Page 71 (part 7)

Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name Kabeiron meaning "the powerful through fire," from the Greek word [[kaio]] "to burn." The Semitic Kabirim, "the powerful, the mighty, and the great," answering to the Greek [[ megaloi dunatoi ]], are later epithets. They were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phoenicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with fire; their temples ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to Chthonian divinities. Therefore Christianity has made of them infernal gods. They are truly "the great, beneficent and powerful Gods," as Cassius Hermone calls them ( See Macrob. Sat. I., iii., c. 4, p . 376). At Thebes, Kore and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuary ( Pausan. IX. 22; 5) , and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter their holy precincts ( Herodotus I. ii., c. 37). But we must not lose sight, at the same time, of the fact that the title of Kabiri was a generic one; that the Kabiri (the mighty gods as well as mortals), were of both sexes, as also terrestrial, celestial and kosmic. That, while in their later capacity of the Rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon (as it is now [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The word "guebra" comes from Kabiri, gabiri, and means Persian ancient fire-worshippers, or Parsis. Kabiri became gabiri and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in Persia. ( See Hyde ' s " De Religio Persarum, " cap. 29.) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 364 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. regarded) was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the rulers of mankind. When incarnated as Kings of the "divine Dynasties," they gave the first impulse to civilizations, and directed the mind with which they had endued men to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To them -- the Kabiri or Titans -- is ascribed the invention of letters (the Devanagari, or the alphabet and language of the gods), of laws and legislature; of architecture, as of the various modes of magic, so-called; and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those demi-gods and heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers -- too zealous for plain truth --would force posterity to see only pagan copies of one and sole prototype, named Noah -- are all generic names. It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed, by producing corn or wheat, the great boon of agriculture. What Isis-Osiris, the once living Kabiria, has done in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class. That the Serpents were ever the emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined around the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing goddesses -- but only in the unclean fancies of profane symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus the souls of the dead to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is simply a very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: the black and the white magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and its power to call to life that which is dead -- a very deep metaphor if one thinks over its meaning. Every people of antiquity reverenced this symbol, with the exception of Christians, who chose to forget the brazen Serpent of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the Serpent by Jesus himself, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves." The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the "Serpents" or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor's throne is the "Dragon's Seat," and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 365 THE VARIOUS NOAHS. Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the "Dragon" is a human, albeit divine, Being. Speaking of the "Yellow Dragon," the chief of the others, the Twan-ying-t ' u, says: "His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable . . . he does not go in company and does not live in herds (he is an ascetic). He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree (Karma); at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains (invisible).". . . And Kon-fu-tyu is made to say by Lu-lan, "The Dragon feeds in the pure water of Wisdom and sports in the clear waters of Life." ------- O UR D IVINE I NSTRUCTORS. Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan isle are not the only record that is left of the deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kaempfer and Faber spell "Maurigosima," for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kaempfer, in his " Japan " ( Appendix, p. 13), gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiru-un, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the divine dynasties of Kings as much as those of any other nations.