Page 79 (part 8)

A thing can only exist through its opposite -- Hegel teaches us, and only a little philosophy and spirituality are needed to comprehend the origin of the later dogma, which is so truly satanic and infernal in its cold and cruel wickedness. The Magians accounted for the origin of evil in their exoteric teachings in this way. "Light can produce nothing but light, and can never be the origin of evil"; how then was the evil produced, since there was nothing co-equal or like the Light in its production? Light, say they, produced several Beings, all of them spiritual, luminous, and powerful. But a G REAT ONE (the "Great Asura," Ahriman, Lucifer, etc., etc.) had an evil thought, contrary to the Light. He doubted, and by that doubt he became dark. This is a little nearer to the truth, but still wide of the mark. There was no "EVIL thought" that originated the opposing Power, but simply THOUGHT per se; something which, being cogitative, and containing design and purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus find itself naturally in opposition to pure quiescence, the as natural state of absolute Spirituality and Perfection. It was simply the law of Evolution that asserted itself; the progress of mental unfolding, differentiated from spirit, involved and entangled already with matter, into which it is irresistibly drawn. Ideas, in their very nature and essence, as conceptions bearing relation to objects, whether true or imaginary, are opposed to absolute THOUGHT, that unknowable ALL of whose mysterious operations Mr. Spencer predicates that nothing can be said, but that "it has no kinship of nature with Evolution" ( Principles of Psychology, **** 474) -- which it certainly has not. The Zohar gives it very suggestively. When the "Holy One" (the Logos) desired to create man, he called the highest host of Angels and said to them what he wanted, but they doubted the wisdom of this desire and answered: "Man will not continue one night in his glory" -- for [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * A division indicative of time. ** Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest AEon, Protogonos, the "first-born." *** Philo Judaeus: "Cain and his Birth," p. xvii. **** It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so conspicuous in our day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won its rights of citizenship in science as taught by Darwin and Haeckel, yet both the eternity of the Universe and the pre-existence of a universal consciousness, are rejected by the modern psychologists. "Should the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream," says Mr. Herbert Spencer. (See foot note, pp. 1 and 2, Book II .) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 491 THE ZOHAR ON THE FALLEN ONES. which they were burnt (annihilated?), by the "Holy" Lord. Then he called another, lower Host, and said the same. And they contradicted the "Holy One": "What is the good of Man?" they argued. Still Elohim created man, and when man sinned there came the hosts of Uzza and Azael, and twitted God: "Here is the Son of Man that thou hast made," they said. "Behold, he sinned!" Then the Holy One replied: "If you had been among them (men) you would have been worse than they." And he threw them from their exalted position in Heaven even down on the Earth; and "they were changed (into men) and sinned after the women of the earth"; ( Zohar, 9, b.). This is quite plain. No mention is made in Genesis of these "Sons of God" (chap. vi.) having been punished for it. The only reference to it in the Bible is in Jude (6). "And the angels which kept not their first estate but left their habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." And this means simply that the "Angels," doomed to incarnation, are in the chains of flesh and matter, under the darkness of ignorance, till the "Great Day," which will come as always after the seventh round, after the expiration of the "Week," on the S EVENTH S ABBATH, or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana. How truly esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is " P YMANDER the Thought Divine" of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive translations in Latin and Greek only. On the other hand how disfigured it has been later on by Christians in Europe, is seen from the remarks and unconscious confessions made by de St. Marc, in his Preface and letter to the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the whole cycle of transformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a mystic Roman Catholic treatise is given, and we see how P YMANDER has become what it is now. Still, even in St. Marc's translation, traces are found of the real P YMANDER -- the "Universal Thought" or " M IND." This is the verbatim translation from the old French translation, the original being given in the foot-note* in its quaint old French: -- "Seven men (principles) were generated in Man." "The nature of the harmony of the Seven of the Father and of the Spirit. Nature . . . . [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " S ECTION 16 (chap. i., Mercure Trismegiste -- P IMANDRE . . . . " "Oh, ma pensee, que s'ensuit il? car je desire grandement ce propos. Pimandre dict, ceci est un mystere cele, jusques a ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l'home, a produit le miracle tres merveilleux, aiant celluy qui ie t'ay dict, la nature de l'harmonie des sept du pere, et de l'esprit. Nature ne s'arresta pas la, mais incontinent a produict sept homes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs en puissance des deux sexes et esleuez. . . . La generation de ces sept s'est donnee en ceste maniere . . . ." And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the Bishop, says: "Nature produced in him (man) seven men" (seven principles). [[Vol. 2, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.