Author of "ISIS UNVEILED."
"There is no Religion higher than Truth."
—SCANNED AND EDITED TO —
A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF 1888
THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
LOS ANGELES CALIF.
This electronic version of
The Secret Doctrine follows the pagination and style of the
A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF 1888
except for the footnotes, instead of breaking up the footnotes,
that are continued on other pages, due to lack of space, on the pages printed in paper books, we placed all the
information for each footnote together on the page of its' origin.
— Editor Theosophy Co. of Arizona
2005
London:
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
117, Nassau Street, New York.
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar, Madras.
—
1888.
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by
H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C."
This Work
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists,
In every Country,
And of every Race,
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.
THE THEOSOPHY
COMPANY
November 17, 1947
PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE
THE Theosophical Movement of the nineteenth century began in 1875. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, first published in 1888, was written by Madame H. P. Blavatsky to establish an authentic record of the teachings of the Theosophical philosophy. “The SECRET DOCTRINE is not,” she said, “a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.” ( I, xxxviii. )
By 1925, fifty years after the inauguration of the Movement in New York City, the original edition had long been out of print. At that time, the mid-point of the centennial cycle of the Theosophical Movement, The Theosophy Company first made available a facsimile edition of Madame Blavatsky’s great work, in the form of a photographic reproduction of the original edition. The present volume is identical with previous printings of the facsimile edition, although from new plates.
Besides the original edition of 1888—the only one authorized by Madame Blavatsky—several other editions of this work have appeared. One of these, the so—called “Third and Revised Edition” of 1893, is marred by many thousands of alterations, some of them trivial, some actual mutilations of the original text. Included in later printings of this so-called “Revised Edition” is a spurious “Third Volume” of THE SECRET DOCTRINE, issued in 1897, six years after the death of H. P. Blavatsky. Compiled from miscellaneous papers found among her effects, this volume forms no part of the original SECRET DOCTRINE written by H.P.B.
The “Third and Revised Edition” was followed by another in 1938, this time in six volumes, called the “Adyar Edition.” Except for additional indexes, a biographical sketch of the author, various typographical changes, and the inclusion of material attempting to justify publication of the spurious “third volume,” this Adyar edition is substantially the same as the earlier “revised” version.
Still another edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE has been printed from reset type. Except for gratuitous “corrections” of the author’s Sanskrit scholarship, and the addition of irrelevant sectarian matter, this edition is virtually an accurate reproduction of the original text. Its exact authenticity, however, cannot be determined without laborious comparison with the original.
The genuine SECRET DOCTRINE has only two volumes. While, as originally written, THE SECRET DOCTRINE was to be published in four volumes, only two volumes were given to the printer by H.P.B. The remaining two volumes, although complete, or nearly complete, were withheld by her for reasons clearly indicated at the close of the second volume of the original edition. (ii, 798.)
With the present printing of THE SECRET DOCTRINE, The
Theosophy Company continues its function of providing students and inquirers
with unaltered editions of the original literature of the Theosophical Movement.
The two volumes of the original edition are here bound in one for the
convenience of students; otherwise, this edition is a perfect facsimile of the
original edition and can be relied upon as such.
November 17, 1947
THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
—————
THE Author
— the writer, rather —
feels it necessary to apologse for the long delay which has occurred in the
appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude
of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme,
and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large
quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of
occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and
showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and
as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favourable reception,
no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety.
The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so.
This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation
of the work was first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that
the "Secret Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis
Unveiled." It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be
added to those already put before the world in the last-named and other works
dealing with esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of
treatment: and consequently the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty
pages extracted from "Isis Unveiled."
The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers
and critics for the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English
which may be found in these pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the
language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is employed because it
offers the most widely-diffused medium for conveying the truths which it had
become her duty to place before the world.
These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does
the author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for
the first time in the world's history. For what is contained in this work is to
be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of
the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol,
and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is now attempted is to
gather the oldest tenets together and to make of them one harmonious and
unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her predecessors,
is that she need not resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work
is a partial statement of what she herself has been taught by more advanced
students, supplemented, in a few details only, by the results of her
own study and observation. The publication of many of the facts herein stated
has been rendered necessary by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many
Theosophists and students of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years,
in their endeavour to, as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought
from the few facts previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its
entirety, but a select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, special
attention being paid to some facts which have been seized upon by various
writers, and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings,
however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, belong neither
to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion, neither
to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is
the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various religious
schemes are now made to merge back into their original element, out of which
every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and become materialised.
It is more than probable that the book will be regarded by a large section
of the public as a romance of the wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of
the book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility for
what is contained in this work, and even to face the charge of having invented
the whole of it. That it has many shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she
claims for it is that, romantic as it may seem to many, its logical coherence
and consistency entitle this new Genesis to rank, at any rate, on a level with
the "working hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science. Further, it
claims consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but
because it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and
analogy.
The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not "a
fortuitous concurrence of atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the
scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are
the basis of all religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental
unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that the occult side of
Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization.
If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is
written in the service of humanity, and by humanity and the future generations
it must be judged. Its author recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she
is accustomed to; calumny she is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in
silent contempt.
De minimis non curat lex.
H.P.B.
London, October, 1888.
—————
INTRODUCTION ... xvii.
The Need of such a Book ... xix.
The Antiquity of Documents and MSS. ... xxiii.
What the Book is intended to do ... xxviii.
PROEM ... 1
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its Symbolism ... 2
The One Life, Active and Passive ... 4
The Secret Doctrine — Pantheism — Atheism ... 6
"Space" in all Religions and in Occultism ... 9
Seven Cosmic Elements — Seven Races of Mankind ... 12
The Three Postulates of the Secret Doctrine ... 14
Description of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan ... 20
—————
SEVEN STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN ... 27
—————
STANZA I. — THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE... 35
The Seven Eternities ... 36
"Time" ... 37
The Universal Mind and the Dhyan Chohans ... 38
Nidana and Maya: The Causes of Misery ... 39
The Great Breath ... 43
Being and Non-Being ... 45
The Eye of Dangma ... 47
Alaya, the Universal Soul ... 49
STANZA II. — THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
The Absolute knows Itself not ... 55
The Germ of Life was not yet ... 57
The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought ... 61
—————
STANZA III. — THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS ... 62
The Great Vibration ... 63
Nature's Symbols ... 65
The Power of Numbers ... 67
The Logoi and the Dragon ... 73
The Astral Light ... 75
Primeval Radiations from Unity ... 79
The Web of Being ... 83
Conscious Electricity: Fohat ... 85
—————
STANZA IV. — THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 86
The Sons of the Fire ... 86
The Vehicle of the Universe — the Dhyan Chohans ... 89
The Army of the Voice ... 93
Speech and Mind ... 95
The Ogdoad and the Heptad ... 99
The Stellar "Sons of Light" ... 103
—————
STANZA V. — FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
The Fiery Whirlwind and the Primordial Seven ... 106
They Produce Fohat ... 108
The Correlation of the "Gods" ... 113
Evolution of the "Principles" of Nature ... 119
The Mystery of the Fire ... 121
The Secret of the Elements ... 123
The Square of the Tabernacle ... 125
The Planetary Spirits and the Lipika ... 129
The Ring "Pass Not" ... 130
The Sidereal Book of Life ... 131
The Soul's Pilgrimage and its "Rest" ... 134
—————
STANZA VI.— OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
The Logos ... 136
Mystery of the Female Logos ... 137
The Seven Layu Centres ... 138
The "Elementary Germs" ... 139
The Evolution of the Elements ... 140
The Building of the Worlds ... 145
A Neutral Centre ... 147
"Dead" Planets — The Moon ... 149
—————
THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
The Planetary Divisions and the Human Principles ... 153
The Moon ... 155
Transmigrations of the Ego ... 159
The Septenary Chain ... 161
Relation of the other Planets to the Earth ... 163
—————
EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS ... 170
The Lunar Chain and the Earth Chain ... 172
The Earth, the Child of the Moon ... 173
Classification of the Monads ... 175
The Monad Defined ... 177
The Lunar Monads—the Pitris ... 179
A Triple Evolution in Nature ... 181
—————
STANZA VI.— CONTINUED ... 191
"Creation" in the Fourth Round ... 191
The "Curse," "Sin," and "War" ... 193
The Struggle for Life and the Birth of the Worlds ... 202
The Adepts and the Sacred Island ... 207
—————
STANZA VII.— THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH ... 213
Divisions of the Hierarchies ... 214
Correlations of Beings ... 223
What incarnates in Animal Man ... 233
Formation of Man: the Thinker ... 238
Occult and Kabalistic Pneumatics ... 243
Akasa and Ether ... 257
The Invisible "Lives" ... 259
Occult Vital Chemistry and Bacteriology ... 261
The Watcher and his Shadow ... 265
Earth peopled by the Shadows of the Gods ... 267
—————
SUMMING UP ... 269
The pith and marrow of the Secret Doctrine ... 273
Hermes in Christian Garb ... 285
Some Occult Aphorisms ... 289
The Seven Powers of Nature ... 293
—————
I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
Emblem and Symbol differ ... 305
Magic Potency of Sound ... 307
Mystery Language ... 309
—————
II. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS ... 310
Egypt's many Religions ... 311
The Jews and their System ... 313
Moses copied from Sargon ... 319
Identity of Ancient Symbols ... 323
—————
III. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
Divine Thought, or Cineritious Matter? ... 327
Ether and Intelligence ... 330
The Seven Prakritis ... 335
The Mystic Fire ... 339
One Tree of Knowledge ... 341
—————
IV. CHAOS — THEOS — KOSMOS ... 342
The Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343
The Birth of Mind ... 345
—————
V. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS ... 349
The Gnostic Idea ... 351
International Correlation of Gods ... 355
VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
Egg-born Logoi ... 363
The Winged Globe ... 365
—————
VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
Human Gods and Divine Men ... 369
The Rebirth of Gods ... 371
The Puranic Prophecy ... 377
—————
VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
Exoteric and Esoteric ... 381
The Purity of early Phallicism ... 383
The Egyptian Lotus ... 385
—————
IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386
A Glance at the Lunar Myth ... 387
A Key-note to the Moon ... 389
Copies and Originals... 393
The Moon Bi-sexual ... 397
—————
X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
Degeneration of the Symbol ... 405
The Seven-headed Dragons ... 407
Dragon and Crocodile ... 409
—————
XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
Death is Life ... 413
The Fall of the Angels ... 418
Transformation of the Legend ... 421
—————
XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
The Point within the Circle ... 426
The Logos or Verbum ... 429
The Factors of Creation ... 432
Identity of the Hierarchies in all Religions ... 438
Difference between the Aryan and Semitic Systems ... 444
XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
The Gnostic and the Hindu Versions ... 449
The Seven Puranic "Creations" ... 450
—————
XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460
The "Gods" and the "Elements" ... 463
The Language of the Elements ... 464
Pagan and Christian Worship of the Elements ... 467
—————
XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Phallicism ... 471
The Real Meaning ... 472
—————
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism versus Materialism ... 479
The Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481
—————
II. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
—————
III. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ... 483
The Hypothetical Ether ... 485
Scientific Theories of its Constitution ... 489
—————
IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
Intelligences or Blind Forces? ... 493
The Cause of Attraction ... 498
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE ... 500
Conflicting Hypotheses ... 502
More Hypotheses ... 505
—————
VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
What are the "Forces?" ... 508
The View of the Occultists ... 510
Scientific and Occult Theories on Heat ... 515
The Atoms of Science ... 519
—————
VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether and Atoms ... 527
—————
VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
Dr. Richardson on Nervous Ether ... 531
The Senses and their Action ... 535
Too much "Life" may Kill ... 539
—————
IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
The Primordial Element ... 542
Elements and Meta-Elements ... 546
The Tree of Life and Being ... 549
Prof. Crookes on the Elements ... 552
—————
X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
Mr. Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist ... 557
Inter-Etheric Waves ... 561
The Secrets of Sound and Odour ... 565
—————
Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
Metaphysical Chemistry ... 569
What are the Seven Planets? ... 575
The Cyclic Fall of the Gods ... 577
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579
All-Potential Unity ... 583
The "Seventh" in Chemistry ... 585
—————
XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
Forces are Emanations ... 591
What is the Nebula? ... 595
—————
XIV. FORCES — MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The Vital Principle ... 603
Occult and Physical Science ... 605
—————
XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
The Gods of the Ancients — the Monads ... 613
The Monad and the Duad ... 617
The Genesis of the Elements ... 621
Hermes and Huxley ... 625
The Teaching of Leibnitz ... 627
The Monads according to Occultism ... 632
—————
XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
Karmic Cycles and Universal Ethics ... 637
Destiny and Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis ... 643
—————
XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
The Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal Cycles ... 656
Hindu Astronomy ... 661
—————
XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
Science Confesses her Ignorance ... 669
Materialism is leading Europe towards a catastrophe ... 675
—————
INTRODUCTORY.
