THE SECRET DOCTRINE:THE SYNTHESIS
|
|
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by
H. P. Blavatsky, |
|
This Work |
|
PREFACE. ————— THE Author — the writer, rather — feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme, and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so.This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation of the work was first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled." It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and consequently the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from "Isis Unveiled." The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in these pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is employed because it offers the most widely-diffused medium for conveying the truths which it had become her duty to place before the world. These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world's history. For what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and to make of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what she herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a few details only, by the results of her |
viii PREFACE.own study and observation. The publication of many of the facts herein stated
has been rendered necessary by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many
Theosophists and students of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years,
in their endeavour to, as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought
from the few facts previously communicated to them. If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in the service of humanity, and by humanity and the future generations it must be judged. Its author recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in silent contempt. De minimis non curat lex. H.P.B. London, October, 1888. |
TABLE OF CONTENTS.————— INTRODUCTION ... xvii.
VOLUME FIRST.COSMOGENESIS.PROEM ... 1
————— BOOK I.
—
PART I.
|
x CONTENTS.STANZA II. — THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
————— STANZA III. — THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS ... 62
————— STANZA IV. — THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 86
————— STANZA V. — FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
————— STANZA VI.— OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
|
xi CONTENTS.
————— THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
————— EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS ... 170
————— STANZA VI.— CONTINUED ... 191
————— STANZA VII.— THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH ... 213
|
xii CONTENTS.
————— SUMMING UP ... 269
————— BOOK I.
—
PART II.
|
xiii CONTENTS.VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
————— VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
————— VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
————— IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386
————— X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
————— XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
————— XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
|
xiv CONTENTS.XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
————— XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460
————— XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
————— BOOK I. —
PART III.
|
xv CONTENTS.V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE ... 500
————— VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
————— VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
————— VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529
————— IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
————— X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
————— Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
|
xvi CONTENTS.XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579
————— XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588
————— XIV. FORCES — MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
————— XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
————— XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634
————— XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647
————— XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668
|
|
INTRODUCTORY. ————— “Gently to hear, kindly to judge.” SINCE the appearance of Theosophical
literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings “Esoteric
Buddhism.” And, having become a habit—as an old proverb based on daily
experience has it—“Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to
laboriously climb its way up hill.” |
xviii INTRODUCTORY.title, though it meant no more than does the title of this work,
the “SECRET DOCTRINE.” It proved
unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging things by their
appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now become so
universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have fallen
victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests were raised
by Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to myself, I must add
that “Esoteric Buddhism” was presented to me as a completed volume, and that I
was entirely unaware of the manner in which the author intended to spell the
word “Budh-ism.” |
|
xx INTRODUCTORY.suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines.
Unwise is the correct term to use in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is
alone calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism,
the repeated attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred, in
his inner spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric
Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special
religions. Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every
one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical
with that of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute
Divine Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun.
Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute
and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called
monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a
blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the
records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the
whole world since the beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism
occupies therein only its legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret
portions of the “Dan” or “Jan-na” * (“Dhyan”) of Gautama’s
metaphysics—grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the
Wisdom Religion of antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole. The
Hindu Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and
physiological aspect of the Wisdom-Religion, to Ethics and MAN
alone. Things “unseen and incorporeal,” the mystery of Being outside our
terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public
lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats. The
latter received their Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni
of Mahavansa) near Mount Baibhâr (the Webhâra of the Pali MSS.). This cave was
in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian,
as rightly suspected by some archæologists.† *Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch’an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as “to reform one’s self by meditation and knowledge,” a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the “Book of Dzyan.” † Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archæologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it. |
xxi INTRODUCTORY.sophy of these teachings, once that they were transplanted from
the secret and sacred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of
proselytism, into a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India;
i.e., once they were transferred into China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the
pristine purity of these grand revelations was dealt with may be seen in
studying some of the so-called “esoteric” Buddhist schools of antiquity in their
modern garb, not only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even
in not a few schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and
Mongolian innovators. |
xxii INTRODUCTORY.yield, thus often giving out the rude outward form in place of
the inner meaning. Works, most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and
speculations, in circulo vicioso, foregone conclusions generally changing places
with premises as in the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pali scholar,
appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding the libraries with dissertations
rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real symbology, and each
contradicting the other. |
xxiii INTRODUCTORY.to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by
official Science; but to the students of Occultism, and to every genuine
Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main body of the Doctrines given
is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some
already translated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual,—others still
awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying
the statements herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. A few new
facts (new to the profane Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the
Commentaries will be found difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also,
have hitherto been transmitted orally: yet even those are in every instance
hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan
temple-literature. * Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the “Science of Religion,” p. 23), Whether Europe has the complete text is very doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises in store for the Orientalists. |
xxiv INTRODUCTORY.direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been
carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the
best and cleverest palæographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. During
Akbar’s reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor’s sinful
prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves helped the Brahmans to
conceal their MSS. Such was Badáonì, who had all undisguised horror for Akbar’s
mania for idolatrous religions.* * Badáoní wrote in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: “His Majesty relished inquiries into the sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and who have no end of revealed books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals, on physical and religious sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of the future, in spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly that no man could now raise a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the heavens were to tear asunder.” This work “was kept secret, and was not published till the reign of Jahângir.” (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104, note.) † Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet. ‡ According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless land of Tarim—a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan—were in the days of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few verdant oases relieve its dead solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a vast city swallowed by and buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact. |
xxv INTRODUCTORY.the reader rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him
pause and reflect over the following well known facts. The collective researches
of the Orientalists, and especially the labours of late years of the students of
comparative Philology and the Science of Religions have led them to ascertain as
follows: An immense, incalculable number of MSS., and even printed works known
to have existed, are now to be found no more. They have disappeared without
leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance they
might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and their very
names would have been obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as
now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and
entirely incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without
those additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for
instance, the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.* * “If we turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is founded on the Five King and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and surrounded by voluminous Commentaries, without which even the most learned scholars would not venture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon.” (Lectures on the “Science of Religion,” p. 185. Max Müller.) But they have not fathomed it—and this is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body, in Paris, complained in 1881, |
xxvi INTRODUCTORY. If one turns to the ancient literature of the
Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures, the elder sister and
instructress, if not the fountainhead of the Mosaic Bible, the basis and
starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To perpetuate the
memory of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record the vast cycle of
astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the tradition of
their splendid and eminently occult literature, what now remains?—only a few
fragments, said to be by Berosus. * Found out and proven only now, through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide his “Chaldean account of Genesis”), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations for direct Divine Revelation! †Bunsen’s “Egypt’s Place in History,” vol. i. p. 200 |
xxvii INTRODUCTORY. So that, with the exception of these more
than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean sacred literature has disappeared
from the eyes of the profane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A few facts
that were contained in the Berosian History are given in Part II. of Vol. II.,
and may throw a great light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels, personified
by Bel and the Dragon. * Spence Hardy, “The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists,” p. 66. † “Buddhism in Tibet,” p. 78. |
xxviii INTRODUCTORY.upon Buddha or his “Good Law,” the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts
does seem miraculous. Had it been vice versâ, every one acquainted with the
natural course of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000,
five or six thousand treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions
in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist
Arhats began their religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new
faith beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,*
and reached China in the year 61 A.D. † when Kashyapa, at the invitation
of the Emperor Ming-ti, went there to acquaint the “Son of Heaven” with the
tenets of Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of
such a loss as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one
moment the possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for
themselves or, that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to
keep their most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to
deliver them to the profanation and misuse of races even so “vastly superior” to
themselves. * Lassen, (“Ind. Althersumkunde” Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected in the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than that. † Reverend T. Edkins, “Chinese Buddhism.” |
xxix INTRODUCTORY.covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange
pictures of gods and goddesses.
. . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have
even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet,
though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race,
the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its
ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us.” * Here again the
mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they
become intelligible have disappeared. * So little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one of that kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had been considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung on his neck, to be that of Sesostris—the greatest King of Egypt! |
xxx INTRODUCTORY.own conclusions, which may be very “scientific,” in the sight of
Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The
conflicting views on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the
various eminent philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max
Müller himself, are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis
to stand upon, “internal evidence” being very often a Jack-o’-lantern, instead
of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology
any better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the
last century or so that there must have been “fragments of a primeval
revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind.
. . preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy,” were entirely wrong.
For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to
the world from time to time. While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the
writer that it was well known that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging
to the sacred canon were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the
European pundits, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of
his day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same
fact with regard to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max
Müller had declared to the audiences of his “Lectures” that the theory
. . .“that there
was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human
race, finds but few supporters at present,”—the holy and learned man laughed.
His answer was suggestive. “If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he pronounced the name,
were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a gupta cave (a secret
crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would soon find out that what
crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from India to Europe were
only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There
was a “primeval revelation,” and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to
the world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to
wait.” |
xxxi INTRODUCTORY.in that affair than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford
themselves. The former, on the testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat.
Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly enough to maintain that “the Hindus were even
now almost Christians, because their Brahmâ, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other
than the Christian trinity.” * It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental
scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy,
and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too
much the other way. For “that first supply on the Brahmanical market,” made for
Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to
give to the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the
opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is
shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole Purânic story about
Chrishna was plagiarized by the Brahmins from the Bible ! But the facts cited by
the Oxford Professor in his Lectures on the “Science of Religion,” concerning
the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of
Col. Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who
studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that
neither the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more
ancient religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews
have not borrowed all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being
mutilated later on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their
primitive learning from the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic
influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long
since justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit
and Brahman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence
of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Müller. What it is everyone knows.
The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every
identification and “connection” between * See Max Müller’s “Introduction to the Science of Religion.” Lecture On False Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever forgery (on leaves inserted in old Purânic MSS.), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc. |
xxxii INTRODUCTORY.the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha,
Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maïa, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Mâyâ, and the
mother of Jesus, likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great
illusion symbolically)—yet these three characters have no connection, nor can
they have any, since Bopp has “laid down his code of phonetic laws.” |
xxxiii INTRODUCTORY.
“Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen, |
xxxiv INTRODUCTORY.woollen garment, her bosom was covered with golden stars, the
feet being left naked.” (From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the
famous traveller adds that all along their way on the river Tchertchen they
heard legends about twenty-three towns buried ages ago by the shifting sands of
the deserts. The same tradition exists on the Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya. |
xxxv INTRODUCTORY.any desire to monopolise the life-giving sacred lore. There were
portions of the Secret science that for incalculable ages had to remain
concealed from the profane gaze. But this was because to impart to the
unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous importance, was equivalent to
giving a child a lighted candle in a powder magazine. |
xxxvi INTRODUCTORY.Imperial Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days
when Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of Mystics flourished unimpeded in
Russia, i.e., at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century,
more than one Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet via the Ural mountains in search
of knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than
one returned years later, with a rich store of such information as could never
have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could be cited, and
well-known names brought forward, but for the fact that such publicity might
annoy the surviving relatives of the said late Initiates. Let any one look over
the Annals and History of Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis,
and he will assure himself of the fact stated. |
xxxvii INTRODUCTORY.legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage
in the World’s History, shown by Dr. Legge *—who calls him “emphatically
a transmitter, not a maker”—as saying: “I only hand on: I cannot create new
things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them.Ӡ (Quoted in
“Science of Religions” by Max Müller.) * Lün-Yü (§ I a) Schott. “Chinesische Literatur,” p. 7. † “Life of Confucius,” p. 96. ‡ This is no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very limited, so far. |
xxxviii INTRODUCTORY.called “a modern forgery” even so recently as fifty years ago?
Was not Sanskrit proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived
from, the Greek, according to Lemprière and other scholars? About 1820, Prof.
Max Müller tells us, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of
the Buddhists, “were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and
there was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda
. . . of the Zend
Avesta, or . . .of
the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be the work of the
highest antiquity whose ‘preservation amounts almost to a marvel’ (Lecture on
the Vedas). |
xxxix INTRODUCTORY.portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from
confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity—at any rate, the
probability—of the existence of such teachings was first established. Such
statements as will now be made, have to be shown warranted by various
authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even certain learned
Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied them,
had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even been
personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the performance of which
the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give
historical and trustworthy names, and to cite well-known authors, ancient and
modern, of recognized ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name
some of the famous proficients in the secret arts and science, along with the
mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged, or, rather, partially presented
before the public in their strange archaic form. |
xl INTRODUCTORY.following the Christian era, then he will find all this in
Volume III. of this work. |
xli INTRODUCTORY.mountain, valleys and highlands, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the symbol of the tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith; and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the Past. Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediæval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made —————“ the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, Both creeds have won their proselytes at the
point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs
of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. of our era, the ominous words
“the KARMA OF ISRAEL,” fatally
glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words,
that will point to the Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY,
for events purposely perverted, and for great characters slandered by posterity,
mangled out of recognition, between the two cars of Jagannâtha—Bigotry and
Materialism; one accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds
to the golden mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of things. Says
Faigi Diwan, the “witness to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who
belongs to a thousand sects”: “In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when
past things shall be forgiven, the sins of the Ka’bah will be forgiven for the
sake of the dust of Christian churches.” To this, Professor Max Müller replies:
“The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of
resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of their
religious doctrines. Men fight about religion on earth; in heaven they shall
find out that there is only one true religion—the worship of God’s SPIRIT.”* * “Lectures on the Science of Religion,” by F. Max Müller, p. 257. |
xlii INTRODUCTORY.it rather, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work,
an indispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in ISIS
could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. The Secret Doctrine
will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work,
especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood. * The name is used in the sense of the Greek word a]nqrwpo" |
xliii INTRODUCTORY. The “very old Book” is the original work from which the many
volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta
but even the Sepher Jezirah,* the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists
to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China’s primitive Bible,
the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Purânas in India, and the
Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that
one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the
secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it
to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our)
race; for there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the
Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as
easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn,
from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the
Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. The “illustration” spoken of in “Isis” relates
to the evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in the
Vaivasvata Manvantara or “Round;” each Round being composed of the Yugas of the
seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the
middle point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical, as
every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The old
book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of everything
on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of the races
from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further. It stops short at
the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 years ago at the death of Krishna, the
bright “Sun-god,” the once living hero and reformer. * Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed “miracles” by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See “Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin,” c. 7, etc.; and “Franck,” pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediæval Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late modern Magus, Eliphas Lévi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic. |
xliv INTRODUCTORY.namely, about 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first
cycle of the first five millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the
Kali-Yuga, will end. And then the last prophecy contained in that book (the
first volume of the prophetic record for the Black Age) will be accomplished. We
have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at
the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the
races. Volume II. of the Prophecies is nearly ready, having been in preparation
since the time of Buddha’s grand successor, Sankarâchârya. |
xlv INTRODUCTORY.one fountain head, the ever-flowing perennial source, at which
were fed all its streamlets—the later religions of all nations—from the first
down to the last. This period, beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one
end and the Neo-Platonists and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in
History wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light streaming
from the æons of time gone by, unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism. |
xlvi INTRODUCTORY.dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge Renan with
having stolen his Vie de Jésus from the Gospels, and Max Müller his “Sacred
Books of the East” or his “Chips” from the philosophies of the Brahmins and
Gautama, the Buddha. But to the public in general and the readers of the “Secret
Doctrine” I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in
the words of Montaigne: Gentlemen, “I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A
NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING
THAT TIES THEM.” |
xlvii INTRODUCTORY.a fact, and thus impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude;
that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; i.e., its probability will bear to
its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three such evidences are joined
together the certitude will become 215216.
The agreement of ten persons giving each ½ of certitude will produce
10231024, etc.,
etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied, and care for no more. PROEM ————— PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. AN
Archaic Manuscript — a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water,
fire, and air, by some specific unknown process — is before the writer's eye. On
the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the
following page, the same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student
knows to represent Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still
slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the
hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of
differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The Mundane
Egg"), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the
ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being
latent and active, periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity,
from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference — a forcibly
limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind — indicates the
abstract, ever incognisable PRESENCE, and its plane, the
Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the face of the Disk being white
and the ground all around black, shows clearly that its plane is the only
knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It is on
this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in this
SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine
Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and
Theogony. * It is hardly necessary to remind the reader once more that the term "Divine Thought," like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as even vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. The "Unconscious," according to von Hartmann, arrived at the vast creative, or rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant wisdom superior to all consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean absolute Wisdom. Only those who realize how far Intuition soars above the tardy processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of that absolute Wisdom which transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc. — all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation, which is again Maya. Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation. The personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical. |
2 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealizable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath," * which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul. Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter generating in due course of time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity — an occult teaching. From the beginning of man's
inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives
in, the unrevealed Deity was recognized and considered under its only
philosophical aspect — universal motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in
Nature. Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus: "Deity is an arcane, living
(or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen
Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," — this trinity including, and being the
cause of, every * Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in Cratylus that aed" is derived from the verb qevein , "to move," "to run," as the first astronomers who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets qeoiv , the gods. (See Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the word produced another term, ajlhvqeia — "the breath of God." |
3 PROEMphenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or that which is subject to perception) is finite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of successive reconstructions. Kosmos — the NOUMENON — has nought to do with the causal relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it have an end." With regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . A few years ago only, it was stated that: — "The esoteric doctrine
teaches, like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the Kabala, that the one
infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and
harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology
of Manu these conditions are called the "Days" and the "Nights" of Brahmâ. The
latter is either "awake" or "asleep." The Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the
oldest school of Buddhism (which still exists in Nepal), speculate only upon the
active condition of this "Essence," which they call Svabhâvat, and deem it
foolish to theorize upon the abstract and "unknowable" power in its passive
condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theologians and
modern scientists, for neither of the * Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that "it is impossible . . . to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving" ("Prin. of Human Knowledge," Introd., par. 10), may put the question, "What is that body, the producer of that |
