Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over this [Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it.
This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the serpent of the legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult their agony, all this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.[1180]
There is no false statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance of ill-applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth of Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Âkâsha,[1181] the Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is born by separation or differentiation. It is the cause of existence; it fills all the infinite Space, is Space itself, in one sense, or both its sixth and seventh principles.[1182] But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation this Light must have its shadowy side—as already remarked. And as the Infinite can never be manifested, hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which its actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and force into [pg 539]activity. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity, it becomes, with regard to mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens—whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness—that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent. It is mankind which has become the “Serpent of Genesis,” and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and Sin of the “Celestial Virgin”—which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent Deity to all those who stir her Soul and Heart, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Éliphas Lévi—the “fatal light” which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and master its effects; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the manifested lower principles—the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable Deity in Space. But in antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the Angelic Entity presiding over the Light of Truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian Gospel Pistis Sophia it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the three Triple Powers (Τριδυνάμεις), that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost according to these Gnostics—the most cultured of all), resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once—Demon est Deus inversus—that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space thrill the magnetic and electrical currents of animate Nature, the life-giving and death-giving waves, for death on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial Light, the “Holy Ghost” and “Satan,” at one and the same time, visible Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the Karma of Humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity—personal, because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of Divine Creators, Guides and Rulers of this Planet; impersonal, as the Cause and Effect of Universal Life and Death.
The Fall was the result of man's knowledge, for his “eyes were opened.” Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the Hidden Knowledge by the “Fallen Angel,” for the latter had become from that day his [pg 540] Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous Life—periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan—is from the beginning of our appearance upon this Earth. It is the Sûtrâtmâ, the luminous thread of immortal impersonal Monadship, on which our earthly “lives” or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads—according to the beautiful expression of the Vedântic Philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of Phôsphoros”—brimstone was a Theological improvement—and Lucifer, or “Light-Bearer,” is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent Liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle—the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine Mind—we would be surely no better than animals. The first man Adam was made only a living soul (Nephesh), the last Adam was made a quickening spirit[1183]—says Paul, his words referring to the building or creation of man. Without this quickening spirit, or human mind or soul, there would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by Theology; if that Fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by Nature—a sin, how about the animals? If we are told that they procreate their species in consequence of that same “original sin,” for which God cursed the Earth—hence everything living on it—we will put another question. We are told by Theology, as also by Science, that the animal was on Earth far earlier than man. We ask the former: How did it procreate its species, before the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had been plucked off? As said:
The Christians—far less clear-sighted than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied, and whose memory they have blackened by their deeds—took the Jewish Jehovah as [pg 541]he was, and of course strove vainly to reconcile the Gospel of Light and Libertywith the Deity of Darkness and Submission.[1184]
But it is sufficiently proven now that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who are credited with having made war on the Gods, are identical as personalities; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same tenet, save the final conclusion, which differs from the Christian. The seven primeval Gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other accidental. In their essential state they were all the Builders or Fashioners, the Preservers and the Rulers of this World; and in the accidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on the Earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
Thus, Esoteric Philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects—good and evil, but Theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching as it does the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption—to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious Angels distinct from God and the Logos in their personalities, to admit that the downfall of the disobedient Spirits means simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos, or God, is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would naturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Yet such was the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now disfigured tenet. The Verbum, or the “Son,” was shown in a dual [pg 542] aspect by the Pagan Gnostics—in fact, he was a duality in full unity. Hence, the endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Âryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from their primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being incarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in the Ladder of Cosmic Evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic Law, without which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed mystery to the understanding of true Philosophy. To say, as the author of Esprits Tombés des Paiens does, that since—