C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
It Corroborates the Occult Teaching Concerning the Seven Globes and the Seven Races.
We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven Rays of Sûrya, the Sun, are therein made parallel to the seven Worlds, of every Planetary Chain, to the seven Rivers of Heaven and Earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the seven Men, or primitive human groups. The seven ancient Rishis—the progenitors of all that lives and breathes on Earth—are the seven friends of Agni, his seven “Horses,” or seven “Heads.” The human race has sprung from Fire and Water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the Fathers, or the Ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Ashvins, the Âdityas,[1444] are all synonymous with those “Sacrificers,” or the Fathers, variously called Pitaras (or Pitris), Angirasas,[1445] and Sâdhyas, “Divine Sacrificers,” the most Occult of all. They are all called Deva-putra Rishayah or the “Sons of God.”[1446] The “Sacrificers,” moreover, are collectively the One Sacrificer, the Father of the Gods, Vishvakarman, who performed the great Sarva-medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself.
In these Hymns the “Heavenly Man” is called Purusha, the “Man,”[1447] from whom Virâj was born[1448]; and from Virâj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna—lowered from his sublime position to be the chief of the Lords—Dhyânîs or Devas—who regulates all natural phenomena, who “makes [pg 641] a path for the Sun, for him to follow.” The seven Rivers of the Sky (the descending Creative Gods), and the seven Rivers of the Earth (the seven primitive Mankinds), are under his control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna's laws (Vratâni, or “courses of natural action,” active laws), is punished by Indra[1449] the Vedic powerful God, whose Vrata, or law or power, is greater than the Vratâni of any other God.
Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all the known ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the Occult Teachings in almost every respect. Its Hymns, which are the records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our) Race concerning the Primordial Teachings, speak of the Seven Races (two still to come), allegorizing them by the seven “Streams”[1450] and of the Five Races (Panchakrishtayah) which have already inhabited this world[1451] on the five Regions (Panchapradishah)[1452] as also of the three Continents that were.[1453]
It is only those scholars who will master the secret meaning of the Purusha Sukta—in which the intuition of the modern Orientalists has chosen to see “one of the very latest hymns of the Rig Veda”—who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric Doctrines. He must study, in all the abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning, the relations therein between the (Heavenly) Man (Purusha), sacrificed for the production of the Universe and all in it,[1454] and the terrestrial mortal man[1455] before he realizes the hidden philosophy of the verse:
15. He [“Man,” Purusha, or Vishvakarman] had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and thrice seven layers of fuel; when the Gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.
This relates to the three septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity of the Vedas, which knew of no other sacrifice, probably, in [pg 642] these earliest oral teachings; and also to the seven primeval groups of Mankind, as Vishvakarman represents divine Humanity collectively.[1456]
The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, it must, have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsîs who read it in their Vendîdâd and elsewhere, though without understanding the allusions therein contained any better than do the Orientalists; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works.[1457]
Comparing the Esoteric Teaching with the interpretations by Prof. James Darmesteter, one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus: