Page 82 (part 3)

18.220 " The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots, 17.795 inches! Which figures show plainly "that the size of the brain of the oldest populations known to us is not such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living inhabitants of the Earth" (" The Age and Origin of Man "). Besides which, they show the "missing link" vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more anon: we must return to our direct subject. The race which Jupiter so ardently desired "to quench, and plant a new one in its stead" ( AEsch.* 241), suffered mental , not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to mortals, as he tells the "Chorus," was to hinder them "from foreseeing death" (256); he "saved the mortal race from sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom" (244); and then only, "besides" that, he gave them fire (260). This shows plainly the dual character, at any rate of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of the seven keys taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man's spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or discovering fire . For fire was never "discovered," but existed on earth since its beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on Earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with the exception of a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men -- whether evolved from angel or gorilla -- appear now on any uninhabited [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Prometheus Vinctus. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 524 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. spot of the globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before discovering fire, through the fall of lightning setting in flames grass or something else. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical of all. But old AEschylus was an initiate, and knew well what he was giving out.* No occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from the East, will deny for a moment that the myth of Prometheus has reached Europe from Aryavarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus represents fire by friction . Therefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in his Les Mythes du feu et breuvage celeste ( Revue germanique, 1861 p . 356)** one of the aspects of Prometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader the supposed primitive process to obtain fire, still in use to-day in India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what he says: -- "This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic Sutras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick in its middle: the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and pulls them alternately. . . . The full process is designated in Sanskrit by the verb manthami, mathnani; which means 'to rub, agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,' and is especially applied to rotatory friction, as proved by its derivation from mandala, which signifies a circle. . . . The pieces of wood serving for the production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick which turns is called pramantha; the discus which receives it is called arani and aranî two aranis' designating the ensemble of the instrument" ( p . 358 et seq .) .*** It remains to be seen what the Brahmins will say to this. But supposing Prometheus has been conceived in one of the aspects of his [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars, they would have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!) to explain the real meaning of the ideas of AEschylus, which, being an ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well himself, is absurdly ludicrous! ** See also his Memoires de la Societe de la Linguistique following the "Fire Myths," ( Vol. I , p. 337, et seq. ) *** There is the upper and nether piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices, and it is the aranî which contains the socket. This is proven by an allegory in the Vayu Purana and others, which tell us that Nemi, the son of Ikshwaku, had left no successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the earth without a ruler, introduced the king's body into the socket of an aranî -- like an upper aranî -- and produced from it a prince named Janaka. "It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered that he was called Janaka." ( But see Goldstucker's Sanskrit Dictionary at the word Arani. ) Devaki, Krishna's mother, in prayer addressed to her, is called "the aranî whose attrition engenders fire." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 525 GREEK IDEAS MISUNDERSTOOD. myth as the producer of fire by means of pramantha, or as an animate and divine pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning attributed to it by the modern symbologists? Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth; for he unconsciously corroborates by his remarks all that the Occult sciences teach with regard to the Manasa Devas, who have endowed man with the consciousness of his immortal soul: that consciousness which hinders man "from foreseeing death," and makes him know he is immortal.* "How has Prometheus got into the possession of the (divine) spark?" he asks. "Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the gods, he must have been a god himself." The Greeks held that he was of the divine race; the Hindus, that he was a Deva. Hence "with the Greeks he was the son of the Titan lapetos," [[ Iapetonides ]] ( Theog. 528) . . . . "But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone; it was a treasure they reserved for themselves . . . over which they jealously watched . . .