Page 73 (part 10)

The gift of Prometheus thus became a CURSE -- though foreknown and foreseen by the HOST personified in that personage, as his name well shows.* It is in this that rests, at one and the same time, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Vide supra, a foot-note concerning the etymology of [[ prometis ]] prometis or forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying: -- [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 421 ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF ZEUS. its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self-conscious pain and even torture "while myriad time shall flow" -- to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of nature, the heavenly host, "Prometheus," still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.* But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility -- the result of his free will -- besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still unachieved at that period of formation. Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin of Evil. ** The allegory which shows K RONOS cursing Zeus for dethroning him (in the primitive "golden" age of Saturn, when all men were demi-gods), and for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then as delivering to his (Zeus') revenge the culprit, who despoiled the gods of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually -- is highly philosophical. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the primeval progenitors, of the PITAR, the "Fathers" who created man senseless [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] "Oh! holy Ether, swiftly-winged gales . . . . Behold what I, a god, from gods endure . . . . . . . . . And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknew All that must happen . . . . . . . . The Destined it behoves, As best I may, to bear, for well I wot How incontestable the strength of Fate . . . . (88-105) "Fate" stands here for K ARMA, or Nemesis. * Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The "sacred spark" is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily -- owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction -- fast dying out. Verily mankind is "of one blood," but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent. ** The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil in the differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of the unit into plurality. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 422 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. and without any mind; while the divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators, the devas who "fell" into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the "Prometheans": therefore, the latter are shown conquered. "The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus," was on this earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas, the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of matter. They (the inferior "Host") were masters of all the Cosmic and lower titanic forces; the higher Titan possessed only the intellectual and spiritual fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind: the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more -- "A god . . . in fetters, anguish fraught; The foe of Zeus, in hatred held by all. . . . " A god, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self-sacrifice -- "For that to men he bare too fond a mind. . ." as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by Selfishness and Egoism in every instance. The modern Prometheus has now become Epi-metheus, "he who sees only after the event"; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the free Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has re-established the broken harmony between the two natures -- the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower titanic forces, invulnerable in his personality, and immortal in his individuality, which cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When man understands that " Deus non fecit mortem " ( Sap. I., 13), but that man has created it himself, he will re-become the Prometheus before his Fall. For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II . of this Volume, chapter "A Second Key to Prometheus," etc. In the said Part -- a kind of supplement to the present portion -- every additional information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of theology and modern science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.