Page 96 (part 9)

One of such "incongruities" and "coincidences" concerns the similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the seven Dwipas (islands, or continents, rather) as met with in the Puranas, namely: "The Dwipas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean, surround Jambu Dvipa, which is situated in the centre" (p. 130, vol. I.), and, "according to the Iranian view, the Karshvar Qaniratha is likewise situated in the centre of the rest . . . . each of them (the other six Karshvars ) is a [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * p. 129, "Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times." ** Cf., e.g., Vol. I., 4, of the Pahlavi Translation; Bdh. xxi., 2-3. *** Footnote by Darab Dastur Peshotan Sanjana, B.A. , the translator of Dr. Wilhelm Geiger's work on the "Civilization of the Eastern Iranians." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 759 THE MAZDEAN VIEW OF THE SEVEN EARTHS. peculiar individual space, and so they group themselves round ( above ) Qaniratha" ( Ibid. p. 131). Now Qaniratha is not, as believed by Geiger and his translator, "the country inhabited by the Iranian tribes," and the other names do not mean "the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the North, South, West, and East" (p. 132), but our globe or Earth. For that which is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely, that "two Vorubarshti and Voru-Zarshti lie in the North; two, Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in the East and West," is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the "chain" of our planet, the Earth, represented in the book of Dzyan (11) thus: The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in the Secret Doctrine to become an orthodox tenet. The "Earth" (our World), therefore, is "tripartite," because the chain of the worlds is situated on three different planes above our globe; and it is septempartite because of the seven globes or spheres which compose the chain. Hence the further meaning given in Vendidad XIX . 39, showing that " Qaniratha alone is combined with imat, 'this' (earth), while all other Karshvares are combined with the word ' avat ,' 'that' or those -- upper earths." Nothing could be plainer. The same may be said of the modern comprehension of all other ancient beliefs. The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore, when, while all the fires were extinguished on the 1st of November, their sacred and inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and later Chaldees, the Greeks, and again like the Christians, who do the same to this day, without suspecting the real meaning, they greeted the Morning Star -- the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.* [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Dr. Kenealy quotes, in his "Book of God," Vallancey, who says "I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I heard a peasant girl say to boor standing by her " Teach an Maddin Nag " (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 760 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Strabo speaks of an island near to Britannia, "where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites as in Samothrace (lib. iv.) and this island was Sacred Ierna," where a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not as Lucian explains: "that the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a different world," but in a series of re-incarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus says, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods, would pass into other bodies.* These tenets came to the Fifth Race Aryans from their predecessors of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings, which told them how their parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant, owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been gradually gliding toward its end. Those records reminded them of the giant intellect of the preceding races as well as of their giant size. One finds the repetition of those records in every age of history, in almost every old fragment which has descended to us from antiquity. AElian preserved an extract from Theophrastus written during the days of Alexander the Great. It is a dialogue between Midas, the Phrygian, and Silenus. The former is told of a continent that had existed in times of old, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa seemed like poor islands compared with it. It was the last to produce animals and plants of gigantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of the tallest man in his (the narrator's) time, and they lived to twice as old an age. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such (cities) held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver being found there in great abundance. . . . Grote's suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a mirage -- clouds on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a golden sea -- is too disingenuous to be even noticed. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had one religion, and when they were of "one lip." "All the religions of the Earth were at first One and emanated from one centre," says Faber very truly. [[This page continued in next section]]