THE REBIRTH OF HUMANITY – II

This mystic vision can only be fleetingly glimpsed and partially understood by beginning to ask sincere if faulty, searching if somewhat confused, questions. Herein lies the starting-point of the dialectical method taught by Krishna in the fourth chapter of the Gita. The sacred teaching of the kingly science was originally given by Krishna to Vivasvat, who in turn imparted it to Manu. Then Vaivaswat Manu, sometimes known as Morya, taught it to Ikshvaku, who stands for all the regal Initiates of forgotten antiquity in the golden ages of myth and fable. Thus the vigilant preservers and magnanimous rulers of this world, without abdicating from their essential state of Mahat-mic wisdom, assumed the guise of visible corporeality to descend on earth and reign upon it as King-Hierophants and Divine Instructors of the humanity then incarnated upon the globe. It is this self-same eternal wisdom that Krishna gives unto Arjuna, an unhappy warrior, not for his own sake, especially when he was not entirely ready to assimilate the Teaching, but for the sake of his work in the world and his help in concluding the Mahabharatan war.

In the great summation of the eighteenth chapter of the Gita, Krishna reveals secrets upon secrets, wrapped in each other in seemingly unending layers, like a Chinese treasure. Every time a secret is revealed, there is more and yet more, because in the end one is speaking of that which is part of the secret of every human soul in its repeated strivings and recurrent lives upon earth. Amidst the chaos and obscuration of misplayed roles, faded memories and fragmented consciousness, coupled with the fatigue of mental confusion, there is also the power of persistence, the sutratman and its connatus which enables every person to breathe from day to day and through each night. In deep sleep, as in profound meditation and the intervals between incarnations, the immortal soul enters into the orbit of the midnight sun and emerges out of the muddle of mundane life and mangled dreams. There it discerns the melody of the flute of Krishna, the music of the spheres, and the hidden magic of the ages which, when heard self-consciously, frees the soul from the fatuous burden of self-imposed delusions. It is the priceless prerogative of every Arjuna in our time to seek once more the pristine wisdom, the sovereign purifier, through unremitting search, through fearless questions, through grateful devotion and selfless service.

Surveying the wreckage of this century in bewilderment and dismay, many have sought an understanding of events in the oft-quoted, though little understood, remarks of H.P. Blavatsky concerning the role of the New World in the evolution of the races of humanity. Too many have submitted to the delusion, to the strange idea, that spiritual evolution is possible only for a few. The idea that any single people out of the globe’s teeming millions, selected at random and fed on the fat of the land, weighted down by the gifts of blind fortune, should be preferred by Krishna must be firmly repudiated. No instrument of the real work of the Lodge of Mahatmas can ever be permitted to become the refuge of the few, the chosen avenue for the exclusive salvation or cloistered comfort of any elite. Now, thanks to many benefactors and blessings in disguise, Americans are being made to slow down to the point where they may hear some of the echoes of what the pilgrim fathers heard when they landed in Plymouth over three centuries ago. In a way which could not have been known clearly to them, their setting out upon a long and difficult sea voyage was reminiscent of far more ancient voyages of seed-pilgrims across the waters of floods guided by Manu. These pilgrims to the New World had set out after having formed a compact with each other, which was a pure act of faith in themselves and in the future and in whatever their God had to offer them. This was one of many precious moments in the long and unwritten history of this mighty continent, whose vastness extends from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan, encompassing great rivers, the Grand Canyon, and awesome ranges of mountains girdling a third of the globe.

There is much more in the civilizations and peoples of pre-Columbian history than can ever be garnered through perfunctory reading of post-Columbian events. The brief journey of Columbus from Spain to the Caribbean, in search of India, but resulting in the rediscovery of America, could foretell little of the future birth in these lands of old Hindus from the India of a million years ago. It could convey few hints of the far-flung variety of spiritual strivings that would occur on the American continent, or of the enormous blasphemy, pride and temerity of inscribing the Third Eye upon the dollar bill. Yet somewhere, past all the humbug of petty educators, pompous bureaucrats and self-serving politicians, an impartial witness can only feel a genuine empathy with the series of lonely men carrying a strenuous burden of leadership in the emerging American republics.

Men such as Lincoln defined the ideal of action “with malice towards none and charity for all” and spoke for all mankind in affirming that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. Much earlier, a perceptive person like President Everett of Harvard could clearly see that the death of Jefferson and Adams on the fourth of July in 1826 was an event that had nothing to do with the destiny of one nation alone, but rather with the whole of humanity. Alas, it now seems paradoxical to some Americans that few people have honoured Jefferson as highly as Ho Chi Minh, and it is a mark of the myopia of educated Americans that they could not honour Eisenhower as much as the humble villagers of India who came in millions to greet this self-effacing soldier. Humanity recognizes its own, just as millions of Americans since the thirties have seen in Gandhi the enduring re-enactment which was once seen in Christ. This is a very different world from that of fifty years ago, and it is still changing rapidly. America is now much less imposing, fortunately for all, than it was threatening to be after the Second World War. Through omission and commission, through misspent and lost opportunities, as well as outright misdeeds, more lives have been lost since World War II owing to the U.S.A. than during World War II, more lives lost than even those due to the Soviet Union, with its barbaric despotism but its immense potential for good.

