Page 65 (part 4)

Then comes Zeus -- Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.** Jupiter the Titan, is Prometheus, in one sense,*** and varies from Zeus, the Great [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] Orientalist says, "The attributes ascribed to Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity." But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man's fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishta. Only . . . "his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the foolish. " * Kronos is not only [[ Chronos ]], time , but also, as Breal showed in his Hercule et Cacus (p. 57), comes from the root Kar , "to make, to create." Whether Breal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in saying that in the Vedas Kronan is a creative god, we have our doubts. Breal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the creative god, the "Omnificent" and the "great Architect of the world." ** The Titanic struggle, in theogony at least, is the fight for supremacy between the children of Uranos and Gaia (or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children of Kronos, whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on to this day between the spiritual inner man and the man of flesh, in one sense. *** Just as the "Lord God," or Jehovah, is Cain esoterically, and the "tempting serpent" as well, the male portion of the androgynous Eve, before her "Fall;" the female portion of Adam Kadmon; the left side or Binah of the right side Chochmah in the first Sephirothal Triad. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 270 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. "Father of the Gods." He is the "disrespectful son" in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the "Heavenly man" (Pymander); and even in the Bible he is found again under the name of Adam, and, later on -- by transmutation -- under that of Ham. Yet these are all personifications of the "sons of Wisdom." The necessary corroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely human Atlantean cycle -- if Uranus and Kronos who precede him are found insufficient -- may be found in Hesiod, who tells us that the Immortals have made men and created the Golden and the Silver age (First and Second Races); while Jupiter created the generations of Bronze (an admixture of two elements), of Heroes, and the men of the age of Iron. After this he sends his fatal present, by Pandora, to Epimetheus,* which present Hesiod calls "a fatal gift," or the first woman. It was a punishment, he explains, sent to man "for the theft of divine creative fire." Her apparition on earth is the signal of every kind of evil. Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from sickness and suffering -- as the same races are made to live under Yima's rule, in the Mazdean Vendidad. Two deluges may also be traced in universal tradition by carefully comparing Hesiod, the Rig Veda, the Zend-Avesta, etc., while no first man is ever mentioned in any of the theogonies save the Bible.** Everywhere the man of our race appears after a cataclysm of water, after which tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and islands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.*** "Gods and mortals have one common origin" says Hesiod ( ibid. v . 108); and Pindar echoes the statement ( Nem. VI., 1). Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by constructing an ark like Noah's ( see Apollod., 1, 7, 2, and Ovid, Metam. I, 260, 899.), ask Jupiter to re-animate the human race whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the Slavonian Mythology ( Lithuanian legend, in Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 1, 545), all men were drowned, and two old people, a man and his wife, alone remained. Then Pram-gimas (the "master of all") advised them to jump seven times on the rocks of the earth, and seven new races (couples) were born, from which came the nine Lithuanian tribes. As well understood by the author of the Mythologie de la Grece Antique -- the four ages [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In the Egyptian legend, translated by M. Maspero (the ex-director of the Bulaq Museum), called the "two Brothers," the original of Pandora is given. Noum, the famous heavenly artist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to Batoo, after which the happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl Eve, of course. ( See Maspero ' s Egyptian Legends, and also Decharme ' s " Mythologie de la Grece Antique. ") ** Yima is not the "first man" in the Vendidad, but only in the theories of the Orientalists. -- See further on. *** Boeotia, then ancient Athens, and Eleusis were submerged. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 271 THE RACES IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY. signify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the races. "The successive races, destroyed and replaced by others," he says, "without any period of transition, are characterized in Greece by the name of metals, to express their ever-decreasing value. Gold, the most brilliant and precious of all, symbol of purity . . . . qualifies the first race. . . . . The men of the second race, those of the age of Silver, are already inferior to the first. Inert and weak creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid infancy. . . . They disappear. . . . The men of the age of Bronze are robust and violent (the third race); their strength is extreme. They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze; used nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet unknown" ( Op. at D., 143-155). The fourth generation (race) is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes who fell before Thebes (see " The Seven Against Thebes, " by AEschylus), or under the walls of Troy. Thus, the four races being found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets, though very much confused anachronistically, our doctrines are once more corroborated by the classics. But this is all "Mythology" and poetry.