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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 [[Vol. 2, Page]] 605 THE VEDIC TEACHINGS. [[Page continued from previous section ]] C. T HE S EPTENARY E LEMENT IN THE V EDAS. I T CORROBORATES THE O CCULT T EACHING CONCERNING THE S EVEN G LOBES AND THE S EVEN R ACES. We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig-Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven rays of Surya (the Sun) are made therein parallel to the Seven Worlds (of every planetary chain), to the seven rivers of heaven and earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the Seven men, or primitive human groups. The Seven ancient Rishis -- the progenitors of all that lives and breathes on earth -- are the seven friends of Agni, his seven "horses," or seven " H EADS." The human race has sprung from fire and water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the F ATHERS, or the ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Aswins, the Adityas ( Rig-Veda III., 54, 16, II., 29 , 3, 4), are all synonymous with that "sacrificer," or the fathers, variously called Pitar ( Pitris, fathers) , Angirases ** ( Ibid, 1 , 31, 17, 139, et seq. ) , the Sadhyas, "divine sacrificers," the most occult of all. They are all called deva putra rishayah or "the Sons of God" ( X., 62 ; 1, 4). The "sacrificers," moreover, are collectively the ONE sacrificer, the father of the gods, Visvakarman, who performed the great Sarva-Medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself. (See Rig-Vedic Hymns.) [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Continued fn from previous page]] "who like [[ Aisa ]] gives to all their portion of good and evil, " and is therefore Karma ( Vide Liddell). By this abbreviation, however, the subject to Destiny or Karma is meant, the S ELF or Ego, and that which is reborn. Nor is [[ Antimimon Pneumatos ]] our conscience, but our Buddhi; nor is it again the " counterfeit of Spirit" but "modelled after," or a counterpart of the Spirit -- which Buddhi is, as the vehicle of Atma ( Vide Ar. Theism, 17; and Liddell's definitions). * C. W. King's Gnostics, p. 38. ** Prof. Roth (in Peter's Lexicon) defines the Angirases as an intermediate race of higher beings between gods and men; while Prof. Weber, according to his invariable custom of modernising and anthropomorphising the divine, sees in them the original priests of the religion which was common to the Aryan Hindus and Persians. Roth is right. "Angirases" was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors ("guru-deva"), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race Initiates. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 606 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. In these Hymns the "Heavenly Man" is called purusha, "the Man," ( X. 90, 1) from whom Viraj was born ( X. 90, 5); and from Viraj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna (now drawn from his sublime position to be the chief of the lords-Dhyanis or Devas) who regulates all natural phenomena, who "makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow." The seven rivers of the sky (the descending creative gods) and the seven rivers of the earth (the seven primitive mankinds) are under his control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna's laws (Vratani, "courses of natural action," active laws) is punished by Indra ( X . 113, 5), the Vedic powerful god, whose Vrata (law or power) is greater than the Vratani of any other god. Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all the known ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the occult teachings in almost every respect. Its hymns -- the records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our race) concerning the primordial teachings -- speak of the Seven Races (two still to come) allegorising them by the "seven streams" (1, 35, 8); and of the Five Races (" panca krishtayah ") which have already inhabited this world ( ibid ) on the five regions " panca pradicah " ( IX, 86, 29), as also of the three continents that were.* It is those scholars only who will master the secret meaning of the Purushasukta (in which the intuition of the modern Orientalist has chosen to see "one of the very latest hymns of the Rig-Veda"), who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric doctrines. One must study in all the abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning the relations in it between the (Heavenly) man "Purusha," S ACRIFICED for the production of the Universe and all in it ( See Visvakarman ) , and the terrestrial mortal man ( Hymn X. 20, 1, 16), before one realizes the hidden philosophy of this verse: -- "15. He ("Man," purusha, or Visvakarman) had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and thrice seven layers of fuel; when the gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim" . . . . This relates to the three Septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity of the Vedas, who knew of no other, probably in this earliest oral teachings; and also [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, continents -- the first "continent" of the First Race prevailing to the last and existing to this day -- are described in the occult Doctrine, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting the name now known in Science), and the Atlantean . Most of Asia issued from under the waters after the destruction of Atlantis; Africa came still later, while Europe is the fifth and the latest -- portions of the two Americas being far older. But of these, more anon. The Initiates who recorded the Vedas -- or the Rishis of our Fifth Race -- wrote at a time when Atlantis had already gone down. Atlantis is the fourth continent that appeared , but the third that disappeared. [[Vol.