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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 [[Vol. 2, Page]] 506 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. § XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? T HE subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects. Whether Milton's grandiose description of the three Days' Battle of the Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition -- it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition of the "Beni Shamash" -- the "children of the Sun" -- concerning the Eastern allegory, with far more minute details in its triple version, than one can get either from the Book of Enoch, or the far more recent Revelation of St. John about the "Old Dragon" and his various Slayers, as just shown. It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to Mystical Societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the "alleged" antiquity of the "Book of Enoch." Thus, while the author of the "Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches" is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (! !) ( vide p. 16), the English compiler of Eliphas Levi's works -- "The Mysteries of Magic" -- is also of a like opinion. He remarks that: "Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work (the 'Book of Enoch') than the fourth century B.C ." ( Biograph. and Critical Essay, p. xxxviii. ) . Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but yesterday that the greatest literary critics in Europe denied the very authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even the Book of Hermes or Thot, until whole verses from the latter were discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The opinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere. The "Old Dragon" and Satan, now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for, the "Fallen Angel," is not so described either in the original Kabala (the Chaldean "Book of Numbers") or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas Levi, describes Satan in the following glowing terms: -- "It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God; brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored [[Vol. 2, Page]] 507 THE LIVING DEVILS. himself in full divine light; strong enough to reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have built himself a throne on his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the Republican and heretical Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (! ! ) . . . . "( Histoire de la Magie, 16-17) This description -- one which reconciles so cunningly theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment in its phraseology -- is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct. Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever-living symbol -- nay apotheosis -- of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity; this ever active Energy protesting against Static Inertia -- the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. It is -- as Eliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony -- "this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor -- it is he who has been finally transformed into a serpent -- the red Dragon." But Eliphas Levi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities; one may add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any existence on earth outside of that mankind.* In this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright sun-god of antiquity -- a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day -- has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than the "Whitechapel murderer" "Jack the Ripper" of 1888, whose unparalleled blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otherwise innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife and child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers!), a small percentage of whom is daily brought before the courts, the complete personifications of the devils of Christian Hell! [[Vol. 2, Page]] 508 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. of the gods; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the "chosen" people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only "a god among other Gods, " (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, "I am the Almighty God, " yet adds, "I will establish my covenant to be a God unto thee" (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7) -- not unto Aryan Europeans. But then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast; and a darker one the Church could hardly invent.