Chapter 661

[←653]

For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article by Visconde de Figanière, F.T.S., in The Theosophist, entitled “Esoteric Studies.” Its author expounds therein quite an Occult theory, though to the world a new idea—”the progress of the Monad concurring with the retrogression of Form, i.e., with decrease of the vis formativa.” (Vol. viii. p. 666.) He says, “Who knows what shape vehicled the Ego in remote rings [Rounds, or Races?]?... May not man’s type ... have been that of the Simiadæ in its variety? Might not the Monkey-kingdom of Râmâyana fame rest on some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or rather aspect, of man?” And the author winds up a very clever, though too short, exposition of his theory by saying that which every true Occultist will endorse: “With physico-ethereal man there must be involution of sex. As physico-astral man depended on entities of the sub-human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man find among the graceful, shapely orders issuing from the air-plane, one or more which will be developed for his successive embodiments when procreated forms are given—a process which will include all mankind only very gradually. The [Pre-?] Adamic and Post-Adamic races were giants; their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians—beauteous, luminous, diaphanous—but will assuredly be giants in mind” (p. 671).