The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, and become as pellucid as crystal.
"The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time (the sixth race) shall be as the seeds of other human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age of purity"; i.e ., it shall be the seventh race, the race of "Buddhas," the "Sons of God," born of immaculate parents.
------- B .
T HE G ODS OF L IGHT PROCEED FROM THE G ODS OF D ARKNESS.
Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in Space and the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of the same antediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom.
The history begins by the descent on Earth of the "Gods" who incarnate in mankind, and this is the F ALL.
Whether Brahma hurled down on Earth in the allegory by Bhagavant, or Jupiter by Kronos, all are the symbols of the human races.
Once landed on, and having touched this planet of dense matter, no snow-white wings of the highest angel can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatar is [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Saith Uriel (chap.
xxvi.
v.
3), in the "Book of Enoch" "all those who have received mercy shall for ever bless God the everlasting King, " who will reign over them.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 484 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the fall of a God into generation.
Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear, when explained esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade, than in the Upanishads, the esoteric glossaries of the Vedas.
The Rig-Veda, as Guignault characterized it, "is the most sublime conception of the great highways of Humanity." The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the esotericism of the Vedanta and the Upanishads, "the mirror of the eternal Wisdom." For over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit.
Yet the metaphorical F ALL, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood.
Worse than all, they led it to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man.
Finally it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man's own appearance on this, and probably on other earths.
Henceforth the people were led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world's sorrows, the thought of original sin.
The philosophy of that law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in every beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and self-guidance, pertains to psychology and cannot be touched on now.
To show the feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyse and give a natural reason for it, would necessitate, moreover, an endless philosophical explanation for which there is no room here.
Perhaps, the best synthesis of this feeling is found in three lines of Milton's Paradise Lost.
Says the "Fallen One": -- "Here we may reign secure; and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in hell!
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven .
.
.
." Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus operatum, than be lost among the will-less spiritual Hosts in Heaven.
We have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few verses in Revelation; these verses being now shown a plagiarism from Enoch by some scholars.
These grew into endless theories and speculations, which gradually acquired the importance of dogma and inspired tradition.
Every one wanted to explain the verse about the seven-headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail [[Vol.
2, Page]] 485 THE SONS OF ETERNITY.
"drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth," and whose place, with that of his angels, "was found no more in heaven." What the seven heads of the Dragon (cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be learned in the Addenda which close Part III .
of this Volume.
From Newton to Bossuet speculations were incessantly evolved in Christian brains with regard to these obscure verses.
.
.
.
.
"The star that falls, is the heresiarch Theodosius" .
.
.
.
explains Bossuet.
"The clouds of smoke, are the heresies of the Montanists.
.
.
.
.
The third part of the stars, are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity.
.
.
.
." Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in Revelation were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and pagan traditions.
There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic times, nor yet far later in China.
But Christian theology had to be protected and saved.
This was only natural.
But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from destruction the lucubrations of Christian theologians?
The princeps aeris hujus, the "prince of the air" of St.
Paul, is not the devil, but the effects of the astral light, as Eliphas Levi correctly explains.
The Devil is not "the God of this period," as he says, for it is the deity of every age and period, since man appeared on earth, and matter, in its countless forms and states, had to fight for its evanescent existence against other disintegrating Forces.
The "Dragon" is simply the symbol of the cycle and of the "Sons of Manvantaric Eternity," who had descended on earth during a certain epoch of its formative period.
The "clouds of smoke" are a geological phenomenon.
The "third part of the stars of heaven" cast down to the earth -- refers to the divine Monads, (the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology) that circumambulate our globe; i.e.
, the human Egos destined to perform the whole cycle of incarnations.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The passage critiques the dogma of a separate evil spirit, stating that 'the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man' and that 'there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man's own appearance,' suggesting evil is not an independent positive force.
The doctrine that the divine or a spiritual principle takes on a specific, bounded material or bodily form — descending from an unconditioned state into individual, corporeal existence — as a discrete act rather than a diffuse pervading presence. The Christian Word made flesh, the Hindu avatara, the Egyptian pharaoh as living Horus, the Vajrayana tulku. Distinct from divine_immanence (the general claim that the divine pervades all of creation diffusely, not a specific embodiment-event) and separation_from_source (the felt exile FROM origin, the opposite motion) in describing a specific, individuated descent INTO a particular body or form.
The passage extensively discusses the Avatar or incarnation as a specific descent of the divine into bounded material form, noting that 'no snow-white wings of the highest angel can remain immaculate' once it touches dense matter.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The passage discusses the 'prince of the air' as effects of the astral light, the 'Sons of Manvantaric Eternity' who descended, and the unseen spiritual dimensions that underlie material history.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage explicitly identifies 'the divine Monads, (the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology) that circumambulate our globe' as the human Egos destined to perform the whole cycle of incarnations.