For the present, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the Moon-Goddesses were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and conception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every popular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is useless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to notice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the Esotericism of the Bible, interpreted kabalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was simply [pg 285] the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil, by the numerical reading of the Bible in general, and of Genesis especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies is symbolized by the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hindûism. To make the matter clearer, and to show at the same time the enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists, we refer the reader to the Section on “The Holy of Holies,” in the second Volume.
Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the highway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification and hierarchic ambition.
6. From the First-Born,[409] the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every Change.[410] The morning sun-light has changed into noon-day glory....
This sentence, “the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow [Man] becomes more strong with every Change,” is another psychological mystery, that will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will suffice to say that the “Watcher” and his “Shadows”—the latter numbering as many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or the Divine Prototype, is at the upper rung of the Ladder of Being; the Shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into the “Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—is an individual Dhyân Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman), is one, of course, with the One Universal Spirit (Paramâtmâ), but the Vehicle (Vâhan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyân-Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that [pg 286] ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back. “My Father, that is in Heaven, and I—are one,” says the Christian Scripture; and in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the Esoteric tenet.
7. “This is thy present Wheel”—said the Flame to the Spark. “Thou art myself, my Image and my Shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou art my Vâhan,[411] to the Day ‘Be With Us,’ when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and I” (a). Then the Builders, having donned their first Clothing, descend on radiant Earth, and reign over Men—who Are themselves (b).
(a) The Day when the Spark will re-become the Flame, when Man will merge into his Dhyân Chohan, “myself and others, thyself and I,” as the Stanza has it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their original principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have reëntered the Great Breath. In other words, everything will be “merged in Brahman,” or the Divine Unity.
Is this annihilation, as some think? Or atheism, as other critics—the worshippers of a personal deity, and believers in an unphilosophical paradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism, in that which is spirituality of a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless sleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness—that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question only—the most material; since reäbsorption is by no means such a “dreamless sleep,” but, on the contrary, Absolute Existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor is the Individuality—nor even the essence of the Personality, if any be left behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless [pg 287] from a human standpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same Monad will reëmerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot transcend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.
(b) The “Watchers” reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon, the incarnated Dhyânis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human Kings of other nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since traditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties of Divine Kings, of Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “fairy tales” in the same order of events.[412] However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as much as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyâni-Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great spiritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers “descend on radiant Earth and reign over men, who are themselves.” The reigning Kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future Manvantaras they will have risen to higher [pg 288] Systems than our planetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own Life-Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads may now be still imprisoned—semi-conscious—in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the vegetable world.
Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven-fold Nature; the spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual; the passional, the instinctual, or cognitional; the semi-corporeal; and the purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal, way, one in their ultimate essence, seven in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to our five physical senses, which are in truth seven, as shown later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads. Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach, through individual merits and efforts, that plane where it re-becomes the One Unconditioned All. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary “Road,” hedged in by thorns, that goes down first, then—