Page 80 (part 6)

Thus, space, in its abstract sense, was called "the realm of divine knowledge," and by the Chaldees or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or Father, i.e. , the source) of knowledge, because it is in space that dwell the intelligent Powers which invisibly rule the Universe.* In the same manner and on the plan of the Zodiac in the upper Ocean or the heavens, a certain realm on Earth, an inland sea, was consecrated and called "the Abyss of Learning"; twelve centres on it in the shape of twelve small islands representing the Zodiacal signs -- two of which remained for ages the "mystery signs"** and were the abodes of twelve Hierophants and masters of wisdom. This "sea of knowledge" or learning*** remained for ages there, where now stretches the Shamo, or Gobi desert. It existed until the last great glacial period, when a [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Siva, the great Yogi, the forefather of all the Adepts -- in Esotericism one of the greatest Kings of the Divine Dynasties. Called "the Earliest" and the "Last," he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and the Fifth Root-Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig-ambara, "clothed with the Elements," Trilochana, "the three -eyed"; Pancha-anana, "the five-faced," an allusion to the past four and the present fifth race, for, though five -faced, he is only "four-armed," as the fifth race is still alive. He is the "God of Time," Saturn-Kronos, as his damaru (drum), in the shape of an hour-glass, shows; and if he is accused of having cut off Brahma's fifth head, and left him with only four, it is again an allusion to a certain degree in initiation, and also to the Races. ** G. Seiffarth's idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient times only ten is erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane; the initiates, however, knew them all, from the time of the separation of mankind into sexes, whence arose the separation of Virgo-Scorpio into two; which, owing to a secret sign added and the Libra invented by the Greeks, instead of the secret name which was not given, made 12. ( Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. II ., p. 456.) *** The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalai-Lama's symbolical name -- the "Ocean" lama, meaning the Wisdom Ocean. Abbe Huc speaks of it. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 503 THE MYTH OF BEL AND MERODACH. local cataclysm, which swept the waters south and west and so formed the present great desolate desert, left only a certain oasis, with a lake and one island in the midst of it, as a relic of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ages the watery abyss -- which, with the nations that preceded the later Babylonians, was the abode of the "great mother" (the terrestrial post-type of the "great mother chaos" in heaven), the parent of Ea (Wisdom), himself the early prototype of Oannes, the man-Fish of the Babylonians -- for ages, then, the "Abyss" or Chaos was the abode of wisdom and not of evil. The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun-god, with Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon, a "war" which ended in the defeat of the latter, has a purely cosmic and geological meaning, as well as an historical one. It is a page torn out of the History of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth and DEATH -- for the profane masses. It relates ( a ) to the systematic and gradual drying up of immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain pre-historic period; one of the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual transformation of once fertile lands abundantly watered into the sandy deserts which they are now; and ( b ) to the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the world into all these exoteric religions, invented to satisfy the depraved tastes of the " hoi polloi " and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever-immaterial and Unknowable Principle. This was a certain improvement on the Atlantean sorcery, the memory of which lingers in the remembrances of all the literary and Sanskrit-speaking portion of India, as well as in the popular legends. Still it was a parody on, and the desecration of the Sacred Mysteries and their science. The rapid progress of anthropomorphism and idolatry led the early Fifth, as it had already led the Fourth Race, into sorcery once more, though on a smaller scale. Finally, even the four " Adams " (symbolizing under other names the four preceding races) were forgotten; and passing from one generation into another, each loaded with some additional myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions, as the Tzelem, "the Shadow-Adam" (the Chhayas of our doctrine); the "model" Adam, the copy of the first, and the "male and female" of the exoteric genesis (chap. i.); the third, the "earthly Adam" before the Fall, an androgyne; and the Fourth -- the Adam after his fall, i.e., separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden of Eden, or the forefather of our race -- the fifth -- is an ingenious compound of the above four. As stated in Zohar (iii., fol. 4, col. 14, Cremona Ed.) Adam, the FIRST man , is not found [[Vol. 2, Page]] 504 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. now on earth, he "is not found in all, below." Because, "where does the lower earth come from? From the chain of the Earth, and heaven above, " i.e., from the superior globes, those which precede and are above our Earth. "And there came out from it (the chain) creatures of all kinds. Some of them in (solid) skins, some in shells ( Klippoth ) . . . some in red shells, some in black, some in white, and some of other colours . . . " (See Qabbalah ).