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tated everywhere the use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic." ( Page 48.) In the same work above cited of the Abbe Pegues, the author wonders why in Bible and tradition the Gibborim, (Giants, the mighty ones) the Rephaim, or the spectres ( Phantoms ), the Nephilim, or the fallen ones -- ( irruentes ) -- are shown "as if identical, though they are all men , since the Bible calls them the primitive and the mighty ones" -- e.g., Nimrod. The "Doctrine" explains the secret. These names, which belong by right only to the four preceding races and the earliest beginning of the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two Phantom (astral) races; to the fallen one -- the Third; and to the race of the Atlantean Giants -- the Fourth, after which "men began to decrease in stature." Bossuet ( Elevations p. 56) sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the "original sin." "Ye shall be as gods," says the serpent of Genesis to Eve, thus laying the first germ of the worship of false divinities. Hence, he thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of images, of anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is the latter that idolatry is made to rest upon, then the two Churches, the Greek and the Latin especially, are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.* It is only in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then, they had been truly gods, as pure and as divine as their progenitors, and the expression of the allegorical serpent does not, as sufficiently shown in the preceding pages, refer at all to the physiological fall of men, but to their acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, which knowledge comes to them prior to their fall. It must not be forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that "Adam knew Eve his wife" ( Genesis iv. ) . It is not, however, by the dead-letter of the Hebrew Bible that we shall check the tenets of the Secret Doctrine ; but point out, rather, the great similarities between the two in their esoteric meaning. It is only after his defection from the Neo-Platonists, that Clement [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that "the form of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by figure or shape." In 692, the council of Constantinople had similarly prohibited "to paint or represent Jesus as a lamb ," as also "to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry." But the council of Nicaea (787) brought this idolatry back, while that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for his showing himself a declared enemy of image worship. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 280 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. of Alexandria began to translate gigantes by serpentes, explaining that "Serpents and Giants signify Demons. " ( Genesis, chapter v. ) * We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those of the Bible, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in Genesis. We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate they belong to a more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah's Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In Shoo-King (4th part, chap. XXVII , p. 291), anyone can read in the French translation, "When the Mao-tse" ("that antediluvian and perverted race," explains the Annotator, "which had retired in the days of old to the rocky caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in the neighbourhood of Canton"),** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his " Mythical Monsters " on p. 212: -- "Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature and spiritual attributes. Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject. . . . " This "mysterious being" is the mythical Dragon, i.e. , the symbol of the historical, actual Adept, the master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere, that the great "magicians" of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called the "Serpents" and the "Dragons" after their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy of the so-called "Fiery Dragons of Wisdom," the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the Agnishwatta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, identified with the god of fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word "Dragon," and why the initiated Adepts were so-called, as he knew the secret of Agathodaemon, the Christ, the seven-vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah, the angels supposed to have rebelled against that Elohim as the Titan-Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father's kingdom; and that "Dragon" was the mystic appellation of the "Sons of Wisdom"; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, "Serpents and Giants signify Demons, " i.e., not "Spirits," but Devils, in Church parlance. ** "What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese -- I speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne, the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the Fourth Race -- reached their highest civilization when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia" ( Esoteric Buddhism, p. 67). And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that of the aborigines of China) be got at and translated correctly, many a priceless piece of evidence would be found.