Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in Space and the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of this same antediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom. Its history begins by the descent on Earth of the “Gods” who incarnate in mankind, and this is the “Fall.” Whether Brahmâ hurled down on Earth by Bhagavân in the allegory, or Jupiter by Cronus, all are the symbols of the human races. Once having touched this Planet of dense Matter, the snow-white wings of even the highest Angel can no longer remain immaculate, or the Avatâra (or incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatâra is the fall of a God into generation. Nowhere is the metaphysical [pg 508] truth more clear, when explained Esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade it—than in the Upanishads, the Esoteric glossaries of the Vedas. The Rig Veda, as Guignault characterized it, “is the most sublime conception of the great highways of humanity.” The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the Esotericism of the Vedânta and the Upanishads, “the mirror of the Eternal Wisdom.”
For upwards of sixteen centuries the new masks, forced over the faces of the old Gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical Fall, and the as metaphorical Atonement and Crucifixion, have led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they have led it to believe in the dogma of the Evil Spirit distinct from the Spirit of all Good, whereas the former lives in all Matter and preëminently in man. Finally it has created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it has spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it has made people remain ignorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man's own appearance on this, and probably on other Earths. Hence the people have been led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world's sorrows, the thought of original sin.
The philosophy of that Law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in every beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and self-guidance, pertains to Psychology and cannot be touched on now, for to demonstrate this feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyze and give a natural reason for it, would necessitate an endless philosophical explanation for which there here is no room. Perhaps the best synthesis of this feeling is found in three lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. Says the “Fallen One”:
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell!
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!
Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus operatum, than be lost among the will-less Spiritual Hosts in Heaven.
We have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few verses in Revelation, which are now shown to be a plagiarism from Enoch by some scholars. These have given rise to endless theories [pg 509] and speculations, which have gradually acquired the importance of dogma and inspired tradition. Every one sought to explain the verse about the seven-headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail “drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth,” and whose place, with that of his Angels, “was found no more in heaven.” What the seven heads of the Dragon (or Cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be learned in the Addenda which close Part III of this Volume.
From Newton to Bossuet speculations were incessantly evolved in Christian brains with regard to these obscure verses. Says Bossuet:
The star that falls is the heresiarch Theodosius.... The clouds of smoke are the heresies of the Montanists.... The third part of the stars are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity.