2. the angels who were in rebellion, who in the lower part of heaven
3. had been created,
4. they caused their evil work
5. devising with wicked heads ... etc.
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained unbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the “Rebellious Angels” had been created in the “lower part of heaven,” i.e., that they belonged and do belong to a material plane of evolution, [pg 065] although as it is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective. Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our Visible World, and especially the Earth, had been created by Lower Angels, the inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one? These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known what it contained better than non-initiated Christians, who took upon themselves, hundreds of years later, to remodel and correct what was said. But let us see what the same Tablet says further on:
7. There were seven of them [the wicked gods].
Then follows the description of these, the fourth being a “serpent,” the phallic symbol of the Fourth Race in human Evolution.
15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu their king.
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldæan Trinity, and is identical with Sin, the “Moon,” in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabalah is the Argha of the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double-sexed, as Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism, and viewed, from a dual aspect: male or spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic principles. Hence the “Messengers of Anu,” who is Sin, the “Moon,” are shown, in lines 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin with the help of Bel, the Sun, and Ishtar, Venus. This is regarded as a contradiction by the Assyriologists, but it is simply metaphysics in the Esoteric teaching.
There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the mystery of the “Fall.” Moreover there are two “Falls” in Theology: the rebellion of the Archangels and their “Fall,” and the “Fall” of Adam and Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a supposed crime. The word “supposed” is the true and correct term, for in both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of Evolution—intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic on the other. The “Fall” is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end of the ladder of Evolution the “rebellion,” i.e., the action of differentiating intellection, or consciousness, on its various planes, seeking union with Matter; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion of Matter against Spirit, or of action against [pg 066] spiritual inertia. And here lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original allegory it is Matter—hence the more material Angels—which was regarded as the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who “fell” on this plane.