Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus – a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly – had received in mystic revelation. It is said that “Marcus had it revealed unto him that ‘the seven heavens‘ ¹ . . . . sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete doxology”; in clearer words: “the Sound whereof being carried down (from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and parent of all things that be on earth.” (See “Hippolytu,” vi 48, and King’s Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: “The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels), these (the second logos, or “Sound”) created all on Earth.

Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John’s Apocalyps a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. x 3, 4), “Seven thunders uttered their voices . . . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, ‘Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.’ “The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them “the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father” (i.e., of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus answers: “Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY AND NINE POWERS, and their numbers thereof; and no name is more excellent than all these vowels.” “The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age” – says the Commentary speaking of the “Fires.”

Now it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea – the basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the divine THREE (), making the perfect number ten.Also, these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography – metaphysical and physical – as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years only. (Compare § “Chronology of the Brahmins.”)

Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird – theVahan or vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kâla, “time”) is shown to ride – is the origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phœnix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the “man-lion”Singha, of whose representations the so-called “gnostic gems” are so full. ² “Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding to their points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet AEHIOYΩ, testifying to the Seven Heavens.” This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as Garuda ³ is that of the great cycle, the “Maha-Kalpa“co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on account of his (Garuda’s) “dazzling splendour,” and called thereupon Gaganeswara, “lord of the sky.” Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes Garuda’s solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King: “Whatever the primary meaning (of the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present shape from INDIA, that true fountain head of gnostic iconography” (Gnostics, p. 218).The mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought into India by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.⁴ When the seven “thunders,” or “sounds,” or “vowels” – one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round – “had uttered their voices” – but forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him “seal up those things” – what did the Angel “standing upon the sea and upon the earth” do? He lifted his hand to heaven “and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . . that there should be time no longer.” “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the Mystery of God (of the Cycle) should be finished” (x. 7), which means, in theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. “There shall be time no longer” very naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life.

---

The Secret Doctrine, ii 563–565
H. P. Blavatsky