This is a curious world in which there are few major actors or authentic mandates, but in which there are millions of awakened human souls who are like unto sad-eyed veterans of history, but who are also coolly waiting to strike when the iron is hot so that the City of Man, now like an embryo hidden in the dark, like Venus before the dawn, will make its timely descent. Thanks to the ineffable grace of Daiviprakriti, which alone can act as a midwife to the rebirth of humanity, there could suddenly emerge a successful sequel to the aborted birth of the United Nations in 1945, so that the world may find itself and retrace its pathways to a more honourable prospect than anything cogitated since that time. The teeming lands and rich resources of the earth, like the seeds of the spiritual harvest of mankind, do not belong to any single tribe and cannot be handed on by any legal system of inheritance. Just as some governments and groups have already done more to protect the environments of the earth than individuals alone could accomplish, so too will future networks and agencies initiate efforts to pool natural and human resources, the seeds and skills that creative pioneers may bring to fruition in the age of micro-electronics, so that the whole world could move into a new era of global solidarity. It will be an era of self-conscious interdependence, promoting the global discovery of the richness and immensity of the potentials in the human brain, matching the vast imaginative potentials for creative longings in the human heart.

This daunting prospect is no less magnanimous than the mandate and the vision of the Brotherhood of Mahatmas and Bodhisattvas, who stand in relation to drifting mortals as they are in relation to the black beetle, in T.H. Huxley’s telling metaphor. Mahatmas are always present in the orbit of the Avatar and his true disciples on earth. They ever move in their invisible forms and are known by infallible signs. This is an arena wherein there is no room for delusion or pretense. It may well be that the Bodhisattvas are recognized only by a few, but this does not alter the fact that they are sometimes more numerous as shining witnesses to the critical events of history than the visible and volatile participants. It is high time that creedal religion catches up with contemporary science, which already knows that in every supposed physical object there is only a mere one-quadrillionth part that is, even by any stretch of the imagination, capable of being called matter. All the rest is empty space, the Akashic empyrean of Adepts, gods and elementals.

The multitudinous sense-perceptions of human beings, as Heraclitus recognized, are liars. Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for the human soul unless one looks with the awakened eye and hears with humble and receptive eardrums that are tuned to the proper vibrations, the music of the Hierophants, the great Compassionaters, the true lovers and friends and servers, but also the fathers and elder brothers, of the entire human race. It is in their name that the Avatar speaks, as no divine incarnation can be separated from the Logoic host which is with and behind the Magus-Teacher. At this critical point in cosmic evolution, after more than eighteen million years, when the human race has already passed the mid-point and is approaching a climactic phase, it is only He who was present at the beginning and who will prevail at the end who can redeem humanity. Whilst the Logos in esse is outside the solar system, it is only through its accredited and self-authenticated agency in the world that it performs its Paracletic function, which was sensed both by those around Buddha and Christ as well as by those like the blind king in the presence of Krishna. Only He who can shake the earth by sound is in a position to save it, with the help of all those who are willing to stand up and be counted, especially as the pralaya of the West begins to envelop the globe. Already, even those who can see but dimly can discern the grim fate that awaits those minute minorities which perversely block the way to the welfare of the vast majority of mankind.

Hermes, December 1981
Raghavan Iyer

The veil which covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand of Mercy.  — Bulwer Lytton

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! This seems easy enough to say, and everyone expects some such greeting. Yet, whether the wish, though it may proceed from a sincere heart, is likely to be realized even in the case of the few – is more difficult to decide. According to our theosophical tenets, every man or woman is endowed, more or less, with a magnetic potentiality, which when helped by a sincere, and especially by an intense and indomitable will – is the most effective of magic levers placed by Nature in human hands – for woe as for weal. Let us then, Theosophists, use that will to send a sincere greeting and a wish of good luck for the New Year to every living creature under the sun – enemies and relentless traducers included. Let us try and feel especially kindly and forgiving to our foes and persecutors, honest or dishonest, lest some of us should send unconsciously an “evil eye” greeting instead of a blessing. Such an effect is but too easily produced even without the help of the occult combination of the two numbers, the 8 and the 9, of the late departed, and of the newly-born year. But with these two numbers staring us in the face, an evil wish, just now, would be simply disastrous!

“Hulloo!” we hear some casual readers exclaiming. “Here’s a new superstition of the theosophic cranks: let us hear it. . . .”

You shall, dearly beloved critics, though it is not a new but a very old superstition. It is one shared, once upon a time, and firmly believed in, by all the Cæsars and World-potentates. These dreaded the number 8, because it postulates the equality of all men. Out of eternal unity and the mysterious number seven, out of Heaven and the seven planets and the sphere of the fixed stars, in the philosophy of arithmetic, was born the ogdoad. It was the first cube of the even numbers,and hence held sacred. ¹ In Eastern philosophy number eight symbolises equality of units, order and symmetry in heaven, transformed into inequality and confusion on earth, by selfishness, the great rebel against Nature’s decrees.

“The figure 8 or ∞ indicates the perpetual and regular motion of the Universe,” says Ragon. But if perfect as a cosmic number it is likewise the symbol of the lower Self, the animal nature of man. Thus, we augur ill for the unselfish portion of humanity from the present combination of the year-numbers. For the central figures 89 in the year 1890, are but a repetition of the two figures in the tail-end of 1889. And nine was a digit terribly dreaded by the ancients. With them it was a symbol of great changes, cosmic and social, and of versatility, in general; the sad emblem of the fragility of human things. Figure 9 represents the earth under the influence of anevil principle; the Kabalists holding, moreover, that it also symbolises the act of reproduction and generation. That is to say that the year 1890 is preparing to reproduce all the evils of its parent 1889, and to generate plenty of its own. Three times three is the great symbol ofcorporisation, or the materialisation of spirit according to Pythagoras – hence of gross matter. ²Every material extension, every circular line was represented by number 9, for the ancient philosophers had observed that, which the philosophicules of our age either fail to see, or else attribute to it no importance whatever. Nevertheless, the natural depravity of this digit and number is awful. Being sacred to the spheres it stands as the sign of circumference, since its value in degrees is equal to 9 – i.e., to 3+6+0. Hence it is also the symbol of the human head – especially of the modern average head, ever ready to be parading as 9 when it is hardly a 3. Moreover, this blessed 9 is possessed of the curious power of reproducing itself in its entirety in every multiplication and whether wanted or not; that is to say, when multiplied by itself or any other number this cheeky and pernicious figure will always result in a sum of 9 – a vicious trick of material nature, also, which reproduces itself on the slightest provocation. Therefore it becomes comprehensible why the ancients made of 9 the symbol of Matter, and we, the modern Occultists, make of it that of the materialism of our age – the fatal nineteenth century, now happily on its decline.

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If this antediluvian wisdom of the ages fails to penetrate the “circumference” of the cephaloid “spheres” of our modern Scientists and Mathematicians – then we do not know what will do so. The occult future of 1890 is concealed in the exoteric past of 1889 and its preceding patronymical eight years.

Unhappily – or shall we say, happily – man in this dark cycle is denied, as a collective whole, the faculty of foresight. Whether we take into our mystic consideration the average business man, the profligate, the materialist, orthe bigot, it is always the same. Compelled to confine his attention to the day’s concern, the business man but imitates the provident ant by laying by a provision against the winter of old age; while the elect of fortune and Karmic illusions tries his best to emulate the grasshopper in his perpetual buzz and summer-song. The selfish care of the one and the utter recklessness of the other make both disregard and often remain entirely ignorant of any serious duty towards Human kind. As to the latter two, namely the materialist and the bigot, their duty to their neighbours and charity to all begin and end at home. Most men love but those who share their respective ways of thinking, and care nothing for the future of the races or the world; nor will they give a thought, if they can help it, to post-mortem life. Owing to their respective psychical temperaments each man expects death will usher him either through golden porches into a conventional heaven, or through sulphurous caverns into an asbestos hell, or else to the verge of an abyss of non-existence. And lo, how all of them – save the materialist – do fear death to be sure! May not this fear lie at the bottom of the aversion of certain people to Theosophy and Metaphysics? But no man in this century – itself whirling madly towards its gaping tomb – has the time or desire to give more than a casual thought either to the grim visitor who will not miss one of us, or to Futurity.

They are, perhaps, right as to the latter. The future lies in the present and both include the Past. With a rare occult insight Rohel made quite an esoterically true remark, in saying that “the future does not come from before to meet us, but comes streaming up from behind over our heads.” For the Occultist and average Theosophist the Future and the Past are both included in each moment of their lives, hence in the eternal PRESENT. The Past is a torrent madly rushing by, that we face incessantly, without one second of interval; every wave of it, and every drop in it, being an event, whether great or small. Yet, no sooner have we faced it, and whether it brings joy or sorrow, whether it elevates us or knocks us off our feet, than it is carried away and disappears behind us, to be lost sooner or later in the great Sea of Oblivion. It depends on us to make every such event non-existent to ourselves by obliterating it from our memory; or else to create of our past sorrows Promethean Vultures – those “dark-winged birds, the embodied memories of the Past,” which, in Sala’s graphic fancy wheel and shriek over the Lethean lake.” In the first case, we are real philosophers; in the second – but timid and even cowardly soldiers of the army called mankind, and commanded in the great battle of Life by “King Karma.” Happy those of its warriors by whom Death is regarded as a tender and merciful mother. She rocks her sick children into sweet sleep on her cold, soft bosom but to awake them a moment after, healed of all ailing, happy, and with a tenfold reward for every bitter sigh or tear. Post-mortem oblivion of every evil – to the smallest – is the most blissful characteristic of the “paradise” we believe in. Yes: oblivion of pain and sorrow and the vivid recollection only, nay once more the living over of every happy moment of our terrestrial drama; and, if no such moment ever occurred in one’s sad life, then, the glorious realization of every legitimate, well-earned, yet unsatisfied desire we ever had, as true as life itself and intensified seventy-seven times sevenfold . . . .

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Christians – the Continental especially – celebrate their New Year days with special pomp. That day is the Devachan of children and servants, and every one is supposed to be happy, from Kings and Queens down to the porters and kitchen-malkins. The festival is, of course, purely pagan, as with very few exceptions are all our holy days. The dear old pagan customs have not died out, not even in Protestant England, though here the New Year is no longer a sacred day – more’s the pity. The presents, which used to be called in old Rome strenâ (now, the FrenchÂtrennes), are still mutually exchanged. People greet each other with the words: Annum novum faustum felicemque tibi, as of yore; the magistrates, it is true, sacrifice no longer a white swan to Jupiter, nor priests a white steer to Janus. But magistrates, priests and all devour still in commemoration of swan and steer, big fat oxen and turkeys at their Christmas and New Year’s dinners. The gilt dates, the dried and gilt plums and figs have now passed from the hands of the tribunes on their way to the Capitol unto the Christmas trees for children. Yet, if the modern Caligula receives no longer piles of copper coins with the head of Janus on one side of them, it is because his own effigy replaces that of the god on every coin, and that coppers are no longer touched by royal hands. Nor has the custom of presenting one’s Sovereigns with strenâ been abolished in England so very long. D’Israeli tells us in his Curiosities of Literature of 3,000 gowns found in Queen Bess’s wardrobe after her death, the fruits of her New Year’s tax on her faithful subjects, from Dukes down to dustmen. As the success of any affair on that day was considered a good omen for the whole year in ancient Rome, so the belief exists to this day in many a Christian country, in Russia pre-eminently so. Is it because instead of the New Year, the mistletoe and the holly are now used on Christmas day, that the symbol has become Christian? The cutting of the mistletoe off the sacred oak on New Year’s day is a relic of the old Druids of pagan Britain. Christian Britain is as pagan in her ways as she ever was.

But there are more reasons than one why England is bound to include the New Year as a sacred day among Christian festivals. The 1st of January being the 8th day after Christmas, is, according to both profane and ecclesiastical histories, the festival of Christ’s circumcision, as six days later is the Epiphany. And it is as undeniable and as world-known a fact as any, that long before the advent of the three Zoroastrian Magi, of Christ’s circumcision, or his birth either, the 1st of January was the first day of the civil year of the Romans, and celebrated 2,000 years ago as it is now. It is hard to see the reason, since Christendom has helped itself to the Jewish Scriptures, and along with them their curious chronology, why it should have found it unfit to adopt also the Jewish Rosh-Hashonah (the head of the year), instead of the pagan New Year. Once that the 1st Chapter of Genesis is left headed in every country with the words, “Before Christ, 4004,” consistency alone should have suggested the propriety of giving preference to the Talmudic calendar over the pagan Roman. Everything seemed to invite the Church to do so. On the undeniable authority of revelation Rabbinical tradition assures us that it was on the 1st day of the month of Tisri, that the Lord God of Israel created the world – just 5,848 years ago. Then there’s that other historical fact, namely that our father Adam was like wise created on the first anniversary of that same day of Tisri – a year after. All this is very important, pre-eminently suggestive, and underlines most emphatically our proverbial western ingratitude. Moreover, if we are permitted to say so, it is dangerous. For that identical first day of Tisri is also called “Yom Haddin,” the Day of Judgment. The Jewish El Shaddai, the Almighty, is more active than the “Father” of the Christians. The latter will judge us only after the destruction of the Universe, on the Great Day when the Goats and the Sheep will stand, each on their allotted side, awaiting eternal bliss or damnation. But El Shaddai, we are informed by the Rabbins, sits in judgment on every anniversary of the world’s creation – i.e. on every New Year’s Day. Surrounded by His archangels, the God of Mercy has the astro-sidereal minute books opened, and the name of every man, woman and child is read to Him aloud from these Records, wherein the minutest thoughts and deeds of every human (or is it only Jewish?) being are entered. If the good deeds outnumber the wicked actions, the mortal whose name is read lives through that year. The Lord plagues for him some Christian Pharaoh or two, and hands him over to him to shear. But if the bad deeds outweigh the good – then woe to the culprit; he is forthwith condemned to suffer the penalty of death during that year, and is sent to Sheol.

This would imply that the Jews regard the gift of life as something very precious indeed. Christians are as fond of their lives as Jews, and both are generally scared out of their wits at the approach of Death. Why it should be so has never been made clear. Indeed, this seems but a poor compliment to pay the Creator, as suggesting the idea that none of the Christians care particularly to meet the Unspeakable Glory of the “Father” face to face. Dear, loving children!

A pious Roman Catholic assured us one day that it was not so, and attributed the scare toreverential awe. Moreover, he tried to persuade his listeners that the Holy Inquisition burnt her “heretics” out of pure Christian kindness. They were put out of the way of terrestrial mischief in this way, he said, for Mother Church knew well that Father God would take better care of the roasted victims than any mortal authority could, while they were raw and living. This may be a mistaken view of the situation, nevertheless, it was meant in all Christian charity.

We have heard a less charitable version of the real reason for burning heretics and all whom the Church was determined to get rid of; and by comparison this reason colours the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination to eternal bliss or damnation with quite a roseate hue. It is said to be stated in the secret records of the Vatican archives, that burning to the last atom of flesh, after breaking all the bones into small fragments, was done with a predetermined object. It was that of preventing the “enemy of the Church,” from taking his part and share even in the last act of the drama of the world – as theologically conceived – namely in “the Resurrection of the Dead,” or of all flesh, on the great Judgment Day. As cremation is to this hour opposed by the Church on the same principle – to wit, that a cremated “Sleeper” will upon awakening at the blast of the angel’s trumpet, find it impossible to gather up in time his scattered limbs – the reason given for the auto da fé seems reasonable enough and quite likely. The sea will give up the dead which are in it, and death and hell will deliver up their dead (Vide “Revelation” xx. 13); but terrestrial fire is not to be credited with a like generosity, nor supposed to share in the asbestosian characteristics of the orthodox hellfire. Once the body is cremated it is as good as annihilated with regard to the last rising of the dead. If the occult reason of the inquisitorial autos da fé rests on fact – and personally we do not entertain the slightest doubt of it, considering the authority it was received from – then the Holy Inquisition and Popes would have very little to say against the Protestant doctrine of Predestination. The latter, as warranted in Revelation, allows some chance, at least, to the “Damned” whom hell delivers at the last hour, and who may thus yet be pardoned. While if things took place in nature as the theology of Rome decreed that they should, the poor “Heretics” would find themselves worse off than any of the “damned.” Natural query: which of the two, the God of the Calvinists or the Jesuit of God, he who first invented burning, beats the other in refined and diabolical cruelty? Shall the question remain in 1890, sub judice, as it did in 1790?

