H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3

The Primitive Woman- (Page 155) The Phoenician cosmogony has connected Bohu βαανBaav into a personified expression denoting the primitive substance, and as a deity, the mother of races of the Gods [ which is Aditi and Vach]. The Aramean name βαφσς, Buto, for the mother of the gods, which passed over to the Gnostics, Babylonians and Egyptians, is identical then with Môt (., our Muth) properly, ( βωθoriiginated in Phoenician from an interchange of b with m. [ Pp. 295. 296 ]

 

Rather, one would say, go to the origin. The mystic euhemerisation of Wisdom and Intelligence, operating in the work of cosmic evolution, or Buddhi under the names of Brahma, Purusha, etc., as male power, and Aditi-Vàch, etc., as female, whence Sarasvati, Goddess of Wisdom, who became under the veils of Esoteric concealment, Butos, Bythos - Depth, the grossly material, personal female, called Eve, the “primitive woman” of Irenaeus, and the world springing out of Nothing.

 

The workings out of this glyph of 4^th Genesis help to the comprehension of the division of one character into the forms of two persons; as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abram and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and so on [all male and female] . . . Now, as linking together several great salient points in the Biblical structure: (1) as to the Old and New Testament; with also (2) as to the Roman Empire; (3) as to confirming the meaning and uses of symbols; and (4) as to confirming the entire explanation and reading of the glyphs; as (5) recognizing and laying down the base of the great pyramid as the foundation square of the Bible construction; (6) as well as the new Roman adoption under Constantine - the following given: [ Had we known the learned author before his book was printed, he might have been perchance prevailed upon to add a seventh link from which all others, far preceding those enumerated in point of time, and surpassing them in universally philosophical meaning, have been derived, aye, even to the great pyramid, whose foundation square was, in its turn, the great Aryan Mysteries.]

 

Cain has been shown to be . . . the 360 circle of the Zodiac, the perfect and exact standard, b a squared division; hence his name of Melchizadik . . . [The geometrical and numerical demonstrations here follow.] It has been repeatedly stated that the object of the Great Pyramid construction was to measure the heavens and the earth . . . (the objective spheres as evoluting from the subjective, purely spiritual Kosmos, we beg leave to add); therefore, its measuring containment would indicate all the substance of measure of the heaven and the earth, or agreeably to ancient recognition, Earth, Air, Water and Fire.[ We would say cosmic Matter, Spirit, Chaos, and Divine Light, for the Egyptians idea was identical in this with the Aryan. However, the author is right with regard to the Occult Symbology of the Jews. They were a remarkably matter of fact, unspiritual people at all times, yet even with them “Ruach” was Divine Spirit, not “air.”] (The base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference in feet of 2400. The characteristic of this is 24 feet, or 6 X 4 = 24, or this very Cain-Adam square.) Now, by the restoration of the encampment of the Israelites, as initiated by Moses, by the great scholar,( Page 156) Father Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit priest, the above is precisely by Biblical record and traditionary sources, the method of laying off this encampment. The four interior squares were devoted to (1) Moses and Aaron; (2) Kohath; (3) Gershom; and (4) Merari - the last three being the head of the Levites. The attributes of these squares were the primal attributes of Adam-Mars and were concreted of the elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, or = Iam = Water, . Nour = Fire, = Rouach = Air, and = Iabeshah = Earth. The initial letters of these words are INRI. [The words translated as Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum - “Jesus, King of the Jews.”] This square of INRI is the Adam square, which was extended from, as a foundation, into four others of 145 X 2 = 288, to the side of the large square of 288 X 4 = 115 -2, = the whole circumference. But this square is the display of also circular elements and 115-2 can denote this. Put INRI into a circle, or read it as the letters stand in the square, as to its value of 1521, and we have which reads 115-2 of this fact.

