The episode brings on a battle between the gods and the Asuras: King Soma, finds allies in Usanas (Venus), the leader of the Danavas; and the gods are led by Indra and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati.
The latter is helped by Sankara (Siva), who, having had for his guru Brihaspati's father, Angiras, befriends his son.
Indra is here the Indian prototype of Michael, the Archistrategus and the slayer of the "Dragon's" angels -- since one of his names is Jishnu "leader of the (celestial) Host." Both fight, as some Titans did against other Titans in defence of revengeful gods, one -- of Jupiter tonans (in India, Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other, in support of the ever-thundering Rudra Sankara.
During this war, he is deserted by his body-guard, the storm-gods (Maruts).
The story is very suggestive in some of its details.
Let us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning.
The presiding genius, or "regent" of the planet Jupiter is Brihaspati, the wronged husband.
He is the instructor or spiritual guru of the gods, who are the representatives of the procreative powers.
In the Rig Veda, he is called Brahmanaspati, a name meaning "the deity in whom the action of the worshipped upon the gods is personified." Hence Brahmanaspati represents the materialization of the divine grace, so to say, by means of ritual and ceremonies, or the exoteric worship.
" T ARA"* -- his wife -- is on the other hand the personification of the powers of one initiated into Gupta Vidya (secret knowledge), as will be shown.
S OMA is the moon astronomically; but in mystical phraseology, it is also the name of the sacred beverage drunk by the Brahmins and the Initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites.
The "Soma" plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See Dowson's Classical Dictionary.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 499 ALLEGORIES ON THE "WAR IN HEAVEN." the Soma drink, is made.
Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the fire priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers.
But the real property of the true Soma was (and is ) to make a new man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he begins to live in his astral body (See "The Elixir of Life"*); for, his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized form.** Soma was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman -- the simple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric ritual.
Thus Brihaspati -- "guru of the gods" though he was -- still represented the dead-letter form of worship.
It is Tara his wife -- the symbol of one who, though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true wisdom -- who is shown as initiated into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom.
Soma is thus made in the allegory to carry her away.
The result of this is the birth of Budha -- esoteric Wisdom -- (Mercury, or Hermes in Greece and Egypt).
He is represented as "so beautiful," that even the husband, though well aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship -- claims the "new-born" as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless forms.*** Such is, in brief, one of the meanings of the allegory.
War in Heaven refers to several events of that kind on various and different planes of being.
The first is a purely astronomical and cosmical fact pertaining to cosmogony.
Mr.
John Bentley thought that with the Hindus war in Heaven is only a figure referring to their calculations of time periods (see Bentley's Hindu Astronomy ) .* *** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See "Five Years of Theosophy." ** The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form.
The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually "as one of the gods," and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns.
Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve , "lest Man should become as one of us." *** We see the same in the modern exoteric religions.
**** "Historical Views of Hindu Astronomy.
" Quoting from the work in reference to Aryachatta, who is said to give a near approach to the true relation among the various values for the computations of the value of [[ pi ]], the author of the "Source of Measures" reproduces a curious statement.
Mr.
Bentley, it is said, "was greatly familiar with the Hindu astronomical and mathematical knowledge .
.
.
this statement of his then may be taken as authentic: the same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient nations of sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of knowledge, is a marked one among the Hindus.
That which was given out to be popularly taught and to be exposed to public inspection, was but the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge.
And this very formulation of Mr.
Bentley will strangely exemplify the assertion; and explained, will show that it (the Hindu exoteric astronomy and sciences) was derived from a system exact beyond the European one, in which Mr.
Bentley himself, of [[footnote continued on following page]] [[Vol.
2, Page]] 500 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
This served as a prototype, he thinks, for the Western nations to build their war of the Titans upon.
The author is not quite wrong, but neither is he quite right.
If the sidereal prototype refers indeed to a pre -manvantaric period, and rests entirely on the Knowledge claimed by the Aryan Initiates of the whole programme and progress of cosmogony,* the war of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy of the real war that took place in the Himalayan Kailasa (heaven) instead of in the depths of Cosmic interplanetary Space.
It is the record of the terrible strife between the "Sons of God" and the "Sons of the Shadow" of the Fourth and the Fifth Races.
It is on these two events, blended together by legends borrowed from the exoteric account of the war waged by the Asuras against the gods, that every subsequent national tradition on the subject has been built.
Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil Spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with the great deities -- are the gods of the Secret Wisdom.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage systematically maps Hindu figures onto Greek and Western counterparts (Indra/Michael, Brihaspati/Jupiter, Budha/Mercury/Hermes, Soma/Moon), demonstrating the Hermetic axiom that the same structure is reflected across traditions.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
Soma is described as a 'sacred beverage' and 'mystic beverage' that produces a state of transformation and ecstatic perception, functioning as a divine intoxication that opens the Initiate to higher knowledge.
The doctrine and practice by which the etheric or astral double separates from the physical body, at will or involuntarily, to act, travel, or encounter other entities on a plane subtler than the physical — remaining tethered to the body by a silver cord, and capable of returning physical injury (bruises, exhaustion) sustained while thus projected. Distinct from linga_sharira (the static doctrine that a subtle form persists as a template) in describing its active operative use, and from shamanic_journey (a trance-journey framed within a shamanic ritual complex, undertaken to return with knowledge, songs, or a recovered soul) in being a Western-esoteric technical practice with its own physiology of cord-attachment and reciprocal wounding.
The footnote describes the partaker of Soma as 'linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form' who 'soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions' while 'preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns,' precisely describing astral projection with cord-attachment.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The passage explicitly references 'the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim' and notes that Soma 'was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman,' framing the esoteric knowledge as restricted and transgressive.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The allegory of Tara (feminine principle of secret knowledge) united with Soma (masculine principle of wisdom) producing Budha (esoteric Wisdom) exemplifies the masculine-feminine generative principle operating on a spiritual plane.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The passage contrasts Gupta Vidya (secret knowledge) and esoteric Wisdom (Budha) with the 'dead-letter form of worship' and 'ritualistic and meaningless forms,' positioning direct inner knowledge as superior to exoteric ritual.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The entire passage is an exercise in revealing the esoteric meaning hidden within an exoteric myth, explicitly stating 'the story is very suggestive in some of its details. Let us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning.'
The ritual admission of an individual into esoteric knowledge or a sacred order through a formal rite of passage — testing, ordeal, or ceremony — marking a definite before/after threshold in the initiate's status and access. Distinct from hidden_sayings (the doctrine being concealed, not the rite of admission to it) and esoteric_lineage (the historical chain of transmission across generations, not a single individual's admission).
The passage describes the Soma rite as an initiatory threshold that transforms the Initiate, with clear before/after markers: the non-initiated cannot receive it, and the Initiate is reborn into a new state of being.
Critique of outward religious observance that lacks inner transformation; form without substance.
Brihaspati is explicitly characterized as representing 'the dead-letter form of worship' and 'ritualistic and meaningless forms,' a direct critique of outward religious observance that lacks inner substance.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The Soma experience is described as making 'a new man of the Initiate' who becomes 'as one of the gods' while preserving physical memory, a progressive transformation into divine nature.