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But the Inquisition, with its stake and rack and diabolical tortures, is happily abolished now, even in Spain. Otherwise these lines would never have been written; nor would our Society have such zealous and good theosophists in the land of Torquemada and the ancient paradise of man-roasting festivals, as it has now. Happy NEW YEAR to them, too, as to all the Brethren scattered all over the wide globe. Only we, theosophists, so kindly nicknamed the “sevening lunatics,” would prefer another day for our New Year. Like the apostate Emperor, many of us have still a strong lingering love for the poetical, bright gods of Olympus and would willingly repudiate the double-faced Thessalonian. The first of Januarius was ever more sacred to Janus than Juno; andjanua, meaning “the gate that openeth the year,” holds as good for any day in January. January 3, for instance, was consecrated to Minerva-Athene the goddess of wisdom and to Isis, “she who generates life,” the ancient lady patroness of the good city of Lutetia. Since then, mother Isis has fallen a victim to the faith of Rome and civilization. and Lutetia along with her. Both were converted in the Julian calendar (the heirloom of pagan Julius Cæsar used by Christendom till the XIIIth century). Isis was baptized Geneviève, became a beatified saint and martyr, and Lutetia was called Paris for a change, preserving the same old patroness but with the addition of a false nose.³ Life itself is a gloomy masquerade wherein the ghastly danse Macabre is every instant performed; why should not calendars and even religion in such case be allowed to partake in the travesty?

To be brief, it is January the 4th which ought to be selected by the Theosophists – the Esotericists especially – as their New Year. January is under the sign of Capricornus, the mysterious Makara of the Hindu mystics – the “Kumaras,” it being stated, having incarnated in mankind under the 10th sign of the Zodiac. For ages the 4th of January has been sacred to Mercury-Budha, ⁴ or Thoth-Hermes. Thus everything combines to make of it a festival to be held by those who study ancient Wisdom. Whether called Budh or Budhi by its Aryan name,Mercurios, the son of Cælus and Hecate truly, or of the divine (white) and infernal (black) magic by its Hellenic, or again Hermes or Thoth its Greco-Egyptian name, the day seems in every way more appropriate for us than January 1, the day of Janus, the double-faced “god of the time” –servers. Yet it is well named, and as well chosen to be celebrated by all the political Opportunists the world over.

Poor old Janus! How his two faces must have looked perplexed at the last stroke of midnighton December 31! We think we see these ancient faces. One of them is turned regretfully toward the Past, in the rapidly gathering mists of which the dead body of 1889 is disappearing. The mournful eye of the God follows wistfully the chief events impressed on the departed Annus: the crumbling Eiffel tower; the collapse of the “monotonous” – as Mark Twain’s “tenth mule” – Parnell-Pigot alliteration; the sundry abdications, depositions and suicides of royalty; the Hegiraof aristocratic Mahomeds, and such like freaks and fiascos of civilization. This is the Janus face of the Past. The other, the face of the Future, is enquiringly turned the other way, and stares into the very depths of the womb of Futurity; the hopeless vacancy in the widely open eye bespeaks the ignorance of the God. No; not the two faces, nor even the occasional four heads of Janus and their eight eyes can penetrate the thickness of the veils that enshroud the karmic mysteries with which the New Year is pregnant from the instant of its birth. What shalt thou endow the world with, O fatal Year 1890 with thy figures between a unit and a cipher, or symbolically between living man erect, the embodiment of wicked mischief-making, and the universe of matter! ⁵ The “influenza” thou hast already in thy pocket, for people see it peeping out. Of people daily killed in the streets of London by tumbling over the electric wires of the new “lighting craze,” we have already a premonition through news from America. Dost thou see, O Janus, perched like “sister Anne” upon the parapet dividing the two years, a wee David slaying the giant Goliath, little Portugal slaying great Britain, or her prestige, at any rate. on the horizons of the torrid zones of Africa? Or is it a Hindu Soodra helped by a Buddhist Bonze from the Empire of the Celestials who make thee frown so? Do they not come to convert the two-thirds of the Anglican divines to the worship of the azure-coloured Krishna and of the Buddha of the elephant-like pendant ears, who sits cross-legged and smiles so blandly on a cabbage-like lotus? For these are the theosophical ideals – nay, Theosophy itself, the divine Wisdom – as distorted in the grossly materialistic, all-anthropomorphizing mind of the average British Philistine. What unspeakable new horrors shalt thou, O year 1890, unveil before the eyes of the world? Shall it though ironclad and laughing at every tragedy of life sneer too, when Janus, surnamed on account of the key in his right hand, Janitor, the door-keeper to Heaven – a function with which he was entrusted ages before he became St. Peter – uses that key? It is only when he has unlocked one after the other door of every one of the 365 days (true “Blue Beard’s secret chambers”) which are to become thy future progeny, O mysterious stranger, that the nations will be able to decide whether thou wert a “Happy,” or a Nefast Year.

Meanwhile, let every nation, as every reader, fly for inquiry to their respective gods, if they would learn the secrets of Futurity. Thus the American, Nicodemus-like, may go to one of his three living and actually reincarnated Christs, each calling himself Jesus, now flourishing under the star-bespangled Banner of Liberty. The Spiritualist is at liberty to consult his favorite medium, who may raise Saul or evoke the Spirit of Deborah for the benefit and information of his client. The gentleman-sportsman can bend his steps to the mysterious abode of his rival’s jockey, and the average politician consult the secret police, a professional chiromancer, or an astrologer, etc., etc. As regards ourselves we have faith in numbers and only in that face of Janus which is called the Past. For – doth Janus himself know the future? – or

. . . perchance himself he does not know.

¹ As shown by Ragon, the Mason-Occultist, the gnostic ogdoad had eight stars representing the 8 cabiri of Samothrace, the 8 principles of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, the 8 gods of Xenocrates, the 8 angles of the cubic stone.
² The reason for this is because according to the Pythagoreans each of the three elements that constitute our bodies is aternary: water. containing earth and fire: earth containing aqueous and igneous particles; and fire being tempered by aqueous globules and terrestrial corpuscles serving it as food. Hence the name given to matter, the “nonagous envelope.”
³ This festival remains thus unchanged as that of the lady Patroness of Lutetia=Paris, and to this day Isis is offered religious honours in every Parisian and Latin church.
⁴ The 4th of January being sacred to Mercury, of whom the Greeks made Hermes the R. Catholics have included St. Hermes in their Calendar. Just in the same way, the 9th of that month having been always celebrated by the pagans as the day of the “conquering sun” the R. Catholics have transformed the noun into a proper name, making, of it St.Nicanor (from the Greek nican, to conquer), whom they honour on the 10th of January.
⁵ It is only when the cipher or nought stands by itself and without being preceded by any digit that it becomes the symbol of the infinite Kosmos and – of absolute Deity.

Lucifer, January, 1890
H. P. Blavatsky

“You will never do anything in this world without courage … the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”  — Aristotle

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

— Plato

THE REBIRTH OF HUMANITY – I

   We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full development of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal MAHAT – a ray unimpeded by matter – will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub-race and nation have their cycles and stages of developmental evolution repeated on a smaller scale, it must be the more so in the case of a Root-Race. Our race then has, as a Root-race, crossed the equatorial line and is cycling onward on the Spiritual side; but some of our sub-races still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles; while others again – the oldest – having crossed their crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 301
H. P. Blavatsky

Ranging from the minutest circles of daily life to the massive arcs of cosmic evolution, the spiralling progress of spiritual humanity has successive phases and synchronous aspects, marked by critical turns and decisive epochs. There are fateful times of birth and death, of transfiguration and rebirth, for individuals as well as civilizations. The majestic beating of the karmic heart of the cosmos resonates within the breast of every intrepid pilgrim-soul so that none is exempt from the challenge of the hour nor impervious to the clarion call of the Mahabharatan “war between the living and the dead”. Days and hours are marked by moments of going forth (pravritti) and going within (nivritti), whilst decades and centuries have their own coded rhythms of activity and rest. In a universe of inexorable law and ceaseless transformation, no two moments in the life of any being are exactly alike. Similarly, in the lifetimes of races the accumulated karma of the past converges with the archetypal logic of cycles to precipitate climacteric moments.

At the present historical moment there is a rapid descent of Dharmakshetra into Kurukshetraand an awesome re-enactment, before the soul’s eye, of the titanic struggle between Kronos and Zeus. To serve the Mahatmas and their Avatar, and through them all of humanity, is the most meaningful and precious privilege open to any person. The readiness to serve is helped by the fusion of an altruistic motive with skill in timely action. These may be gestated through deep meditation on behalf of the good of all beings and an authentic renunciation of earthly concerns for the sake of the many who are lost. One must lay one’s heart open to the present plight of millions of souls who are wandering adrift and are much afflicted by the psychological terror prophesied in Tibet. Not even affording the visible reference of an external cataclysm, this psychological convulsion is needed for the transformation of the humanity of the past into the humanity of the future.

The ramifications of this crucial transition were anticipated and provided for by the Brotherhood of Bodhisattvas. The Avataric descent of the Seventh Impulsion into the moral chaos consequent upon two World Wars and the world weariness of the present epoch marks the culmination of a seven hundred-year cycle extending back to Tsong-Kha-Pa. Whilst this may be more than can be encompassed in the cribbed and cabined conceptions of mortals, it is scarcely an instant in the eyes of those who ever reside on the plane of Shamballa. Sages are fully aware that the voluntary descent of a spiritual Teacher into Myalba merely provides the outward illusion of passage through various phases of earthly life, using but a small portion of an essentially unmanifest Self. Impervious to containment by form, the true being of the Avatar abides in timeless duration, always honouring the One without a second, Tad ekam,that which as the central Spiritual Sun is the single source of all that lives and breathes throughout the seven kingdoms of nature, and of all that is lit up at any level of reflected intelligence from the tiniest atom to the mightiest star in this vast cosmos which extends far beyond the solar system and this earth. One with the unmanifest Logos, Dakshinamurti remains poised at the threshold of the realm of boundless Light, the mathematical circle dividing infinity from finitude, and reposes as achutya – unfallen. As H.P. Blavatsky declared:

   The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is that the incognizable Cause does not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 487

