Subraces

Secret Doctrine

* Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Aryan race, born in India, and belonging to the Caucasian division. No one who is familiar with the Armenians and the Parsis can fail to recognize in the three the same Aryan, Caucasian type. From the seven primitive types of the Fifth Race there now remain on Earth but three. As Prof. W. H. Flower aptly said in 1885, "I cannot resist the conclusion so often arrived at by various anthropologists -- that the primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the course of ages diverged into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around these types. . . . " (The President's address at the Anthrop. Inst. of Great Britain, etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its Fifth Sub-race, how can it be otherwise?

Though we apply the term "truly human," only to the Fourth Atlantean Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in

its latest portion, since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated sexually, and that the first man was born according to the now normal process.

"Only a weak seed of it, of which you (Greeks) are the descendants,* is all that remains." "Their books,"

they added, "preserved the records of a great nation, which emerging from the Atlantic sea had invaded Europe and Asia

(Timaeus). The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious nation. . . ."**

What was this nation? The secret doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh sub-race of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races of the Aryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil; had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races -- the remnants of the Atlanteans -- "yellow and red, brown and black," began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers were defeated; and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these lands became in course of time -- owing to new geological convulsions -- islands. Being thus forcibly

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* For a full discussion of the relations between the old Greeks and Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, cf. "Five Years of

Theosophy."

** The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told, as all know, by Plato in his "Timaeus and Critias." Plato, when a child, had it from his grand-sire Critias, aged ninety, who in his youth had been told of it by Solon, his father Dropidas' friend -- Solon, one of the Grecian Seven Sages. No more reliable source could be found, we believe.

separated from the continents, the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.

Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with WHITE savage chiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the pre-historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the Mongolian, which is the stumbling-block of anthropology. The individual who lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium (Vide Dr. Carter Blake's paper "On the Naudette Jaw," Anthrop. Review, Sept., 1867), is an example. "The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South-Eastern Belgium," says this Anthropologist, "afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by the Naulette jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone, perforated for the purpose of ornament; these are made of a psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde."

Thus Belgian man was extremely ancient. That man who was antecedent to the great flood of waters -- which covered the

highlands of Belgium with a deposit of lehm or upland gravel 30 metres above the level of the present rivers -- must have

combined the characters of the Turanian and the negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man, may have been black, and had nothing to do with the Aryan type whose remains are contemporary with those of the cave bear at Engis. And yet there are records which show Egyptian priests -- Initiates -- journeying in a North-Westerly direction, by land, via what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phoenician settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to the West again and arrived, still travelling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent.**

What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptables for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by land may give an idea of the date when such a journey could have been performed on terra firma.

Besides this, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ever yet found is

older than between 50, or 60,000 years,*** and man's size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third

sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race -- born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and

conditions -- had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone are archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,**** or rather the ashes of generations of giants.

"They (the sixth sub-race of the Atlanteans) used magic incantations even against the Sun"

-- failing in which, they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited with the power of calling down the moon, as Greek history assures us. The Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the gods.

But the oldest civilized country of Asia -- India -- can be shown to claim the same descent likewise. Sub-races guided by Karmic law or destiny repeat unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother-races. As the comparatively fair Brahmins have come -- when invading India with its dark-coloured Dravidians – from the North, so the Aryan Fifth Race must claim its origin from northern regions. The occult sciences show that the founders (the respective groups of the seven Prajapatis) of the Root Races have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find: --

"He who understands the age of Dhruva* who measures 9090 mortal years, will understand the times of the pralayas,

the final destiny of nations, O Lanoo." 

Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should locate its great progenitors and saints in the Ursa Major, a northern constellation. It is 70,000 YEARS, HOWEVER, SINCE THE POLE OF THE EARTH POINTED TO

THE FURTHER END OF URSA MINOR'S TAIL; and many more thousand years since the seven Rishis could have been

identified with the constellation of Ursa Major.

The Aryan race was born and developed in the far north, though after the sinking of the continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further south into Asia. Hence Prometheus is son of Asia, and Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah -- he who created men out of the stones of mother earth -- is called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the Snows.*

Greece had her Hyperborean as well as her Southern Apollo. Thus nearly all the gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phoenicia, as well as those of other Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological evolution had been completed.** All the "fables" of Greece were built on historical facts, if that history had only passed unadulterated by myths to posterity. The "one-eyed" Cyclopes, the giants fabled as the sons of Coelus and Terra -- three in number, according to Hesiod -- were the last three sub-races of the Lemurians, the "one-eye" referring to the Wisdom eye***; for the two front eyes were fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race.

The allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of Ithaca was saved by putting out with a fire-brand the eye of Polyphemus, is based upon the psycho-physiological atrophy of the "third" eye. Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though a "sage" in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.**** His adventure with the latter -- a savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the Odyssey -- is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Deukalion is said to have brought the worship of Adonis and Osiris into Phoenicia. Now the worship is that of the Sun, lost and found again in its astronomical significance. It is only at the Pole where the Sun dies out for such a length of time as six months, for in latitude 68 [[degrees]] it remains dead only for forty days, as in the festival of Osiris. The two worships were born in the north of Lemuria, or on that continent of which Asia was a kind of broken prolongation, and which stretched up to the Polar regions. This is well shown by de Gebelin's "Allegories d'Orient," p. 246, and by Bailly; though neither Hercules nor Osiris are solar myths, save in one of their seven aspects.

It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths -- known to and communicating with the Greeks -- who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis.

Now mythology, built upon Hesiod's Theogony, which is but a poetised record of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants, called Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they were imprisoned by Kronos for their rebellion against him. All the three are endowed by myth with an hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter standing for races, the former for sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind that in mythology every personage almost is a god or derni-god, and also a king or simple mortal in his second aspect;* and that both stand as symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and sub-races, the esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to make room for another. The whole globe is convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the arctic and antarctic poles has but little altered. The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore northern Asia is called the "eternal or perpetual land," and the Antarctic the "ever living" and "the concealed"; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear and reappear in turn, into and above the great waters.

From the first appearance of the great continent of Lemuria, the three polar giants had been imprisoned in their circle by

Kronos. Their gaol is surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated by Poseidon (or Neptune, hence by the seas), which they cannot cross; and it is in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three brothers languish. The Iliad (viii., 13) makes of it the Tartaros. When the gods and Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus -- the deity of the Fourth Race -- the father of the gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants in order to conquer the gods and Titans, and to precipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.* The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Rakshasas of Lanka and the Bharateans, the melee of the Atlanteans and Aryans in their supreme struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds (or Peris), became, ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and still later the war between the angels of God and the angels of Satan. Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.

Haeckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also regards the Australians as direct descendants of the

Lemurians. "Persistent forms (of both his Lemurian stems,) are in all probability still surviving . . . Papuans and Hottentots . . .

Australians . . . one division of the Malays."

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With regard to a former civilization, of which a portion of these degraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology of the tribes, he writes, "The statement that the Australian civilization (?) indicates a higher grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here, where everything resounds like the expiring voices of a previous and richer age. The idea that the Australians have no religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this religion is certainly quite deteriorated." (Cited in Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent of Darwinism," pp. 301-2.) As to his other statement, namely, that the Australians are a "division of the Malays" (Vide his ethnological theories in the "Pedigree of Man"), Haeckel is in error, if he classes the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a mixed stock, resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with the Seventh sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of indirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact -- to those concrete thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma -- that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking place all over the globe, among those races, whose "time is up" -- among just those stocks, be it remarked, which esoteric philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is invariably due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, drunkenness, etc., etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as offering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. "Nothing," says even the materialist Lefevre, "can save those that have run their course. . . . It would be necessary to extend their destined cycle. . . . The peoples that have been most spared . . . Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion." ("Philosophy," p. 508.)

True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed of the operation of CYCLIC LAW difficult to account for on materialist lines? Whence the "destined cycle" and the order here testified to? Why does this (Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their "appointed hour"? The answer that it is due to a "mental disproportion" between the colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not explain the sudden "checks to fertility" which so frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to recognize with Occultists that the true solution has to be sought for in a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lefevre remarks, "the time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great human types" (before the Sixth Root-Race dawns), the white (Aryan, Fifth Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro -- with their crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians, Polynesians, etc., etc. -- all are dying out. Those who realize that every Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc., will understand the "why." The tide-wave of incarnating EGOS has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some extraordinary and unexplained statistics as to Race extinction are given in de Quatrefages' "Human Species," p. 428 et seq. No solution, except on the occult lines, is able to account for these.

But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former

Atlantic and Pacific Continents.

He writes in "NATURE," Nov. 4th, 1880: "There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or geological evidence at

present accessible, to render untenable the hypothesis that an area of the mid-Atlantic or Pacific sea-bed as big as Europe, should have been uplifted as high as Mont Blanc, and have subsided again, any time since the Palaeozoic epoch, if there were any grounds for entertaining it."

That is to say, then, that there is nothing which can militate against positive evidence to the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Seemann assures us in the "Popular Science Review" (Vol. V., p. 18), article "Australia and Europe formerly one Continent,"* that: --

"The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by the great oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present flora of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a continental connection between South-Eastern Asia and Western America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland, Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests on a solid historical basis. . . . Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river-banks (from Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the East. The west also furnished additions, and if at that period these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the bridge was already building, which, at a late period, was to facilitate communication between the two continents in such a remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of Atlantis, then probably just rising (?) above the ocean."

And in another number of the same review (Vol. I., p. 143) Mr. Duppa Crotch, M.A., F.L.S., in an article entitled "The

Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations," alludes to the same subject.

"Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records

speak of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon its surface

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Undoubtedly a fact and a confirmation of the esoteric conception of the Lemuria which originally not only embraced great

areas in the Indian and Pacific oceans, but projected round South Africa into the North Atlantic. Its Atlantic portion

subsequently became the geological basis of the future home of the Fourth Race Atlanteans.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 782 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the 'Challenger' has proved the existence of three long ridges* in the Atlantic Ocean,** one extending for more than three thousand miles,

and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic

islands.*** . . . . The submerged continent of LEMURIA, in what is now the Indian Ocean, is considered to afford an

explanation of many difficulties in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence of a MIOCENE ATLANTIS

will be found to have a strong elucidative bearing on subjects of greater interest [Truly So!] than the migration of the

lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls, not only is a

motive found for these apparently suicidal migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial inheritance of previously acquired experiences."

(At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and perish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of

Norway, the powerful instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.)

In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace's "Island Life" -- a work devoted largely to the question of the

distribution of animals, etc. -- Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes ("Subsidence and Elevation," Geological Magazine, June, 1881): --

     "By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that

     the distribution of life upon the land as we now see it, has been accomplished without the aid of important changes

     in the relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must believe that Asia and Africa,

     Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at some period not

     remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of 1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as

     utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Cf. the published reports of the "Challenger" expedition; also Donnelly's "Atlantis," p. 468 and pp. 46-56, chap. "The

Testimony of the Sea."

** Even the cautious Lefevre speaks of the existence of Tertiary men on "upheaved lands, islands and continents then

flourishing, but since submerged beneath the waters," and elsewhere introduces a "possible Atlantis" to explain ethnological facts. Cf. his "Philosophy," Eng. Ed., pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with rare intuition that "modern civilization is Atlantean . . . . the 'inventive' faculty of the present age is taking up the delegated work of Creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago" (Atlantis, p. 133). He also refers the origin of culture to the Miocene times. It is, however, to be sought for in the teachings given to the Third Race-men by their Divine Rulers -- at a vastly earlier period.

*** An equally "curious" similarity is traced between some of the West Indian and West African fauna.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 783 ATLANTIS, NECESSARY TO ETHNOLOGY.

     all the evidences at our command (!!), the supposition that temperate Europe and temperate America, Australia,

     and South America, have ever been connected except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic circles and that lands

     now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth have ever been united. Mr. Wallace, it must be

     admitted, has succeeded in explaining the chief features of existing life-distribution, without bridging the Atlantic or

     Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily

     explained by admitting the former existence of the connection between the coast of Chile and Polynesia*

     and Great Britain and Florida, shadowed by the submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is

     urged that renders the more direct connection impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the floor of

     the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The route by which (according to the anti-Atlantean and

     Lemurian hypotheses of Wallace) the floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have mingled, is

     beset by almost insurmountable obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of sub-tropical American

     plants in our Eocene flora, necessitates a connection more to the south than the present 1,000 fathom line . . . .

     forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an elevating force once set in action in the centre of

     an ocean should cease to act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted out from the sea, in

     comparatively recent geological times, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits repeatedly that

     sea-beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms and islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to

     suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it seems to me, 'utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed

     to all the evidences at our command.' "

The "Father" of English Geology -- Sir Charles Lyell -- was an Uniformitarian in his views of continental formation. On page

492 of his "Antiquity of Man" we find him saying: --

     "Professor Unger (Die versunkene Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora Tertiaria Helvetiae) have admitted on botanical

     grounds the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of the Tertiary Period, as affording

     the only plausible explanation that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of central Europe,

     and the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the

     American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa

     Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the Eastern States of North America, and

     the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from America to

     central Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction

     of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or

     Pleistocene, antecedently to the Glacial Epoch, to Amoorland, on the East coast of North Asia."

