts' -- speak loudly in favour of ancient civilization? And do\nthey not prove, over and over again, that nations and continents\nthat have passed away have buried along with them arts and sciences,\nwhich neither the first crucible ever heated in a mediaeval cloister,\nnor the last cracked by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will\n-- at least, in the present century.\"\n\nAnd the same question may be put now that was put then; it may\nbe once more asked: \"How does it happen that the most advanced\nstandpoint that has been reached in our times, only enables us\nto see in the dim distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the\nmonumental proofs that earlier explorers have left to mark the\nplateaux they had reached and occupied?\n\n\"If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones,\nwhy do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian\nforefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor\n-- the Tyrian purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which\ndecorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the\nfirst day of their application? The indestructible cement of the\npyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can\nbe turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the\ngorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found\namid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient\ncathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if\nchemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediaeval\nages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, accord-\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 431 MISTAKES OF THE EGYPTOLOGISTS.\n\ning to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years\nago? The more archeology and philology advance, the more humiliating\nto our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more\nglorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps\non account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been\nuntil now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire\nof superstition.\"\n\nAmong other arts and sciences, the ancients -- ay, as a heirloom\nfrom the Atlanteans -- had those of astronomy and symbolism, which\nincluded the knowledge of the Zodiac.\n\nAs already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good\nreason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected\nwith the planets, and these with Zodiacal signs. The whole world's\nHistory is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt\nthis was proved by the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic\nwork, the property of a *Sufi, *the writer has never met\nwith a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past, as\nalso of the *future, *history of our globe. Yet the original\nrecords exist, most undeniably.\n\nAs Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India,\nnor do they understand those they happen to know (witness Bentley),\nthe reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn\nto the work of Denon (*Travels in Egypt, Vol. II.*)*\n*in which, *if understood, *the two famous Egyptian\nZodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen them personally,\nthe writer has no longer need to trust to what other students\n-- who have examined and studied both very carefully - have to\nsay of them. As asserted by the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus,\nwho was informed that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the\nEcliptic had formerly coincided, thus was it found and corroborated\nby Mackey.* For he states that the Poles are represented on the\nZodiacs in both positions, \"And in that which shows the Poles\n(polar axes) at right angles, there are marks which prove that\n'it was not the last time they were in that position; *but\nthe first*' -- after the Zodiacs had been traced.\" \"Capricorn,\"\nhe adds, \"is represented at the North Pole, and Cancer is\ndivided, near its middle, at the South Pole; which is a confirmation\nthat originally they had their winter when the Sun was in Cancer;\nbut the chief characteristics of its being a monument commemorating\nthe *first* *time *that the Pole had been in that\nposition, are the Lion and the Virgin.\" (See in Part **II**.,\n§\"A Mystery of the Zodiac.\")\n\nBroadly calculated, it is believed by the Egyptologists that the\ngreat Pyramid was built 3,350 **B.C.** (*See Proctor, Knowledge,\nVol. I. pp*. 242, 400); and that Menes and his Dynasty existed\n7 50 years before the Fourth\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* \"The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated\"\nby a strangely intuitional symbologist and astronomer, a kind\nof a self-made adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quarter\nof this century.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 432 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nDynasty (supposed to have built the Pyramids) had appeared (\"*The\nGreat Pyramid,\" Staniland Wake*). Thus 4,100 years **B.C.\n**is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's\ndeclaration that *\"all the facts lead to the conclusion\n*that the Egyptians had already made very great progress in\nthe arts of civilization *before the age of Menes,* *and\nperhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile\"\n*(*Rawlinson's \"Herodotus,\" vol. ii. p. *345)\nis very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis. It points to\ngreat civilization in *prehistoric *times, and a still\ngreater antiquity. The *Schesoo-Hor *(\"the servants\nof Horus\") were the people who had settled in Egypt; and,\nas M. G. Maspero affirms, it is to this *prehistoric *race\nthat \"belongs the honour . . . of having founded the principal\ncities of Egypt, and established the most important sanctuaries.\"\nThis was *before *the great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt\nhad hardly arisen from the waters. Yet \"they possessed the\nhieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must\nhave been already considerably advanced in civilization.\"\nIt was, says Lenormant, \"the country of the great prehistoric\nsanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal dominion, which played the\nmost important part in the origin of civilization.\" What\nis the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the\nutmost of 5,000 years **B.C.** (Maspero). Now it\nis claimed that it is by means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the\nSidereal year) that the approximate year of the erection of the\nGreat Pyramid can be ascertained. \"Assuming that the long\nnarrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of\nthe pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that . . . . Alpha\nDraconis, the then pole-star, was in the required position about\n3,350** B.C.