These were the Cosmic Gods, ever synthesizing all in one, as found in every cosmogony or mythology. Thus, the Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter, who included in himself the four Elements and the four cardinal points, and who was recognized, therefore, in old Rome under the pantheistic title of Jupiter Mundus; and who now, in modern Rome, has become the Deus Mundus, the one Mundane God, who is made to swallow all others, in the latest theology, by the arbitrary decision of his special ministers.
As Gods of Fire, Air, and Water, they were Celestial Gods; as Gods of the Lower Region, they were Infernal Deities; the latter adjective applying simply to the Earth. They were “Spirits of the Earth” under their respective names of Yama, Pluto, Osiris, the “Lord of the Lower Kingdom,” etc., and their tellurial character sufficiently proves it. The Ancients knew of no worse abode after death than the Kâma Loka, the Limbus on this Earth.[767] If it is argued that the Dodonean Jupiter was identified with Dis, or the Roman Pluto with the Dionysus Chthonius, the Subterranean, and with Aïdoneus, the King of the Subterranean World, wherein, according to Creuzer,[768] oracles were rendered, then it will become the pleasure of the Occultists to prove that both Aïdoneus and Dionysus are the bases of Adonaï, or Iurbo-Adonaï, as Jehovah is called in the Codex Nazaræus. “Thou shalt not worship the Sun, who is named Adonaï, whose name is also Kadush and El-El,”[769] and also “Lord Bacchus.” Baal-Adonis of the Sôds, or Mysteries, of the pre-Babylonian Jews became the Adonaï by the Massorah, the later vowelled Jehovah. Hence the Roman Catholics are right. All these Jupiters are of the same family; but Jehovah has to be included therein to make it complete. The Jupiter Aërius or Pan, the Jupiter-Ammon, and the Jupiter-Bel-Moloch, are all correlations and one with Iurbo-Adonaï, because they are all one Cosmic Nature. It is that Nature and Power which creates the specific terrestrial symbol, and the physical and material fabric of the latter, which proves the Energy manifesting through it as extrinsic.
For primitive religion was something better than simple preöccupation about physical phenomena, as remarked by Schelling; and principles, [pg 502] more elevated than we modern Sadducees know of, “were hidden under the transparent veil of such merely natural divinities as thunder, the winds, and rain.” The Ancients knew and could distinguish the corporeal from the spiritual Elements in the Forces of Nature.
The four-fold Jupiter, as the four-faced Brahmâ, the aërial, the fulgurant, the terrestrial, and the marine God, the lord and master of the four Elements, may stand as a representative for the great Cosmic Gods of every nation. Although deputing power over the fire to Hephæstus-Vulcan, over the sea to Poseidon-Neptune, and over the Earth to Pluto-Aïdoneus, the Aërial Jove was still all these; for Æther, from the first, had preëminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the Elements.
Tradition tells of a grotto, a vast cave in the deserts of Central Asia, whereinto light pours, through four seemingly natural apertures, or clefts placed crossways at the four cardinal points. From noon till an hour before sunset the light streams in, of four different colours, as averred, red, blue, orange-gold, and white, owing to some either natural or artificially prepared conditions of vegetation and soil. The light converges in the centre round a pillar of white marble with a globe upon it, which represents our earth. It is named the “Grotto of Zarathustra.”
Included under the arts and sciences of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans, the phenomenal manifestation of the Four Elements, which were justly attributed by these believers to the intelligent interference of the Cosmic Gods, assumed a scientific character. The Magic of the ancient priests consisted, in those days, in addressing their Gods in their own language.
The speech of the men of the Earth cannot reach the Lords. Each must be addressed in the language of his respective Element.
So says The Book of Rules, in a sentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning, adding as an explanation of the nature of that element-language:
It is composed of Sounds, not words; of sounds, numbers and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the superintending Power [the Regent-God of the specific Element needed].
Thus this “language” is that of incantations or of mantras, as they are called in India; sound being the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication between Mortals and Immortals. He who believes in the words and [pg 503] teachings of St. Paul, has no right to pick out from the latter those sentences only which he chooses to accept, to the rejection of others; and St. Paul teaches most undeniably the existence of Cosmic Gods and their presence among us. Paganism preached a dual and simultaneous evolution, a “creation” spiritualem ac mundanum, as the Roman Church has it, ages before the advent of that Roman Church. Exoteric phraseology has changed little with respect to Divine Hierarchies since the most palmy days of Paganism, or “Idolatry.” Names alone have changed, together with claims which have now become false pretences. For when, for instance, Plato put in the mouth of the Highest Principle (Father Æther or Jupiter) the words, “the Gods of the Gods of whom I am the maker, as I am the father of all their works,” he knew the spirit of this sentence as fully, we suspect, as St. Paul did, when saying: “For though there be that are called Gods, whether in Heaven or in Earth, as there be Gods many and Lords many....”[770] Both knew the sense and the meaning of what they put forward in such guarded terms.