—————
“Gently to hear, kindly to judge.”
—SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE the appearance of Theosophical
literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings “Esoteric
Buddhism.” And, having become a habit—as an old proverb based on daily
experience has it—“Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to
laboriously climb its way up hill.”
Old truisms are often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain entirely
free from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough
examination of a subject from all its aspects has been made. This is said with
reference to the prevailing double mistake (a) of limiting Theosophy to
Buddhism: and (b) of confounding the tenets of the religious philosophy preached
by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines broadly outlined in “Esoteric
Buddhism.” Any thing more erroneous than this could be hardly imagined. It has
enabled our enemies to find an effective weapon against theosophy; because, as
an eminent Pali scholar very pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume
named “neither esotericism nor Buddhism.” The esoteric truths, presented in Mr.
Sinnett’s work, had ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public;
nor did it contain the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a
hitherto hidden teaching which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and
explained in the present volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many
fundamental tenets from the SECRET DOCTRINE
of the East, raise but a small corner of the dark veil. For no one, not even the
greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could—even if he would—give out
promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving world, that which has been so
effectually concealed from it for long æons and ages.
“Esoteric Buddhism” was an excellent work with a very unfortunate
xviii
INTRODUCTORY.
title, though it meant no more than does the title of this work,
the “SECRET DOCTRINE.” It proved
unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging things by their
appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now become so
universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have fallen
victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests were raised
by Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to myself, I must add
that “Esoteric Buddhism” was presented to me as a completed volume, and that I
was entirely unaware of the manner in which the author intended to spell the
word “Budh-ism.”
This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first
to bring the subject under public notice, neglected to point out the difference
between “Buddhism”—the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord Gautama,
and named after his title of Buddha, “the Enlightened”—and Budha, “Wisdom,” or
knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root “Budh,” to
know. We theosophists of India are ourselves the real culprits, although, at the
time, we did our best to correct the mistake. (See Theosophist, June, 1883.) To
avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the spelling of the word had only to be
altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written “Budhism,” instead of
“Buddhism.” Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it ought
to be called, in English, Buddhaïsm, and its votaries “Buddhaïsts.”
This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like
this one. The “Wisdom religion” is the inheritance of all the nations, the world
over, though the statement was made in “Esoteric Buddhism” (Preface to the
original Edition) that “two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other
European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put
into a scientific shape,” etc. This error must have crept in through
inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is “divulged” in
“Esoteric Buddhism”— and much more — many years before it became her duty (in
1880) to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two European
gentlemen, one of whom was the author of “Esoteric Buddhism”; and surely the
present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of
being a European, by birth and education. Moreover, a considerable part of the
philosophy
xix
INTRODUCTORY.
expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in America, even before Isis
Unveiled was published, to two Europeans and to my colleague, Colonel H. S.
Olcott. Of the three teachers the latter gentleman has had, the first was a
Hungarian Initiate, the second an Egyptian, the third a Hindu. As permitted,
Colonel Olcott has given out some of this teaching in various ways; if the other
two have not, it has been simply because they were not allowed: their time for
public work having not yet come. But for others it has, and the appearance of
Mr. Sinnett’s several interesting books is a visible proof of the fact. It is
above everything important to keep in mind that no theosophical book acquires
the least additional value from pretended authority.
In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the one (or the First) and “Supreme
Wisdom” is a term used by Aryâsanga in his Secret treatises, and now by all the
mystic Northern Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by
the earliest Aryans to the Unknown deity; the word “Brahmâ” not being found in
the Vedas and the early works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and “Adi-bhûta” is
translated “the primeval uncreated cause of all” by Fitzedward Hall. Æons of
untold duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so
humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to mortals and
finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him
to receive the title of the “Buddha of Wisdom unmoved” Bodha means the innate
possession of divine intellect or “understanding”; “Buddha,” the acquirement of
it by personal efforts and merit; while Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the
channel through which divine knowledge reaches the “Ego,” the discernment of
good and evil, “divine conscience” also; and “Spiritual Soul,” which is the
vehicle of Atma. “When Buddhi absorbs our EGO-tism
(destroys it) with all its Vikaras, Avalôkitêshvara becomes manifested to us,
and Nirvana, or Mukti, is reached,” “Mukti” being the same as Nirvana, i.e.,
freedom from the trammels of “Maya” or illusion. “Bodhi” is likewise the name of
a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which the subject
reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of
Buddhism, and, by reaction, of “Budhism,” deny its esoteric teachings (which are
those also of the Brahmins), simply because the name
xx
INTRODUCTORY.
suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines.
Unwise is the correct term to use in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is
alone calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism,
the repeated attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred, in
his inner spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric
Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special
religions. Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every
one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical
with that of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute
Divine Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun.
Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute
and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called
monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a
blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the
records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the
whole world since the beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism
occupies therein only its legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret
portions of the “Dan” or “Jan-na” * (“Dhyan”) of Gautama’s
metaphysics—grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the
Wisdom Religion of antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole. The
Hindu Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and
physiological aspect of the Wisdom-Religion, to Ethics and MAN
alone. Things “unseen and incorporeal,” the mystery of Being outside our
terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public
lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats. The
latter received their Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni
of Mahavansa) near Mount Baibhâr (the Webhâra of the Pali MSS.). This cave was
in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian,
as rightly suspected by some archæologists.†
Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philo-
——————————————————————————————
* Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics
ch’an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In
the old books, the word Janna is defined as “to reform one’s self by meditation
and knowledge,” a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the “Book
of Dzyan.”
† Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a
distinguished archæologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it.
xxi INTRODUCTORY.
sophy of these teachings, once that they were transplanted from
the secret and sacred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of
proselytism, into a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India;
i.e., once they were transferred into China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the
pristine purity of these grand revelations was dealt with may be seen in
studying some of the so-called “esoteric” Buddhist schools of antiquity in their
modern garb, not only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even
in not a few schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and
Mongolian innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference
between orthodox Buddhism—i.e., the public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and
his esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from
that of the initiated Brahmins of his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan
soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and a disciple of the “twice born” (the initiated
Brahmins) or Dwijas. His teachings, therefore, could not be different from their
doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a
portion of that which had been kept secret from every man outside of the
“enchanted” circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that
had been imparted to him—owing to his pledges—though he taught a philosophy
built upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to
the world only its outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See
also Volume II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the
“Soul Doctrine.” None seem to have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly—too secretly,
perhaps—within the sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and
aspirations—Nirvana—has so tried and irritated the curiosity of those scholars
who have studied it, that, unable to solve it logically and satisfactorily by
untying the Gordian knot, they cut it through, by declaring that Nirvana meant
absolute annihilation.
Toward the end of the first quarter of this century, a
distinct class of literature appeared in the world, which became with every year
more defined in its tendency. Being based, soi-disant, on the scholarly
researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was held scientific.
Hindu, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and emblems were made to
yield anything the symbologist wanted them to
xxii
INTRODUCTORY.
yield, thus often giving out the rude outward form in place of
the inner meaning. Works, most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and
speculations, in circulo vicioso, foregone conclusions generally changing places
with premises as in the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pali scholar,
appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding the libraries with dissertations
rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real symbology, and each
contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental
truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the
light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say “a
few truths,” advisedly, because that which must remain unsaid could not be
contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present
generation of Sadducees. But, even the little that is now given is better than
complete silence upon those vital truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career
towards the unknown—which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable,
whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist—is rapidly progressing on
the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena—a
true valley of discord and of eternal strife—a necropolis, wherein lie buried
the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes
with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The “amiable infidels
and accomplished profligates” of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for
the revival of the dead sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of
earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to
them now; and now much more than ten years ago, when “Isis Unveiled,” or even
the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were published.
One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the
correctness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS:
“How can the statements contained in them be verified?” True, if a great portion
of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are
known to some Orientalists, the chief work—that one from which the Stanzas are
given—is not in the possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or “Dzan”)
is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by
them under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback
xxiii
INTRODUCTORY.
to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by
official Science; but to the students of Occultism, and to every genuine
Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main body of the Doctrines given
is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some
already translated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual,—others still
awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying
the statements herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. A few new
facts (new to the profane Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the
Commentaries will be found difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also,
have hitherto been transmitted orally: yet even those are in every instance
hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan
temple-literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through
malevolent criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several esoteric
schools—the seat of which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may
be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South
America—claim to have in their possession the sum total of sacred and
philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the works, in fact, that have ever
been written, in whatever language or characters, since the art of writing
began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the
Devanagari.
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the
Alexandrian Library (see Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 27), every work of a
character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and
comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the
combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It
is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left
and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last of the
precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor
Akbar.*
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose
text was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any
——————————————————————————————
* Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar
could extort from the Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that
European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the “Science of Religion,” p. 23),
Whether Europe has the complete text is very doubtful, and the future may have
very disagreeable surprises in store for the Orientalists.
xxiv
INTRODUCTORY.
direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been
carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the
best and cleverest palæographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. During
Akbar’s reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor’s sinful
prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves helped the Brahmans to
conceal their MSS. Such was Badáonì, who had all undisguised horror for Akbar’s
mania for idolatrous religions.*
Moreover in all the large and wealthy lamaseries, there are subterranean
crypts and cave-libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang
are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsaydam, in the solitary
passes of Kuen-lun † there are several such hiding-places. Along the
ridge of Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so far, there
exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses,
a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old
lama, a hermit, living nearby to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean
galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which,
according to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British
Museum. ‡
All this is very likely to provoke a smile of doubt. But then, before
——————————————————————————————
* Badáoní wrote in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: “His Majesty
relished inquiries into the sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so
numerous they are, and who have no end of revealed books) . . . As they (the
Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals, on
physical and religious sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of
the future, in spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based
on reason and testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly that no man
could now raise a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to
dust, or the heavens were to tear asunder.” This work “was kept secret, and was
not published till the reign of Jahângir.” (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr.
Blochmann, p. 104, note.)
† Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet.
‡ According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of
the waterless land of Tarim—a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan—were in
the days of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly
a few verdant oases relieve its dead solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre
of a vast city swallowed by and buried under the sandy soil of the desert,
belongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same
tradition speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with
tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.
xxv INTRODUCTORY.
the reader rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him
pause and reflect over the following well known facts. The collective researches
of the Orientalists, and especially the labours of late years of the students of
comparative Philology and the Science of Religions have led them to ascertain as
follows: An immense, incalculable number of MSS., and even printed works known
to have existed, are now to be found no more. They have disappeared without
leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance they
might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and their very
names would have been obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as
now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and
entirely incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without
those additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for
instance, the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.*
He is said to have written 930 books on Ethics and religions, and seventy on
magic, one thousand in all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine,
the “Tao-te-King,” or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as
Stanislas Julien shows, only “about 5,000 words” (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.),
hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Müller finds that “the text is
unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than
sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation,” the earliest going back
as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries
and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time
to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The
Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and
followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of the
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which
our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but
intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the
texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane.
——————————————————————————————
* “If we turn to China, we find that the religion of
Confucius is founded on the Five King and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of
considerable extent and surrounded by voluminous Commentaries, without which
even the most learned scholars would not venture to fathom the depth of their
sacred canon.” (Lectures on the “Science of Religion,” p. 185. Max Müller.) But
they have not fathomed it—and this is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a
very learned member of that body, in Paris, complained in 1881,
xxvi
INTRODUCTORY.
If one turns to the ancient literature of the
Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures, the elder sister and
instructress, if not the fountainhead of the Mosaic Bible, the basis and
starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To perpetuate the
memory of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record the vast cycle of
astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the tradition of
their splendid and eminently occult literature, what now remains?—only a few
fragments, said to be by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the
character of what has disappeared. For they passed through the hands of his
Reverence the Bishop of Cæsarea—that self-constituted censor and editor of the
sacred records of other men’s religions—and they doubtless bear to this day the
mark of his eminently veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of
this treatise on the once grand religion of Babylon?
Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus,
for Alexander the Great, from the astronomical and chronological records
preserved by the priests of that temple, and covering a period of 200,000 years,
it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander Polyhistor made a series of
extracts from it—also lost. Eusebius used these extracts in writing his
Chronicon (270—340 A.D.). The points of resemblance—almost of identity—between
the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous
to Eusebius, in his rôle of defender and champion of the new faith which had
adopted the Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty
certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of
Manetho—so much so that Bunsen† charges him with mutilating history most
unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the fifth century, and Syncellus,
vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both denounce him as the most
daring and desperate forger.
Is it likely, then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which
were already menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted?
——————————————————————————————
* Found out and proven only now, through the discoveries
made by George Smith (vide his “Chaldean account of Genesis”), and which, thanks
to this Armenian forger, have misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500
years into accepting Jewish derivations for direct Divine Revelation!
† Bunsen’s “Egypt’s Place in History,” vol. i. p. 200
xxvii INTRODUCTORY.
So that, with the exception of these more
than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean sacred literature has disappeared
from the eyes of the profane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A few facts
that were contained in the Berosian History are given in Part II. of Vol. II.,
and may throw a great light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels, personified
by Bel and the Dragon.
Turning now to the oldest Aryan literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will
find, following strictly in this the data furnished by the said Orientalists
themselves, that, although the Rig-Veda contains only “about 10,580 verses, or
1,028 hymns,” in spite of the Brâhmanas and the mass of glosses and
commentaries, it is not understood correctly to this day. Why is this so?
Evidently because the Brâhmanas, “the scholastic and oldest treatises on the
primitive hymns,” themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed
to secure.
What do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Have they got it in its
completeness? Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and
the Tanjur of the Northern Buddhists, each volume we are told, “weighing from
four to five pounds,” nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred
canon of the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the
Saddharma alankâra,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, “five
or six times the amount of the matter contained in the Bible,” the latter, in
the words of Professor Max Müller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters.
Notwithstanding, then, these “325 volumes” (in reality there are 333, Kanjur
comprising 108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), “the translators, instead of supplying
us with correct versions, have interwoven them with their own commentaries, for
the purpose of justifying the dogmas of their several schools.Ӡ
Moreover, “according to a tradition preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of
the South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist Canon comprised originally
80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so that there remained but
6,000,” the professor tells his audiences. “Lost” as usual for Europeans. But
who can be quite sure that they are likewise lost for Buddhists and Brahmins?
Considering the sacredness for the Buddhists of every line written
——————————————————————————————
* Spence Hardy, “The Legends and Theories of the
Buddhists,” p. 66.
† “Buddhism in Tibet,” p. 78.
xxviii
INTRODUCTORY.
upon Buddha or his “Good Law,” the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts
does seem miraculous. Had it been vice versâ, every one acquainted with the
natural course of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000,
five or six thousand treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions
in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist
Arhats began their religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new
faith beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,*
and reached China in the year 61 A.D. † when Kashyapa, at the invitation
of the Emperor Ming-ti, went there to acquaint the “Son of Heaven” with the
tenets of Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of
such a loss as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one
moment the possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for
themselves or, that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to
keep their most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to
deliver them to the profanation and misuse of races even so “vastly superior” to
themselves.
Owing to the expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every one
of the Orientalists (See Max Müller’s Lectures for example) the public may feel
sufficiently sure (a) that the students of ancient religions have indeed very
few data upon which to build such final conclusions as they generally do about
the old religions, and (b) that such lack of data does not prevent them in the
least from dogmatising. One would imagine that, thanks to the numerous records
of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries preserved in the classics, and in a
number of ancient writers, the rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt ought to be
well understood at least; better, at any rate, than the too abstruse
philosophies and Pantheism of India, of whose religion and language Europe had
hardly any idea before the beginning of the present century. Along the Nile and
on the face of the whole country, there stand to this hour, exhumed yearly and
daily, fresh relics which eloquently tell their own history. Still it is not so.
The learned Oxford philologist himself confesses the truth by saying that
“Though . . . we
see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and labyrinths, their
walls
——————————————————————————————
* Lassen, (“Ind. Althersumkunde” Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows
a Buddhist monastery erected in the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General
Cunningham, earlier than that.
