Page 72 (part 5)

403.) This is only another version of the Hindu "War in Heaven," between Soma, the moon, and the gods -- Indra being the atmospheric Vul; which shows it plainly to be both a Cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest theogony as taught in the Mysteries. It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of powers now called Evil , can be seen the best; as it is they who divulged the esoteric nature of the Jewish Substitute for AIN-SOPH in their teachings; of the true meaning of which, while the Rabbins concealed it, the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as wise as the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil one ; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of "the Brotherhood of the Serpent," have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of WISDOM , the divine Sophia (and a type of the all-good, not the all-bad), were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol; and [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * These "evil Spirits" can by no means be identified with Satan or the Great Dragon. They are the Elementals generated or begotten by ignorance -- Cosmic and human passions -- or Chaos. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 387 WHO FIRST CREATED WOMAN? as a Dragon it had never been anything else than a symbol of the manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The Draco volans, the flying Dragon of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal; but those who have faith in the Occult teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying Dragons, or a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as the prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.* The Jews had worshipped the latter idol themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, turned round, and called that symbol of the great or Higher God of every other nation -- a Devil, and their own usurper -- the "One God."** The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew satan, "an adversary" (from the verb shatana, "to be adverse," to persecute) belongs by right to the first and cruelest " adversary of all the other gods " -- Jehovah, not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, "the adversary of men." This dogma, based as it is on chapter iii. of Genesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first to create that original and hence-forward universal tempter of man -- the woman? Not the serpent surely, but the "Lord God" himself, who, saying: -- "It is not good that the man should be alone" -- made woman, and "brought her unto the man" (18-22). If the unpleasant little incident that followed was and is still to be regarded as the "original sin," then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam (of chap. 1.) to have been left either "male and female," or "alone." It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the " agent provocateur, " and the Serpent -- only a prototype of Azazel, "the scapegoat for the sin of (the God of) Israel," the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity in Genesis in their dead-letter sense. Those who read them esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See Numbers xxi. 8-9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent "Saraph"; to look upon which heals those bitten by the fiery serpents. The latter were the Seraphim , each one of which, as Isaiah shows (vi. 2), " had six wings "; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses -- Seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent is Jehovah, the chief of the "fiery serpents." And yet, in 2 Kings xviii., it is shown that King Hezekiah, who, like as David his father, "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" -- "brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made . . . and called it Nehushtan, " or piece of brass. ** And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel (Chron. xxi. 1.) "The anger of the Lord Jehovah was kindled against Israel," and he moved David to say: "Go, number Israel" (2 Samuel, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 388 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. speculations and hypothesis; they know how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err. There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a blind created purposely by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.* But the following statement is made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of Genesis variously as "God," the "Lord God," and "Lord" simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabala, Jehovah appearing only in chapter iv., in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into mankind -- male and female, jah-veh.** The "Serpent," moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who, promising the woman that if they ate of the forbidden fruit " ye shall not surely die, " kept his promise, and made man immortal in his incorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne creators of men. Chapter iii.