The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by Dr. Carter Blake, the anthropologist, "Pacificus."

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 784 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

apparent to escape notice. If the botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism would be half legitimate; but in this case all

branches of science converge to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors than the

admission of our two now invisible continents, would lay it open to. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of the mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years ago.* We have Professor Huxley's authority for saying that there is no a priori improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting the belief. (Vide supra.) But now that the POSITIVE EVIDENCE is brought forward, will that eminent scientist admit the corollary?

Touching on the problem in another place ("Principles of Geology," pp. 12-13), Sir Charles Lyell tells us: "Respecting the

cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.

(Continental, not cosmic, catastrophes.) We learn from Plutarch that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every successive World. The returns of great catastrophes were determined by the present period of the Magnus Annus, or great year -- a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these return together to the sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to set out. We learn particularly from the Timaeus of Plato that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges. The sect of the Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at intervals to destroy the world. These, they taught, were of two kinds -- the cataclysm, or destruction by water, and the Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire (submarine volcanoes). From the Egyptians they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence" (nascent simplicity of the first sub-races of each Root-Race). "Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of man, and a shock of the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; (vide degeneracy into magical practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans) after which calamity, Astraea again descended on the earth to renew the golden age." (Dawn of a new Root-Race.)

Astraea, the goddess of justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the earth, when the gods are said to abandon it and be

taken up into heaven by Jupiter again. But, no sooner does Zeus carry away from earth Ganymedes (the object of lust,

personified) than the father of the gods throws down Astraea back on the earth again, on which she falls upon her head.

Astraea is Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain significance, and one which gives the Key to the occult meaning. But it is inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All of these are connected with the periodical renovations of the earth, with regard to its continents -- even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It was already shown that while the South Pole is the pit (or the infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the first continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma, the throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the gods forsook the earth and were said to ascend into heaven, the ecliptic had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to descend from the north pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great festival in commemoration of that Magnus Annus, of which Plutarch was speaking. Since that year (40,000 years ago) there has been a retrograde motion of the equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic hymn on the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole esotericism of the event. Pluto (in the pit) carries off Eurydice, bitten by the (polar) serpent. Then Leo, the lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is in the pit, or below the south pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him, and when her head, down to the waist, is

below the South horizon -- she is inverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge constellations; and

Aldebaran (he who follows, or succeeds the daughters of Atlas, or the Pleiades) looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from

this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were commenced. The student has to remember also, that when

Ganymedes (Aquarius) is raised to

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heaven (or above the horizon of the North Pole) Virgo or Astraea, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards below

the horizon of the South Pole, or the pit; which pit, or the pole, is also the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise

his intuition by placing these facts together; no more can be said.

The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the Archaic period. This esotericism is the common property of all, and

belongs neither to the Aryan 5th Race, nor to any of its numerous Sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so-called,

the Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, nor any of the Seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but really belongs to the Third and

Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Aryans.

The possession of a physical third eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root-Race down to nearly the

middle period of Third SUB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the outward anatomy of man.

The Aryan Hindu belongs to the oldest races now on earth; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. One is nearly one

[[Vol. 2, Page 471]] THE CRAFT OF THE RABBINS.

million years old; the other is a small sub-race some 8,000 years old and no more.*

III. The inflectional speech -- the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called "the elder sister" of the Greek, instead of its

mother -- was the first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race). At any rate, the "Semitic" languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite, accepting even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Aryans -- degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Tchandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul,* and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia.

But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will

permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids.

