This account is omitted in Genesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
17. The Breath[238] needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;[239] “We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;[240] “It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.[241] But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; “We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers. “I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth. “The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.[242]... Man[243] remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who[244] became Men with Bones in the Third.[245]
As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its “Mother,” because of that mysterious power in the Moon, [pg 111] which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the “Nurse”;[246] while “Spiritual Fire” alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.
Now what is that “Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the “Dhyân of the First Element.” Hydrogen is gas only on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen “would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”[247] and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is “fire, air and water,” in fact: one under three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the “One” of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen is not water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.
If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these “Fires” was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, the personified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say [pg 112] seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the “Flame of his Wrath,” which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these “Fires” and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.
The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of our five physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in the Purânas Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.” “Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,” says an Occult axiom.
The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.
In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the Purânas and Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the “Mother of the Vedas,” who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests. [pg 113] And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.
I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, the Light that radiates within Darkness [Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.[248]
Thus we have to study well the “Primary Creation” before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had three rudimentary Elements in it; and no Fire as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja, “pregenetic,” and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.