Page 63 (part 6)

Therefore, once that the title was applied to Christ (declared God and the very God himself) Christian theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of the personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it does, that the Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of other religions were false, and only the masquerading Evil Principles, S ATAN. Now see where this led Western theology to. *** "For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Life and Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which, being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven other Governors, which in their circles contain the [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 237 MAHASURA AND SATAN. Synthetically every Creative Logos, or "the Son who is one with the Father," is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian theology makes of the seven "Angels of the Presence" the Virtues, or the personified attributes of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus were by Brahma, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic theodice itself recognising, in its creative Verbum Princeps, the head of those angels -- caput angelorum -- and the magni consilii Angelus (the Angel of the great Counsel), thus recognizes the identity of Christ and those Angels. " The Gods became no-Gods, the Sura -- A -sura," says the text; i.e ., gods became fiends -- S ATAN, when read literally. But Satan will now be shown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, allegorized as Good, and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names. The Kabala teaches that Pride and Presumption -- the two chief prompters of Selfishness and Egotism -- are the causes that emptied heaven of one third of its divine denizens -- mystically, and of one third of the stars -- astronomically; in other words, the two statements are -- the first an allegory, and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, as shown, is intimately connected with humanity. In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret meaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the whole of creation was due to, and the result of, that legendary "War in Heaven" brought on by the rebellion of the angels * against creative law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the inner meaning is to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty by appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy -- is to say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient to [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] Phenomenal World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny." ( Section 9, ch. I, ed. of 1579). Here it is evident that "Mind" (the primeval universal Divine Thought) is neither the Unknown unmanifested One, since it abounds in both sexes (is male and female), nor yet the Christian Father, as the latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the Father, Son, and Man are hopelessly mixed up in the translations of Pymander. * The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer, who was hurled down to the bottomless pit, or simply unto our Earth, to live as man. The Hindu Lucifer, the Mahasura, is also said to have become envious of the Creator's resplendent light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras (not gods, but spirits), to have rebelled against Brahma; for which Siva hurled him down to Patala. But, as philosophy goes hand in hand with allegorical fiction in Hindu myths, the devil is made to repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful man esoterically, and can by yoga devotion, and adeptship, reach his status of one with the deity, once more. Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades (the cave of Initiation) to deliver the victims from their tortures, etc., etc. The Christian Church alone creates eternal torment for the devil and the damned, that she has invented. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 238 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. believers in the Pope's infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told by any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and symbologists, showed an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither alchemist nor philosopher could, during the Mediaeval Ages, utter that* which in the sight of orthodox theology was a terrible blasphemy, for it would have led them directly through the "Holy" office of the Inquisition, to stake and rack. But for our modern Kabalists and Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected and as ineradicable superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manichaeism, invented the devil, and by placing [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Why should, for instance, Eliphas Levi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact and real meaning of the allegory -- both in its religious and mystical, as well as in its physiological sense -- is proved by his voluminous writings and frequent allusions and hints. Yet Eliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his latest " Histoire de la Magie, " p. 220 . . . "We protest with all our might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We pretend neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the Angels . . . but if so, then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned -- now that he is separated from deity -- which is the principle of every power. . . ." This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style: -- "Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied -- distinguished by different names in all the mythologies . . . (including the Christian). . . . The idea regarding each is a general one.