Page 71 (part 3)

This "Dragon" having a septenary meaning, the highest and the lowest may be given. The former is identical with the "Self-born," the Logos (the Hindu Aja ) . He was the second person of the Trinity, the S ON, with the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent-Worshippers. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.* Its seven "stars" are the seven stars held in the hand of the "Alpha and Omega" in Revelation. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term "Dragon" was applied to the Wise men. This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian ear that it can hardly escape, all civilization notwithstanding, being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished Christian dogmas, the subject of which required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma. Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * As shown by H. Lizeray in the "Trinite Chretienne Devoilee" -- placed between the immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed Point) and mutable matter, the Dragon transmits to the latter the influences received by him from the Pole, whence his name -- the Verbum. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 356 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Heaven originate with St. John, and in his Revelation? Emphatically we answer -- No. His "Dragon" is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean magic. To demonstrate the negation the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects. ------- T HE S IDEREAL AND C OSMIC G LYPHS. Every astronomer -- besides Occultists and Astrologers -- knows that, figuratively, the astral light, the milky way, and also the path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the circles of the Sidereal or Tropical year, were always called "Serpents" in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the adepts. This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a "Dragon": " Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune" (Peratae Gnostics); the "Good and Perfect Serpent," the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco. But one ought to discriminate between the characters of this symbol. For instance: Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine; and when, as an example, we read in the Vendidad complaints uttered against the "Serpent," whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana-Vaego, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, at the same time as mental and psychic consumption, every occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the north pole, as also the pole of the heavens.* The latter produces the seasons according to the angle at which it penetrates the centre of the earth. The two axes were no more parallel ; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaego by the good river Daitya had disappeared, and "the Aryan Magi had to emigrate to Sagdiani" -- say the exoteric accounts. But the esoteric teaching states that the pole had passed through the equator, and that the "land of bliss" of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognise the mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met before the Flood, and conversed with the pure "Yazathas" (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life and food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein ( Revue Archeologique, 8 th year, 1885), "the Vendidad seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara-Korum chain." [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a Serpent with a hawk's head. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 357 THE TWO MYSTIC POLES. The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who for once (and for a wonder) wrote the truth, symbolised Kosmos by a large fiery circle, representing a serpent with a hawk's head lying across its diameter. "Here we have the pole of the earth within the plane of the ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac in 25,000 (odd) years, must have reddened with the solar blaze, and each sign must have been vertical to the polar region." ( See Mackey ' s " Sphinxiad. ") Meru -- the abode of the gods -- was placed, as before explained, in the North Pole, while Patala, the nether region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric philosophy has seven keys, geographically, Meru and Patala have one significance and represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean "the two poles," which meanings ended by their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism -- the "Mountain" and the "Pit," or Heaven and Hell. If we hold at present only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern astronomers; they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the " Mountain " and the other the " Pit. " As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same: " Heli-on is the Sun in the highest " (Helios, Heli-on, the "most high"); "and Acheron is 32 deg. above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, being therefore called the P IT, while observing, toward the Northern pole that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon -- they called it the Mountain.