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    "slug": "vol-2-anthropogenesis",
    "name": "Volume II — Anthropogenesis"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 33,
    "slug": "83-xx-prometheus-the-titan-519",
    "title": "XX. PROMETHEUS THE TITAN ... 519",
    "of": 49,
    "words": 5096,
    "text": "## XX. PROMETHEUS THE TITAN ... 519\n\n\nThe Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 2, ch 20\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 519 THE \"FATHER OF MORTALS.\"\n\n#### § XX.\n\n##### PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN.\n\n###### HIS ORIGIN IN ANCIENT\nINDIA.\n\n**I**N our modern day there does not exist the slightest\ndoubt in the minds of the best European symbologists that the\nname Prometheus possessed the greatest and most mysterious significance\nin antiquity. While giving the history of Deukalion, whom the\nBoeotians regarded as the ancestor of the human races, and who\nwas the Son of Prometheus, according to the significant legend,\nthe author of the *Mythologie* *de la Grece Antique\n*remarks: \"Thus Prometheus is something more than the\narchetype of humanity; he is *its generator. *In the same\nway that we saw Hephaestus moulding the first woman (Pandora)\nand endowing her with life, so Prometheus kneads the moist clay,\nof which he fashions the body of the first man whom he will endow\nwith the soul-spark\" (*Apollodorus, *I., 7, 1). After\nthe Flood of Deukalion, Zeus, it was taught, had commanded Prometheus\nand Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left\nby the waters of the deluge (*Ovid*, *Metam. *1,\n81. * Etym. M. **v*. [[*Prometheus*]]); and in\nthe day of Pausanias the slime which the hero had used for this\npurpose was still shown in Phocea (*Paus. *x, 4, 4). \"On\nseveral archaic monuments one still sees Prometheus modelling\na human body, either alone or with Athena's help\" (*Myth.\nGrece Ant. 246*)*.*\n\nThe same authors remind the world of another equally mysterious\npersonage, though one less generally known than Prometheus, whose\nlegend offers remarkable analogies with that of the Titan. The\nname of this second ancestor and generator is *Phoroneus, *the\nhero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer extant --\nthe* Phoronidae. *His legend was localized in Argolis,\nwhere a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder\nthat he was the bringer of fire upon earth (*Pausanias,*\n11, 19, 5;* Cf. *20*, *3.) A benefactor of men as\nPrometheus was, he had made them participators of every bliss\non earth. Plato (*Timaeus, p. *22)*,* and Clemens\nAlexandrinus (*Strom.* 1*, p. *380) say that Phoroneus\nwas the first man, or \"the father of mortals.\" His genealogy,\nwhich assigns to him as his father Inachos, the river, reminds\none of that of Prometheus, which makes that Titan the son of the\nOceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph Melia;\na significant descent which distinguishes him from Prometheus.\n\nMelia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the *ash-tree,\n*whence,\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 520 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\naccording to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze* (*Opera\net* *Dies, *142-145); and which with the Greeks is\nthe *celestial tree *common to every Aryan mythology. This\n*ash *is the Yggdrasil of the Norse antiquity, which the\nNorns sprinkle daily with the waters from the fountain of Urd,\nthat it may not wither. It remains verdant till the last days\nof the Golden Age. Then the Norns -- the three sisters who gaze\nrespectively into the Past, the Present, and the Future -- make\nknown the decree of Fate (*Karma, Orlog*)*, *but\nmen are conscious only of the Present. But when Gultweig comes\n(the golden ore) \"the bewitching enchantress who, thrice\ncast into the fire, arises each time more beautiful, and fills\nthe souls of gods and men with unapproachable longing, then the\nNorns . . . enter into being, and the blessed peace of childhood's\ndreams passes away, and Sin comes into existence with all its\nevil consequences . . .\" and **K**ARMA (*See\n\"Asgard and the Gods,\" p. *10-12)*. *The\nthrice purified Gold is -*- Manas, *the Conscious Soul.\n\nWith the Greeks, the \"ash-tree\" represented the same\nidea. Its luxuriant boughs are the sidereal heaven, golden by\nday and studded with stars by night -- the fruits of Melia and\nYggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during\nthe Golden Age without desire as without any fear . . . . \"That\ntree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, *which was lightning,\"\n*Decharme guesses.\n\nAnd here steps in the killing materialism of the age; that peculiar\ntwist in the modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends\nall on its way, and freezes every intuition, allowing it no hand\nin the physical speculations of the day. After having seen in\nPrometheus no better than *fire by friction, *the learned\nauthor of the *\"Mythologie de la Grece* *Antique\"\n*perceives in this \"fruit\" a trifle *more than\nan allusion to* *terrestrial fire and its discovery. It\nis no longer fire, owing to the fall of* *lightning setting\nsome dry fuel in a blaze, *and thus revealing all its priceless\nbenefits to Palaeolithic men; -- but something more mysterious\nthis time, though still as earthly. . . . \"A divine bird,\nnestled in the boughs of the celestial ash-tree, stole that bough\n(or the fruit) and carried it down on the earth in its bill. Now\nthe Greek word [[*Phoroneus*]] is the rigid equivalent of\nthe Sanskrit word *bhuranyu *('the rapid') an epithet of\nAgni, considered as the carrier of the divine spark. Phoroneus,\nson of *Melia *or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds\nto a conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which\ntransformed the *pramantha *(of the old Aryan Hindus) into\nthe Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* According to the Occult teaching, three yugas passed away during\nthe time of the Third Root-Race,* i.e*., the Satya, the\nTreta, and the Dvapara yuga, answering to the golden age of its\nearly innocence: to the silver -- when it reached its maturity:\nand to the Bronze age, when, separating into sexes, they became\nthe mighty demi-gods of old.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 521 THE POETRY OF MODERN ORIENTALISTS.\n\n(personified) bird, that brings the heavenly lightning to the\nEarth. Traditions relating to the birth and origin of the race\nof Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the father of the\nArgians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt (or lightning),\nas in the legends of Hephaestus or Prometheus, was the origin\nof the human race\" (266).\n\nThis still affords us no more than the external meaning of the\nsymbols and the allegory. It is now supposed that the name of\nPrometheus has been unriddled, and the modern mythologists and\nOrientalists see in it no longer what their fathers saw on the\nauthority of the whole of classical antiquity. They only find\ntherein something far more appropriate to the spirit of the age,\nnamely, a phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus, as well\nas that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a series\nof esoteric meanings. Both relate to the *seven* *celestial\nfires; *to Agni Abhimanin, his three sons, and their forty-five\nsons,* constituting the forty-nine fires. *Do all these\nnumbers relate only to the terrestrial mode of fire and to the\nflame of sexual passion? Did the Hindu Aryan mind never soar above\nsuch purely sensual conceptions? that mind which is declared by\nProf. Max Muller to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined\non the whole globe? The number of those fires alone ought to have\nsuggested an inkling of the truth.\n\nWe are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rational\nthought, to explain the name of Prometheus as the old Greeks did.\nThe latter, it seems, \"basing themselves on the false analogy\nof [[*prometheus*]] with the verb [[*Promanthanein*]]*,\n*saw in him the type of the 'foreseeing' man, to whom, for\nthe sake of symmetry, a brother was added -- Epimetheus, or 'he\nwho takes counsel *after *the event.' \" But now the\nOrientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real meaning\nof the two names better than those who invented them.\n\nThe legend is based upon an event of universal importance. It\nwas built \"to commemorate a great event which must have strongly\nimpressed itself upon the imagination of the first witnesses to\nit, and its remembrance has never since faded out from popular\nmemory.\" What is it? Laying aside every poetical *fiction,\n*all those dreams of the golden age, let us imagine -- argue\nthe modern scholars -- in all its gross realism, the first miserable\nstate of humanity, the striking picture of which was traced for\nus after AEschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth of which\nis now confirmed by science; and then one may understand better\nthat a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw\nthe first spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood,\nor from the veins of a flint. How could man help feeling gratitude\nto that mysterious and marvellous being which they were henceforth\nenabled to create at their will, and which was no sooner born,\nthan it grew and expanded, developing with singular power. \"This\nterrestrial flame,\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 522 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nwas it not analogous in nature to that one which they received\nfrom above, or that other which frightened them in the thunderbolt?\"\n\n\"Was it not derived from the same source? And if its origin\nwas in heaven, it must have been brought down some day on earth.\nIf so, who was the powerful being, the beneficent being, god or\nman, who had conquered it? Such are the questions which the curiosity\nof the Aryans offered in the early days of their existence, and\nwhich found their answer in the myth of Prometheus\"; (*Mythologie\nde la Grece* *Antique, *p. 258).\n\nThe philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the\nabove reflections, and points them out. The miserable state of\nHumanity described by AEschylus and Prometheus was no more wretched\nthen, in the early days of the Aryans, than it is now. That \"state\"\nwas limited to the savage tribes; and the now-existing savages\nare not a whit more happy or unhappy than their forefathers were\na million years ago.\n\nIt is an accepted fact in Science that \"rude implements,\nexactly resembling those in use *among existing savages,\"\n*are found in river-gravels and caves geologically \"implying\nan enormous antiquity.\" So great is that resemblance that,\nas the author of \"The Modern Zoroastrian\" tells us:\n\"If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts\nand arrow-heads used now by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed\nside by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects\nfrom Kent's Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert\ncould distinguish between them\" (*p*. 145). And if\nthere are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest civilization,\nwho are no higher intellectually than the race of men which inhabited\nDevonshire and Southern France during the *Palaeolithic *age,\nwhy could not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and have\nbeen the contemporary of, other races as highly civilized for\ntheir day as we are for ours? That the sum of knowledge increases\ndaily in mankind, \"but that intellectual capacity does not\nincrease with it,\" is shown when the intellect, if not the\nphysical knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases, Paninis, Kapilas,\nPlatos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the Newtons, Kants,\nand the modern Huxleys and Haeckels. On comparing the results\nobtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist, worked out\nin 1868 (*Trans. of the Royal Society* *of London*)*,\n*with regard to the internal capacity of the skull -- its\nvolume being taken as the standard and test for judging of the\nintellectual capacities -- Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity\namong the French (certainly in the highest rank of mankind) is\n88.4 cubic inches, being thus \"perceptibly smaller than that\nof the Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and\nAlfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches\";\nwhich shows that it is the *quality *and not the *quantity\n*of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity.\nThe\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 523 THE BOON GIVEN BY PROMETHEUS.\n\naverage index of skulls among various races having been now recognized\nto be \"one of the most characteristic marks of difference\nbetween different races,\" the following comparison is suggestive:\n\"The index of breadth among the Scandinavians (is) at 75:\namong the English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at\n80; Schiller's skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 . .\n. the Madurese also 82!\" Finally, the same comparison between\nthe oldest skulls known and the European, brings to light the\nstartling fact *\"that most of these old skulls, belonging\nto the* *stone period, are above rather than below the\naverage of the brain of the* *now living man in volume.\"\n*Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length\nin inches from the average measurements of several skulls, the\nfollowing sums are obtained: --\n\n1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age . . . . 18.877 ins.\n\n2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England . . .\n. 18.858 \"\n\n3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales . . . . 18.649\n\"\n\n4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France . . . . 18.220\n\"\n\nThe average of the *now living Europeans *is 18.579 inches;\nof *Hottentots, *17.795 inches!\n\nWhich figures show plainly \"that the size of the brain of\nthe oldest populations known to us is not such as to place them\non a lower level than that of the now living inhabitants of the\nEarth\" (\"*The Age and* *Origin of Man*\").*\n*Besides which, they show the \"missing link\" vanishing\ninto thin air. Of these, however, more anon: we must return to\nour direct subject.\n\nThe race which Jupiter so ardently desired \"to quench, and\nplant a new one in its stead\" (*AEsch.* *241), suffered\n*mental*, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus\ngave to mortals, as he tells the \"Chorus,\" was to hinder\nthem \"from *foreseeing *death\" (256); he \"saved\nthe mortal race from sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom\"\n(244); and then only, \"besides\" that, he gave them fire\n(260). This shows plainly the dual character, at any rate of the\nPromethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence\nof the *seven keys *taught in Occultism. This relates to\nthe first opening of man's spiritual perceptions, not to his first\nseeing or* discovering **fire*. For *fire*\nwas never \"discovered,\" but existed on earth since its\nbeginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages,\nvolcanic eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods\nas fog is in England now. And if we are told that men appeared\nso late on Earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with the exception\nof a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances\nhad made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let\na new race of men -- whether evolved from angel or gorilla --\nappear now on any uninhabited\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n** Prometheus Vinctus.*\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 524 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nspot of the globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and\na thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before discovering\nfire, through the fall of lightning setting in flames grass or\nsomething else. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages\non earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the\nmost painfully illogical of all. But old AEschylus was an initiate,\nand knew well what he was giving out.*\n\nNo occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom\ncame to us from the East, will deny for a moment that the myth\nof Prometheus has reached Europe from Aryavarta. Nor is he likely\nto deny that in one sense Prometheus represents *fire by friction*.\nTherefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows\nin his *Les Mythes* *du feu et breuvage celeste *(*Revue\ngermanique, *1861* p*. 356)** one of the aspects of\nPrometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader the*\nsupposed *primitive process to obtain fire, still in use to-day\nin India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what he says:\n--\n\n\"This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic\nSutras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in\nthe centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat\nand ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact.\nThe motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series\nof motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the\nstick in its middle: the operator holds one of the ends in each\nhand and pulls them alternately. . . . The full process is designated\nin Sanskrit by the verb manthami, mathnani; which means 'to rub,\nagitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,' and is especially applied\nto rotatory friction, as proved by its derivation from *mandala,\n*which signifies a circle. . . . The pieces of wood serving\nfor the production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The\nstick which turns is called *pramantha; *the discus which\nreceives it is called *arani **and** aranî**\n*two aranis' designating the *ensemble *of the instrument\"\n(*p*. 358* et seq*.)*.****\n\nIt remains to be seen what the Brahmins will say to this. But\nsupposing Prometheus has been conceived in one of the aspects\nof his\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars,\nthey would have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!)\nto explain the real meaning of the ideas of AEschylus, which,\nbeing an ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well\nhimself, is absurdly ludicrous!\n\n** See also his *Memoires de la Societe de la* *Linguistique\n*following the \"Fire Myths,\" (*Vol.* I*,\np.* 337, *et seq.*)\n\n*** There is the *upper* and *nether* piece of timber\nused to produce this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices, and\nit is the *aranî *which contains the socket. This\nis proven by an allegory in the *Vayu Purana *and others,\nwhich tell us that Nemi, the son of Ikshwaku, had left no successor,\nand that the Rishis, fearing to leave the earth without a ruler,\nintroduced the king's body into the socket of an *aranî\n*-- like an upper *aranî *-- and produced from\nit a prince named Janaka. \"It was by reason of the peculiar\nway in which he was engendered that he was called Janaka.\"\n(*But see Goldstucker's* *Sanskrit Dictionary at the\nword Arani.*)* *Devaki, Krishna's mother, in prayer\naddressed to her, is called \"the aranî whose attrition\nengenders fire.\"\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 525 GREEK IDEAS MISUNDERSTOOD.\n\nmyth as the producer of fire by means of *pramantha, *or\nas an animate and divine *pramantha, *would this imply\nthat the symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning attributed\nto it by the modern symbologists? Decharme, at any rate, seems\nto have a correct glimmering of the truth; for he unconsciously\ncorroborates by his remarks all that the Occult sciences teach\nwith regard to the *Manasa *Devas, who have endowed man\nwith the consciousness of his immortal soul: that consciousness\nwhich hinders man \"from foreseeing death,\" and makes\nhim *know *he is immortal.* \"How has Prometheus got\ninto the possession of the (divine) spark?\" he asks. \"Fire\nhaving its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to find\nit before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the\ngods, he must have been a god himself.\" The Greeks held that\nhe was of the *divine *race; the Hindus, that he was a\nDeva. Hence \"with the Greeks he was the son of the Titan\nlapetos,\" [[*Iapetonides*]] (*Theog. *528) .\n. . . \"But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the\ngods alone; it was a treasure they reserved for themselves . .\n. over which they jealously watched . . . 