3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many forms. He is all these worlds in the future. They call him “Time in the highest Heaven.”[1469]
Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric Volumes:
Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the incognizable That, which can be sensed only through its seven Rays—which are the seven Creations, the seven Worlds, the seven Laws, etc.
Remembering that the Purânas insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space,[1470] and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is Maqom, “Space,” it becomes clear why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity—Space, Matter, and Spirit—the one central Point became the Triangle and Quaternary—the perfect Cube—hence seven. Even the Pravaha Wind—the mystic and occult force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the course of the stars and planets—is septenary. The Kûrma and Linga Purânas enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the principles of Cosmic Space.[1471] They are [pg 648] intimately connected with Dhruva[1472] (now Alpha), the Pole-Star, which is connected in its turn with the production of various phenomena through cosmic forces.
Thus, from the seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc., in the Âryan Scriptures, the number has passed through Indian, Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian mystic thought, until it landed in, and remained indelibly impressed on, every exoteric theology. The seven old books stolen out of Noah's Ark by Ham, and given to Cush, his son, and the seven Brazen Columns of Ham and Cheiron, are a reflection and a remembrance of the seven primordial Mysteries instituted according to the “seven secret Emanations,” the seven Sounds, and seven Rays—the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven thousand times seven copies of them in later æons.
The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The Vâyu Purâna shows, and the Harivamsha corroborates, concerning the Maruts—the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower Gods in the Rig Veda:
That they are born in every Manvantara [Round], seven times seven (or forty-nine); that, in each Manvantara, four times seven (or twenty-eight) obtain emancipation, but their places are filled up by persons reborn in that character.[1473]
What are the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who those persons “reborn in that character”? In the Rik and other Vedas, the Maruts are represented as the Storm Gods and the friends and allies of Indra; they are the “Sons of Heaven and of Earth.” This led to an allegory that makes them the children of Shiva, the great patron of the Yogîs:
The Mahâ Yogî, the great ascetic, in whom is centred the highest perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, by which the most unlimited powers are attained, marvels and miracles are worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained.[1474]
In the Rig Veda the name Shiva is unknown, but the corresponding God is called Rudra, a name used for Agni, the Fire-God, the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the Râmâyana and the Purânas, their mother, Diti—the sister, or complement, and a form of Aditi—anxious [pg 649] to obtain a son who would destroy Indra, is told by Kashyapa, the Sage, that if, “with thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure,” she carries the babe in her womb “for a hundred years,”[1475] she will have such a son. But Indra foils her in the design. With his thunderbolt he divides the embryo in her womb into seven portions, and then divides every such portion into seven pieces again, which become the swift-moving deities, the Maruts.[1476] These Deities are only another aspect, or a development, of the Kumâras, who are patronymically Rudras, like many others.[1477]