 

But as seen Cain denotes this as, or in, the 115 of his name: which 115 was the very complement to make up the 360 day year, to agree with the balances of the standard circle, which were Cain. The corner squares of the larger square are, A = Leo, and B = Dan Scorpio; and it is seen that Cain pierces Abel at the intersection of the equinoctial with the solstice cross lines, referred to from Dan-Scorpio on the celestial circle. But Dan-Scorpio borders on Libra, the scales, whose sign is (which sign is that of the ancient pillow on which the back of the head to the ears[ Mr Ralston Skinner shows that the symbol the crossed bones and skull, has the letter P Koph, the half of the head behind the ears.] rested, the pillow of Jacob), and is represented for one symbol as Also the badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life, in the symbol Now the cross is the emblem of the origin of measures, in the Jehovah form of a straight line ONE of a denomination of 20612, the perfect circumference; hence Cain was this as Jehovah, for the text says that he was Jehovah. But the attachment of a man to this cross was that of 113: 355 to 6561: 5153 X 4 = 20612, as shown. Now, over the head of Jesus crucified was placed the inscription, of which the initial letters of the words have always been retained as symbolic, and handed down and used as a monogram of Jesus Chrestos - viz., INRI or Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum; but they are located on the Cross, or the cubed form of the circular origin of measures which measure the substance of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, or INRI = 1152, as shown. Here is the man on the cross, or 113; 355 combined with 6561: 5153 X 4 = 20612. These are the pyramid-base numbers as coming from 113: 355 as the Hebrew source; whence the Adam-square, which is the pyramid base, and the centre one to the larger square of the encampment. Bend INRI into a circle, and we have 1152, or the circumference of the latter. But Jesus dying ( or Abel married) made use of the very words needed to set forth all. He says, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani . . . Read them by their power values, in circular form, as produced from the Adam form as shown, and we have .. = 113, = 113, or 113-311: = 345, or Moses in the Cain-Adam pyramid circle: = 710, equals Dove, or Jonah and 710 divided by 2 = 355, or 355 -553: and finally, as determinative of all or ni......... where = nun, fish = 565, and = 1 or 10; together 565 . = or the Christ value.

 

Kabalistic Reading of Gospels- (Page 157) [All of the above] throws light on the transfiguration scene on the mount. There were present there Peter and James and John with Jesus; or Iami, James, Water; , Peter, Earth , John, Spirit, Air, and , Jesus, Fire, Life - together INRI. But behold Eli and Moses met them there, or . and or Eli and Lamah, or 113 and 345. And this shows that the scene of transfiguration was connected with the one above set forth. [ Pp. 296 -302 . By these numbers, explains the author. “Eli is 113 (by placing the word in a circle): amah being 345, is by change of letters to suit the same value ( in a circle) or Moses, while Sabachth is John or the dove, or Holy Spirit, because (in a circle) it is 710 (or 355 X 2). The termination ni, as meni or 5651, becomes Jehovah.]

 

This kabalistical reading of the Gospel narratives - hitherto supposed to record the most important, the most mystically awful, yet most real events of the life of Jesus - must fall with terrible weight upon some Christians. Every honest trusting believer who has shed tears of reverential emotion over the events of the short period of the public life of Jesus of Nazareth, has to choose one of the two ways opening before him after reading the aforesaid: either his faith has to render him quite impervious to any light coming from human reasoning and evident fact; or he must confess that he has lost his Saviour. The One whom he had hitherto considered as the unique incarnation on this earth of the One Living God in heaven, fades into thin air, on the authority of the properly read and correctly interpreted Bible itself. Moreover, since on the authority of Jerome himself and his accepted and authentic confession, the book written by the hand of Matthew “exhibits matter not for edification but for destruction” (of Church and human Christianity, and only that) what truth can be expected from his famous Vulgate? Human mysteries, concocted by generations of Church Fathers bent upon evolving a religion of their own invention, are seen instead of a divine Revelation; and that this was so is corroborated by a prelate of the Latin Church. Saint Gregory Nazianzen wrote to his friend and confidant, St. Jerome:

Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they understand the more they admire . . . Our fathers and doctors have often said, not what they thought, but that to which circumstances and necessity forced them.

 (Page 158) Which then of the two - clergy, or the Occultists and Theosophists - are the more blasphemous and dangerous? Is it those who would impose upon the world’s acceptance a Saviour of their own fashioning, a God with human shortcomings, and who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being; or those others who say: Jesus of Nazareth was in Initiate, a holy, grand and noble character, but withal human, though truly “a Son of God”?

 

If Humanity is to accept a so-called supernatural Religion, how far more logical to the Occultist and the Psychologist seems the transparent allegory given of Jesus by the Gnostics. They, as Occultists, and with Initiates for their Chiefs, differed only in their renderings of the story and in their symbols, and not at all in substance. What say the Ophites, the Nazarenes, and other “heretics”? Sophia, “the Celestial Virgin,” is prevailed upon to send Christos, her emanation, to the help of perishing humanity, from whom Ilda-Baoth (the Jehovah of the Jews) and his six Sons of Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels) are shutting out the divine light. Therefore, Christos, the perfect, [ The Western personification of that power, which the Hindus call the Vija, the “one seed,” or Maha Vishnu - a power, not the God - or that mysterious Principle that contains in itself the Seed of Avatârism.]

Uniting himself with Sophia [divine wisdom] descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form . . . [and] entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From this time forth Jesus began to work miracles; before that he had been entirely ignorant of his own mission.

 Ilda-Baoth, discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his kingdom of Matter, stirred up the Jews, his own people, against Him, and Jesus was put to death. When Jesus was on the Cross Christos and Sophia left His body, and returned to Their own sphere. The material body of Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but He Himself, the Inner Man, was clothed with a body made up of aether. [ Arise into Nervi from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed Avatâr!”]

Thenceforth he consisted merely of soul and spirit . . . During his sojourn upon earth of eighteen months after he had risen, he received from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, which he communicated to the small portion of the Apostles who were capable of receiving the same. [ The Gnostics and their Remains. King. pp.100, 101.]

 The above is transparently Eastern and Hindu; it is the Esoteric Doctrine pure and simple, save for the names and the allegory. It is, more or less, the history of every Adept who obtains Initiation.

 

Universal Teachings- (Page 159) The Baptism in the Jordan is the Rite of Initiation, the final purification, whether in sacred pagoda, tank, river, or temple lake in Egypt or Mexico. The perfect Christos and Sophia - divine Wisdom and Intelligence - enter the Initiate at the moment of the mystic rite, by transference from Guru to Chela, and leave the physical body, at the moment of the death of the latter, to re-enter the Nirmânakâya, or the astral Ego of the Adept.

The spirit of Buddha [collectively] overshadows the Bodhisattvas of his Church says the Buddhist Ritual of Aryasangha.

 Says the Gnostic teaching:

When he [ the spirit of Christos] shall have collected all the Spiritual, all the Light [ that exists in matter], out of Ildabaoth’s empire, Redemption is accomplished and the end of the world arrived. [ Loc. Cit.]

 Say the Buddhists;

When Buddha [the Spirit of the Church] hears the hour strike, he will send Maitreya Buddha - after whom the old world will be destroyed.

That which is said of Basilides by King may be applied as truthfully to every innovator, so called, whether of a Buddhist or of a Christian Church. In the eyes of Clemens Alexandrinus, he says, the Gnostics taught very little that was blameable in their mystical transcendental views.

In his eyes the latter (Basilides), was not a heretic, that is an innovator upon the accepted doctrines of the Catholic Church, but only a theosophic speculator who sought to express old truths by new formulae. [ Op. cit.,p. 258.]

 There was a Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus; and “secrecy” in those days meant Secrets, or Mysteries of Initiation, all of which have been either rejected or disfigured by the Church. In the Clementine Homilics we read:

And Peter said: “We remember that our Lord and Teacher, commanding us, said ‘Guard the mysteries for me and the sons of my house.’” Wherefore also he explained to His disciples privately the Mysteries of the Kingdom of the Heavens.[ Homilies XIX. XX,I ]

 

SECTION XIX

 

St. Cyprian of Antioch

 

(Page 160) THE Aeons (Stellar Spirits) - emanated from the Unknown of the Gnostics, and identical with the Dhyan Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine - and their Pleroma, having been transformed into Archangels and the “Spirits of the Presence” by the Greek and Latin Churches, the prototypes have lost caste. The Pleroma[ The Pleroma constituted the synthesis or entirety of all the spiritual entities. St. Paul still used the name in his Epistles.] was now called the “Heavenly Host,” and therefore the old name had to become identified with Satan and his “Host.” Might is right in every age, and History is full of contrasts. Manes has been called the “Paraclete” [ The “Comforter,” second Messiah, intercessor. “A term applied to the Holy Ghost.” Manes was the disciple of Terebinthus, an Egyptian Philosopher, who, according to the Christian Socrates (1.i., cited by Tillemont, iv. 584). “while invoking one day the demons of the air, fell from the roof of his house and was killed.”] by his followers. He was an Occultist, but passed to posterity, owing to the kind exertions of the Church, as a Sorcerer, so a match had to be found for him by way of contrast. We recognise this match in St. Cyprianus of Antioch, a self-confessed if not a real “Black Magician,” it seems, whom the Church - as a reward for his contrition and humility - subsequently raised to the high rank of Saint and Bishop.

 

What history knows of him is not much, and it is mostly based on his own confession, the truthfulness of which is warranted, we are told, by St. Gregory, the Empress Eudoxia, Photius and the Holy Church. This curious document was ferreted out by the Marquis de Mirville, [Cy.Op. cit.,vi, 169-183.] in the Vatican, and by him translated into French for the first time, as he assures the reader. We beg his permission to retranslate a few pages, not for the sake of the penitent Sorcerer, but for that of some students of Occultism, who will thus have an opportunity of comparing the methods of ancient Magic (or as the Church calls it, Demonism) with those of modern Theurgy and Occultism.

 

Magic in Antioch- (Page 161) The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third century, 252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to find how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator “Satan,” or the “Serpent Dragon,” as he calls him. There are other and more modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus, Parsis and other “heathen” of India are apt to denounce their forefathers’ religions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession:

O all of you who reject the real mysteries of Christ, see my tears! . . .You who wallow in your demoniacal practices, learn by my sad example all the vanity of their [the demons’] baits . . . I am that Cyprianus, who, vowed to Apollo from his infancy, was early initiated into all the arts of the dragon. [“The great serpent placed to watch the temple,” comments de Mirville. “How often have we repeated that it was no symbol, no personification but really a serpent occupied by a god!” - he exclaims; and we answer that at Cairo in a Mussulman, not a heathen temple, we have seen, as thousands of other visitors have also seen, a huge serpent that lived there for centuries, we were told, and was held in great respect. Was it also “occupied by a God,” or possessed, in other words?] Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Mithra: three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter,[ The Mysteries of Demeter, or the "afflicted mother".] and I also became the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.

 Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning of their [the Gods’] speeches and their clamorous manifestations (strepituum). It is there that I was made to see in imagination (phantasia) [or mayâ] those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of demons; . . . and I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing. [ By the satyrs.] I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the Gods and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations. [ This looks rather suspicious and seems interpolated. De Mirville tries to have what he says of Satan and his Court sending their imps on earth to tempt humanity and masquerade at seances corroborated by the ex-sorcerer.]

 

At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices. [ This does not look like sinful food. It is the diet of Chelas to this day.]

 

When I was fifteen my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of (Page 162) bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces grafted [“Grafted” is the correct expression. “The seven Builders graft the divine and the beneficent forces on to the gross material nature of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms every Second Round - says the Catechism of Lanoos.] (insitas) on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution. [ Only the Prince of the World is not Satan, as the translator would make us believe, but the collective Host of the Planetary. This is a little theological backbiting.] At twenty I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of demons [Daimones or Spirits] with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, they sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain planets, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light. [ Here the Elemental and Elementary Spirits are evidently meant.] There I learned the number of the fallen Princes, [ The reader has already learned the truth about them in the course of the present work.] that which takes place in human souls and the bodies they enter into communication with.

 

I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and the rains, between the motion of the earth [ Pity the penitent Saint had not imparted his knowledge of the rotation of the earth and heliocentric system earlier to his Church. That might have saved more than one human life - that of Bruno for one.] and the motion of the seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on is shoulders. [ Chelas in their trials of initiation, also see in trances artificially generated for them, the vision of the Earth supported by an elephant on the top of a tortoise standing on nothing - and this, to teach them to discern the true from the false.].

 

When thirty I travelled to Chaldaea to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light [Akâsha]. I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldaean division of Ether into 365 parts, [ Relating to the days of the year, also to 7X7 divisions of the earth’s sublunary sphere, divided into seven upper and seven lower spheres with their respective Planetary Hosts or “armies.”] and I perceived that everyone of the demons who divide it among themselves [ Daimon is not “demon,” as translated by De Mirville, but Spirit. ] was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein [in the Ether]. [ All this is to corroborate his dogmatic assertions that Pater Aether or Jupiter is Satan! and that pestilential diseases, cataclysms, and even thunderstorms that prove disastrous, come from the Satanic Host dwelling in Ether - a good warning to the men of Science! ] They [the Chaldees] explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light.

 

I got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De Mirville explains! ] [ The translator replaces the word Mediators by mediums, excusing himself in a footnote by saying that Cyprian must have meant modern mediums!] and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.[ Cypriannus simply meant to hint at the rites and mysteries of Initiation, and the pledge of secrecy and oaths that bound the Initiates together. His translator, however, has made a Witches Sabbath of it instead.]