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of the seven principles or the "Seven Souls of Man."* The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all those principles -- materialised for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to prove that the ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and did not teach Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the Ego or Self ) of the defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, "co-eval with, and disappearing with the Solar boat," i.e. , for the cycle of necessity. This "Soul" emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life ) and joins the living on Earth by day , to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. (Book of the Dead, cvxliii.) The shadow , the astral form, is annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus" (cxlix., 51), the Manes will be annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will be scattered; but the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow -- and the Uraeus of Flame" (Manas and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother's husbands.** Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating principle. S PIRIT (Atman) is one -- and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou. For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the "Book of the Dead" contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the moon. The human being, in their [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Vide in Part II., Book II., "The Seven Souls of Man," the divisions made respectively by Messrs. Gerald Massey and Franz Lambert. ** Another suggestive analogy between the Aryan or Brahmanical and the Egyptian esotericism. The former call the Pitris "the lunar ancestors" of men; and the Egyptians made of the Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor. This "moon-god" "expressed the Seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the eighth one (hence the eighth sphere). The seven rays of the Chaldean Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones indicate the same septenary of souls." . . . "The first form of the mystical SEVEN was seen to be figured in heaven, by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven elemental powers." (See The Seven Souls , etc.) As well known to every Hindu, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and as such is called Riksha , and Chitra-Sikhandinas. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 228 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. esotericism, came out from the moon (a triple mystery -- astronomical, physiological, and psychical at once); he crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned to his birth-place before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the god Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot (the celestial abyss), returning once more to Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of Osiris into the moon." In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the moon was the symbol of life-renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reappearance every month. In the Dankmoe , (iv. 5) it is said: -- "Oh, Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy renewal." And Safekh says to Seti I. (Mariette's Abydos, plate 51), "Thou renewest thyself as the god Lunus when a babe." It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus (P. Pierret, "Etudes Egyptologiques"): "Couplings and conceptions abound when he (Osiris-Lunus) is seen in heaven on that day." Says Osiris: "Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living" ("Book of the Dead," ch. ii.), -- i.e. , to produce conceptions. Osiris was "God manifest in generation," because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception.* Later on, when the moon became connected with female goddesses** -- with Diana, Isis, Artemis, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In the oldest systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma is, with the Hindus, a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a "King," and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Buddha -- Wisdom, which relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance with lunar mysteries including those of sexual generation. (See "Holy of Holies.") ** If instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of the ragged and the poor were taught Astrology -- so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned, then there would be little need to fear increase of the population nor to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 1, Page]] 229 MANY STREAMS, BUT ONE SOURCE. Juno, etc., that connection was due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, so to say, tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological deities -- the Father and the Son, while Space and air in general, or that expanse of Heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two.