Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered truths. Defenders of the biblical dead-letter could not help the writers of missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient Âryans based their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the physiological.
But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic Philosophy is against such an interpretation. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:
This idea of the creative power of fire is explained ... by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark[1226]
—as shown by the imagery often made use of in the Vedas when speaking of Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual conception. A Hymn to Agni in the Veda is cited as an example:
Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress of the race (the female aranî). Let us produce Agni by attrition, according to ancient custom.
This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of mortals. The female Aranî, the “mistress of the race,” is Aditi, the Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light—in the World of Spirit, the “Great Deep” and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from the Unknown, in the Manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied to Devakî, the Mother of Krishna, or [pg 555] the incarnated Logos; and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been transformed into the objective; Spirit had fallen into Matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning. Between the Vedas and the Purânas there is an abyss of which they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Âtmâ, and the first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary constitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the Vedas, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the Paurânic accounts, found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing events which took place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna's death, from which day the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, began for mankind.
As Aditi is called Surârani, the Matrix or “Mother” of the Suras or Gods, so Kuntî, the mother of the Pândavas, is called in the Mahâbhârata Pândavârani[1227]—and the term is now physiologized. But Devakî, the antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is the Goddess-mother, or Deva-mâtri, of seven Sons (the six and the seven Âdityas of early Vedic times); the mother of Krishna, Devakî, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad-dhâtri, the “Nurse of the World,” the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being transferred to that of Rohinî. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven children, of five sons and two daughters (a later transformation of sex), in Matthew's Gospel.[1228] No one of the worshippers of the Roman Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by the Gods to Devakî. Let the reader judge.
Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which formerly bore Brahmâ in its womb.... Thou, eternal being, comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things, wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri-form sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the Aranî, whose attrition engenders fire.[1229] As Aditi, thou art the parent of the gods.... Thou art light [Jyotsnâ, the morning twilight],[1230]whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [Samnati, a daughter of Daksha], the [pg 556]mother of wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of harmony (Naya);[1231] thou art modesty, the progenitrix of affection [Prashraya, explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of whom love is born.... Thou art ... the mother of knowledge [Avabodha]; thou art patience [Dhriti], the parent of fortitude [Dhairya].[1232]
Thus Aranî is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic “Vase of Election.” As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the Zohar—far less metaphysical in its symbology than any other symbolism—the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the Zohar says:
All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and female principle.[1233]