We must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without an attempt to explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number, the Hebdomad, in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest to the latest, reveals its presence, and explains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special dogmas, this is no easy task. We can, therefore, do no better or more explanatory work than to give a bird’s-eye view of all. The numbers, 3, 4, 7, are the sacred numbers of Light, Life, and Union—especially in this present Manvantara, our Life-Cycle; of which number seven is the special representative, or the factor number. This has now to be demonstrated.

If one should ask a Brâhman learned in the Upanishads, which are so full of the Secret Wisdom of old, why “he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon-plant,” is Trisuparna, as Bopaveda is credited with saying;1400 and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the Brâhman Trisuparna—very few could answer the question; or, if they knew, they would still less satisfy one’s curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what the old Esoteric Doctrine teaches. As says the Commentary:

When the first Seven appeared on Earth, they threw the seed of everything that grows on the land into the soil. First came Three, and Four were added to these as soon as stone was transformed into plant. Then came the second Seven, who, guiding the Jîvas of the plants, produced the middle [intermediate] natures between plant and moving living animal. The third Seven evolved their Chhâyâs.... The fifth Seven imprisoned their Essence.... Thus man became a Saptaparna.

A. Saptaparna.

Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown elsewhere, a seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek myths. The T, or τ (Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ (Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, and of Life Eternal: of earthly life, because Γ (Gamma) is the symbol of the Earth (Gaia)1401; and of Life Eternal, because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked with Divine Life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:

[Symbol: a triangle over a square]

—a Triangle and a Quaternary, the symbol of Septenary Man.

Now, the number six has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an emblem of physical Nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions of all bodies—the six directions which compose their form, namely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, and the two directions of height and thickness that answer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the Senary was applied by the Sages to physical man, the Septenary was for them the symbol of that man plus his immortal Soul.1402

J. M. Ragon gives a very good illustration of the “hieroglyphical senary,” as he calls our double equilateral triangle.

The hieroglyphical senary is the symbol of the commingling of the philosophical three fires and three waters, whence results the procreation of the elements of all things.1403

The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For, though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the Triad, or Tri-mûrti. For, even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle, [Symbol: triangle], with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water, Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;1404 while the triangle, with its apex upward, [Symbol: triangle], is Shiva, the Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.1405 It is these two interlaced triangles, wrongly called “Solomon’s Seal”—which also form the emblem of our Society—that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this [Symbol: 6-point star] is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, [Symbol: 6-point star with middle dot], it is a sevenfold sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number three, or the Triad; the two triangles show the presence of the Binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the Quaternary; the six points are the Senary; and the central point, the Unit; the Quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of two triangles, the even number, and of three sides in each triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made the number six sacred to Venus, since:

The union of the two sexes, and the spagyrization of matter by triads, are necessary to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and tendency to reproduction which is inherent in all bodies.1406

Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other Planets of our system, the Earth has seven Logoi—the emanating Rays of the one “Father-Ray”—the Protogonos, or the Manifested Logos, he who sacrifices his Esse (or “Flesh,” the Universe) that the World may live and every creature therein have conscious being.

Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is the emblem of Life Eternal in Spirit on its ascending arc, and in Matter as the ever resurrecting Element—by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical [Symbol: bar]; the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or ☩. The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is why all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by Science, can be reduced to four Elements only—Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a terra incognita, and mere speculations, mere names, to exact Science. Her servants must believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom the nature, and acquaint themselves with the potentialities, of the effects. Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or Matter, to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great Alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.1407 As those Alchemists have it:

When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its middle nature with that of the Triangle [or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of the other], and becomes a Cube; then only does it [the Cube unfolded] become the vehicle and the number of Life, the Father-Mother Seven.

Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or “soft stones that hardened,” to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, followed by the “hard plants that softened,” which are the product of the mineral, for “it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born”;1408 and then to man—all the primitive models in every kingdom of Nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the first beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the seventh begin to branch off into species, all except men, the first of the mammalian animals1409 in the Fourth Round.

Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in Esoteric Philosophy, sang of evolution in the following strains:

Principio cælum ac terras camposque liquentes

Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.

Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitæque volantum

Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus.1410

“First came three, or the Triangle.” This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated, in Mineralogy, Botany, and even in Geology—as has been demonstrated in the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans”—by the compound number seven, the three and the four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. For when its molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of Fire, whence the word “Pyramis”; while the second geometrical figure in manifested Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4 and 6; for, as Enfield says, “the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal”—truly. The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines—the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic Nature—fire and water, heat and cold—begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them a double or a treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one. Says Mr. Darwin—showing that the inhabitants of the sea-shore are greatly affected by the tides:

The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata ... apparently consisted of a group of marine animals.... Animals living either about the mean high-water mark, or about the mean low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight.... Now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata ... many normal and abnormal processes have one or more weeks [septenates] as their periods ... such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers.1411

The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks [or 14 days]; those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven.1412

This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is ever manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the Moon which is the guide of the Occult side of terrestrial Nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life. This truth has ever been evident to the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting Mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great Occultist.

But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the metrological key of the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic key. This key explains that Noah, the Deluge-Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law), for the purpose of the formation of our Earth, its population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.

Now bearing in mind the septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in cosmic and human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah-Noah is at the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower cosmic Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal Triad, △—of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female, angle—emanates the Quaternary, □. The latter, symbolizing by itself the Heavenly Man, the sexless Adam Kadmon, viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth—the seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride of the Heavenly Man”—thus forming, with the higher Triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree—the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the lower creative Sephiroth are seven.

The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary reminder to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to show that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, the alleged Creator of our Earth, of man and all upon it, is:

(a) The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim—in his cosmic aspect.

(b) The Tetragrammaton or the Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” of the four letters—in his theogonic and kabalistic aspects.

(c) The Noah—identical with the Hindû Shishta, the human Seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as expressed in the Purânas, or the pre-diluvian period as rendered allegorically in the Bible—in his cosmic character.

But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing the 3, △, and 4, □, on parallel lines with the cosmic and human principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of.

As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to kabalistic works.

“Ararat = the mount of descent = הר-י-רד, Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of composition by Arath = ארת. Editor of Moses Cherenensis says: ’By this, they say, is signified the first place of descent (of the ark).’ ” (Bryant’s Anal., vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, 15.) Under “Berge,” mountain, Nork says of Ararat: “אררט, for ארת (i.e., Ararat for Arath) earth, Aramaic reduplication.” Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of the same equivalent, in Arath, ארש, with the meaning of earth.1413

Noah thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power which developed the Planetary Chain, and our Earth, and the Seed-Race, the Fifth, which was saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth, Vaivasvata Manu, perished, the number seven will be seen to recur at every step. It is Noah who, as Jehovah’s permutation, represents the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence the verses of Genesis: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male [3], and the female [4]; of fowls also of the air by sevens,”1414 etc., followed by all the sevening of days and the rest.

B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.

Thus number seven, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in every ancient religion, because it is the factor element in Nature. Its adoption must be justified, and it must be shown to be the number par excellence, for, since the appearance of Esoteric Buddhism, frequent objections have been made, and doubts expressed as to the correctness of these assertions.

And here let the student be told at once, that in all such numerical divisions the One universal Principle—although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One—never enters into the calculations. It stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Universal Abstraction, entirely by Itself and independent of every other Power whether noumenal or phenomenal. Says the author of the article “Personal and Impersonal God”:

This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject.

In the language of Hindû philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha [Spirit] and Prakriti [Matter]. As the Advaitîs hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purusha is the only reality; it is the one existence which remains in the universe of Ideas. This ... then, is the Parabrahman of the Advaitîs. Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material Upâdhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Advaitî there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity, as these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic idealism ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the Universe, which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidâkâsham (the field of consciousness) in fact.

When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahman by the Advaitîs.1415

Although itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this “huge aggregation of various states of consciousness” is a septenate, in its totality entirely composed of septenary groups—simply because “the capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter,”1416 or the seven properties, or states of matter. And, therefore, the series from one to seven, begins in the Esoteric calculations with the first manifested principle, which is number one if we commence from above, and number seven when reckoning from below, or from the lowest principle.

The Tetrad is esteemed in the Kabalah, as it was by Pythagoras, the most perfect, or rather sacred number, because it emanated from the One, the first manifested Unit, or rather the Three in One. And the latter has ever been impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though within the possibility of the higher mental perceptions.

The first manifestation of the eternal Monad was never meant to stand as the symbol of another symbol, the Unborn for the Element-born, or the one Logos for the Heavenly Man. Tetragrammaton, or the Tetraktys of the Greeks, is the Second Logos, the Demiurgos.

The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thinks, is, however, the animal itself of Plato who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of the Pythagoreans; subsists at the extremity of the intelligible triad, as is most satisfactorily shown by Proclus in the third book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between these two triads [the double triangle], the one intelligible, and the other intellectual, another order of gods exists, which partakes of both extremes.1417...

The Pythagorean world, according to Plutarch,1418 consisted of a double quaternary.

This statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric theologies, of the lower Tetraktys. For:

The quaternary of the intellectual world [the world of Mahat] is T’Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle; while that of the sensible world [of Matter], which is properly what Pythagoras meant by the word Kosmos, is Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The four elements are called by the name of rhizômata, the roots or principles of all mixed bodies.1419

That is to say, the lower Tetraktys is the root of illusion, of the World of Matter; and this is the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the “mysterious deity,” over which the modern Kabalists make such a fuss!

This number [four] forms the arithmetical mean between the monad and the heptad; and this comprehends all powers, both of the productive and produced numbers; for this, of all numbers under ten, is made of a certain number; the duad doubled makes a tetrad, and the tetrad doubled [or unfolded] makes the hebdomad [the septenary]. Two multiplied into itself produces four; and retorted into itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a fertile number, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and four [depending on the monad, the seventh]. Thus the two principles of temporal things, the pyramis and cube, form and matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon [on earth, the monad, in heaven].1420

Here Reuchlin, the great authority on the Kabalah, shows the cube to be “matter,” whereas the pyramid or the triad is “form.” With the Hermesians the number four becomes the symbol of truth only when amplified into a cube, which, unfolded, makes seven, as symbolizing the male and female elements and the element of Life.1421

Some students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line,1422 which is male, becoming, in the cross, a four-partitioned line (four being a female number), while the horizontal (the line of matter) becomes three-divisioned. But this is easy of explanation. Since the middle face of the “cube unfolded” is common to both the vertical and the horizontal bar, or double-line, it becomes neutral ground so to say, and belongs to neither. The spirit line remains triadic, and the matter line two-fold—two being an even and therefore a female number also. Moreover, according to Theon in his Mathematica, the Pythagoreans, who gave the name of Harmony to the Tetraktys, “because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia,” were of opinion that:

The division of the canon of the monochord was made by the tetraktys in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a duple, a triple, and a quadruple proportion, the section of which is 27. In the ancient musical notation, the tetrachord consisted of three degrees or intervals, and four terms of sounds called by the Greeks diatessaron, and by us a fourth.1423

Moreover, the quaternary though an even, therefore a female (“infernal”) number, varied according to its form. This is shown by Stanley.1424 The four was called by the Pythagoreans the Key-Keeper of Nature; but in union with the three, which made it seven, it became the most perfect and harmonious number—nature herself. The four was “the masculine of feminine form,” when forming the cross; and seven is the “Master of the Moon,” for this Planet is forced to alter her appearance every seven days. It is on number seven that Pythagoras composed his doctrine on the Harmony and Music of the Spheres, calling a “tone” the distance of the Moon from the Earth; from the Moon to Mercury half a tone, from thence to Venus the same; from Venus to the Sun one and a half tones; from the Sun to Mars a tone; from thence to Jupiter half a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn half a tone; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones—the diapason harmony.1425 All the melody of Nature is in those seven tones, and therefore is called the “Voice of Nature.”

Plutarch explains1426 that the most ancient Greeks regarded the Tetrad as the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of the elements which gave birth to all visible and invisible created things.1427 With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the figure of the cross, or cube unfolded, formed the subject of a disquisition in one of the Theosophic degrees of Peuvret, and was treated according to the fundamental principles of light and darkness, or good and evil.1428

The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind [or unit] after this manner. The Tetraktys, reflecting upon its own essence, the first unit, productrix of all things, and on its own beginning, saith thus: Once one, twice two, immediately ariseth a tetrad, having on its top the highest unit, and becomes a Pyramis, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable to a superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity produceth the form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent of Juno (matter) to inferior things. Hence ariseth essential light, not burning but illuminating. This is the creation of the middle world, which the Hebrews call the Supreme, the world of the [their] deity. It is termed Olympus, entirely light, and replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal gods, deûm domus alta, whose top is unity, its wall trinity, and its superficies quaternity.1429

The “superficies” has thus to remain a meaningless surface, if left by itself. Unity only “illuminating” quaternity, the famous lower four has to build for itself also a wall from trinity, if it would be manifested. Moreover, the Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus, is “Jehovah” arrogating to himself very improperly the “Was, Is, Will Be,” now translated into the “I am that I am,” and interpreted as referring to the highest abstract Deity; while Esoterically and in plain truth, it means only periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal Matter, with all its potentialities. For the Tetragrammaton is one with Nature, or Isis, and is the exoteric series of androgyne Gods such as Osiris-Isis, Jove-Juno, Brahmâ-Vâch, or the Kabalistic Jah-Hovah; all male-females. Every anthropomorphic God, in old nations, as Marcellus Ficin well observed, has his name written with four letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut; the Arabs, Alla; the Persians, Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mahometans, Abdi; the Greeks, Teos; the ancient Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which John Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott; the Sarmatian Bouh; etc.1430

The Monad being one, and an odd number, the Ancients therefore said that the odd were the only perfect numbers; and—selfishly, perhaps, yet as a fact—considered them all as masculine and perfect, being applicable to the celestial Gods, while even numbers, such as two, four, six, and especially eight, as being female, were regarded as imperfect, and given only to the terrestrial and infernal Deities. Virgil records the fact by saying, “Numero deus impare gaudet.” “The God is pleased with an odd number.”1431

But number seven, or the Heptagon, the Pythagoreans considered to be a religious and perfect number. It was called Telesphoros, because by it all in the Universe and mankind is led to its end, i.e., its culmination.1432 The doctrine of the Spheres ruled by the seven Sacred Planets1433 shows, from Lemuria to Pythagoras, the seven Powers of terrestrial and sublunary Nature, as well as the seven great Forces of the Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones, which are the seven notes of the musical scale.

The Heptad [our Septenary] was considered to be the number of a virgin, because it is unborn [like the Logos or the Aja of the Vedântins]:

Without a father ... or a mother, ... but proceeding directly from the monad, which is the origin and crown of all things.1434

And if the Heptad is made to proceed from the Monad directly, then it is, as taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest schools, the perfect and sacred number of this Mahâmanvantara of ours.

The Septenary, or Heptad, was sacred indeed to several Gods and Goddesses; to Mars, with his seven attendants, to Osiris, whose body was divided into seven and twice seven parts; to Apollo, the Sun, amid his seven planets, and playing the hymn to the seven-rayed on his seven-stringed harp; to Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others.1435

Cis-Himâlayan Occultism with its sevening, and because of such sevening, must be regarded as the most ancient, the original of all. It is opposed by some fragments left by Neo-Platonists; and the admirers of the latter, who hardly understand what they defend, say to us: See, your forerunners believed only in triple man, composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body. Behold, the Târaka Râja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, we, to 4, and the Vedântins to 5 (Koshas). To this, we of the Archaic school ask:

Why then does the Greek poet say that it is not four but seven who sing the praise of the Spiritual Sun?

Ἑπτά με κ.τ.λ.

Seven sounding letters sing the praise of me,

The immortal God, the almighty Deity.

Why again is the triune Iao, the Mystery God, called the “fourfold,” and yet the triadic and tetradic symbols come under one unified name with the Christians—the Jehovah of the seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Shebâ is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktys) identical with number 7? Or, as Mr. Gerald Massey has it:

Taking an oath was synonymous with “to seven,” and the 10 expressed by the letter Jod, was the full number of Iao-Sabaoth [—the ten-lettered God].1436

In Lucian’s Auction:

Pythagoras asks, “How do you reckon?” The reply is, “One, Two, Three, Four.” Then Pythagoras says, “Do you see? In what you conceive Four there are Ten, a perfect Triangle and our Oath [Tetraktys, Four!—or Seven in all].”1437

Why again does Proclus say:

The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetraktys as the fountain of perennial nature?1438

Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the exoteric proofs against us have no idea of the real Esoteric meaning. All the ancient Cosmologies—the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the Fifth Root-Race, the Hindû Âryans and the Egyptians, together with the early Chinese races, the remnants of the Fourth or Atlantean Race—based the whole of their Mysteries on number 10; the higher Triangle standing for the invisible and metaphysical World, the lower three and four, or the Septenate, for the physical Realm. It is not the Jewish Bible that brought number seven into prominence. Hesiod used the words, “the seventh is the sacred day,” before the Sabbath of “Moses” was ever heard of. The use of number seven was never confined to any one nation. This is well testified by the seven vases in the Temple of the Sun, near the ruins of Babian in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning continually for ages before the altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians; the seven peninsulas, the seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India; and of the Zohar; the Jewish Sephiroth of the seven splendours; the seven Gothic deities; the seven worlds of the Chaldæans and their seven Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod and Homer; and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS. they discover.1439

What we have to say finally is this: Enough has been brought forward to show why the human principles were and are divided in the Esoteric Schools into seven. Make it four and it will either leave man minus his lower terrestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical standpoint, make of him a soulless animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower—the celestial or terrestrial Tetraktys; to become comprehensible, according to the teachings of the ancient Esoteric School, man must be regarded as a septenary. This was so well understood, that even the so-called Christian Gnostics adopted this time-honoured system.1440 This remained for a long time a secret, for though it was suspected, no MSS. of that time spoke of it clearly enough to satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the literary curiosity of our age—the oldest and best preserved Gospel of the Gnostics, Pistis Sophia. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall quote from an authority, C. W. King, the only Archæologist who has had a faint glimmer of this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the day on the Gnostics and their gems.

According to this extraordinary piece of religious literature—a true Gnostic fossil—the human Entity is the Septenary Ray from the One,1441 just as our School teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of which are borrowed from the four kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus:

From Asiah it gets the Nephesh, or seat of the physical appetites [vital breath, also]; from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the passions [? !]; from Briah, the Neshamah or reason; and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life. This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul’s obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its downward progress through their spheres. But the Pistis-Sophia, with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical shape (§ 282). The Inner Man is similarly made up of four constituents, but these are supplied by the rebellious Æons of the Spheres, being the Power—a particle of the Divine light (“Divinæ particula auræ”) yet left in themselves; the Soul [the fifth] “formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments”; the Ἀντιμῖμον Πνεύματος, Counterfeit of the Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience) [the sixth]; and lastly the Μοῖρα, Fate1442 [Karmic Ego], whose business it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him: if he hath to die by the fire, to lead him into the fire; if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast—[the seventh]!1443

C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.

It Corroborates the Occult Teaching Concerning the Seven Globes and the Seven Races.

We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven Rays of Sûrya, the Sun, are therein made parallel to the seven Worlds, of every Planetary Chain, to the seven Rivers of Heaven and Earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the seven Men, or primitive human groups. The seven ancient Rishis—the progenitors of all that lives and breathes on Earth—are the seven friends of Agni, his seven “Horses,” or seven “Heads.” The human race has sprung from Fire and Water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the Fathers, or the Ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Ashvins, the Âdityas,1444 are all synonymous with those “Sacrificers,” or the Fathers, variously called Pitaras (or Pitris), Angirasas,1445 and Sâdhyas, “Divine Sacrificers,” the most Occult of all. They are all called Deva-putra Rishayah or the “Sons of God.”1446 The “Sacrificers,” moreover, are collectively the One Sacrificer, the Father of the Gods, Vishvakarman, who performed the great Sarva-medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself.

In these Hymns the “Heavenly Man” is called Purusha, the “Man,”1447 from whom Virâj was born1448; and from Virâj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna—lowered from his sublime position to be the chief of the Lords—Dhyânîs or Devas—who regulates all natural phenomena, who “makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow.” The seven Rivers of the Sky (the descending Creative Gods), and the seven Rivers of the Earth (the seven primitive Mankinds), are under his control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna’s laws (Vratâni, or “courses of natural action,” active laws), is punished by Indra1449 the Vedic powerful God, whose Vrata, or law or power, is greater than the Vratâni of any other God.

Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all the known ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the Occult Teachings in almost every respect. Its Hymns, which are the records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our) Race concerning the Primordial Teachings, speak of the Seven Races (two still to come), allegorizing them by the seven “Streams”1450 and of the Five Races (Panchakrishtayah) which have already inhabited this world1451 on the five Regions (Panchapradishah)1452 as also of the three Continents that were.1453

It is only those scholars who will master the secret meaning of the Purusha Sukta—in which the intuition of the modern Orientalists has chosen to see “one of the very latest hymns of the Rig Veda”—who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric Doctrines. He must study, in all the abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning, the relations therein between the (Heavenly) Man (Purusha), sacrificed for the production of the Universe and all in it,1454 and the terrestrial mortal man1455 before he realizes the hidden philosophy of the verse:

15. He [“Man,” Purusha, or Vishvakarman] had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and thrice seven layers of fuel; when the Gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.

This relates to the three septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity of the Vedas, which knew of no other sacrifice, probably, in these earliest oral teachings; and also to the seven primeval groups of Mankind, as Vishvakarman represents divine Humanity collectively.1456

The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, it must, have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsîs who read it in their Vendîdâd and elsewhere, though without understanding the allusions therein contained any better than do the Orientalists; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works.1457

Comparing the Esoteric Teaching with the interpretations by Prof. James Darmesteter, one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus:

The Indo-Iranian Asura [Ahura] was often conceived as sevenfold; by the play of certain mythical [?] formulæ and the strength of certain mythical [?] numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,1458 and the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled. The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, only one of which is known and accessible to man, the one on which we live, namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are seven earths.1459 Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. § 72.)1460

The same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most revered of the Hindû scriptures—the Rig Veda. Mention is made therein of six Worlds, besides our Earth: the six Rajamsi above Prithivî, the Earth, or “this” (Idam) as opposed to “that which is yonder” (i.e., the six Globes on the three other planes or Worlds).1461

The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of the Esoteric Doctrine, and to accentuate the mistake that is made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other people believed in: namely, in seven “Worlds” or Globes of our Planetary Chain, of which only one is accessible to man, at the present time, our Earth; and in the successive appearance and destruction of seven Continents or Earths on this our Globe, each Continent being divided, in commemoration of the seven Globes (one visible, six invisible), into seven islands or continents, seven “climes,” etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities in septenary divisions, which has made the Orientalists—who have, moreover, been further led astray by the oblivion of their primitive doctrines of both the uninitiated Hindûs and Parsîs—feel so puzzled by this ever-recurring sevenfold number as to regard it as “mythical.” It is this oblivion of first principles which has led the Orientalists off the right track and made them commit the greatest blunders. The same failure is found in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant of the Esoteric Doctrine of the earliest Âryans, can never assimilate or even understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these Beings.

Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas, or Amshaspands, and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as Jehovah-Binah-Elohim was the head and synthesis of the Elohim, and no more; so Agni-Vishnu-Sûrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence emanated in physics and also in metaphysics, from the spiritual as well as from the physical Sun, the seven Rays, the seven Fiery Tongues, the seven Planets or Gods. All these became supreme Gods and the One God, but only after the loss of the primeval secrets; i.e., the sinking of Atlantis, or the “Flood,” and the occupation of India by the Brâhmans, who sought safety on the summits of the Himâlayas, for even the high table-lands of what is now Tibet became submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as the “Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the Corporeal World” in the Vendîdâd. Ahura Mazda in its literal translation means the “Wise Lord” (Ahura “lord” and Mazda “wise”). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed the mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (Manas). Ahura (Asura) may be derived from the root ah “to be,” but in its primal signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be.

When Geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know the age of the existing Âryan Brâhmanical nation, and also the time of its descent into the plains of Hindûstan, which did not take place till millenniums later.

Yima, the so-called “first man” in the Vendîdâd, as much as his twin-brother Yama, the son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of Universal History. He is the Progenitor of the Second human Race, hence the personification of the Shadows of the Pitris, and the Father of the Postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said, “Yima,” as we say “man” when speaking of mankind. The “fair Yima,” the first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is the first “man” who dies or disappears, not the first who is born. The “son of Vîvanghat”1462 was, like the son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man, who stood in Esotericism as the representative of the first three Races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these Races the first two never died1463 but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the Third knew death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its “Fall” into generation. This is plainly alluded to in Fargard ii of the Vendîdâd. Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying:

“I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law.”1464

And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and “watch over” his world.

He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest and sacrificer, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer:

“Yes!... Yes, I will nourish, and rule, and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I am king, neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death.”

Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty.

Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred winters passed away, and the earth was replenished with flocks and herds, with men and dogs and birds and with red blazing fires.

Three hundred winters mean three hundred periods or cycles. “Replenished,” mark well; that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive Destructions of the World and its Life-Cycles. Once the “three hundred winters” were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the Earth is becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of Spenta Ârmaita, the female Genius, or Spirit of the Earth, makes that Earth stretch out and become larger by one-third, after which “new flocks and herds and men” appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes the Earth by the same magic power to become larger by two-thirds. “Nine hundred winters” pass away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the third time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the Earth, refer to the three successive Continents and Races issuing one after and from the other, as explained more fully elsewhere. After the third time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima in an assembly of “celestial gods” and “excellent mortals” that upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, and all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for the “Flood,” and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every Race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a Vara—an Enclosure, an Ark—under the God’s direction, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals and “Fires.”

It is of this “Earth” or new Continent that Zarathushtra became the law-giver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till then, as said above, there had been no regular death, but only a transformation, for men had no personality as yet. They had Monads—”Breaths” of the One Breath, as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karma-less. Therefore, as there was no Kâma Loka—least of all Nirvâna or even Devachan—for the “Souls” of men who had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the Phœnix, primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more solid, more physically perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came with the complete physical organism, and with it—moral decay.

This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology with the Universal Doctrine.

Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did not issue from one solitary couple. Nor was there ever a first man—whether Adam or Yima—but a first mankind.

It may, or may not, be “mitigated polygenism.” Once that both Creation ex nihilo (an absurdity) and a superhuman Creator or Creators (a fact) are made away with by Science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences—rather fewer from a scientific point of view—than monogenism does.

In fact, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, Agassiz declares his belief in an indefinite number of “primordial races of men created separately”; and remarks that, “whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man, in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms one and the same human being.”

Occultism defines and limits the number of primordial races to seven, because of the seven “Progenitors,” or Prajâpatis, the evolvers of beings. These are neither Gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from another and lower Planet, reborn on this Planet, and giving birth in their turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again corroborated by one of its echoes—among the Gnostics. In their anthropology and genesis of man they taught that “a certain company of seven Angels,” formed the first men, who were no better than senseless, gigantic, shadowy forms—”a mere wriggling worm” (!) writes Irenæus,1465 who takes, as usual, the metaphor for reality.

D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.

We may now examine other ancient scriptures and see whether they contain the septenary classification, and, if so, to what degree.

Scattered about in thousands of other Sanskrit texts, some still unopened, others yet unknown, as well as in all the Purânas, as much as, if not much more than, even in the Jewish Bible, the numbers seven and forty-nine (7 × 7) play a most prominent part. In the Purânas they are found from the seven Creations, in the first chapters, down to the seven Rays of the Sun at the final Pralaya, which expand into seven Suns and absorb the material of the whole Universe. Thus the Matsya Purâna has:

For the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, in the beginning of a Kalpa, related to Manu the story of Narasimha and the events of seven Kalpas.1466

Then again the same Purâna shows that:

In all the Manvantaras, classes of Rishis1467 appear by seven and seven, and having established a code of law and morality depart to felicity.1468

The Rishis, however, represent many other things besides living sages.

In Dr. Muir’s translation of the Atharva Veda, we read:

1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with seven rays, a thousand eyes, undecaying, full of fecundity. On him intelligent sages mount; his wheels are all the worlds.

2. Thus Time moves on seven wheels; he has seven naves; immortality is his axle. He is at present all these worlds. Time hastens onward the first God.

3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many forms. He is all these worlds in the future. They call him “Time in the highest Heaven.”1469

Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric Volumes:

Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the incognizable That, which can be sensed only through its seven Rays—which are the seven Creations, the seven Worlds, the seven Laws, etc.

Remembering that the Purânas insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space,1470 and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is Maqom, “Space,” it becomes clear why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity—Space, Matter, and Spirit—the one central Point became the Triangle and Quaternary—the perfect Cube—hence seven. Even the Pravaha Wind—the mystic and occult force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the course of the stars and planets—is septenary. The Kûrma and Linga Purânas enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the principles of Cosmic Space.1471 They are intimately connected with Dhruva1472 (now Alpha), the Pole-Star, which is connected in its turn with the production of various phenomena through cosmic forces.

Thus, from the seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc., in the Âryan Scriptures, the number has passed through Indian, Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian mystic thought, until it landed in, and remained indelibly impressed on, every exoteric theology. The seven old books stolen out of Noah’s Ark by Ham, and given to Cush, his son, and the seven Brazen Columns of Ham and Cheiron, are a reflection and a remembrance of the seven primordial Mysteries instituted according to the “seven secret Emanations,” the seven Sounds, and seven Rays—the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven thousand times seven copies of them in later æons.

The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The Vâyu Purâna shows, and the Harivamsha corroborates, concerning the Maruts—the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower Gods in the Rig Veda:

That they are born in every Manvantara [Round], seven times seven (or forty-nine); that, in each Manvantara, four times seven (or twenty-eight) obtain emancipation, but their places are filled up by persons reborn in that character.1473

What are the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who those persons “reborn in that character”? In the Rik and other Vedas, the Maruts are represented as the Storm Gods and the friends and allies of Indra; they are the “Sons of Heaven and of Earth.” This led to an allegory that makes them the children of Shiva, the great patron of the Yogîs:

The Mahâ Yogî, the great ascetic, in whom is centred the highest perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, by which the most unlimited powers are attained, marvels and miracles are worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained.1474

In the Rig Veda the name Shiva is unknown, but the corresponding God is called Rudra, a name used for Agni, the Fire-God, the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the Râmâyana and the Purânas, their mother, Diti—the sister, or complement, and a form of Aditi—anxious to obtain a son who would destroy Indra, is told by Kashyapa, the Sage, that if, “with thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure,” she carries the babe in her womb “for a hundred years,”1475 she will have such a son. But Indra foils her in the design. With his thunderbolt he divides the embryo in her womb into seven portions, and then divides every such portion into seven pieces again, which become the swift-moving deities, the Maruts.1476 These Deities are only another aspect, or a development, of the Kumâras, who are patronymically Rudras, like many others.1477

Diti, being Aditi—unless the contrary is proven to us—Aditi, we say, or Âkâsha in her highest form, is the Egyptian sevenfold Heaven. Every true Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth principle of metaphysical Nature, the Buddhi of Âkâsha. Diti, the Mother of the Maruts, is one of her terrestrial forms, made to represent, at one and the same time, the Divine Soul in the ascetic, and the divine aspirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from the webs of Mâyâ, and consequent final bliss. Indra is now degraded, because of the Kali Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal through a general spread of Ahamkâra, the feeling of Egotism, or “I-am-ness” and ignorance; but in the beginning Indra was one of the greatest Gods of the Hindû Pantheon, as the Rig Veda shows. Surâdhipa the “chief of the gods,” has fallen down from Jishnu, the “Leader of the Celestial Host”—the Hindû St. Michael—to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy of every holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindrî (Indrânî), the personification of Aindriyaka, the evolution of the element of senses, whom he married “because of her voluptuous attractions”; after which he began sending celestial female demons to excite the passions of holy men, Yogîs, and “to beguile them from the potent penances which he dreaded.” Therefore, Indra, now characterized as “the god of the firmament, the personified atmosphere”—is in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and the fifth human principle, Manas in its dual aspect—as connected with Buddhi, and as allowing itself to be dragged down by the Kâma principle, the body of passions and desires. This is demonstrated by Brahmâ telling the conquered God that his frequent defeats were due to Karma, and were a punishment for his licentiousness, and the seduction of various nymphs. It is in this latter character that he seeks, to save himself from destruction, to destroy the coming “babe,” destined to conquer him—the babe, of course, allegorizing the divine and steady will of the Yogî, determined to resist all such temptations, and thus destroy the passions within his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh conquers spirit.1478 He divides the “embryo” (of new divine Adeptship, begotten once more by the Ascetics of the Âryan Fifth Race) into seven portions (a reference not alone to the seven sub-races of the new Root-Race, in each of which there will be a Manu,1479 but also to the seven degrees of Adeptship), and then each portion into seven pieces—alluding to the Manu-Rishis of each Root-Race, and even sub-race.

It does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining “four times seven” emancipations in every Manvantara, and by those persons who are re-born in that character, viz., of the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who “fill up their places.” The Maruts represent (a) the passions that storm and rage within every Candidate’s breast, when preparing for an ascetic life—this mystically; (b) the Occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of Âkâsha’s lower principles—her body, or Sthûla Sharîra, representing the terrestrial, lower atmosphere of every inhabited Globe—this mystically and sidereally; (c) actual conscious existences, beings of a cosmic and psychic nature.

At the same time, Marut in Occult parlance is one of the names given to those Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and are known also as Nirmânakâyas; of those Egos for whom—since they are beyond illusion—there is no Devachan, who, having either voluntarily renounced Nirvâna for the good of mankind, or who not yet having reached it, remain invisible on Earth. Therefore are the Maruts1480 shown, firstly, as the sons of Shiva-Rudra, the Patron Yogî, whose Third Eye (mystically) must be acquired by the Ascetic before he becomes an Adept; then, in their cosmic character, as the subordinates of Indra and his opponents, under various characters. The “four times seven” emancipations have a reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of which Maruta-Jîvas (Monads) have been re-born, and would have obtained final liberation, if only they had chosen to avail themselves of it. But instead of this, out of love for the good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in the meshes of ignorance and misery were it not for this extraneous help, they are re-born over and over again “in that character,” and thus “fill up their own places.” Who they are, “on Earth”—every student of Occult Science knows. And he also knows that the Maruts are Rudras, among whom also the family of Tvashtri, a synonym of Vishvakarman, the great Patron of the Initiates, is included. This gives us an ample knowledge of their true nature.

The same for the septenary division of cosmos and the human principles. The Purânas, along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this. First of all, the Mundane Egg which contained Brahmâ, or the Universe, was externally invested with seven natural elements, at first loosely enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and three secret elements; then the “World” is said to be “encompassed on every side” by seven elements, also within the Egg—as explained:

The world is encompassed on every side, and above, and below, by the shell of the egg (of Brahmâ) [Andakatâha].1481

Around the shell flows Water, which is surrounded with Fire; Fire by Air; Air by Ether; Ether by the Origin of the Elements (Ahamkâra); the latter by Universal Mind, or “Intellect,” as Wilson translates. It relates to Spheres of Being as much as to Principles. Prithivî is not our Earth but the World, the Solar System, and means the “broad,” the “wide.” In the Vedas—the greatest of all authorities, though needing a key to be read correctly—three terrestrial and three celestial Earths are mentioned as having been called into existence simultaneously with Bhûmi, our Earth. We have often been told that six, not seven, appears to be the number of spheres, principles, etc. We answer that there are, in fact, only six principles in man; since his body is no principle, but the covering, the shell of a principle. So with the Planetary Chain; therein, speaking Esoterically, the Earth—as well as the seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh, if we count from the first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin its formation—may be left out of consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The language of Occultism is varied. But supposing that three Earths only, instead of seven, are meant in the Vedas, what are those three, since we still know of but one? Evidently there must be an Occult meaning in the statement under consideration. Let us see. The “Earth that floats” on the Universal Ocean of Space, which Brahmâ divides in the Purânas into seven Zones, is Prithivî, the World divided into seven principles—a cosmic division, looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, physical in its Occult effects. Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and again, in its turn, is divided into seven Zones according to the law of analogy which guided ancient Philosophers. After which we find on it seven Continents, seven Isles, seven Oceans, seven Seas and Rivers, seven Mountains, seven Climates, etc.1482

Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindû scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phœnician, Chaldæan, and Egyptian cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phœnix1483—called by the Hebrews Onech ענק, from Phenoch, Enoch, the symbol of a secret cycle and initiation, and by the Turks, Kerkes—lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self-consumed; and then, reborn from itself, it lives another thousand years, up to seven times seven,1484 when comes the Day of Judgment. The “seven times seven,” or forty-nine, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty-nine Manus, the seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human Cycles in each Round on each Globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a Race Cycle, and the mystical Tree Ababel, the “Father Tree” in the Kurân, shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phœnix; the “Day of Judgment” meaning a minor Pralaya. The author of the Book of God and the Apocalypse believes that:

The Phœnix is ... very plainly the same as the Simorgh of Persian romance; and the account which is given us of this last bird yet more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the Phœnix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge [and also a watery one in its turn]. When the Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been already seven times replenished, with beings different from men, and seven times depopulated:1485 that the age of the human race in which we now are, is to endure seven thousand years, and that she herself had seen twelve of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see.1486

The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in the present, these facts have been noticed by a number of writers; but now a connection can be established between the Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the Book of God:

The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindûs, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the end of the world ... [as a] monstrous lion-bird.... From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the earth, sometimes walking in the ocean ... while its head props the sky; and with the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe; that each reproduced system will last seven thousand years [?]; and that the total duration of the Universewill be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the doctrine of the preëxistence of each renewed creature, they may either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or it may have been part of the primeval religion which their priests had preserved from remote times.1487

It shows rather that the initiated Jews borrowed, and their non-initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost, the sense, and applied the seven Rounds, and the forty-nine Races, etc., wrongly.

Not only their priests, but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We say more: even the Christian editor or author of Revelation has preserved this tradition and speaks of the seven Races, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as can be. Thus saith the angel:

And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come.1488

Who, in the least acquainted with the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings that have fallen, the four Root-Races that were, and part of the Fifth, the one that is; and in the other, that “is not yet come,” the Sixth and Seventh coming Root-Races, as also the sub-races of this, our present Race? Another still more forcible allusion to the seven Rounds and the forty-nine Root-Races in Leviticus, will be found elsewhere, Part III.1489

E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.

Again, number seven is closely connected with the Occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, “the six present, the seventh hidden.” In India they are connected with their nursling, the war God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave this name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, astronomically. As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumâra, a “virgin youth” again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Shiva—the Holy Spirit—hence called Agni-bhû. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of the Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when intended to commemorate one particular event, Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, an Ascetic, with six heads—one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindû Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is well known. A six-rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, a six and occasionally seven-pointed crown, is on his brow; the peacock’s tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which he is also called Dvâdasha-kara, the “twelve-handed,” and Dvâdashâksha, “twelve-eyed.” It is as Shakti-dhara, however, the “spear-holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka-jit, that he is shown to be most famous.

As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by one hundred “years of the gods” (divine years), or one hundred “mortal years,” we can see the tremendous difficulty the non-initiated have in arriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John’s Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic cycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre-historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found any but a few approximate truths.

Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it has been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in their chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism—which we have already exposed—of the Hindû figures 432. These they give in thousands and millions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to 4,320 lunar years,1490 “before the birth of Christ,” as “foreordained” in the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved “by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem.” But Suidas had no other warrant for this assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477 days, as he thinks, or again rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original—thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation.1491 True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldæans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.1492 The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of mortals, which is only one day of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2 of these months constitute a Rûdû, 3 Rûdûs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a year of mortals, which is only a day of the Gods. It is from such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!

This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of the present century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindû chronology, brought from India by certain unscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory on the subject. Because the Hindûs had made of half a revolution of the moon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days, of which Quintus Curtius speaks,1493 is found mentioned in Hindû literature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day! The Chinese, also, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, and hence their year into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent them having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a period of 60 days—the Southern Indian Rûdû—to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus1494 calls “thirty days an Egyptian year,” or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch1495 both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the lunar month consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions? This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the Ayanam and the Rûdû of the Hindûs. The year of 2 months’ duration, and the period of 60 days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traité de l’ Astronomie Indienne et Orientale. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other;1496 the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-tche, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbé Chappe.1497 But is all this any reason for claiming that when the Hindû Purânas say a solar year, they mean one solar day!

It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root nature-number, so to say, in the manifested world, or at any rate in our present terrestrial life-cycle, and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the Ancients so many of the mysteries of Nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old Astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand—to prophesy, it is called—the influence which they would have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and Planets being the never-erring time-measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus respectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or “spheres of action.”1498

This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention called to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are explained in the Commentaries in the following words:

The Circle is not the “One” but the “All.”

In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,1499 it [the Circle] becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in it.

In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three “Worlds”], the One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and the Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton].

In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt obtain Seven, the sacred number of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt have Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming.1500

When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World—the two-fold, three-fold, six-and sevenfold, and especially the nine-fold division—the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to Heaven and Earth, Gods and Men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For:

There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perceptions of the mind. The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds, and probably of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy.1501

So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the septenary periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law.

The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks [or seven days].1502

Dr. Laycock, writing on the “Periodicity of Vital Phenomena,”1503 records a “most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects.”1504

To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he defends biblical chronology:

And man’s life ... is a week, a week of decades. “The days of our years are three-score years and ten.” Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks.1505

Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned founder of “The East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions,” the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the Occult chronology of the Bible; just as, while rejecting the theories, hypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the Physical, or in all the minor details of material Nature.

There is most assuredly an Occult “chronological system in Hebrew scripture,” the Kabalah being its warrant; moreover there is in it “a system of weeks,” based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.1506 And there are in it cycles of the “week of days,” of the “week of months,” of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, and more, of the “week of years of years.”1507 But all this can be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the chronology in every scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days and the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first “week of creation” shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ’s “seven creations.” The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical chronology is, as he says, “regulated by the law of weeks,” and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days may be, and if, finally, “the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales,” then this system is shown to be identical with all the Pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years, in lunar months, elapsed between the “Creation” and the “Nativity,” is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindû Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are preëminently Chaldæan and Indo-Âryan, play such a part in the New Testament? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.

Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts—the Vishnu Purâna and the Bible—and he will find that the “seven creations” of Brahmâ are at the foundation of the “week of creation” in Genesis. The two allegories are different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation-stone. The Bible can be understood only by the light of the Kabalah. Take the Zohar, the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus, of the seven Manvantaras, issue from Brahmâ’s head; they are his “Mind-born Sons,” and it is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from the Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking of the “Skull” (Head) of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One1508 (in Sanskrit Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha, or “Greater Holy Assembly,” says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden fountain issuing from the concealed brain.

And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it [which is the manifest Quaternary, the Tetragrammaton] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth forth into thirty and two paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or again 432].

And again:

Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of the skull [i.e., six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is male-female]; ... and through them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things, of mankind and the races].1509

“We six are lights which shine forth from a seventh (light),” saith Rabbi Abba; “thou art the seventh light”—the synthesis of us all—he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven “companions,” whom he calls the “eyes of Tetragrammaton.”1510

Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed four forms, in order to create four kinds of supernal creatures, i.e., made himself fourfold, or the manifest Quaternary;1511 after that, he is re-born in the seven Rishis, his Mânasaputras, “Mind-born Sons,” who became later, nine, twenty-one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahmâ.1512

There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain—Non-being, i.e., illimitable or absolute “Be-ness.” But when viewed as Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the Triangle in the Square—the sevenfold Cube, not the fourfold, or the plane Square. For it is written in “The Greater Holy Assembly”:

And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod. xvii. 7: “Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One?”1513

—where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the Negatively Existent.1514

Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three made four and the Four made three, and is represented on this Earth by his seven “Companions,” or “Eyes”—the “seven eyes of the Lord.” Microprosopus is, at best, only a secondary manifested Deity. For “The Greater Holy Assembly” elsewhere says:

We have learned that there were ten (Rabbis) [Companions] entered into (the Assembly) [the Sod, “mysterious assembly or mystery”] and that seven came forth1515 [i.e., ten for the unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].

1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were found none present there save those [seven] (companions). And Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: “These are the seven eyes [or principles] of Tetragrammaton” [—i.e., the fourfold Heavenly Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter and Spirit].1516

Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female Chokmah-Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine—the basis and foundation, astrally, of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.

For Christians and believers, this reference to Zechariah and especially to the Epistle of Peter,1517 ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, “man,” chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a “stone.” Christ is the corner-stone, and Peter refers to all men as “lively” (living) stones. Therefore a “stone with seven eyes” on it can only mean a man whose constitution (i.e., his “principles”) is septenary.

To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor, sine quâ non, in the production of occult astral phenomena.

It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only one octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of seven octaves represented theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and in ordinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach:

It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into seven columns, and that the successive numbers in each column are closely allied; i.e., that they exhibit a close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures.... The fact that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number seven is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause must be discovered.

Verily, then, as Rabbi Abba said:

We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (light); thou [Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (the origin of) us all.

For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh. For all things depend from the seventh.1518

The ancient and modern Western American Zuñi Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present-day customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their institutions, political, social and religious, were, and still are, shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a group of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh. Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six “Priests of the House” seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the “Priestess Mother.” Compare this with the “seven great officiating priests” spoken of in the Anugîtâ, the name given to the “seven senses,” exoterically, and to the seven human principles, Esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over to Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulûpî, the daughter of the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuñi priests.

These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a certain day they come out—six priests and one priestess—arrayed in their priestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes the first sun-light; the yellow corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the Aurora Borealis; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the nether underground region—darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of the upper region—of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The “speckled” corn, each grain containing all the colours, is that of the “Priestess-Mother”—woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.

Apart from these was the Sun—the Great Deity—whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became a Zuñi, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about them than any other man now living.

Seven is also the great magic number. In the Occult Records the weapon mentioned in the Purânas and the Mahâbhârata—the Âgneyâstra or “fiery weapon” bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara—is said to be constructed of seven elements. This weapon—supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to have been a “rocket” (!)—is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the Hindû Theatre, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues:

These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual—such as those of paralyzing an enemy, or locking his senses fast in sleep, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven.1519... They are supposed to assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties.... The Râmâyana calls them the sons of Krishâshva.1520

The Shastra-devatâs, “Gods of the divine weapons,” are no more Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of Krishâshva, “the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”1521 It is the fiery javelin of Brahmâ.

The sevenfold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles, symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell.

F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.

If one turns to those wells of information, The Natural Genesis and the Lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too materialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that:

The student of Böhme’s books finds much in them concerning these Seven “Fountain Spirits,” and primary powers, treated as seven properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of the mediæval mysteries....

The followers of Böhme look on such matter as the divine revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the “Wisdom”1522 of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognize the physical features of the ancient “Seven Spirits” beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of Hermes Trismegistus.1523 No matter whether these teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their beginnings.1524 When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions.1525 It is useless for us to read our later thought into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients meant that!1526 Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural knowledge.1527

But the able author of The Book of the Beginnings and of The Natural Genesis does—very fortunately, for us—quite the reverse. He demonstrates most triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge from his learned lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man.”1528 Says the author:

The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven Elemental Powers.1529

Just so, for the Hindûs place their seven primitive Rishis in the Great Bear, and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarshi, Riksha and Chitra-shikhandinas. And their Adepts claim to know whether it is only an astronomical myth, or a primordial mystery having a deeper meaning than it bears on its surface. We are also told that:

The Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The primary Heaven was sevenfold.1530

So it was with the Âryans. One has but to read the Purânas about the beginnings of Brahmâ and his Egg, to see this. Have the Âryans then, taken the idea from the Egyptians? But, as the lecturer proceeds:

The earliest forces recognized in Nature were reckoned as seven in number. These became Seven Elementals, devils [?], or later divinities. Seven properties were assigned to Nature—as matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and division—and seven elements or souls to man.1531

All this was taught in the Esoteric Doctrine, but it was interpreted and its mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with seven, not two or, at the utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their effects worked in invisible or mystic as well as in psychic Nature, and were made referable to Metaphysics and Psychology as much as to Physiology. As the author says:

A principle of sevening, so to say, was introduced, and the number seven supplied a sacred type that could be used for manifold purposes.1532

And it was so used. For:

The seven souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts.... Seven souls, or principles in man were identified by our British Druids.... The Rabbins also ran the number of souls up to seven: so, likewise, do the Karens of India.1533

And then, the author, with several misspellings, tabulates the two teachings—the Esoteric and the Egyptian—and shows that the latter had the same series and in the same order.

[Esoteric] Indian. / Egyptian.

1. Rûpa, body or element of form. / 1. Kha, body.2. Prâna, the breath of life. / 2. Ba, the soul of breath.3. Astral body. / 3. Khaba, the shade.4. Manas, or intelligence.1534 / 4. Akhu, intelligence or perception.5. Kâma Rûpa, or animal soul. / 5. Seb, ancestral soul.6. Buddhi, or spiritual soul. / 6. Putah, the first intellectual father.7. Âtmâ, pure spirit. / 7. Atmu, a divine, or eternal soul.1535

Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) Souls, as (1) The Soul of Blood—the formative; (2) The Soul of Breath—that breathes; (3) The Shade or Covering Soul—that envelopes; (4) The Soul of Perception—that perceives; (5) The Soul of Pubescence—that procreates; (6) The Intellectual Soul—that reproduces intellectually; and (7) The Spiritual Soul—that is perpetuated permanently.

From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct; it becomes less so from the Esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean that the “Esoteric Buddhists” resolve men into a number of elementary spirits, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of maintaining. No “Esoteric Buddhist” has ever been guilty of any such absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows “become spiritual beings in another world,” or “seven potential spirits or elementaries of another life.” What is maintained is simply that every time the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a compound unit of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. Gerald Massey adds:

The seven souls [our “principles”] ... are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts. The moon-god, Taht-Esmun, or the later sun-god, expressed the seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls [we say “principles”].... The seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation, have the same significance.1536

And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the seven keys of the Seven Churches or the Sodalian Mysteries, kabalistically. However, we will not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also discovered that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the Sphinx, of Munich, Herr Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian records. For details the reader must be referred to the articles themselves.

Böhme, the prince of all the mediæval seers, says:

We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all things [which he calls fire, light, sound (the upper three) and desire, bitterness, anguish, and substantiality, thus analyzing the lower in his own mystic way]; whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh [the body or substantiality], is essentially. These are the seven forms of the Mother of all Beings, from whence all that is in this world is generated.1537

And again:

The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as it were creaturely in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are ... God’s powers, and the whole body of the world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain spirits.1538

This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. But how can we agree with Mr. Gerald Massey when he states that:

The Seven Races of Men that have been sublimated and made Planetary [?] by Esoteric Buddhism,1539 may be met with in the Bundahish as (1) the earth-men; (2) water-men; (3) breast-eared men; (4) breast-eyed men; (5) one-legged men; (6) bat-winged men; (7) men with tails.1540

Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later form, is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching. They all refer to the pre-human evolution of the “Water-men terrible and bad” by unaided Nature through millions of years, as previously described. But we deny point-blank the assertion that “these were never real races,” and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to infer and to say that our “instructors have mistaken these shadows of the Past, for things human and spiritual”; but that “they are neither, and never were either,” it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common pithecoid ancestor. What the lecturer takes for a “mode of expression” and nothing more, in the Egyptian Ritual, we take as having quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance. Says the Ritual, the Book of the Dead:

“I am the mouse.” “I am the hawk.” “I am the ape.”... “I am the crocodile whose soul comes from men.”... “I am the soul of the gods.”1541

The last sentence but one is explained by the lecturer, who says parenthetically, “that is, as a type of intelligence,” and the last as meaning, “the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of all.”

The Occult Teaching answers: It means far more.

It gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the human Monad has passed on Globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms—the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal—in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man, if the semi-ethereal, many-shaped creature with the human Monad in it, of the first two Races, can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for, in the Esoteric language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as man, which is in any way the Man, but the inner divine Monad with its manifold principles or aspects.

The lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes Esoteric Buddhism and its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to represent the whole as a new-fangled doctrine. And there are many such, in Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the Esotericism of the old Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brâhmans who have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does not appear so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the question of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, more than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence than the everlasting question of the filioque dogma, which since the eighth century has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary dogma is presented, the substance is there, and its presence and importance in the Brâhmanical system may be judged by what one of India’s learned meta-physicians and Vedântic scholars says of it:

The real esoteric sevenfold classification is one of the most important, if not the most important classification, which has received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the fourfold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble-faced prism of Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven principles of this classification. The progress of development presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of the rays of the spectrum. While the fourfold classification is amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real sevenfold classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance. It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the peculiar property of the “Trans-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine.” In fact, it has a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words, there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has became the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom-Religion. This classification is not the sevenfold classification we have adopted. I make this assertion without the slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states of Prajñâ or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which define the limits of human consciousness.1542

The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, on one point. The “sevenfold classification” in the Esoteric System has never (to the writer’s knowledge) been claimed by any one belonging to it, as “the peculiar property of the ’Trans-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine’ ”; but only as having survived in that old School alone. It is no more the property of the Trans-, than it is of the Cis-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine, but is simply the common inheritance of all such Schools, left to the Sages of the Fifth Root-Race by the great Siddhas1543 of the Fourth. Let us remember that the Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of the oldest MSS. of India, only toward their “Fall,” whereby the submersion of their Continent was brought on. What is claimed is simply that the Wisdom imparted by the “Divine Ones”—born through the Kriyâshaktic powers of the Third Race before its Fall and separation into sexes—to the Adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity in a certain Brotherhood. The said School or Fraternity being closely connected with a certain island of an inland sea—believed in by both Hindûs and Buddhists, but called “mythical” by Geographers and Orientalists—the less one talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said “sevenfold classification” as having “a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos,” since both are identical, whether the one Logos is called Îshvara or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ or Padmapâni. These are, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact. Brâhmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution. While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree, once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement must fall, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The “Achilles’ heel” of orthodox Brâhmanism is the Advaita philosophy, whose followers are called by the pious “Buddhists in disguise”; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern Mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the philosophies of the Yogâchârya School of Âryâsangha and the Mahâyâna, who are twitted in their turn by their co-religionists as “Vedântins in disguise.” The Esoteric Philosophy of both these can be but one if carefully analyzed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Shankarâchârya are most closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain Esoteric Teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form rather than of substance.

A most mystic discourse, full of septenary symbology, may be found in the Anugita1544 There the Brâhmana narrates the bliss of having crossed beyond the regions of illusion:

In which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding darkness, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in which desire and anger are the obstructors.

The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest—a symbol for man’s life-time—and also that forest itself:1545

In that forest are seven large trees [the senses, mind and understanding, or Manas and Buddhi, included], seven fruits, and seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid flowers and fruits of five colours.

The senses, says the commentator:

Are called trees, as being producers of the fruits ... pleasures and pains ...; the guests are the powers of each sense personified—they receive the fruits above described; the hermitages are the trees ... in which the guests take shelter; the seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the higher life, by repudiating as not one’s own the actions of each member out of the group of seven.1546

The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory. Says the Brâhmana, continuing his description:

That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of four colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of three colours, and mixed. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of two colours, and of beautiful colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of one colour, and fragrant. That forest is filled [instead of with seven] with two large trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours [mind and understanding—the two higher senses, or theosophically, Manas and Buddhi]. There is one fire [the Self] here, connected with the Brahman,1547 and having a good mind [or true knowledge, according to Arjuna Mishra]. And there is fuel here, (namely) the five senses [or human passions]. The seven (forms of) emancipation from them are the seven (forms of) initiation. The qualities are the fruits.... There ... the great sages receive hospitality. And when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another forest shines forth, in which intelligence is the tree, and emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of) tranquillity, which depends on knowledge, which has contentment for its water, and which has the Kshetrajña1548 within for the sun.

Now, all the above is very plain, and no Theosophist, even among the least learned, can fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The “great sages” who “receive hospitality” are explained as meaning the senses, “which, having worked as unconnected with the self are finally absorbed into it.” But one fails to understand, if the senses are “unconnected” with the “Higher Self,” in what manner they can be “absorbed into it.” One would think, on the contrary, that it is just because the personal senses gravitate and strive to be connected with the impersonal Self, that the latter, which is Fire, burns the lower five and purifies thereby the higher two, “mind and understanding,” or the higher aspects of Manas1549 and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The “great sages” disappear after having “been worshipped.” Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses) are “unconnected with the self”? By Mind, of course; by Manas (in this case merged in the sixth sense) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman, the Self, or Kshetrajña—the Soul’s Spiritual Sun. Into the latter, in time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped “great sages” and given hospitality to terrestrial wisdom; but once that “another forest shone forth” upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi, the seventh sense, but sixth principle) which is transformed into the Tree—that Tree whose fruit is emancipation—which finally destroys the very roots of the Ashvattha tree, the symbol of life and of its illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state of emancipation have, in the words of the above-cited Sage, “no fear afterwards.” In this state “the end cannot be perceived because it extends on all sides.”

“There always dwell seven females there,” he goes on to say, carrying out the imagery. These females—who, according to Arjuna Mishra, are the Mahat, Ahamkâra and five Tanmâtras—have always their faces turned downwards, as they are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension.

In that same [Brahman, the Self] the seven perfect sages, together with their chiefs, ... abide, and again emerge from the same. Glory, brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection and power—these seven rays follow after this same sun [Kshetrajña, the Higher Self].... Those whose wishes are reduced [the unselfish]; ... whose sins [passions] are burnt up by penance, merging the self in the self,1550 devote themselves to Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of knowledge [Brahman, or the Self], praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that forest, they are [re-] born so as not to lose courage. Such, indeed, is this holy forest.... And understanding it, they [the sages] act (accordingly), being directed by the Kshetrajña.

No translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of Self within Self, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism, however often he may err in minor details of the Philosophy.

And here we must be allowed a last remark. No true Theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon Occult matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselves—are all liable to err. Thus mistakes have been made in Isis Unveiled, in Esoteric Buddhism, in Man, in Magic: White and Black, etc., and more than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great Adept, if not by an Avatâra. Then only should we say, “This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!” But so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect? “Endless is the search for truth!” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers’ ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?

Our chief point in the present subject, however, has been to show that the septenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, for we are supported in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediæval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well said; what the latter repeated, has generally been distorted. An instance: Read the Pythagorean Fragments, and study the septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned Mason, in his Pythagorean Triangle, who speaks as follows:

The Theosophic Philosophy ... counted seven properties [or principles] in man—viz.:

(1) The divine golden man.

(2) The inward holy body from fire and light, like pure silver.

(3) The elemental man.

(4) The mercurial ... paradisiacal man.

(5) The martial soul-like man.

(6) The venerine, ascending to the outward desire.

(7) The solar man, [a witness to and] an inspector of the wonders of God [the Universe].

They had also seven fountain spirits or powers of nature.1551

Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western Theosophic Philosophy with the latest Theosophic explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily:

Wisdom hath builded her house,

She hath hewn out her seven pillars.1552

As to the charge that our School has not adopted the sevenfold classification of the Brâhmans, but has confused it, this is quite unjust. To begin with, the “School” is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) quite another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the tremendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of Prajñâ or Consciousness; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Prajñâ is, in Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge, though only one of the states of that consciousness, came to him; in other words, it is to make him account for something he knows on this plane, by something he knows nothing about on the other planes; i.e., to lead him from the spiritual and the psychological, direct to the ontological. This is why the primary, old classification was adopted by the Theosophists—of which classifications in truth there are many.

To busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses and proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional enumeration from theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme are far less philosophical than even the seven liberal and the seven accursed sciences—or the seven arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the latter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as for the future. The modern name for it is Hypnotism; used as it is by scientific and ignorant Materialists, in the general ignorance of the seven principles, it will soon become Satanism in the full acceptation of the term.