Page 87 (part 7)

- - "The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetractys as the fountain of perennial nature"? Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the exoteric proofs against us have no idea of the real esoteric meaning. Because all the ancient Cosmologies -- the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the Fifth Root Race, the Hindu Aryans and the Egyptians, adding to them the early Chinese races (the remnants of the Fourth or Atlantean Race) -- based the whole of their mysteries on number 10: the higher triangle standing for the invisible and metaphysical world, the lower three and four, or the Septenate, for the physical realm. It is not the Jewish Bible that brought number seven into prominence. Hesiod used the words "The seventh is the sacred day," before the Sabbath of "Moses" was ever heard of. The use of number seven was never confined to any one nation. This is well testified by the seven vases in the temple of the Sun, near the ruins of Babion in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning continually for ages before the altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians; the seven peninsulas, the seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India; and of the Zohar (See Ibn Gebirol ) ; the Jewish Sephiroth of the Seven splendours; the seven Gothic deities, the seven worlds of the Chaldeans and their seven Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod and Homer; and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS . they discover. What we have to say finally is this: Enough has been brought forward to show why the human principles were and are divided in the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 604 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. esoteric schools into seven. Make it four and it will either leave man minus his lower terrestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical stand-point, make of him a soulless animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower -- the celestial or terrestrial Tetraktis: to become comprehensible, according to the teachings of the esoteric ancient school man must be regarded as a Septenary. This was so well understood, that even the so-called Christian Gnostics had adopted this time-honoured system ( Vide § on " The Seven Souls ") . This remained for a long time secret as, though suspected, no MSS . of that time spoke of it clearly enough to satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the literary curiosity of our age -- the oldest and best preserved gospel of the Gnostics, Pistis Sophia [[ Pictic Cophia ]]. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall quote from an authority (C. W. King) -- the only archaeologist who had a faint glimmer of this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the day on the Gnostics and their gems. According to this extraordinary piece of religious literature -- a true Gnostic fossil -- the human Entity is the Septenary ray from the One,* just as our school teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of which are borrowed from the four Kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus "from Asia it gets the Nephesh or seat of the physical appetites (vital breath, also); from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the passions (? !); from Briah, the Neshamah, and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life;" (King). "This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul's obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its downward progress through their Spheres. But the Pistis-Sophia, with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical shape (§ 282)." The Inner Man is similarly made up of four constituents, but these are supplied by the rebellious AEons of the Spheres, being the Power -- a particle of the Divine light (" Divinae particula aurae ") yet left in themselves; the Soul (the fifth) "formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments; the [[ Antimimon Prieumatos ]] , Counterfeit of the Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience), ( the sixth ) ; and lastly the [[ Moira ]], Fate** (Karmic Ego), whose [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The Seven Centres of Energy evolved, or rendered objective by the action of Fohat upon the one element; or, in fact, the " Seventh Principle" of the Seven Elements which exist throughout manifested Kosmos. We may here point out that they are in truth the Sephiroth of the Kabalists; the "Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost" in the Christian system; and in a mystical sense, the seven children or sons of Devaki killed before the birth of Krishna by Kamsa. Our seven principles symbolize all of these. We have to part or separate from them before we reach the Krishna or Christ-state, that of a Jivanmukta , and centre ourselves entirely in the highest, the Seventh or the O NE. ** [[ Moira ]] is destiny, not "Fate," in this case, as it is an appellation, not a proper noun. (See Wolf's transl. in Odyssey 22, 413). But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a deity [[Continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 605 THE VEDIC TEACHINGS. whose business it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him; if he hath to die by the fire, to lead him into the fire, if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast, etc."* -- the SEVENTH! [[Page continued in next section]] -------