Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su-dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata's progeny.
Says Professor Wilder:
The name Adam, or man, itself implies this double form of existence. It is identical with Athamas, or Thomas (Tamil, Tam), which is rendered by the Greek Didumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.” Accordingly we read: “And the side which the Lord God [Elohim] had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is Tzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in Berosus, who says that Thalatth (the Omorôka, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....
The two memorable twin-births of Genesis, that of Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name Hebel is the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine. “Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human Third Root-Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,” because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind were “male and female.”
As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and [pg 144] on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:
Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring.[314]
Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.[315] It must, however, be [pg 145] always borne in mind that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition cognized as such by the Jovians. It is not “spring,” as we know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.
It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:
Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony.[316]