Page 73 (part 9)

Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter's passion, becomes "horned." The cow was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of nature, Isis, Vach, Venus -- the mother of the prolific god of love, Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol became with the Egyptians and the Indians -- the bull -- as testified to by Apis and the Hindu bulls in the most ancient temples. In esoteric philosophy the cow is the symbol of creative nature, and the Bull (her calf) the spirit which vivifies her, or "the Holy Spirit," as Mr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed near the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 419 WAS AESCHYLUS INITIATED? But "Argos" is Arghya Varsha, the land of libation of the old Hierophants, whence the deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour, India -- the Arya-varta of old. That the subject formed part of the Sabasian mysteries is made known by several ancient writers: by Cicero ( in Tuscul. Quaest. I, ii. No. 20) and by Clemens Alexandrinus ( Strom . I, ii., oper. tom . 1 , p. 467 -- Ed. Potter ' s ). The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the fact that AEschylus was charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and condemned to be stoned to death, to its true cause. They say that having been himself uninitiated, AEschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage.* But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated -- which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a daimon to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical drama of initiation. At all events, it is not the "father of the Greek tragedy" who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the MYSTERIA of the Sabasia.** The latter, however, is one of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras (the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments) with Jupiter and Bacchus. But it was never the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial. The translators of the drama wonder how AEschylus could become guilty of such "discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the 'Prometheus Bound' and that depicted in the remaining dramas." ( Mrs. A. Swanwick. ) This is just because AEschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual "Sphinx" of the ages. Between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented during the mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence -- Manas wedded to Kama ; Prometheus -- its divine aspect merging into and aspiring to Buddhi -- the divine Soul. Zeus was the human soul and nothing more, whenever shown yielding to his lower passions, -- the jealous God, revengeful and cruel in its egotism or I -AM-NESS. Hence, Zeus is represented as a serpent -- the intellectual tempter of man -- which, nevertheless, begets in the course of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation was that AEschylus, adopting the theogony of the Egyptians, made Diana, the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See AElian Var. Hist. I, v. c . xviii., tom . 1, p . 433 Edition Gronov. ) But AEschyIus was initiated. ** Sabasia was a periodical festival with mysteries enacted in honour of some gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole evolution of the races was performed in them. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 420 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. cyclic evolution the "Man-Saviour," the solar Bacchus or "Dionysos," more than a man. Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Christos (mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of Kaliyuga. It is only after the appearance of Kalki-Avatar, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from woman without sin. Then will Brahma, the Hindu deity; Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian; Zeus, the Greco-Olympian Don Juan; Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy -- vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of all those deities, ever represented as their "twin brothers" and creatures, in exoteric legend, their own reflection on earth -- in esoteric philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued. There is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally - - SELF - REDEEMED . In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus -- his proto- and anti- types being found in every ancient theogony -- stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life. K RONOS is "Time," whose first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases in the process of evolution during cyclic development should be strictly preserved -- under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development that man -- higher animal though he may be -- should become at once -- intellectually, spiritually, and psychically -- the demi-god he is on earth, while his physical frame remains weaker and more helpless and ephemeral than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its indwelling god.