Page 63 (part 11)

This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, was construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows "the rebel angels hurled down from heaven into the darkness of Hell" -- our Earth. Hindu philosophy hints at the truth by teaching that the Asuras hurled down by Siva, are only in an intermediate state in which they prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. Pratt says, "Spirit was to man (to the Jewish Rabbin, rather?) a bodiless, disembodied, or deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph Nahash 'Deprived;' represented as appearing to and seducing the human race -- men through the Woman. . . . In the picture from this Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its destitution of bodily members, the Serpent was looked upon as a deprived and depraved and degraded creature" (" New Aspects, " p. 235). Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer that of the serpent -- the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of limbs as it is -- to the Jod ( ) -- the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in the Kabala -- the god of the male symbol of generation. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 247 THE CURSE OF VASISHTA. wretched condition; but Christian theology, claiming to be based on the rock of divine love, charity, and justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour -- has invented, to enforce that claim paradoxically, the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman Catholic philosophy. As to Rabbinical Wisdom -- than which there is none more positive, materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to physiological mysteries -- it calls these Beings, the "Evil One;" and the Kabalists -- Nahash, "Deprived," as just said, and the Souls, that have thrown themselves, after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One , into an abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth. ( Zohar iii., 61, C. ) And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the Zohar and the Kabala in their right interpretation -- for the latter is ours -- but only with the gross, pseudo -esoteric explanations of the later, and especially those of the Christian Kabalists. " Our earth and man, " says the Commentary, " being the products of the three Fires " -- whose three names answer, in Sanskrit, to " the electric fire, the Solar fire, and the fire produced by friction, " -- these three fires, explained on the Cosmic and human planes, are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three great Root groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with the Schools, and become -- according to their applications -- the upadhis and the vehicles, or the noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are personified by the "three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour" of Agni Abhimanin, the eldest son of Brahma, the Cosmic L OGOS, by Swaha, one of Daksha's* daughters. In the metaphysical sense the "Fire of friction" means the Union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth, principles, which thus are united or cemented together; the fifth merging partially into and becoming part of the monad ; in the physical, it relates to the creative spark, or germ, which fructifies and generates the human being. The three Fires, it is said (whose names are Pavaka, Pavamana and Suchi) were condemned by a curse of Vasishta, the great sage, " to be born over and over again. " (Bhagavata-Purana iv. 24, 4.) This is clear enough. Therefore, the FLAMES, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books, and who are called indifferently Prajapati, Pitris, Manus, Asuras, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Daksha, the "intelligent, the competent." "This name generally carries with it the idea of creative power. " He is a son of Brahma, and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, a self-born power, which, like Minerva, sprang from his father's body. He is the chief of the Prajapati -- the Lords or Creators of Being. In Vishnu Purana, Parasara says of him, "in every Kalpa (or manvantara) Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed." And the Rig-Veda says that "Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha," a reference to the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 248 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Rishis, Kumaras,* etc. etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third Root-Race and thus find themselves "reborn over and over again." In the Esoteric doctrine they are generally named the Asuras, or the Asu-ra Devata or Pitar-devata (gods) for, as said, they were first Gods -- and the highest -- before they became " no -gods," and had from Spirits of Heaven fallen into Spirits of the Earth** -- exoterically, note well, in orthodox dogma. No Theologian, any more than an Orientalist, can ever understand the genealogies of the Prajapati, the Manus, and the Rishis, nor the direct connection of these -- or their correlation rather -- with the Gods, unless he has the key to the old primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all the Nations originally had in common. All these gods and demi-gods are found reborn on earth, in various Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, having his Karma distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause. Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as seen, absolutely necessary to show that the sons of "Dark Wisdom," though identical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the "Fallen," are as divine and as pure and more so than all the Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the churches. The "old Book" goes into various details of Astral life, which at this juncture would be quite incomprehensible to the reader. It may, therefore, be left for later explanations, and the First and Second Races can now only receive bare notice. Not so for the Third Race -- the Root-Race which separated into sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason. Men evolving pari passu with the globe, and the latter having "incrustated" more than a hundred million of years before -- the first human sub-race had already begun to materialize or solidify, so to say.