The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4 / The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy

by H. P. Blavatsky

All this, notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two Testaments, is quite sufficient to class the Bible among esoteric [pg 341] works, and to connect its secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of Biblical glyphs and numbers, as suggested by astronomical observations—Astronomy and Theology being closely connected—is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric, systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the planets, their aspects and nodes—the last term having now passed even into our modern Botany—are known in Astronomy as Sextiles, Quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and æons by the archaic nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. The earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence, the most archaic symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a square, a pentagon, and a hexagon, and other plane figures with various sides and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical symbology to be as old as the world.

Starting from this, it becomes easy to understand how Nature herself, even without the help of their divine instructors, could have taught primeval mankind the first principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol-language.[471] Hence we find numbers and figures used as an expression and a record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever the same, with certain variations only, arising from the first figures. Thus the evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and development—spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete—were first recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle, a point, a triangle and a square, up to number 9, when it was synthesized by the first line and a circle—the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all, involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire Kosmos; mysteries recorded a hundred times more fully in the Hindû system than elsewhere, for him who can understand its mystic language. The numbers 3 and 4, in their combination 7, and also 5, 6, 9, and 10, are the very corner-stones of Occult Cosmogonies. This Decad and its thousand combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes it in the caves and rock-cut temples of Hindûstan and [pg 342] Central Asia; in the Pyramids and Lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas; in the mounds of the snow-capped Caucasian fastnesses; in the ruins of Palenque; in Easter Island; everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ever journeyed. The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the square, or the universal male and female glyphs, showing the first aspect of the evolving deity, are stamped for ever in the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux Ansata. As well expressed by the author of The Source of Measures:

The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the Tau, or Egyptian form, or of the Christian cross-form.... A circle attached to the first, gives the Ansated Cross ... numbers 3 and 4, counted on the cross, showing a form of the [Hebrew] golden candlestick [in the Holy of Holies], and of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the circle of the week, as 7 lights of the sun. So also as the week of 7 lights gave origin to the month and year, so it is the time-marker of birth.... The cross-form being shown, then, by the connected use of the form 113:355, the symbol is completed by the attachment of a man to the cross.[472] This kind of measure was made to coördinate with the idea of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.

The Stanzas show the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in archaic Cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by the same author, in the section which he rightly calls the “Primordial Vestiges of these Symbols,” to show the identity of symbols and their esoteric meaning all over the globe.

Under the general view taken of the nature of the number-forms ... it becomes a matter of research of the utmost interest as to when and where their existence and their use first became known. Has it been a matter of revelation in what we know as the historic age—a cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the human race is contemplated? It seems, in fact, as to the date of its possession by man, to have been farther removed, in the past, from the old Egyptians than are the old Egyptians from us.

The Easter Isles in “mid Pacific” present the feature of the remaining peaks of the mountains of a submerged continent, for the reason that these peaks are thickly studded with cyclopean statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and cultivated people, who must have, of necessity, occupied a widely extended area. On the backs of these images is to be found the “ansated cross” and the same modified to the outlines of the human form. A full description, with plate showing the land with the thickly planted statues, also with copies of the images, is to be found in the January number, 1870, of the London Builder....

In the Naturalist, published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of the early numbers (about 36), is to be found a description of some very ancient and curious carving [pg 343]on the crest walls of the mountains of South America, older by far, it is averred, than the races now living. The strangeness of these tracings is in that they exhibit the outlines of a man stretched out on a cross,[473] by a series of drawings, by which from the form of a man that of a cross springs, but so done that the cross may be taken as the man, or the man as the cross....

It is known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very perfect account of the deluge.... Baron Humboldt says that we are to look for the country of Aztalan, the original country of the Aztecs, as high up, at least, as the 42nd parallel north; whence journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of Mexico. In that vale the earthen mounds of the far north become the elegant stone pyramidal, and other structures, whose remains are now found. The correspondences between the Aztec remains and those of the Egyptians are well known.... Atwater, from examination of hundreds of them, is convinced that they had a knowledge of astronomy. As to one of the most perfect of the pyramidal structures among the Aztecs, Humboldt gives a description to the following effect:

“The form of this pyramid [of Papantla] which has seven stories, is more tapering than any other monument of this kind yet discovered, but its height is not remarkable, being but 57 feet, its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it is remarkable on one account: it is built entirely of hewn stones, of an extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. Three staircases lead to the top, the steps of which were decorated with hieroglyphical sculptures and small niches, arranged with great symmetry. The number of these niches seem to allude to the 318 simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar.”

318 is the Gnostic value of Christ, and the famous number of the trained or circumcized servants of Abram. When it is considered that 318 is an abstract value, and universal, as expressive of a diameter value to a circumference of unity, its use in the composition of a civil calendar becomes manifest.