'The prudent son of\nIapetus,' says Hesiod, 'deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing\nin the cavity of a narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent\nglow' (*Theog. *565)* *. . . Thus the gift made\nby Prometheus to men was a conquest made from heaven. . . \"\n\"Now according to Greek ideas,\" (identical in this with\nthose of the Occultists) \"this possession forced from Jupiter,\nthis human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be\nfollowed by an expiation. . . . Prometheus, moreover, belongs\nto that race of Titans who had rebelled** against the gods, and\nwhom the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like\nthem, he is the genius of Evil, doomed to cruel suffering, etc.,\netc.\"\n\nThat which is revolting in the explanations that follow, is the\none-sided view taken of this grandest of all the myths. The most\nintuitional among modern writers cannot or will not rise in their\nconceptions above the level of the Earth and Cosmic phenomena.\nIt is not denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented\nin the Theogony of Hesiod, plays a certain part in the primitive\nGreek conception. The Titan is more than a thief of the celestial\nfire. He is the representation of humanity -- active, industrious,\nintelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling\ndivine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person\nof Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With the latter,\nPrometheus is not a\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The *monad *of the animal is as immortal as that of man,\nyet the brute knows nothing of this; it lives an animal life of\nsensation just as the first human would have lived, when attaining\nphysical development in the Third Race, had it not been for the\nAgnishwatta and the *Manasa *Pitris.\n\n** The fallen angels, therefore; the *Asuras *of the Indian\nPantheon.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 526 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\ncriminal, save in the eyes of the gods. In his relation with the\nEarth, he is, on the contrary, a god himself, a friend of mankind\n([[*philanthropos*]]), which he has raised to civilization\nand initiated into the knowledge of all the arts; a conception\nwhich found its most poetical expounder in AEschylus. But with\nall other nations Prometheus is -- what? The fallen Angel, Satan,\nas the Church would have it? Not at all. *He is* *simply\nthe image of the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning.\n*He is the \"evil fire\" (*mal feu*)* and\nthe symbol of the divine reproductive* *male organ. *\"Reduced\nto its simple expression, the myth we are trying to explain is\nthen simply a (Cosmic) genius of fire\" (p. 261). It is the\nformer idea (the phallic) which was *pre-eminently Aryan, *if\nwe believe Ad. Kuhn (*in his Herabkunft des Feuers und des\nGottertranks*)* *and Baudry. For --\n\n\"The fire used by man being the result of the action of *pramantha*\nin the *arani, *the Aryas *must have *ascribed (?)\nthe same origin to celestial fire, and they *must* have *imagined\n(?) that a god armed with pramantha, or a divine pramantha, exercised\nin the bosom of the clouds a violent friction, which gave birth\nto lightning and thunderbolts. . . . . This idea is supported\nby the fact that, according to Plutarch's testimony (*Philosoph.\nPlant.,* iii*. *3), the Stoics thought that thunder\nwas the result of the struggle of storm-clouds and lightning --\na conflagration due to friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt\nonly the action of clouds which clashed with each other. What\nwas this theory, if not the scientific translation of the production\nof fire by friction? . . . . . . Everything leads us to think\nthat, from the highest antiquity, and before the dispersion of\nthe Aryans, it was believed that the pramantha lighted fire in\nthe storm cloud as well as in the aranis.\" (*Revue Germanique,\np. *368.)\n\nThus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered\ntruths. Defenders of the Bible dead-letter could never help the\nwriters of missionary tracts more effectually, than do materialistic\nSymbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient Aryans\nbased their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the\nphysiological.\n\nBut it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic philosophy is against\nsuch an interpretation. And if, as Decharme himself confesses,\n\"this idea of the creative power of fire is explained at\nonce by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial\nspark,\" as shown by the imagery often made use of in the\nVedas when speaking of *Arani, *it would mean something\nhigher than simply a gross sexual conception. A hymn to Agni in\nthe Veda is cited as example: -- \"Here is the pramantha,\nthe generator is ready. Bring the mistress of the race (the female\n*Arani*)*. *Let us produce Agni by attrition, according\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to\nlaws in our day.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 527 THE SIX BROTHERS OF KRISHNA.\n\nto ancient custom\" -- which means no worse than an abstract\nidea expressed in the tongue of mortals. The \"female Arani,\"\nthe mistress of the race, is Aditi, the mother of the gods, or\nShekinah, eternal light -- in the world of Spirit, the \"Great\nDeep\" and **C**HAOS; or primordial Substance\nin its first remove from the **U**NKNOWN, in the\nmanifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied\nto Devaki, the mother of Krishna, or the incarnated **L**OGOS;\nand if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread\nof exoteric religions, may already be regarded as having a sexual\nsignificance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image.\nThe subjective had been transformed into the objective; Spirit\nhad fallen into matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance\nhad become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual union\nof Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropomorphic\ncolouring which it had never had in the beginning. Between the\nVedas and the Puranas there is an abyss of which both are the\npoles, like the seventh (*atmic*) and the first or lowest\nprinciple (the physical body) in the Septenary constitution of\nman. The primitive, purely spiritual language of the Vedas, conceived\nmany decades of millenniums earlier, had found its purely human\nexpression for the purpose of describing events taking place 5,000\nyears ago, the date of Krishna's death (from which day the Kali\nYuga, or Black-Age, began for mankind).\n\nAs Aditi is called *Surarani *(the matrix or \"mother\"\nof the *sura *gods), so Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas,\nis called in Mahabharata *Pandavarani* -- which term is\nalready *physiologized. *But Devaki, the antetype of the\nRoman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form of Aditi.\nThe latter is the goddess mother, the \"Deva-matri\" of\nSeven Sons (the *six *and the *seven* Adityas of\nearly Vedic times); the mother of Krishna, Devaki, has six embryos\nconveyed into her womb by Jagaddhatri (the \"nurse of the\nworld\"), the seventh (Krishna, the Logos,) being transferred\nto that Rohini. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven\nchildren, of five sons and two daughters, (a later transformation\nof sex) in Matthew's Gospel (*xiii.* 55-56). No one of\nthe worshippers of the Roman Catholic Virgin would object to reciting\nin her honour the prayer addressed by the gods to Devaki. Let\nthe reader judge.\n\n\"Thou art that Prakriti (essence), infinite and subtile,\nwhich bore Brahma in its womb. Thou eternal being, comprising\nin thy substance the essence of all created things, wast identical\nwith creation; thou wast the parent of the triform sacrifice,\nbecoming the germ of all. . . . Thou art sacrifice, whence all\nfruit proceeds; thou art the *arani* whose attrition engenders\nfire\" . . . . (\"Womb of Light,\" \"holy Vessel,\"\nare the epithets of the Virgin). \"As Aditi, thou art the\nparent of the gods. . . . Thou art Jyotsna (the morning twilight).\"\nThe Virgin\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 528 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nis often addressed as the \"morning Star\" and the \"star\nof Salvation\" -- the light whence day is begotten. \"Thou\nart *Samnati *(humility, a daughter of Daksha), the mother\nof Wisdom; thou art *Niti, *the parent of harmony (*Naya*)*;\n*thou art modesty, the progenitrix of affection (*Prasraya\nor vinaya*); thou art desire, of whom love is born. . . .\nThou art the mother of knowledge (*Avabodha*); patience\n(*Dhriti*)*, *the parent of fortitude (*Dhairya*)*\n*. . . . etc., etc.\"\n\nThus *arani *is shown here as the Roman Catholic \"vase\nof election\" and no worse. As to its primitive meaning, it\nwas purely metaphysical. No unclean thought traversed these conceptions\nin the ancient mind. Even in the *Zohar -- *far less metaphysical\nthan any other symbolism -- the idea is an abstraction and nothing\nmore. Thus, when the *Zohar* (iii., 290) says: \"All\nthat which exists, all that which has been formed by the ancient,\nwhose name is holy, can only exist through a male and female principle,\"\nit means no more than this: \"The divine Spirit of Life is\never coalescing with matter.\" It is the **W**ILL\nof the Deity that acts; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian.\n\"When *Atteekah Kaddosha, *the ancient and the concealed\nof the concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things\nlike male and female. This wisdom cornprises ALL when it goeth\nforth.\" Hence Chochmah (male wisdom) and Binah (female consciousness\nor Intellect) are said to create all between the two -- the active\nand the passive principles. As the eye of the expert jeweller\ndiscerns under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate\npearl, enshrined within its bosom, his hand dealing with the former\nbut to get at its contents, so the eye of the true philosopher\nreads between the lines of the Puranas the sublime Vedic truths,\nand corrects the form with the help of the Vedantic wisdom. Our\nOrientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the thick\ncoating of the shell, and -- act accordingly.\n\nFrom all that has been said in this section, one sees clearly\nthat, between the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity,\nthere is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of ancient philosophy\ncan kill this dogma.\n\n-------\n\nNext Section\n\nContents",
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