Chapter 613

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Uranus is a modified Varuna, the “universal encompasser,” the “all-embracer,” and one of the oldest of the Vedic Deities—Space, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the Âdityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the “Leviathan”—Makara, now the most sacred and mysterious of the Signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, without whom “no creature can even wink,” was degraded like Uranus, and, like him, fell into generation; his functions—”the grandest cosmical functions,” as Muir calls them—having been degraded from Heaven to Earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same Orientalist says: “The attributes and functions ascribed to Varuna [in the Vedas] impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity.” But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like as that of Uranus, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man’s fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishtha. Only “his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the foolish.”