In the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all-knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.[211] Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow Intelligence,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.
Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.[212]
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the [pg 098] Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become A-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the Infernal Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of form who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.
Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that one-third[213] of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances”[214]—was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.[215] Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Purânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical [pg 099] and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.
The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye.
As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs, i.e., those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the Creative Gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.[216] Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.
Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, [pg 100] pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have refused to create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,[217] who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.
Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a lower Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of [pg 101] mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,[218] to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phædrus, of a “winged” race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato's Banquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:
The circuit having been accomplished, the knot was loosened ... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were untied [separated] together with man ... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.[219]