From an objective point of view the “microcosm” is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of perception.[1372]
But the true Esoteric sense of the word Makara is not, in truth, “crocodile” at all, even when it is compared with the animal depicted on the Hindû Zodiac. For it has the head and the fore-legs of an antelope and the body and tail of a fish. Hence the tenth sign of the Zodiac has been taken variously to mean a shark, a dolphin, etc.; as it is the Vâhana of Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this [pg 610] reason, Jala-rûpa or “water-form.” The dolphin was the vehicle of Poseidon-Neptune with the Greeks, and one with him, Esoterically; and this “dolphin” is the “sea-dragon” as much as the crocodile of the Sacred Nile is the Vehicle of Horus, and Horus himself. Says the mummy-form God with the crocodile's head:
I am the fish [and seat] of the great Horus of Kem-oor.[1373]
With the Peratæ Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune) who converts the dodecagonal pyramid into a sphere, “and paints its gate with many colours.”[1374] He has five androgyne ministers—he is Makara, the Leviathan.
As the rising Sun was considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest itself to men every day, and as the crocodile rose out of the water at the first sunbeam, that animal came finally to personify a solar-fire devotee in India, as it personified that Fire, or the highest Soul with the Egyptians.
In the Purânas, the number of the Kumâras changes according to the exigencies of the allegory. For Occult purposes their number is given in one place as seven, then as four, then as five. In the Kûrma Purâna it is said of them:
These five [Kumâras], O Brâhman, were Yogins who acquired entire exemption from passion.
Their very name shows their connection with the said constellation Makara, and with some other Paurânic characters connected with the zodiacal signs. This is done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs of the primitive Temples. The Kumâras are mixed up, astronomically, physiologically, and mystically in general, with a number of Paurânic personages and events. Hardly hinted at in the Vishnu, they figure in various dramas and events throughout all the other Purânas and sacred literature; so that the Orientalists, having to pick up the threads of connection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming the Kumâras “due chiefly to the fancy of the Purânic writers.” But—
Ma—we are told by the author of the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”—is “five”; kara, a “hand” with its five fingers, as also a five-sided sign or a Pentagon. The Kumâra (in this case an anagram for Occult purposes), as Yogîs, are five in Esotericism, because the last two names have ever been kept secret; they are the fifth order of Brahma-devas, and the five-fold Chohans, having the Soul of the five Elements in [pg 611] them, Water and Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both aquatic and fiery.
Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the Golden Lotus (Padma) floating on the Water.