† Reverend T. Edkins, “Chinese Buddhism.”
xxix INTRODUCTORY.
covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange
pictures of gods and goddesses.
. . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have
even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet,
though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race,
the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its
ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us.” * Here again the
mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they
become intelligible have disappeared.
Nevertheless, having found that “there is a natural connection between
language and religion”; and, secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion
before the separation of the Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the
separation of the Semitic race; and a common Turanian religion before the
separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class;
having, in fact, only discovered “three ancient centres of religion” and “three
centres of language,” and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive
religions and languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to
declare “that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those
principal religions of the world has been gained!”
A “scientific treatment” of a subject is no guarantee for its “historical
basis”; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the
most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical
facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has proved thoroughly to the world’s
satisfaction, that according to Grimm’s law of phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha
are two different personages, quite distinct from each other, and he has shown
it scientifically. When, however he takes the opportunity of saying in the same
breath that Odin “was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long
anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer” (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has
not the slightest “historical basis” for it. He makes history and fact
subservient to his
——————————————————————————————
* So little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the
funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes
made on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year
or two since, one of that kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of
what had been considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out,
thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung on his neck, to be that of
Sesostris—the greatest King of Egypt!
xxx
INTRODUCTORY.
own conclusions, which may be very “scientific,” in the sight of
Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The
conflicting views on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the
various eminent philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max
Müller himself, are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis
to stand upon, “internal evidence” being very often a Jack-o’-lantern, instead
of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology
any better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the
last century or so that there must have been “fragments of a primeval
revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind.
. . preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy,” were entirely wrong.
For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to
the world from time to time. While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the
writer that it was well known that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging
to the sacred canon were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the
European pundits, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of
his day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same
fact with regard to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max
Müller had declared to the audiences of his “Lectures” that the theory
. . .“that there
was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human
race, finds but few supporters at present,”—the holy and learned man laughed.
His answer was suggestive. “If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he pronounced the name,
were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a gupta cave (a secret
crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would soon find out that what
crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from India to Europe were
only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There
was a “primeval revelation,” and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to
the world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to
wait.”
Questioned further on this point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut,
in 1880.
No doubt the mystification played, in the last century at Calcutta, by the
Brahmins upon Colonel Wilford and Sir William Jones was a cruel one. But it had
been well deserved, and no one was more to be blamed
xxxi INTRODUCTORY.
in that affair than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford
themselves. The former, on the testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat.
Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly enough to maintain that “the Hindus were even
now almost Christians, because their Brahmâ, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other
than the Christian trinity.” * It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental
scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy,
and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too
much the other way. For “that first supply on the Brahmanical market,” made for
Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to
give to the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the
opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is
shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole Purânic story about
Chrishna was plagiarized by the Brahmins from the Bible ! But the facts cited by
the Oxford Professor in his Lectures on the “Science of Religion,” concerning
the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of
Col. Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who
studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that
neither the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more
ancient religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews
have not borrowed all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being
mutilated later on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their
primitive learning from the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic
influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long
since justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit
and Brahman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence
of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Müller. What it is everyone knows.
The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every
identification and “connection” between
——————————————————————————————
* See Max Müller’s “Introduction to the Science of Religion.”
Lecture On False Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This
relates to the clever forgery (on leaves inserted in old Purânic MSS.), in
correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard
from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc.
xxxii
INTRODUCTORY.
the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha,
Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maïa, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Mâyâ, and the
mother of Jesus, likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great
illusion symbolically)—yet these three characters have no connection, nor can
they have any, since Bopp has “laid down his code of phonetic laws.”
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history,
it is a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny, a priori, everything
that does not dovetail with their special conclusions. Thus, while new
discoveries are daily made of great arts and sciences having existed far back in
the night of time, even the knowledge of writing is refused to some of the most
ancient nations, and they are credited with barbarism instead of culture. Yet
the traces of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be
found. This civilization is undeniably prehistoric. And how can there be
civilization without a literature, in some form, without annals or chronicles?
Common sense alone ought to supplement the broken links in the history of
departed nations. The gigantic, unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the
whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper course of the river Khuan-Khé down to
the Kara-Korum hills, witnessed a civilization during milleniums of years, and
would have strange secrets to tell mankind. The Eastern and Central portions of
those regions—the Nan-Schayn and the Altyne-taga—were once upon a time covered
with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has
swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of
shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains
of the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to
the traveller. Within those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases
are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or
trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which
are entirely inaccessible even to the native profane traveller. Hurricanes may
“tear up the sands and sweep whole plains away,” they are powerless to destroy
that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the
subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such
oases, there is little fear that anyone should discover them, even should
several armies invade the sandy wastes where—
xxxiii INTRODUCTORY.
“Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged screen
Round the parch’d flats of the dry, dry desert.
. .”
But there is no need to send the reader across the desert, when the same
proofs of ancient civilization are found even in comparatively populated regions
of the same country. The oasis of Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000
feet above the level of the river Tchertchen D’arya, is surrounded with the
ruins of archaic towns and cities in every direction. There, some 3,000 human
beings represent the relics of about a hundred extinct nations and races—the
very names of which are now unknown to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would
feel more than embarrassed to class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as
the respective descendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes known as
little of their own forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the moon.
When questioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their
fathers had come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were ruled by
the great genii of these deserts. This may be put down to ignorance and
superstition, yet in view of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, the answer
may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe of Khoorassan claims to
have come from what is now known as Afghanistan, long before the days of
Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The
Russian traveller, Colonel (now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the
oasis of Tchertchen, the ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was,
according to local tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and
the other by the Mongolians in the tenth century of our era. “The emplacement of
the two cities is now covered, owing to shifting sands and the desert wind, with
strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken china and kitchen utensils and
human bones. The natives often find copper and gold coins, melted silver,
ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most remarkable—broken glass.
