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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page 301]] BOOK I., PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER. --------------------- EXPLANATORY SECTIONS. [[Vol. 1, Page 302]] CONTENTS. §§ PAGE. - - - - - I. -- S YMBOLISM AND I DEOGRAPHS ... 303 II. -- M YSTERY L ANGUAGE ... 310 III. -- P RIMORDIAL S UBSTANCE AND D IVINE T HOUGHT ... 325 IV. -- C HAOS, T HEOS, K OSMOS ... 342 V. -- T HE H IDDEN D EITY AND ITS G LYPHS ... 349 VI. -- T HE M UNDANE E GG ... 359 VII. -- T HE D AYS AND N IGHTS OF B RAHMA ... 368 VIII. -- T HE L OTUS AS A U NIVERSAL S YMBOL ... 379 IX. -- D EUS L UNUS ... 386 X. -- T REE AND S ERPENT AND C ROCODILE W ORSHIP ... 403 XI. -- D EMON EST D EUS I NVERSUS ... 411 XII. -- T HEOGONY OF THE C REATIVE G ODS ... 424 XIII. -- T HE S EVEN C REATIONS ... 445 XIV. -- T HE F OUR E LEMENTS OF THE A NCIENTS ... 460 XV. -- O N K WAN- S HI Y IN AND K WAN- Y IN ... 470 [[Vol. 1, Page 303]] BOOK I. -- PART II. (SECRET DOCTRINE.) § I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS. "A symbol is ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like. Through all there glimmers something of a divine idea; nay, the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under the cross itself, had no meaning, save an accidental extrinsic one." C ARLYLE. T HE study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small -- pre-eminently the traditions of the East -- has occupied the greater portion of the present writer's life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual, historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth nothing save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind of the ancients, and believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar myths. Such superficial thinkers were admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern." His pointed criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part of this work, as it echoes so well our own feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when "Isis Unveiled" was written. "For thirty years past Professor Max Muller has been teaching in his books and lectures, in the Times and various magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution, the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that mythology is a disease of language, and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something like a primitive aberration. "'We know,' says Renouf, echoing Max Muller, in his Hibbert lectures, 'we know that mythology is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture.' Such is the shallow explanation of the non-evolutionists, and such explanations are still accepted by the British public, that gets its think- [[Vol. 1, Page]] 304 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. ing done by proxy. Professor Max Muller, Cox, Gubernatis, and other propounders of the Solar Mythos, have portrayed the primitive myth-maker for us as a sort of Germanised-Hindu metaphysician, projecting his own shadow on a mental mist, and talking ingeniously concerning smoke, or, at least, cloud; the sky overhead becoming like the dome of dreamland, scribbled over with the imagery of aboriginal nightmares! They conceive the early man in their own likeness, and look upon him as perversely prone to self-mystification, or, as Fontenelle has it, 'subject to beholding things that are not there.' They have misrepresented primitive or archaic man as having been idiotically misled from the first by an active but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies, which were directly and constantly contradicted by his own daily experience; a fool of fancy in the midst of those grim realities that were grinding his experience into him, like the grinding icebergs making their imprints upon the rocks submerged beneath the sea. It remains to be said, and will one day be acknowledged, that these accepted teachers have been no nearer to the beginnings of mythology and language than Burns' poet Willie had been near to Pegasus. My reply is, 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist that mythology was a disease of language, or of anything else except his own brain. The origin and meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these solarites and weather-mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the early thought. It was founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in phenomena. There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, when considered in the light of evolution, and when its mode of expression by sign-language is thoroughly understood. The insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation.* Mythology is the repository of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this -- when truly interpreted once more, it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth.** In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical in proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a system or mode of falsifying in that sense. Its fables were the means of conveying facts; they were neither forgeries nor fictions. . . . For example, when the Egyptians portrayed the moon as a Cat , they were not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon was a cat; nor did their wandering fancies see any likeness in the moon to a cat; nor was a cat-myth any mere expansion of verbal metaphor; nor had they any intention of making puzzles or riddles. . . . They had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in the dark, and that her eyes became full-orbed, and grew most luminous by night. The moon was the seer by night in heaven, and the cat was its equivalent on the earth; and so the familiar cat was adopted as a representative, a natural sign, a living pictograph of the lunar orb. . . . And so it followed that the sun which saw down in the under-world at night could also be called the cat, as it was, because it also saw in the dark.