9. Mother-Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.
Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high-tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin's theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth's plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz, Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal retardation of the Earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only “a fraction of its present distance.” In short, his theory was that it was the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly [pg 068] equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus separate completely from the Earth.[139]
The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother-Water “arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.”
10. When[140] they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare.[141] She asked to be dried.[142]
The time for the Earth's incrustation had arrived. The waters had separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire” it calls it—and enters upon an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as minerals and earths. From the “Waters of Space,” the progeny of the male Spirit-Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be based on a strictly scientific foundation.
Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three mountains, rather like the letter “M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the Universal Matrix or the “Great Deep.” Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, issues forth from the sea-wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and [pg 069] metaphysically Aditi, and even Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.
Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power “Life-Electricity,” or the Spirit of “Life-giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi-Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.
Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the modus operandi at the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth's formation.
The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores, 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.