**, as well as in 2,170 **B.C.**\n(Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) But we are also told that\n\"this relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being\nan extraordinary one . . it could not occur again for a whole\nsidereal year\" (*ibid*)*. *This demonstrates\nthat, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal\nyears, the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago,\nor in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at\nleast as readily as the later date of 3,350 **B.C.**\n\nNow on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, as\non the Dendera Zodiac, the same characteristics of the signs are\nfound. Those who know well the Hindu symbols and constellations,\nwill be able to find out by the description of the Egyptian, whether\nthe indications of the chronological time are correct or not.\nOn the Dendera Zodiac as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic\nand Greek adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey,\nthe Lion stands upon the *Hydra* and his tail is almost\nstraight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees,\nthis position agreeing with the* original *conformation\nof these constellations. \"But in many places we see the Lion\n(*Simha*),\"\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 433 THEORIES OF A SELF-MADE ADEPT.\n\nMackey adds, \"with his tail turned up over his back, and\nending with a Serpent's head; thereby showing that the Lion had\nbeen *'inverted';* which, indeed, must have been the case\nwith the whole Zodiac and every other Constellation, when the\nPole had been inverted.\"\n\nSpeaking of the *Circular *Zodiac, given also by Denon,\nhe says: -- There, \"the Lion is standing *on *the\nSerpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which it\nis found that *though six or seven hundred* *thousand\nyears *must have passed between the two positions, yet they\nhad made but little difference between in the constellations of\nLeo and the Hydra; while *Virgo *is represented very differently\nin the two. In the *circular *Zodiac, the *Virgin is\nnursing her child; *but it seems that they had not had that\nidea when the pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic;\nfor in *this *Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see *three\nVirgins* between the Lion and the Scales, *the last of\nwhich holds in her hand *an ear of wheat. It is much to be\nlamented that there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figure in\nthe latter part of Leo and the *beginning of Virgo* which\nhas taken away one *Decan *out of each sign.\"\n\nNevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong\nto three different epochs: namely, to the last three family races\nof the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each of which must\nhave lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years. The first of\nthese (the \"Aryan-Asiatics\") witnessed the doom of the\nlast of the populations of the \"giant Atlanteans\"* who\nperished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents)\ntoward the close of the Miocene Age.** The fourth sub-race witnessed\nthe destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans -- the Aryo-Atlanteans\nin the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago.\nIn order to understand this the reader\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The term \"Atlantean\" must not mislead the reader to\nregard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though\none said \"Asiatics.\" Many, multityped, and various were\nthe Atlanteans, who represented several *humanities, *and\nalmost a countless number of races and nations, more varied indeed\nthan would be the \"Europeans\" were this name to be given\nindiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world; which,\nat the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps,\nin less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red,\nyellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as some\nAfrican tribes comparatively are, even now).\n\n** Says a teacher in \"Esoteric Buddhism,\" on p. 64:\n\"In the Eocene age, even in its very first part, the great\ncycle of the fourth race men the (Lemuro) Atlanteans had already\nreached its highest point (of civilization), and the great continent,\nthe father of nearly all the present continents, showed the first\nsymptoms of sinking. . . .\" And on page 70, it is shown that\nAtlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To show\nhow the continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other,\none has but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished\nabout 700,000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary period\n(see p. 65 of the same work), and the last of \"Atlantis\"\nonly 11,000 years ago; thus both overlapping -- one the Atlantean\nperiod, and the other the Aryan.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 434 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nis asked to glance at the diagram of the genealogical tree of\nthe Fifth Root-Race -- generally, though hardly correctly, called\nthe Aryan race, and the explanations appended to it.\n\nLet the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions\nof Root Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and\nstated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett's \"Esoteric Buddhism.\"\n\n1. There are seven **R**OUNDS in every manvantara;\nthis one is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at\npresent.\n\n2. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races.\n\n3. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which\nmay be called Branch or \"Family\" races.\n\n4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last-named\nare countless and depend on Karmic action. Examine the \"genealogical\ntree\" hereto appended, and you will understand. The illustration\nis purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader\nin obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion\nwhich exists between the terms which have been used at different\ntimes for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted\nto express in figures -- but only within approximate limits, for\nthe sake of comparison -- the duration of time through which it\nis possible to definitely distinguish one division from another.\nIt would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made\nto give accurate dates to a few; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc.,\netc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled\nwith each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.\n\nThe human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably\nas an illustration.\n\nThe main stem of a tree may be compared to the ROOT-RACE (A).\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 435 ILLUSTRATION OF THE RACES.\n\nIts larger limbs to the various SUB-RACES; seven in number (B1,\nB2).\n\nOn each of these limbs are seven BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES. (C).\n\nAfter this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its\nfleshy \"leaves\" are covered with sharp spines, each\nof which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings.\n\nNow our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence -- as a\nrace *sui generis *and quite free from its parent stem\n-- about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each\nof the four preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000\nyears; thus each Family-Race has an average existence of about\n30,000 years. Thus the European \"Family Race\" has still\na good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the\ninnumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding \"season\"\nof three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark\nthe comparative approximation of duration between the lives of\na \"Family-Race\" and a \"Sidereal year.\"\n\nThe knowledge of the foregoing, and the accurately correct division,\nformed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences\nwere taught to the disciples, and where they were transmitted\nby one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European\nastronomers assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the invention\nof the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2000 or 2400 **B.C.\n**(*Proctor*);* *and insist that this invention\ncoincides in its date with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid.\nThis, to an Occultist and Eastern astronomer, must appear quite\nabsurd. The year of the *Kaliyuga *is said to have begun\nbetween the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3102 **B.C.**\nNow the Hindus claim that in the year 20400 before Kaliyugam,\nthe origin of their Zodiac coincided with the spring equinox --\nthere being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon -- and\nBailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date,\nthat, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started\nto establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was *very real.\n*That \"epoch is the year 3102 before our era,\" he\nwrites. (*See Part III., Book I. *\"*Hindu Astronomy\ndefended by an Academician\".*)* *The lunar eclipse\narriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the black Age\n-- it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of\nVirgo and the star [[*theta*]] of the same constellation.\nOne of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions\nand respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades *-- *(*Krittika*)*.\n*Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern\nIndia and Lanka,* the esoteric meaning was evidently identical.\nThe three \"Virgins,\" or Virgo in three different positions,\nmeant, with both, the record of the first three \"divine or\nastronomical Dynasties,\" who taught the Third\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Ceylon.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 436 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nRoot-Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their\ndoom, returned (or redescended, rather) during the third Sub-Race\nof the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries\nof their birth-place -- the sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical\nrecord of the human races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes\n-- semi-divine astrals of the Third and Fourth, and the \"Heroes\"\nof the Fifth Race), which preceded the purely human kings, was\nfound in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian\nLabyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed\nthe face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time.\nIn Mackey's \"Sphinxiad\" the speculations of the bold\nauthor must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population\nof Norwich, as he says, fantastically enough: --\n\n\"But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by\nthose monuments (the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs)\n*does not exceed* *five millions of years *(which\nis not so)*; which falls short of the records given us both by\nthe (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus; which latter nation has registered\na knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years**; which\nI have seen upon a talisman of porcelain. . . . \"\n\nThe Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura-Maya,\nas the modern Hindus still have. As stated in \"*Esoteric\nBuddhism,*\" the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and\n\"Romans\" some thousand years ago, were \"remnants\nof the Atlanto-Aryans,\" *i.e.*, the former, of the\nolder, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants\nof the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was\nnarrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The *human *Dynasty\nof the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the *knowledge\n*of the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood\nin their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic\nrecords. All this has been shown long ago.*** And it is just because\nthe Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and 80,000 years old that the\nZodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed\nout in his \"Ruins of Empires\" (p. 360) that it is only\n16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.****\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The forefathers of the Aryan Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations\nand Zodiac from those born by Kriyasakti power, the \"Sons\nof Yoga\"; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of Ruta.\n\n** The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or\neight millions of years, but the Egyptians *could not.*\n\n*** This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed\nand answered. See *Five Years of Theosophy.* (*Art.\n\"Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism,\" pp. *325-46).\n\n**** Volney says that, as *Aries *was in its 15th degree\n1447 **B.C**., it follows that the first degree of\n\"Libra\" could not have coincided with the vernal equinox\nmore lately than 15,194 years **B.C.**, to which\nif you add 1790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears\nthat 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic)\norigin of the Zodiac.\n\nNext Section\n\nContents",
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