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitae (Kabul tribes), calls them [[Aristophuloi]], the aristocratic or noble

tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issrael (children of Is(sa)rael), from Issa, "woman and also earth," Sons of Mother

Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The subject is fully treated elsewhere. The names of the

supposed twelve tribes and the names of the real tribes, the same in number, of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans being

far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the Israelites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among them as

Youssoufzic, "Sons of Joseph" in Punjcaure and Boonere; the Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben-manasseh (sons of Manasseh)

among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar (now Ashnagor in Afghanistan), etc., etc. The whole twelve names of the

so-called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. At any rate, the names of the oldest Arabic

tribes, re-transliterated, yield the names of the zodiacal signs and of the mythical sons of Jacob likewise. Where are the traces

of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there is a trace, and a good one, that the Jews have tried to deceive people with the

help of those names. For, see what happens ages after the ten tribes had wholly disappeared from Babylon. Ptolemy

Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest

of the Jews, Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes; and the seventy-two representatives (of whom

sixty were ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the law amid miracles and wonders. See Butler's "Horae

Biblicae," Josephus, and Philo Judaeus.

With the ancient Aryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime, and poetical, however much the external appearance of

their symbol may now militate against the claim. The ceremony of passing through

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* In the fourth chapter of Genesis, v. 26, it is mis-translated, " . . . And he called his name Enos (man); then began men to call

upon the name of the Lord." -- which has no sense in it, since Adam and the others must have done the same.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 470 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

the Holy of Holies (now symbolized by the cow), in the beginning through the temple Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg) -- in

itself a symbol of Universal, abstract nature -- meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the re-birth of the individual and

his regeneration: the stooping man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass through the matrix of mother

nature, or the physical creature ready to re-become the original spiritual Being, pre-natal MAN. With the Semite, that stooping

man meant the fall of Spirit into matter, and that fall and degradation were apotheosized by him with the result of dragging

Deity down to the level of man. For the Aryan, the symbol represented the divorce of Spirit from matter, its merging into and

return to its primal Source; for the Semite, the wedlock of spiritual man with material female nature, the physiological being

taking pre-eminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Aryan views of the symbolism were those of the

whole Pagan world; the Semite interpretations emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe, thus marking its

national features and the idiosyncratic defects that characterize many of the Jews to this day -- gross realism, selfishness, and

sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father Jacob, with their tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a

covenant that his "seed shall be as the dust of the earth"; and that deity could have no better image henceforth than that of the

symbol of generation, and, as representation, a number and numbers.

Carlyle has wise words for both these nations. With the Hindu Aryan -- the most metaphysical and spiritual people on earth --

religion has ever been, in his words, "an everlasting lode-star, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth

grows the night around him." The religion of the Hindu detaches him from this earth; therefore, even now, the cow-symbol is

one of the grandest and most philosophical among all others in its inner meaning.

DK

The Problem Of Government

Coming now to the realm of government, under the new world order, one is faced with a very complex situation. [Page 199] Certain great ideological regimes have divided the world into opposing groups. There are the great democracies, under which certain of the few remaining monarchies find a place; there are the totalitarian powers in which the ancient dictatorships and autocracies of the past are summed up. There is nothing new in the Axis policies. They are essentially reactionary groups, for tyrants, cruelty and the exploitation of the weak are part of ancient history. The democracies, with all their present ineffectiveness, have in them the germ of that which is truly new, for they are the expression of an upward surging towards self-rule and self-mastery by humanity as a whole. There is also the communistic ideal which is a curious blend of individualism, dictatorship, the ancient conflict between labour and capital, the Sermon on the Mount, and the worst aspects of revolution and exploitation. The lines which it will follow, even in the immediate future, are unpredictable. There are other countries and peoples whose governments are conditioned by their environment and who at present play no real determining part in world events, except in so far as a greater power uses them. Again, there are peoples and tribes who still pursue their little lives, unaffected by the turmoil to be found in the more highly civilised parts of the world.

Behind all this diversity of governmental methods, certain clear outlines are emerging which indicate wider fusions and a tendency to bring about certain syntheses. Various basic trends of thought are appearing which, in the new world order, will unfold into that major synthesis so much desired by the spiritual Hierarchy of the planet, and which, whilst preserving the large national and racial outlines, will produce an underlying and subjective state of mind which will end the age of separateness. Desire is today being evoked for the Federated States of Europe, modelled on the lines of the British Commonwealth of Nations or the United States of America; there is talk of a new order in Asia, of the Good Neighbour policy in America, of a Federal Union of the democratic nations; there is also the steady spread of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Certain major groupings [Page 200] would seem possible and probably advisable. They might be divided as follows:

1. A Federal Union of the great democracies after the war. This might include the British Empire as a whole, the United States, the Scandinavian countries and certain northern European nations, including Germany.

2. A Union of the Latin countries, including France, Spain, all the Mediterranean countries, the Balkan countries (except one or two which might be absorbed into the U.S.S.R.), and South America.

3. The United Soviet Socialist Republics and certain Asiatic nations working in collaboration with them, such as China, and later Japan.

These three great blocs would not be antagonistic blocs but simply geographical spheres of influence. They would all three work in the closest unity and economic relation. Each nation within the three blocs would preserve its sovereign independence, but between these independent nations and between these blocs there would be identity of purpose, unity of effort and the recognition of the economic control of a league of nations. This league, being formed of the representatives of all the nations and its inner governing body being chosen by the three blocs, would control all sources of supply, distribute all such supplies and determine all economic policies.

With the details of these future adjustments I shall not deal. They must be wrought out by the men and women of goodwill in the crucible of experiment and experience. Only universal disaster could have brought men to a state of mind wherein such propositions and solutions could be presented. The general recognition that the old order has lamentably failed is most valuable.

In the hands of the United States, Great Britain and Russia, and also in the hands of France, lies the destiny of the world disciple, Humanity.  Humanity has been passing through the tests which are preparatory to the first initiation; they have been hard and cruel and are not yet entirely over.  The Lords of Karma (four in number) are today working through these four Great Powers; it is, however, a karma which seeks to liberate, as does all karma.  In the coming crisis, true vision and a new freedom, plus a wider spiritual horizon may be attained.  The crisis, if rightly handled, need not again reach the ultimate horror.

The area of difficulty—as is well known—is the Near East and Palestine.  The Jews, by their illegal and terroristic activities, have laid a foundation of great difficulty for those who are seeking to promote world peace.  As a Jewish member of my Ashram pointed out (and I commend him on his soul vision), the Jews have partially again opened the door [Page 430] to the Forces of Evil, which worked originally through Hitler and his evil gang.  The "sealing" of that door had not been successfully accomplished, and it is the part of wisdom to discover this in time.  These Forces of Evil work through a triangle of evil, one point of which is to be found in the Zionist Movement in the United States, another in central Europe, and the third in Palestine.  Palestine is no longer a Holy Land and should not be so regarded.

I would have you bear these points in mind while you investigate the world picture.  This picture is taking shape and warrants recognition.  It involves the Jews (who are not a nation but a religious group) the Near East and Russia.  In the maps which are to be found in the Archives of the spiritual Hierarchy, the entire area of the Near East and Europe—Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Palestine, the Arab States, Egypt and Russia—are under a heavy overshadowing cloud.  Can that cloud be dissipated by the right thinking and planning of Great Britain, the United States and the majority of the United Nations or—must it break in disaster over the world?  Will it present a task too hard for correct handling by that inexperienced disciple—Humanity?

In what I have written above you have the picture of the true situation; it is one which finds Great Britain temporarily weakened and ineffective (except for the clear thinking of her people and her political maturity); it finds the United States, unused to power, somewhat arrogant, with a strong superiority complex, inexperienced and yet at the same time exceedingly well-intentioned and fundamentally sound.  It is the mass of the people who are sound in their thinking and not their representatives in Congress.

It is not for me to tell you what will happen, although the Hierarchy knows.  Humanity must (as must all disciples) be left entirely free to settle its own destiny.  Humanity has not yet learned the difficult lesson which all disciples have to master:  the lesson of the dual life of the man whose soul is functioning and whose physical brain is constantly aware of this fact.

His third activity is the effort to offset the growing hate in the world, to strengthen the trend towards unity, and to show people everywhere the danger of separateness. A growing and (from the worldly point of view) reasonable hatred of the German people and of the Japanese is steadily rising. This hate they have brought upon themselves. Hate ever lacks discrimination. The great Law of Spiritual Retribution requires that justice be meted out, but hatred will close the eyes of justice. The law must be administered, and the world will see the expression of that same law, stated in the words, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." But the materialistic law of hate and of separation must be negated and offset. The problem with which the Christ is faced is wellnigh—from the human angle—insoluble. He will require the united effort of all men of goodwill to stem the rising tide of hate—the floodgates of which were opened by Germany when she began her attacks upon the [Page 437] Jews; she is now in danger of drowning in the waters which she has set loose. There is also a rising tendency to separation among certain of the Allied Nations, with which the Christ must deal. Several of them are as houses divided against themselves. Such are Poland, France, Yugoslavia and Greece. How can their differences be reconciled?