. .” “Coffins of some undecaying wood, or material, also, within which
beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are found.
. . The male mummies are all extremely tall powerfully built men with
long waving hair. . .
A vault was found with twelve dead men sitting in it. Another time, in a
separate coffin, a young girl was discovered by us. Her eyes were closed with
golden discs, and the jaws held firm by a golden circlet running from under the
chin across the top of the head. Clad in a narrow
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INTRODUCTORY.
woollen garment, her bosom was covered with golden stars, the
feet being left naked.” (From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the
famous traveller adds that all along their way on the river Tchertchen they
heard legends about twenty-three towns buried ages ago by the shifting sands of
the deserts. The same tradition exists on the Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us the
right to credit other legendary lore warranted by well educated and learned
natives of India and Mongolia, when they speak of immense libraries reclaimed
from the sand, together with various reliques of ancient MAGIC
lore, which have all been safely stowed away.
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine was the universally
diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion,
authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its
character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its
great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to
the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the following
facts: the tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments saved when the
Alexandrian library was destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which
disappeared in India in the reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and
Japan that the true old texts with the commentaries, which alone make them
comprehensible—amounting to many thousands of volumes—have long passed out of
the reach of profane hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult
literature of Babylon; the loss of those keys which alone could solve the
thousand riddles of the Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India
that the real secret commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though
no longer visible to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in
secret caves and crypts; and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with
regard to their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating
hands, to re-appear in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the
late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, “the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond
the pale of Aryan civilization) will have to wait.”
For it is not the fault of the initiates that these documents are now “lost”
to the profane; nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or
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INTRODUCTORY.
any desire to monopolise the life-giving sacred lore. There were
portions of the Secret science that for incalculable ages had to remain
concealed from the profane gaze. But this was because to impart to the
unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous importance, was equivalent to
giving a child a lighted candle in a powder magazine.
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of students,
when meeting with statements such as this, may be outlined here.
“We can understand,” they say, “the necessity for concealing from the herd
such secrets as the Vril, or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W.
Keely, of Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how any danger could arise from
the revelation of such a purely philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of
the planetary chains.”
The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven
races, at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle
is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on
every plane, correlated to seven-fold occult forces—those of the higher planes
being of tremendous power. So that any septenary division at once gives a clue
to tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to
humanity. A clue, which is, perhaps, no clue to the present
generation—especially the Westerns—protected as they are by their very blindness
and ignorant materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would,
nevertheless, have been very real in the early centuries of the Christian era,
to people fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of
degradation, which made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the
worst description.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge
itself and its actual existence had never been made a secret of by the
Hierophants of the Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever
been made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was
repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the
Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change
for the worse—in the policy of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to
the writer by a reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian
Embassy—namely, that there are several documents in the St. Petersburg
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INTRODUCTORY.
Imperial Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days
when Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of Mystics flourished unimpeded in
Russia, i.e., at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century,
more than one Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet via the Ural mountains in search
of knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than
one returned years later, with a rich store of such information as could never
have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could be cited, and
well-known names brought forward, but for the fact that such publicity might
annoy the surviving relatives of the said late Initiates. Let any one look over
the Annals and History of Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis,
and he will assure himself of the fact stated.
This is a corroboration of that which has been stated many times before,
and, unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the
virulent charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose thrown at
those who asserted but a truthful, if even a little known fact, have only
generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But now the mischief is done, and truth
should no longer be denied, whatever the consequences. Is it a new religion, we
are asked? By no means; it is not a religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as
already stated, it is as old as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published
for the first time, but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more
than one European Initiate—especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious
founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or
revealed a new truth. These founders were all transmitters, not original
teachers. They were the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the
truths upon which the latter were based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or
more of those grand verities—actualities visible only to the eye of the real
Sage and Seer—out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved
and perpetuated in the adyta of the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES
and by personal transmission—they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus
every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its
own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more
or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is
Confucius, a very ancient
xxxvii
INTRODUCTORY.
legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage
in the World’s History, shown by Dr. Legge *—who calls him “emphatically
a transmitter, not a maker”—as saying: “I only hand on: I cannot create new
things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them.Ӡ (Quoted in
“Science of Religions” by Max Müller.)
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and the
modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits that
which she has received and learnt herself to all those who will accept it. As to
those who may reject her testimony,—i.e., the great majority—she will bear them
no malice, for they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is right in
hers in affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two
entirely different stand-points. Agreeably with the rules of critical
scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject a priori whatever evidence he cannot
fully verify for himself. And how can a Western scholar accept on hearsay that
which he knows nothing about? Indeed, that which is given in these volumes is
selected from oral, as much as from written teachings. This first installment of
the esoteric doctrines is based upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people
unknown to ethnology; it is claimed that they are written in a tongue absent
from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is
acquainted; they are said to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by
science; and, finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly
discredited before the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have
some special hobby of their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these
teachings may be expected, and must be accepted beforehand. No one styling
himself a “scholar,” in whatever department of exact science, will be permitted
to regard these teachings seriously. They will be derided and rejected a priori
in this century; but only in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era
scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been
invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally,
that its teachings antedate the Vedas.‡ Have not the latter been derided,
rejected, and
——————————————————————————————
* Lün-Yü (§ I a) Schott. “Chinesische Literatur,”
p. 7.
† “Life of Confucius,” p. 96.
‡ This is no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement
based on the knowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show
the world that Occultism is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted to be
kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times
are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very
limited, so far.
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INTRODUCTORY.
called “a modern forgery” even so recently as fifty years ago?
Was not Sanskrit proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived
from, the Greek, according to Lemprière and other scholars? About 1820, Prof.
