This is the human Root-Race.
It is just at this point that the modern Kabalists—led into error by the long generations of Christian Mystics who have tampered with the kabalistic records wherever they could—diverge from the Occultists in their interpretations, and take the later thought for the earlier idea. The original Kabalah was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with animal, or terrestrial, sexes; the later Kabalah has suffocated the divine ideal under the heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say: “God made man male and female.” Says the author of the Qabbalah:
Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued creation and existence is called the Balance.[1042]
And being without this “Balance,” connected with Maqom (the mysterious “Place”),[1043] even the First Race is not, as we have seen, recognized by the Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly Man, the Upper Adam who is “male-female” or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they consider as a “Karma” pertaining only to the mundane relation of man, who is dominated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the person becomes “wise.” They considered it a most fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of Brahmâchârya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of the sublime correlation of creative cosmic forces. And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other mother-lands of cults.
This will be demonstrated in the following Section.
Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in [pg 480] “whose image he is made”; the third, from this second—an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the sixth and seventh pairs of the male-female Æons, Amphain-Essumen (Ἀμφαὶν Ἐσσουμὲν), and Vananin-Lamertade (Οὐανανίν Λαμερτάδε)—Father and Mother[1044]—while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean monster. The latter—a Post-Christian fancy—is the degraded copy of the Ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the “Good One,” or “He, who created before anything existed,” the Celestial Priapus—truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodæmon, the Gnostic Saviour, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract creative Power, but symbolizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the five branches cut off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands in the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root-Races was recorded in the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which five were framed in a panel in the Initiation Halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it was a hand with five fingers spread out, the fifth or little finger being only half-grown, and also five “N's”—hieroglyphs standing for that letter. The Romans used the five vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this archaic symbol was adopted during the Middle Ages as a motto by the House of the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria!
Section III. The “Holy of Holies.” Its Degradation.
The Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, also called the Adytum—the recess at the West end of the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only aperture or door hung over with a curtain—was common to all ancient nations.