All this, however, teaches us very little as to the true functions of this celestial army, and nothing at all as to its place in evolution and its relation to the earth we live on. For an answer to the question, “Who are the true Creators?” we must go to the Esoteric Doctrine, since there only can the key be found which will render intelligible the Theogonies of the various world-religions.
There we find that the real creator of the Kosmos, as of all visible Nature—if not of all the invisible hosts of Spirits not yet drawn into the “Cycle of Necessity,” or evolution—is “the Lord—the Gods,” or the “Working Host,” the “Army” collectively taken, the “One in many.”
The One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can have no relation to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see, from the glorious suns and planets down to the blades of grass and the specks of dust, had been created by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First Energy that proceeded from It,[389] then every such thing would have been perfect, eternal, and unconditioned, [pg 209] like its author. The millions upon millions of imperfect works found in Nature testify loudly that they are the products of finite, conditioned beings—though the latter were and are Dhyân Chohans, Archangels, or what ever else they may be named. In short, these imperfect works are the unfinished production of evolution, under the guidance of the imperfect Gods. The Zohar gives us this assurance as well as the Secret Doctrine. It speaks of the auxiliaries of the “Ancient of Days,” the “Sacred Aged,” and calls them Auphanim, or the living Wheels of the celestial orbs, who participate in the work of the creation of the Universe.
Thus it is not the “Principle,” One and Unconditioned, nor even Its reflection, that creates, but only the “Seven Gods” who fashion the Universe out of the eternal Matter, vivified into objective life by the reflection into it of the One Reality.
The Creator is they—“God the Host”—called in the Secret Doctrine the Dhyân Chohans; with the Hindus the Prajâpatis; with the Western Kabalists the Sephiroth; and with the Buddhist the Devas—impersonal because blind forces. They are the Amshaspends with the Zoroastrians, and while with the Christian Mystic the “Creator” is the “Gods of the God,” with the dogmatic Churchman he is the “God of the Gods,” the “Lord of lords,” etc.
“Jehovah” is only the God who is greater than all Gods in the eyes of Israel.
I know, that the Lord [of Israel] is great and that our Lord is above all gods.[390]
And again:
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.[391]
The Egyptian Neteroo, translated by Champollion “the other Gods” are the Elohim of the Biblical writers, behind which stands concealed the One God, considered in the diversity of his powers.[392] This One is not Parabrahman, but the Unmanifested Logos, the Demiurgos, the real Creator or Fashioner, that follows him, standing for the Demiurgi collectively taken. Further on the great Egyptologist adds: