Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in Isis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride” of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a devil?”
Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the Rig Veda, the Occult volume par excellence of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the Purânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In the Rig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Purânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the militant Host. Turning to the Bible, we find Satan, one of the “Sons of God,”[866] becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the Kabalah,[867] Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael, who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan Book of Numbers Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) is influenced by Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts [pg 396] of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.[868]
Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.
In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this [pg 397] passage was a Snake's hole, “un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.[869]
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake's hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent-god,” or “Sons of the Dragon.”