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna disclosed that he incarnates on earth periodically for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked and the establishment of righteousness. In Hindu iconography Narayana holds the conch shell, symbolizing his ability to rock the earth through sound, the potency of the Logos as Shabdabrahman, the Soundless Sound of the indestructible Akshara behind and beyond and within all the spaces of “the AUM throughout eternal ages”. This clarion call has gone out to heroic souls incarnated in the last half century for the solemn purpose of gathering together those spread out across the globe who readily recognize the immense danger to humanity from itself, the spiritual danger of self-destruction. It is a summons to halt the desecration of the sacred soil of the good earth upon which all human beings must find their common ground, regardless of race, sex, religion, creed, atheistic philosophy, indifferentism, or any set of beliefs and values. Regardless of whatsoever labels and idiosyncracies of form, all human beings are sharers of the Nur of Allah, the Light that lighteth up every soul that cometh into the world, that Light which is beyond Darkness itself. It is the One Light which has been known by diverse names amongst the many forgotten peoples of our globe over millions and millions of years, in civilizations long buried under deserts and mountains or slipped beneath the sea before existing continents emerged. Infinitely resplendent in eternal duration, it is the Light which was transmitted over eighteen million years ago when the Manas of humanity was lit up by divine beings of one lip, one race, one mind, one heart, seers of whom the Vedas speak.

   The mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their celestial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 281

Truly God is one, but manifold are its names. As the Koran teaches, there are as many ways to God as there are children of the breaths of men. Tragically, as mankind became progressively enwrapped in the illusion of material existence, its eyes and ears dimmed, though the light within remained inviolate. Outside the circle of ever vigilant custodians of the Mysteries, the arcane teaching of the universal sound and light of the Logos was obscured, distorted and lost. Today those who call themselves Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists or Zoroastrians, men and women of every sect and nation throughout every continent of the globe, are bereft of the lost Word, Shabdabrahman. Although lost, it has yet been fervently sought by many more millions in our time than ever before in recorded history or even in earlier epochs of antiquity shrouded in myth and mist. The unseen tablets of nature, which are a vast reservoir of enigmatic glyphs and symbols and eternal verities, record the unknown strivings of innumerable human beings, groping in their gloom, sometimes with shame but often with nothing else to support them than the pathos of their search. It is a search to find one’s way back home, out of exile from the kingdom of God, the land of the midnight sun.

In order to gather together the afflicted, the Divine Cowherd summons all awakened souls, wherever and however disguised, through the sounding of the mighty conch. Independent of all modes of external communication, and relying upon the oldest mode of communication known to the Ancient of Days – controlled transference of benevolent thought and ineffable sound – the call is heard by scattered volunteers “in the fierce strife between the living and the dead”. As with Jacob’s ladder in his dream, heaven and earth are reunited, even if momentarily. In this manner, over the next eighteen years the world will move through the darkness, yet mysteriously, step by step, faltering and failing yet persisting, it will move towards that moment when Anno Domini has ceased to be, and a new era will dawn with a new name. There will then be no U.S.A. but a new Republic of Conscience which will take its place in the community of mankind which would have come of age and declared itself as one family.

This is a grand prospect for which there can be inherently no empirical or merely rational proof. Yet it may be tested by any intuitive individual who is courageous enough to pour his or her deepest unspoken feelings, unarticulated dreams and unexpressed inner agony into the alchemical crucible of spiritual striving on behalf of others. It is a tryst that such souls make with destiny, but also with the grandchildren of persons yet unborn. It is a tryst with the humanity of the future, and with the full promise of the Aquarian Age which dawned on the nineteenth of June, 1902, seventy-nine years ago, with mathematical precision. This has an exact relationship to that moment five thousand and eighty-three years ago, in 3102 B.C., when Krishna, having witnessed the outcome of the Mahabharatan war between the greedy Kauravas and the foolish Pandavas, was able to end his seeming life on earth and withdraw from the terrestrial scene. Thus standing apart from this universe, into which he never really enters, he creates therein his mayavi rupas through the mighty magic of prakriti, the seminal potency of mystic thought in the eternal life of self-ideation. Again and again, under different names, it is the same being behind every divine incarnation, whether past or future.

As Dakshinamurti, the Initiator of Initiates, he is seated immovable above Mount Kailas, in mystic meditation since over eighteen million years ago from the time when there was no Mount Kailas and no Himalayas as presently understood. Coming down through all the subsequent recorded and unrecorded eras, he carries forth in unbroken continuity the onward spiritual current which is the irresistible, unconquerable, ineluctable forward march of humanity. He is Shiva-Mahadeva, reborn as the four Kumaras in the successive races of humanity, and that still more mysterious and solitary Being alluded to in the secret Teachings.

   The inner man of the first * * * only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 281

Attuned to the rhythms of the cosmic ocean of Divine Thought, he is the still motionless centre in its depths around which revolve, like myriad mathematical points in spinning circles, the scattered hosts of humanity. Amidst the larger and larger circles of ripples upon ripples, waves upon waves, all souls are citizens of that universe which is much vaster than the disordered kingdom which, as earthlings, they may seem to inherit but to which they have no claim except as members of a single family.

Hermes, December 1981
Raghavan Iyer

There are those Orientalists and historians — and they form the majority — who, while feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the Bible, and some of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the immorality in the pantheons of India and Greece. ¹We may be told that before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the same; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented —”those miserable stories of the poets,” as Euripides expresses it  (ᾀοιδὣν  ὄιδε δυστήυοι λόλοι, Hercules furens, 1346, Dindorf’s Edition).

But there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who knew that there was more than one key to theogonic symbolism, it was a mistake to have expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if the educated and learned philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom under the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the greatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well as the origin of all things — not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the dead letter was religion; the interpretation — sacrilege. And this dead letter could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an example was given him by his gods. But to the philosopher — especially the Initiate — Hesiod’s theogony is as historical as any history can be. Plato accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges permitted him.

The fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranos for their first king, and that Plato commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranos, shows that there were continents and kings before Atlantis. For Neptune, to whose lot that continent fell, finds on a small island only one human couple made of clay (i.e., the first physical human man, whose origin began with the last sub-races of the Third Root-Race). It is their daughter Clito that the god marries, and it is his eldest son Atlas who receives for his part the mountain and the continent which was called by his name.

Now all the gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindu Pantheon and the Rishis, were the septiform personations (1) of the noumena of the intelligent Powers of nature; (2) of Cosmic Forces; (3) of celestial bodies; (4) of gods or Dhyan Chohans; (5) of psychic and spiritual powers; (6) of divine kings on earth (or the incarnations of the gods); and (7) of terrestrial heroes or men. The knowledge how to discern among these seven forms the one that is meant, belonged at all times to the Initiates, whose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and allegorical system.

Thus while Uranos (or the host representing this celestial group) reigned and ruled over the Second Race and their (then) Continent; Kronos or Saturn governed the Lemurians; and Jupiter, Neptune ² and others fought in the allegory for Atlantis, which was the whole earth in the day of the Fourth Race. Poseidonis, or the (last) island of Atlantis “the third step of Idaspati” (or Vishnu) in the mystic language of the secret books — lasted till about 12,000 years ago. ³ The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in claiming that it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas, where “the gods were born” — i.e., “incarnated.” But it was after their fourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human Kings and rulers.

Diodorus speaks of Uranos as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either consciously or otherwise, the continents; but, as shown, Plato indirectly corrects the statement. The first astronomical teacher of men was Uranos, because he is one of the seven Dhyan Chohans of that second period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara (that of Swarochisha), among the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding gods or Rishis of that race, we find Jyotis, ⁴ the teacher of astronomy (Jyotisha), one of the names of Brahmâ. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the sky, Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of astronomy. Uranos gave birth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they who (personified by Saturn-Kronos) mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who fell into generation, when “creation by will was superseded by physical procreation,” they needed Uranos no more.

And here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence of the last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, “The Greater Gods of Olympos,” the ideas of the general public about Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer is credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as “the true key to the Homeric conception,” whereas this “key” was merely ablind. Poseidon “is indeed essentially of the earth earthy . . . . strong and self-asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive,” — but this is because he symbolises the Spirit of the Fourth Root-Race, the ruler of the Seas, that race which lives above the surface of the seas (λίμνη, Iliad, xxiv., 79), which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon, the race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan and one-eyed Cyclops. Though Zeus reigns over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules, and who is the true key to the triad of the Kronid Brothers and to our human races. Poseidon and Nereus are one: the former the ruler or spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion, the latter, after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the living race; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan Race: and this is what the great Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or even dimly perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the “artfulness” of Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we arrive . . . . only through the patronymic of the Nereids!

Thus the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their speculations to the exoteric images of mythology and to lose sight of their inner meaning: and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of our age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured scholars England has given birth to. Grecian literature has been the loving study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public affairs to enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek scholarship which will make his name famous through coming generations. At the same time, as his sincere admirer, the present writer cannot but feel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which must then shine upon the whole question of symbolism and mythology, judge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which he has often criticised from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that future day it will be perceived that the esoteric key to the mysteries of the Christian as well as of the Grecian theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret Doctrine of the pre-historic nations, which, along with others, he has denied. It is that Doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all human religious speculations or even so-called Revelations, and it is this teaching which infuses the Spirit of life into the lay figures on the Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a younger man, his admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be crowned by the discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes the golden hours of his declining years in futile disputations with that giant free-thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of exoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorantLITERALISM. These two great controversialists are equally blind to the true esoteric meaning of the texts which they hurl at each other’s head like iron bullets, while the world alone suffers by such controversies: since the one helps to strengthen the ranks of materialism, and the other those of blind Sectarianism and of the dead letter. And now we may return once more to our immediate subject.

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¹ Professor Max Müller’s Lectures — “on the Philosophy of Mythology” — are before us. We read his citations of Herakleitos (460 B.C.), declaring that Homer deserved “to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged”; and of Xenophanes “holding Homer and Hesiod responsible for the popular superstitions of Greece. . . . ” and for ascribing “to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among men . . . unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud.” Finally the Oxford Professor quotes from Professor Jowett’s translation of Plato, where the latter tells Adaimantos (Republic) that “the young man (in the State) should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes, he is far from doing anything outrageous, and that he may chastise his father (as Zeus did with Kronos) . . in any manner that he likes, and in this will only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods. . . In my opinion, these stories are not fit to be repeated.” To this Dr. Max Müller observes that “the Greek religion was clearly a national and traditionalreligion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages and disadvantages of this form of religious belief“; while the Christian religion is “an historical and, to a great extent, an individual religion, and it possesses the advantage of an authorised codex and of a settled system of faith” (p. 349). So much the worse if it is “historical,” for surely Lot’s incident with his daughters would only gain, were it “allegorical.”
² Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindu Idaspati, identical with Narâyana (the mover on the waters) or Vishnu, and like this Hindu god he is shown crossing the whole horizon in three steps. Idaspati means also “the master of the waters.”
³ Bailly’s assertion that the 9,000 years mentioned by the Egyptian priests do not represent “solar years” is groundless. Bailly knew nothing of geology and its calculations; otherwise he would have spoken differently.
⁴ See Matsya Purâna, which places him among the seven Prajâpatis of the period.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 764–767
H. P. Blavatsky