Page 66 (part 5)

These beings in female forms (Lilith is the prototype of these in the Jewish traditions) are called in the esoteric accounts "Khado" (Dakini, in Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the chief of these Liliths, Sangye Khado, (Buddha Dakini, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of "walking in the air," and the greatest kindness to mortals ; but no mind -- only animal instinct.* ( c ) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to degenerate into phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of the human body -- that "miracle of miracles," as an English author calls it -- and ended by that of its respective sexes. The worshippers were giants in stature; but they were giants in knowledge and learning, though it came to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times. Their Science was innate in them. The Lemuro-Atlantean had no need of discovering and fixing in his memory that which his informing P RINCIPLE knew at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and the ever-growing obtuseness of the matter in which the Principles had clothed themselves, could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre-natal knowledge, the other, blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in them. Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures and bred "monsters" -- i.e. , men of distinct varieties from themselves. Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer describes them well in saying that:-- "Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by the Sovereign Powers, the authors of their being, with extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. They commanded the Elements, knew the secrets of heaven and the earth, of the sea and the whole world, and read futurity in the stars. . . . It seems, indeed, as though one has to deal, when reading of them, not with men as we are but with Spirits of the Elements sprung from the bosom of Nature and having full sway over her. . . . All these beings are marked with a character of MAGIC and SORCERY. . . . " And so they were, those (now) legendary heroes of the pre-historic, still, once really existing races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he did not charge with deliberate deceit, or dullness and superstition, an endless series of recognized philosophers, who mention these races and assert that, even in their own time, they saw their fossils. There were sceptics in days of old -- no fewer and as great as they are now. But even a Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus yielded to the evidence of facts and showed the discriminative capacity of really [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * These are the beings whose legendary existence has served as a ground-work upon which to build the rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the Bible would term the antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the pre-Adamite races. They are no fiction -- this is certain, however fantastic the exuberance of later growth. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 286 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. great intellects, which can distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud. Ancient writers were no more fools than our modern wise men are; for, as well remarked by the author of some " Notes on Aristotle ' s Psychology in Relation to Modern Thought " ( in Mind ) : -- "The common division of history into ancient and modern is . . . . misleading. The Greeks in the 4th century, B.C . were in many respects moderns especially, we may add, in their scepticism. They were not very likely to accept fables so easily . . . . ." Yet the "Lemurians" and the Atlanteans, "those children of Heaven and Earth," were indeed marked with a character of SORCERY; for the Esoteric doctrine charges them precisely with that, which, if believed, would put an end to the difficulties of science with regard to the origin of man, or rather, his anatomical similarities to the Anthropoid Ape. It accuses them of having committed the ( to us ) abominable crime of breeding with so-called "animals," and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now extinct. Of course, as in the question of spontaneous generation -- in which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches -- the possibility of such a cross-breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied. But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already remarked, neither the human Atlantean giants, nor yet the "animals," were the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us, the modern notions upon this subject -- those of the physiologists included -- are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute denial a priori of such a fact. A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being that the new " incarnate " bred with, was called an "animal," not because he was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically and mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII. and what is said in its first verse (24th): -- that when the "Sons of Wisdom" came to incarnate the first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms only a spark, while some of the shadows were left over from being filled and perfected, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which "remained destitute of knowledge," or those again which were left "mindless," remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It is these who committed the first cross-breeding, so to speak, and bred monsters; and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans chose their wives. Adam and Eve were supposed, with Cain and Abel, to be the only human family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the Singhalese [[Vol. 2, Page]] 287 THE RACES OF MEN NOT ALL HUMAN. regard the Veddhas of their jungles as speaking animals and no more, some British people believe firmly, in their arrogance, that every other human family -- especially the dark Indians -- is an inferior race. Moreover there are naturalists who have sincerely considered the problem whether some savage tribes -- like the Bushmen for instance -- can be regarded as men at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of animals "fair to look at" as a biped: -- " Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist down, covered with hair. " Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.