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The name of the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * As far as divine revelation is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to " human history. " . . . For there is "history" in most of the allegories and "myths" of India, and events, real actual events, are concealed under them. ** When the "false theologies" disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans -- ancient Hindoos, and even the pre-Homeric Hellenes. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 305 EMBLEM AND SYMBOL DIFFER. cat in Egyptian is mau , which denotes the seer , from mau , to see. One writer on mythology asserts that the Egyptians 'imagined a great cat behind the sun, which is the pupil of the cat's eye.' But this imagining is all modern. It is the Mullerite stock in trade. The moon as cat was the eye of the sun, because it reflected the solar light , and because the eye gives back image in its mirror. In the form of the goddess Pasht, the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, called his eternal enemy. . . ." This is a very correct exposition of the lunar-mythos from its astronomical aspect. Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the divisions of lunar Symbology. To master thoroughly -- if one is permitted to coin a new word -- Selenognosis , one must become proficient in more than its astronomical meaning. The moon ( vide § VII. Deus Lunus ) is intimately related to the Earth, as shown in Stanza VI. of Book I., and is more directly concerned with all the mysteries of our globe than is even Venus-Lucifer, the occult sister and alter-ego of the Earth. The untiring researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last and the present centuries, have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced persons to see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally. This every scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. G. Massey alone are sufficient in themselves to convince any fair-minded Christian that to accept the dead-letter of the Bible is equivalent to falling into a grosser error and superstition than any hitherto evolved by the brain of the savage South Sea Islander. But the point to which even the most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalists -- whether Aryanists or Egyptologists -- seem to remain blind, is the fact that every symbol in papyrus or olla is a many-faced diamond, each of whose facets not merely bears several interpretations, but relates likewise to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the moon symbolized by the cat -- an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon bearing many other meanings besides this with other nations. As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia , there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The former "comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single special idea." Hence, the symbols (say lunar, or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is "a concrete visible [[Vol. 1, Page]] 306 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. picture or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who have received certain instructions " (initiates). To put it still plainer, an emblem is usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one after the other. Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric Scriptures. As the same authority shows: -- "All esoteric Societies have made use of emblems and symbols, such as the Pythagorean Society, the Eleusinian, the Hermetic Brethren of Egypt, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. Many of these emblems it is not proper to divulge to the general eye, and a very minute difference may make the emblem or symbol differ widely in its meaning. The magical sigillae, being founded on certain principles of numbers, partake of this character, and although monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed, convey a whole body of doctrine to those who have been trained to recognise them." The above enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier than the middle ages. How much more proper, then, that the students of the oldest Archaic School should be careful not to divulge secrets of far more importance to humanity (in the sense of being dangerous in the hands of the latter) than any of the so-called "Masonic Secrets," which have now become, as the French say, those of "Polichinelle!" But this restriction can apply only to the psychological or rather psycho-physiological and Cosmical significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that lead to a correlation of elements, whether psychic or physical, that may produce a hurtful result as well as a beneficent one. But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed under mythological symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land-marks towards a retrospective view of the past, as containing useful information with regard to the origin of man, the evolution of the races and geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint of to-day, not only among theosophists, but also among the few profane interested in the subject. "Why do not the adepts reveal that which they know?" To this, one might answer, "Why should they, since one knows beforehand that no man of science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let alone as a theory or axiom, the facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed in the A B C of the Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist , "Esoteric Buddhism," and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which was given, been ridiculed and derided, and made to face the "animal" and "ape theory" of Huxley -- Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding such an unenviable prospect, a mass of facts is given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the evolution of the globe and [[Vol. 1, Page]] 307 MAGIC POTENCY OF SOUND.