Max Müller tells us, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of
the Buddhists, “were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and
there was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda
. . . of the Zend
Avesta, or . . .of
the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be the work of the
highest antiquity whose ‘preservation amounts almost to a marvel’ (Lecture on
the Vedas).
The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given
of its undeniable existence and records. But it will take centuries before much
more is given from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being
almost lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer in “Isis Unveiled” some
ten years ago that: “The said key must be turned seven times before the whole
system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane
one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!”
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and
no more, was given in “ISIS.” Much more is explained in
these volumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the
work was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now,
was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far
better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and
irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya; and that,
like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and
philosophies now known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to
men, but is at last found.
Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a
volume rather; one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET
DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories,
but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those
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INTRODUCTORY.
portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from
confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity—at any rate, the
probability—of the existence of such teachings was first established. Such
statements as will now be made, have to be shown warranted by various
authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even certain learned
Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied them,
had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even been
personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the performance of which
the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give
historical and trustworthy names, and to cite well-known authors, ancient and
modern, of recognized ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name
some of the famous proficients in the secret arts and science, along with the
mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged, or, rather, partially presented
before the public in their strange archaic form.
How is this to be done? What is the best way for achieving such an object?
was the ever-recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an illustration may
be attempted. When a tourist coming from a well-explored country, suddenly
reaches the borderland of a terra incognita, hedged in, and shut out from view
by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he may still refuse to acknowledge
himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if
he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still find a means of
examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his
knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he can get a general and pretty correct
idea of the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the
altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it, at his leisure,
comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left below,
now that he is, thanks to his efforts, beyond the line of the mists and the
cloud-capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary observation, for those who would like to get a
more correct understanding of the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in
the texts, cannot be offered to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has
patience, and would glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe,
compare and check it with what is known to history of the ages directly
preceding and
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INTRODUCTORY.
following the Christian era, then he will find all this in
Volume III. of this work.
In that volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal
adepts known to history, and the downfall of the mysteries will be described;
after which began the disappearance and final and systematic elimination from
the memory of men of the real nature of initiation and the Sacred Science. From
that time its teachings became Occult, and Magic sailed but too often under the
venerable but frequently misleading name of Hermetic philosophy. As real
Occultism had been prevalent among the Mystics during the centuries that
preceded our era, so Magic, or rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed
the beginning of Christianity.
However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early
centuries, to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of
the Pagans, it was a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry
and intolerance has perverted systematically and ever since, every bright page
written in the pre-Christian periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has
preserved enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the
whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot
of observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that
millennium which divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by
the year ONE of the Nativity. This event—whether
historically correct or not—has nevertheless been made to serve as a first
signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against any possible return of, or
even a glimpse into, the hated religions of the Past; hated and dreaded—because
throwing such a vivid light on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation
of what is now known as the “New Dispensation.”
However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian fathers to obliterate
the Secret Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all failed. Truth can
never be killed; hence the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the
earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness
who testified to it. Let one only think of the thousands, and perhaps millions,
of MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their too indiscreet inscriptions and
pictorial symbols, pulverised to dust; of the bands of early hermits and
ascetics roaming about among the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in
desert and
xli
INTRODUCTORY.
mountain, valleys and highlands, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the symbol of the tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith; and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the Past. Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediæval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made
—————“ the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!”
Both creeds have won their proselytes at the
point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs
of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. of our era, the ominous words
“the KARMA OF ISRAEL,” fatally
glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words,
that will point to the Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY,
for events purposely perverted, and for great characters slandered by posterity,
mangled out of recognition, between the two cars of Jagannâtha—Bigotry and
Materialism; one accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds
to the golden mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of things. Says
Faigi Diwan, the “witness to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who
belongs to a thousand sects”: “In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when
past things shall be forgiven, the sins of the Ka’bah will be forgiven for the
sake of the dust of Christian churches.” To this, Professor Max Müller replies:
“The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of
resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of their
religious doctrines. Men fight about religion on earth; in heaven they shall
find out that there is only one true religion—the worship of God’s SPIRIT.”*
In other words—“THERE IS NO RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN
TRUTH”—“SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH”—the motto of the Maharajah of Benares,
adopted by the Theosophical Society.
As already said in the Preface, the Secret Doctrine is not a
version of “Isis Unveiled”—as originally intended. It is a volume explanatory of
——————————————————————————————
* “Lectures on the Science of Religion,” by F. Max Müller, p.
257.
xlii
INTRODUCTORY.
it rather, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work,
an indispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in ISIS
could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. The Secret Doctrine
will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work,
especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.
Concerned simply with the philosophies within our historical times and the
respective symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be
thrown at the panorama of Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present
work, detailed Cosmogony and the evolution of the four races that preceded our
Fifth race Humanity are given, and now two large volumes explain that which was
stated on the first page of ISIS UNVEILED
alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and thither throughout
that work. Nor could the vast catalogue of the Archaic Sciences be attempted in
the present volumes, before we have disposed of such tremendous problems as
Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the gradual development of the mysterious
Humanities and races that preceded our “Adamic” Humanity. Therefore, the present
attempt to elucidate some mysteries of the Esoteric philosophy has, in truth,
nothing to do with the earlier work. As an instance, the writer must be allowed
to illustrate what is said.
Volume I. of “Isis” begins with a reference to “an old book”—
“So very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an
indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon
which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most
ancient Hebrew document on occult learning—the Siphrah Dzeniouta—was compiled
from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light
of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine Essence
emanating from ADAM * like a luminous arc proceeding to
form a circle; and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference,
the ineffable glory bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher
type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our
planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the
ground it is as black as night.”
——————————————————————————————
* The name is used in the sense of the Greek word a]nqrwpo"
xliii INTRODUCTORY.
The “very old Book” is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah,* the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Purânas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. The “illustration” spoken of in “Isis” relates to the evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in the Vaivasvata Manvantara or “Round;” each Round being composed of the Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the middle point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical, as every one can well