But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with the moon.... It was the Hebrew יהוה [Jehovah],—and St. Paul enjoins:—“Let no man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of new moon,—which are a shadow of things to come; but the body (or substance) is of Christ,” i.e., Jehovah,—that function of this power that “made the barren woman the joyful mother of children,”—“for they are the gift of Jehovah,” ... which is a key to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to her going to the man of God:—“for it is neither the 7th day nor the day of new moon.” The living spiritual powers of the constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on the Hindû “war between the gods and the giants,” as marked by the eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, [pg 080]945 b.c. [!], at which time was born,[168] or produced from the sea, SRI (Sarai), S-r-i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram[169], who was the Venus-Aphroditus [sic] of the Westerns, emblem “of the luni-solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see foot-note], the goddess of increase.”[170] ... [Therefore] the grand monument and land-mark of the exact period of the lunar year and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount Sinai,—the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon.... Paul speaks [then] as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond woman of Abraham:—“For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is Mount Sinai in Arabia.” How could a woman be a mountain? and such a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, הגר whose numbers read 235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal 19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed, and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) “the Mountain of the Moon (Sin).” So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, שרה, giving to her the property of this lunar influence.[171]
This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was “fair to look upon,” and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî, or Shrî, Lakshmî-Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and Water;—and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that Genesis was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
13. They[172] went each on his allotted Land: Seven of them, each on his Lot. The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not create.
The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of the Globe “each on his lot”—i.e., each a different Race of men externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are “They” who create, and the “Lords of the Flame,” “who would not”? Occultism divides the “Creators” into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached “Liberation” to the end of the “Great Age,” the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man-bearing Globes of our Chain.
Exoteric Hindû books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of it. Hindû ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who have not attended as they should to their household sacred fires in their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the Vedas. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman-householders, who, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt sacrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires, are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due to the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta Pitris are devoid of “fire” i.e., of creative passion, because they are too divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust.
The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his first progeny:
Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and undesirous of progeny.[173]
This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, “They would not create,” and is explained as follows:
“The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will develop only in the next and subsequent removes.”