431-53), and has the gift of appearing to his Seers without being visible to other persons present -- (Iliad, xvii., 322-36) -- a gift, however, shared by every high Adept.
The King of the Hyperboreans, was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the north-wind, and the High Priest of Apollo.
The quarrel of Latona with Niobe (the Atlantean race) -- the mother of seven sons and seven daughters personifying the seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches (see Apollodorus for this number) -- allegorizes the history of the two continents.
The wrath of "the sons of god," or of "Will and Yoga," at seeing the steady degradation of the Atlanteans was great ( See " The Sons of God and the Sacred Island "); and the destruction of the "children of Niobe" by the children of Latona -- Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom and purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes changes in the earth's axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms -- is thus very clear.* The fable about the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * So occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is made to reappear even in Revelation ( xii.
) as the woman clothed with the Sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being with child "cries, travailing in birth, pained to be delivered." A great red Dragon, etc., stands before the woman ready to devour the child.
She brings forth the man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and who was caught unto the throne of God (the Sun).
The woman fled to the wilderness still pursued by the Dragon, who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a flood, when the earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood; and the Dragon went to make war with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandment of God, etc.
( See xii., 1, 17.) Anyone, who reads the allegory of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognise the identity of the two versions.
Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to persecute and destroy Latona and devour her babe.
The latter is Apollo, the Sun, for "the man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" of Revelation, is surely not the meek "Son of God," Jesus, but the physical Sun, "who rules all nations"; the Dragon being the North Pole, gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the lands which became more and more Hyperborean and unfit to be inhabited by those who were fast developing into physical men, for they now had to deal with the climatic variations.
The Dragon will not allow Latona "to bring forth" -- (the Sun to appear).
"She is driven from heaven, and finds no place where she can bring forth," until Neptune (the ocean), moved with pity, makes immovable the floating isle of Delos (the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from Jupiter under the waves of the ocean) on which Latona finds refuge and where the bright god [[ Delios ]] is born, the god, who no sooner appears than he kills Python, the cold and frost of the Arctic region, in whose deadly coils all life becomes extinct.
In other words, Latona-Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son Apollo, or the Sun, reigns -- with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus makes the Atlantes curse his too great heat.
This allegory is reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another of the seven keys) in the [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol.
2, Page]] 772 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
never-ceasing tears of Niobe, whose grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain -- Atlantis covered with water -- is no less graphic as a symbol.
Niobe, let it be remembered, is the daughter of one of the Pleiades (or Atlantides) the grand-daughter of Atlas therefore, ( See " Metamorphoses of Ovid, " Book VI.
) , because she represents the last generations of the doomed continent.
A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous influence on antiquity.
"If these names," he adds, "are mere allegories, then all that those fables contain of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real tradition -- however altered -- then the whole of the ancient history is still in it." ( Lettres sur l ' Atlantide, p.
137.) So much so, that all ancient writings -- prose and poetry -- are full of the reminiscences of the Lemuro-Atlanteans, the first physical races, though the Third and the Fourth in number.
Hesiod records the tradition about the men of the age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash-wood and who had hearts harder than diamond.
Clad in bronze from head to foot they passed their lives in fighting.
Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength, invincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the poet ( Hesiod, in oper.
and dieb.
v .
143).
Such were the giants of the first physical races.
The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in Yasna ix.
15.
Tradition maintains that the "Sons of God," or the great Initiates of the Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge, to rid the earth of all the Sorcerers among the Atlanteans.
The said verse addresses Zoroaster as one of the "Sons of God." -- It says: "Thou, O Zarathustra, didst make all demons ( i.e.
, Sorcerers), who before roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the earth" ( i.e.
, helped them to get submerged).
The Lemurians, as also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two distinct classes -- the "Sons of Night" or Darkness, and the "Sons of the Sun," or Light.
The old books tell us of terrible battles between the two, when the former, leaving their land of Darkness, from whence the Sun departed for long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and "tried to wrench the lord of light" from their better favoured brothers of the equatorial regions.
We may be told that the ancients knew nothing of the long night of six months' duration in the Polar regions.
Even Herodotus, more learned [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] chapter just cited of the Apocalypse.
Latona became a powerful goddess indeed, and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in almost every fane of antiquity.
In his occult aspect Apollo is patron of Number 7.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage systematically maps Greek myth (Latona, Niobe, Apollo, Python) onto the Book of Revelation (woman clothed with the Sun, the Dragon, the man-child) and onto physical-astronomical events (North Pole, solar cycles, continental submersion), making each level a legible key to the others.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The entire passage is an exegesis of allegorical layers, explicitly calling the myth 'occult and mystic,' referencing 'another of the seven keys,' and decoding the outer fable into an inner cosmological truth.
An informal, decentralised network of occultists — operating partly through inner-plane guidance and partly through organised physical-plane fraternities that hunt and disband harmful lodges — that polices the occult field against criminal or malevolent use, acting on inner-voice direction and coincidence-engineering rather than any single headquarters or centralised human command. Distinct from secret_societies (an institution that holds esoteric knowledge collectively, not one organised specifically around enforcement against occult wrongdoing) and left_hand_path (the malevolent orientation this network exists to counter, not the countering network itself).
The 'Sons of God' or great Initiates are described as taking advantage of the Deluge to 'rid the earth of all the Sorcerers among the Atlanteans,' functioning as a network that polices the occult field against malevolent practitioners.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The passage explicitly divides the Lemurians and early Atlanteans into 'Sons of Night' or Darkness and 'Sons of the Sun' or Light, describing their battles as the fundamental structural opposition of the cosmos.
Organized, persisting groups — fraternities, orders, lodges — that maintain esoteric knowledge or practices as an institution distinct from public religion or mainstream society, holding 'the keys' collectively rather than through any one master-disciple pair. Distinct from esoteric_lineage (a genealogical chain of individual transmission, not an institution) and hidden_sayings (the concealment of a teaching's meaning, independent of whether any organized body holds it).
The 'great Initiates of the Sacred Island' are described as an organized body that collectively holds esoteric knowledge and exercises authority over the physical races, functioning as a persisting institution distinct from public religion.