Page 71 (part 6)

Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth can still be traced about them even in Genesis.** Seth is the "progenitor" of those early men of the Third Race in whom the "Planetary" angels had incarnated -- a Dhyan Chohan himself, who belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said to be his son -- because it was a generic name for all the early Seers ("Enoichion"). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabeanism; and therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), ( See Vyse, " Operations, " Vol. II., p. 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Who became later on, with the Greeks, limited only to Castor and Pollux. But in the days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the "Egg-born," were the Seven Dhyan Chohans (Agnishwatta-Kumara) who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race. ** Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of chapter xxv. et seq. of Exodus. According to the Mosaic doctrine, he says that the seven planets help in the generation of terrestrial things. The two cherubs standing on the two sides of the sacred tetragrammaton represent the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 362 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc., etc.) ( See Palgrave, Vol. II., p. 264). Abd Allatif says curious things about the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was consecrated to a star " (a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us "that he had read in Sabean books that one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other of Hermes" ( Vyse, Vol. II., p. 342). "Agathodaemon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son," adds Mr. Staniland Wake in " The Great Pyramid, " p. 57. Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples they were the great Cosmic Gods (the seven and the forty-nine Sacred Fires), in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, therefore to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were 3 and 4, or 7 -- the male and female principles -- (the crux ansata ); this division showing why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were -- the Kabiri -- Axieros (in his female aspect, Demeter); Axio-Kersa (Persephone)*; Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kadmilos (Hermes -- not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus ( II . 51) but "he of the sacred legend," explained only during the Samothracian mysteries). This identification, due, according to the Scholiast Apollon (Rh. I. 217), to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is none at all, as names alone do not reveal much. There were still others again who maintained, being as right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. The two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial, and the pole of the heavens -- astronomically, as also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, the Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically to understand the allegory. The parts played in the event by the fire, water, earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how "the father of the gods" [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * It is a curious idea -- yet one not very far from the truth, perhaps -- that speculation of Mackey, the self-made Adept of Norwich, found in his "Mythological Astronomy." He says that the Kabiri named Axieros and Axiokersa derived their names ( a ) from Kab or Cab, a measure, and from Urim , the heavens: the Kabirim being thus "a measure of the heavens"; and ( b ) that their distinctive names, implying the principle of generation, referred to the sexes. For, "the word sex was formerly understood by aix ; which has now settled . . . . into sex." And he refers to "Encyclopaedia Londinus" at the word " aspiration. " Now if we give the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would be Saxieros ; and the other pole would be Saxiokersa. The two poles would thus become the generators of the other powers of nature -- they would be the parents: therefore the most powerful gods. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 363 THE POLES, THE "HEAVENLY MEASURE." and the "merry God of the wine" were also made to personify the two terrestrial Poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In astronomy, the poles are indeed the "heavenly measure" ( vide note supra ); and so are the Kabiri Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the invention of fire* and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus. (I. ix. p. 751.) But the fact that, astronomically, the Titans-Kabirim were also the generators and regulators of the seasons, and cosmically the great Volcanic Energies, the gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial works, does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed humanity with intellect and reason. They are pre-eminently in every theogony -- especially in the Hindu -- the sacred divine fires, 3, 7, or 49, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, as they are the Agni-putra (Sons of the Fire) in India, and the genii of the fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere.