Page 88 (part 7)

Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindu Scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the Seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phoenician, Chaldean, and Egyptian Cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phoenix* -- called by the Hebrews Onech [Heb char] (from Phenoch, Enoch, symbol of a secret cycle and initiation), and by the Turks, Kerkes -- lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self-consumed; and then, reborn from itself -- it lives another thousand years, up to seven times seven: (See "Book of Ali" -- Russian transl.), when comes the day of Judgment. The "seven times seven," 49, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty-nine "Manus," the Seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human cycles in each Round on each globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a race cycle, and the mystical tree Ababel -- the " Father Tree " in the Kuran -- shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phoenix; the "Day of judgment" meaning a "minor Pralaya " (See " Esoteric Buddhism ") . The author of the "Book of God" and the "Apocalypse" believes that "the Phoenix is very plainly the same as the Simorgh, the Persian roc , and the account which is given us of this last bird, yet more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the Phoenix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge" -- (p. 175); and a watery one in turn. "When the Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been already seven times replenished with beings different from men, and seven times depopulated;** that the age of the human race, in which we now are, is to endure seven thousand numbers, and that she herself had seen twelve of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see." ( Oriental Collections, ii., 119.) The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in this one, these facts have been noticed by several writers, but now a connection can be established between [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Continued from previous page]] diameter of that which precedes it -- amounts to but two crores or fifty-four lakhs etc. . . . Whenever any contradictions in different Puranas occur, they have to be ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like. " "The like" ought to read "Occult meaning," which explanation is withheld by the commentator, who wrote for exoteric, sectarian purposes, and was misunderstood by the translator for various other reasons, the least of which is -- ignorance of the esoteric philosophy. * The Phoenix, connected with the Solar Cycle of 600 years (with ciphers taken out or with more added according to which cycle is meant), the Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations -- is a generic symbol for several kinds of cycles. Fuller details will be given in the section on "Kalpas and Cycles." ** The tense is the "past" because the book is allegorical, and has to veil the truths contained. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 618 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the "Book of God": -- "The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindus, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the end of the world . . . . as a monstrous lion-bird. From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the Earth, sometimes walking in the ocean . . . while its head props the sky; and with the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe, that each reproduced system will last seven thousand years; ( ? ) and that the total duration of the universe will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the doctrine of the pre-existence of each renewed creature, they may either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or it may have been part of the primeval religion which their priests had preserved from remote times" (p. 176). It shows rather that the initiated Jews borrowed, and their non-initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost the sense, and applied the Seven Rounds, and the forty-nine races, etc., to the wrong end. Not only " their priests," but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We say more: even the Christian editor or author of Revelation has preserved this tradition and speaks of the Seven R ACES, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as could be stated in chapter xvii., verses 9 and 10. Thus saith the angel: "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are SEVEN Kings, five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come . . . . " Who, acquainted in the least with the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings that have fallen, the four Root-Races that were, and part of the fifth, the one that is ; and in the other, that " is not yet come, " the sixth and seventh coming root races, as also the sub-races of this, our present race? Another still more forcible allusion to the Seven Rounds and the forty-nine root-races in Leviticus, will be found elsewhere in the Addenda, Part III . ------- E. S EVEN IN A STRONOMY, S CIENCE, AND M AGIC. Again, number seven is closely connected with the occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, "the six present, the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 619 THE CYCLE OF THE NAROS. seventh hidden. " In India they are connected with their nursling, the war god, Karttikeya. It is the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittika ) who gave the god their name, for Karttikeya is the planet Mars, astronomically. As a god he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumara, a "virgin youth" again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Siva -- the holy spirit -- hence called Agni-bhu. The late Dr.