Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in Revelation were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and Pagan traditions. There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic times, nor yet far earlier in China. But Christian Theology had to be protected and saved.
This is only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from destruction the lucubrations of Christian Theologians?
The “princeps aeris hujus,” the “Prince of the Air,” of St. Paul, is not the Devil, but the effects of the Astral Light, as Éliphas Lévi correctly explains. The Devil is not the “God of this period,” as he says, for it is the Deity of every age and period since Man appeared on Earth, and Matter in its countless forms and states had to fight for its evanescent existence against other disintegrating Forces.
The “Dragon” is simply the symbol of the Cycle and of the “Sons of Manvantaric Eternity,” who had descended on Earth during a certain epoch of its formative period. The “clouds of smoke” are geological phenomena. The “third part of the stars of heaven,” cast down to the Earth, refers to the Divine Monads—the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology—that circumambulate our Globe; i.e., the human Egos destined to perform the whole Cycle of Incarnations. The sentence, “qui circumambulat terram,” however, is again referred to the Devil in Theology, the mythical Father of Evil being said to “fall like lightning.” Unfortunately for this interpretation, the “Son of Man,” or Christ, is expected, on the personal testimony of Jesus, to descend on Earth likewise, “as the lightning cometh out of the East,”[1113] just in [pg 510] the same shape and under the same symbol as Satan, who is seen to fall “as lightning ... from heaven.”[1114] All these metaphors and figures of speech, preëminently Oriental in their character, must have their origin searched for in the East. In all the ancient Cosmogonies Light comes from Darkness. In Egypt, as elsewhere, Darkness was “the principle of all things.” Hence Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” issues as Light from Darkness. Behemoth[1115] is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him that Behemoth is “the chief [principle] of the ways of God”—“Principium viarum Domini Behemoth!”[1116]
Consistency does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of Divine Revelation, so-called—not as interpreted by Theologians, at any rate.
The Egyptians and the Chaldæans referred the birth of their Divine Dynasties to that period when creative Earth was in her last final throes in giving birth to her pre-historic mountain ranges, which have since disappeared, her seas and her continents. Her face was covered with “deep Darkness and in that [Secondary] Chaos was the principle of all things” that developed on the Globe later on. Our Geologists have now ascertained that there was such a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological periods, several hundred millions of years ago.[1117] As to the tradition itself, every country and nation had it, each under its respective national form.
It is not alone Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia or Mexico, that had its Typhon, Python, Loki, and its “falling” Demon, but China also. The Celestials have a whole literature upon the subject. It is said that in consequence of the rebellion against Ti of a proud Spirit, who said he was Ti himself, seven Choirs of Celestial Spirits were exiled upon Earth, which “brought a change in all Nature, Heaven itself bending down and uniting with Earth.”
In the Y-King, one reads:
The flying Dragon, superb and rebellious, suffers now, and his pride is punished; he thought he would reign in Heaven, he reigns only on the Earth.
Again, the Tchoon-Tsieoo says allegorically: