The Indo-Iranian Asura [Ahura] was often conceived as sevenfold; by the play of certain mythical [?] formulæ and the strength of certain mythical [?] numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,[1458] and the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled. The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, only one of which is known and accessible to man, the one on which we live, namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are seven earths.[1459] Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. § 72.)[1460]
The same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most revered of the Hindû scriptures—the Rig Veda. Mention is made therein of six Worlds, besides our Earth: the six Rajamsi above Prithivî, the Earth, or “this” (Idam) as opposed to “that which is yonder” (i.e., the six Globes on the three other planes or Worlds).[1461]
The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those [pg 643] of the Esoteric Doctrine, and to accentuate the mistake that is made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other people believed in: namely, in seven “Worlds” or Globes of our Planetary Chain, of which only one is accessible to man, at the present time, our Earth; and in the successive appearance and destruction of seven Continents or Earths on this our Globe, each Continent being divided, in commemoration of the seven Globes (one visible, six invisible), into seven islands or continents, seven “climes,” etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities in septenary divisions, which has made the Orientalists—who have, moreover, been further led astray by the oblivion of their primitive doctrines of both the uninitiated Hindûs and Parsîs—feel so puzzled by this ever-recurring seven-fold number as to regard it as “mythical.” It is this oblivion of first principles which has led the Orientalists off the right track and made them commit the greatest blunders. The same failure is found in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant of the Esoteric Doctrine of the earliest Âryans, can never assimilate or even understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these Beings.
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas, or Amshaspands, and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as Jehovah-Binah-Elohim was the head and synthesis of the Elohim, and no more; so Agni-Vishnu-Sûrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence emanated in physics and also in metaphysics, from the spiritual as well as from the physical Sun, the seven Rays, the seven Fiery Tongues, the seven Planets or Gods. All these became supreme Gods and the One God, but only after the loss of the primeval secrets; i.e., the sinking of Atlantis, or the “Flood,” and the occupation of India by the Brâhmans, who sought safety on the summits of the Himâlayas, for even the high table-lands of what is now Tibet became submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as the “Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the Corporeal World” in the Vendîdâd. Ahura Mazda in its literal translation means the “Wise Lord” (Ahura “lord” and Mazda “wise”). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed the mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (Manas). Ahura (Asura) may be derived from the root ah “to be,” but in its primal signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be.
When Geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know the age of the existing Âryan Brâhmanical nation, and also the time of its descent into the plains of Hindûstan, which did not take place till millenniums later.
Yima, the so-called “first man” in the Vendîdâd, as much as his twin-brother Yama, the son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of Universal History. He is the Progenitor of the Second human Race, hence the personification of the Shadows of the Pitris, and the Father of the Postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said, “Yima,” as we say “man” when speaking of mankind. The “fair Yima,” the first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is the first “man” who dies or disappears, not the first who is born. The “son of Vîvanghat”[1462] was, like the son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man, who stood in Esotericism as the representative of the first three Races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these Races the first two never died[1463] but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the Third knew death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its “Fall” into generation. This is plainly alluded to in Fargard ii of the Vendîdâd. Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying:
“I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law.”[1464]
And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and “watch over” his world.
He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest and sacrificer, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer:
“Yes!... Yes, I will nourish, and rule, and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I am king, neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death.”