INTRODUCTORY.                                          xliii

The “very old Book” is the
original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled.  Not only this latter and the Siphrah
Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah,* the work attributed by
the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king,
China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes,
the Purânas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch
itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume.  Tradition says, that it was taken
down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the
Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the
very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when its language
(the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the
forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the
lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race,
the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and
1st Races.  The
“illustration” spoken of in “Isis”
relates to the evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in
the Vaivasvata Manvantara or “Round;” each Round being composed of
the Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our
life cycle, the middle
point of the 5th being nearly reached.  The illustration is symbolical, as
every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning.  The old book, having described Cosmic
Evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including physical
man, after giving the true history of the races from the First down to
the Fifth (our) race, goes no further.
It stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989
years ago at the death of Krishna, the bright
“Sun-god,” the once living hero and reformer.

--------------------------------------------------------

SD1-I-1-Stanza V

STANZA
V.

1.  THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST
SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY
CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND (a).

COMMENTARY.

(a) This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to
explain.  Its language is
comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory and its
purposely obscure phraseology.  The
question will surely be asked, “Do the Occultists believe in all these
‘Builders,’ ‘Lipika,’ and ‘Sons of Light’
as Entities, or are they merely imageries?” To this the answer is given
as plainly:  “After due
allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of
these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual humanity
within physical mankind.  For
the hosts of these Sons of Light and ‘Mind-born Sons’ of the first
manifested Ray of the UNKNOWN ALL, are the very root of spiritual man.”
Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a specially created soul
for every human birth—a fresh supply of these pouring in daily, since
“Adam”—we have to admit the occult teachings.  This will be explained in its place.  Let us see, now, what may be the
occult meaning of this Stanza.

The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully
conscious god,—aye, even the highest—the Spiritual primeval
INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human stage.  And when we say human, this does not
apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any
world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the
appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since
the middle point of
the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed.  Each Entity must have won for itself
the right of becoming divine, through self-experience.  Hegel, the great German thinker,
must have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that
the Unconscious evolved the Universe only “in the hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness,” of becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also
the secret meaning of the usual Purânic phrase about

NO
MAN—NO GOD.                                             107

Brahmâ
being constantly “moved by the desire to create.” This
explains also the hidden Kabalistic meaning of the saying:  “The Breath becomes a
stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a
spirit; and the spirit, a god.”  The Mind-born Sons, the Rishis, the
Builders, etc., were all men—of whatever forms and shapes—in
other worlds and the preceding Manvantaras.

-----------------------------------------

SD1-I-1-Explanations concerning the Globes and the Monads:

The student hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by
the fourth Globe and the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution.

From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis,
to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series
occupies a unique position.
Unlike the others, the Fourth has no “sister” Globe on the
same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the
“balance” represented by the whole chain.  It is the sphere of final evolutionary
adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance
is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder
of its incarnations in the cycle.
And therefore it is, that, after this central turning-point has been
passed in the Great Cycle,—i.e., after the middle point of the
Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe—no more Monads can enter the
human kingdom.  The door is
closed for this Cycle and the balance struck.  For were it otherwise—had there
been a new soul

MAN, THE OLDEST SON OF THE EARTH.                            183

created
for each of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and
had there been no reincarnation—it would become difficult indeed to
provide room for the disembodied “Spirits;” nor could the origin
and cause of suffering ever be accounted for.  It is the ignorance of the occult tenets
and the enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious
education, which have created materialism and atheism as a protest against the
asserted divine order of things.

--------------------------------------------

SD1-I-1-Stanza VI

192                                                           THE
SECRET DOCTRINE.

(a) That which is meant by the qualification the
“Fourth” is explained as the “fourth Round” only on the
authority of the Commentaries.
It can equally mean fourth “Eternity” as “Fourth
Round,” or even the fourth (our) Globe.  For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is
the fourth Sphere on the fourth or lowest plane of material life.  And it so happens that we are in the
Fourth Round, at the middle
point of which the perfect equilibrium between Spirit and Matter had to
take place.* Says the Commentary explaining the verse:—

“The holy youths (the gods) refused to multiply
and create species after their likeness, after their kind.  They are not fit forms (rupas)
for us.  They have to grow.  They refuse to enter the chhayas (shadows
or images) of their inferiors.  Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from
the beginning, even among the gods, and they fell under the eye
of the Karmic Lipikas.”

They had to suffer for it in later births.  How the punishment reached the gods will
be seen in the second volume.

--------------------------------------

SD1-I-2-XIII The Seven Creations

(IV.) The Mukhya,
the Primary as it begins the series of four. Neither the word
“inanimate” bodies nor yet immovable things, as translated
by Wilson, gives a correct idea of the Sanskrit terms used. Esoteric
philosophy is not the only one to reject the idea of any atom being inorganic,
for it is found also in orthodox Hinduism. Moreover, Wilson himself says
(in his collected Works, vol. iii., p.
381): “All the Hindu systems consider vegetable bodies as endowed
with life . . .” Charâchara, or the
synonymous sthâvara and jangama, is, therefore,
inaccurately rendered by “animate and inanimate,” “sentient
beings,” and “unconscious,” or “conscious and
unconscious beings,” etc., etc. “Locomotive and
fixed” would be better, since trees are considered to possess souls.”
Mukhya is the “creation” or organic evolution of the vegetable
kingdom. In this secondary Period, the three degrees of Elemental
or Rudimental Kingdoms are evolved in this world, corresponding inversely
in order to the three Prakritic creations during the Primary period of
Brahmâ’s activity. As in that period, in the words of
“Vishnu Purâna”: “The first creation was that of
Mahat (Intellect), the second, of Tanmâtras (rudimental
principles), and the third, that of the senses (Aindriyaka)”; in this
one, the order of the Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) The nascent
centres of Force (intellectual and physical); (2) the rudimental
principles—nerve force, so to say; and (3) nascent apperception,
which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially developed in the
third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the

—————

* “The three
Creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six creations
which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first are the work of
Brahmâ (Vâyu-Purâna), Here “creations”
mean everywhere stages of Evolution, Mahat, “Intellect”
or mind (which corresponds with Manas, the former being on the Cosmic,
and the latter on the human plane) stands here, too, lower than Buddhi
or Supra-divine Intelligence. Therefore, when we read in Linga
Purâna that “the first Creation was that of Mahat, Intellect
being the first in manifestation,” we must refer that (specified)
creation to the first evolution of our system or even our Earth, none of the
preceding ones being discussed in the Purânas, but only
occasionally hinted at.

—————

CREATIONS
CONTINUED.                           455

objective kingdom of minerals, in which
latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-develop only in the plants).
The mukhya “Creation,” then, is the middle point between the three lower and
the three higher kingdoms, which represent the seven esoteric kingdoms of
Kosmos, as of Earth.

--------------------------------------------

SD1-I-3-XIV-Forces -Modes of Motion or Intelligences?

When we speak, therefore, as in Book II., of men who inhabited
this globe 18,000,000 years back, we have in the mind neither the men of our
present races, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc.
The Earth and mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and planets, have all their growth,
changes, developments, and gradual evolution in their life-periods; they are
born, become infants, then children, adolescents, grown-up bodies, grow old,
and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this
universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch: “Behold, I have showed thee
all things. Thou seest the Sun, Moon, and those which conduct the stars
of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to
return. . . . In the days of sinners the
years shall be shortened . . . everything done on Earth
shall be subverted . . . the moon shall change its
laws” . . . etc. Ch. lxxix.)

The “days of Sinners” meant the days when matter would be
in its full sway on Earth, and man would have reached the apex of physical
development in stature and animality. That came to pass during the
period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race (the 4th), which was drowned as
prophesied by Uriel. Since then man began decreasing in physical
stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in

610                                               THE
SECRET DOCTRINE.

Book II. But as we are in the mid-point of our sub-race
of the Fifth Root Race—the acme of materiality in each—therefore
the animal propensities, though more refined, are not the less developed for
that: and they are so chiefly in civilized countries.

-----------------------------------

SD2-II-1-Stanza VI

The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general
cataclysms and disturbances of our globe, which—owing to its being the
period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the life
allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the
three preceding Rounds (the cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life
and of its semi-ethereal conditions) physical Humanity has existed upon it for
the last 18,000,000 years.† This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years
of the mineral and vegetable development.

-------------------------------------

SD2-II-1-Stanza
VIII

EVOLUTION OF THE
ANIMAL MAMMALIANS.—THE FIRST FALL.

§§
(28) How the first mammals were produced.  (29) A quasi-Darwinian Evolution.  (30) The animals get solid bodies.  (31) Their separation into sexes:  (32) The first sin of the mindless men.

28.  FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT (a); FROM
THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL
BEFORE (previous, Third Round); AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST; THE FIRST
ANIMALS (of this Round) WERE PRODUCED.

(a)
The Occult doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later
work of evolution than man.
Evolution proceeds in cycles.  The great Manvantaric cycle of Seven
Rounds, beginning in the First Round with mineral, vegetable, and animal,
brings its evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle
of the Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round.  It is on our Earth, then, (the Fourth
sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that this middle point has been
reached.  And since the Monad
has passed, after its “first inmetallization” on Globe A, through
the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states
of matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached
only at the “mid-point of evolution,” it is but logical and
natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the
first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter
that is compatible with objectivity.  To make it still clearer:  if the Monad begins its cycle of
incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved
line, it has necessarily to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the sphere
as a man also.  On the
descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually transformed into the
material.  On the middle line
of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man.  On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly
re-asserting itself at the expense of the physical, or matter, so that, at the
close of the seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as

MEN,
THE PROGENITORS OF ANIMALS.                           181

free from matter and all its qualities as
it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom,
the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.

------------------------------------------

SD2-II-1—The Races with the Third Eye

Questions with
regard to Karma and re-births are constantly offered, and a great
confusion seems to exist upon this subject. Those who are born and bred
in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the idea

———————

* Karma is a word
of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects.
It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the
attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire,
which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else. Karman is action, the
Cause; and Karma again is “the law of ethical causation”; the effect
of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on
altruism.

———————

THE
NUMBER OF MONADS IS LIMITED.                            303

that a new soul is created by God for every
newly-born infant, are among the most perplexed. They ask whether in
such case the number of incarnating Monads on earth is limited; to which they
are answered in the affirmative. For, however countless, in our
conceptions, the number of the incarnating monads—even if we take into
account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their respective seven
groups were furnished with bodies, several births and deaths may be allowed for
every second of time in the aeons already passed—still, there must be a
limit. It was stated that Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid is Nature,
adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the
fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased as soon as Humanity had
reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated
since the middle-point
of the Atlanteans. Hence, remembering that, save in the case of young
children, and of individuals whose lives were violently cut off by some
accident, no Spiritual Entity can re-incarnate before a period of many
centuries has elapsed, such gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is
necessarily finite and limited. Moreover, a reasonable time must be
given to other animals for their evolutionary progress.

------------------------------------

SD2-II-1-Stanza XI

It is to this period that we have to look
for the first appearance of the Ancestors of those, who are termed by us the
most ancient peoples of the world—now called respectively the Aryan
Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the
Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other.  These were governed by the DIVINE
DYNASTIES, i.e., kings and rulers who had of mortal
man only his physical appearance as it was then, but who were Beings
from spheres higher and more celestial than our own sphere will be, long
Manvantaras hence.  It is
useless of course to attempt to force their existence on sceptics.  Their greatest pride consists in
proving their patronymic denomination as catarrhinides; which fact they
try to demonstrate on the alleged

CHANGES
OF CLIMATE.                             329

authority of the Coccyx appended to
their os sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if they only had it long
enough, they would wag in joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer.  These will remain as faithful to their
ape-ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam.  The Secret Doctrine, however, sets right
on this point theosophists and students of Occult Sciences.

If
we regard the Second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of
the really human race with solid bones, then Hæckel’s
surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place. .
. . in either Southern Asia or. . . .
Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of
question—is correct enough, if not entirely so.  To be accurate, however, in the same way
that the evolution of the First Race (from the bodies of the pitars)
took place on seven distinctly separated regions of the (then) only Earth at
the arctic pole—so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur:  it began in those northern regions,
which have just been described a few pages back as including Behring’s
Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate
was semi-tropical even in the Arctic regions and most adapted to the primitive
wants of nascent physical man.
That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in
turn since the appearance of man.
The commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its
development when:—

“The
axle of the Wheel tilted.
The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the
SWEAT BORN; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men,
plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth.  Those that did not perish REMAINED
AS HALF-GROWN BABES* IN SIZE AND INTELLECT.  This was the third pralaya of the races.†

------------------------------------

ML- Letter nº 66

Whenever any
question of evolution or development in any Kingdom presents itself to you bear
constantly in mind that everything comes under the Septenary rule of series in
their correspondences and mutual relation throughout nature.

In the evolution
of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an
ascending arc. As it is “Spirit” which transforms itself into
“matter” and (not “matter” which ascends — but)
matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race
evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial,
more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical (progressively of
course in each round) and at the same time — as physical intelligence
is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence — each evoluted
race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor,
and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled
with spiritual intuitiveness.

The first race (or
stock) of the first round after a solar manwantara (kindly wait for my
forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be repuzzled or remuddled
— it will explain a good deal), would then be a god-man race of an almost
impalpable shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the student to
reconcile this fact with the evolution of man from the animal —
however high his form among the anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for
whomsoever will hold religiously to a strict analogy between the works of the
two worlds, the visible and the invisible — one world, in fact, as one is
working within itself so to say. Now there are — there must be
“failures” in the etherial races of the many classes of Dhyan
Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too far
progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dhyan
Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower
kingdoms — this then happens. When a new solar system is to be evolved
these Dhyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas
hurled by Siva into Andarah 7 who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider
it as an intermediate state where they may prepare themselves by a series of
rebirths in that sphere for a higher state — a new regeneration) borne in
by the influx “ahead” of the elementals and remain as a latent or
inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until
the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they
will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then
they become an active Force, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities
of the pure animal kingdom to develop little by little the full type of
humanity. In this commingling they lose their high intelligence and
spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the
seventh round.

Thus we have:

1st Round. — An
ethereal being — non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of
the subsequent races and sub-races and minor races of evolution he grows more
and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly
etherial. And like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies
correspondential with his coarse surroundings.

2nd Round. — He is
still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer and more condensed in body
— a more physical man, yet still less intelligent than spiritual; for
mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the physical frame, and the
mind would not develop as rapidly as the body.

3rd Round. — He has
now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and
more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he
has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or
over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his
gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture (perhaps the
microscope might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes a more rational being
— though still more an ape than a Deva man.

4th Round. — Intellect
has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races will acquire our
human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected
and knowledge in physical things increases. At this half-way point of the
fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric
circle. (Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution of
each round, man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the same rule
applying to the whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara
— 7 rounds ÿ 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). At this point then the world teems
with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In the
first half of the fourth race, sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were
born, eclipsed in one nation, reborn in another, civilization and intellectual
development whirling in septenary cycles as the rest; while it is but in the
latter half that the spiritual Ego will begin its real struggle with body and
mind to manifest its transcendental powers. Who will help in the forthcoming
gigantic struggle? Who? Happy the man who helps a helping hand.

5th Round. — The same
relative development, and the same struggle continues.

6th Round.

7th Round.

Of these we need
not speak.

---------------------------------------------

CW13-Pistis Sophia-Commentary and Notes,VI

* The Soul, in
passing through the different stages and planes of evolution, reaches a middle point of balance
in each, where the choice between the below and the above is given; doubt thus
arises, and it is said to “repent.”

----------------------------------------------

CW13-On Cosmic cycles, Manvantaras and
Rounds

[ON COSMIC CYCLES, MANVANTARAS, AND ROUNDS]

……

Since the total period of the existence of
our Planetary Chain (i.e., of the Seven Rounds)
is—4,320,000,000—and we are now in the 4th Round; and since we have
unto the present Terrene year period 1,955,884,685 years from the beginning of
the Cosmic Evolution of Planet A; therefore, in point of time, we shall reach
the middle point,
or just 3½ Rounds in 204,115,315 years, although in point of space we
have virtually reached it being on planet D and in our 5th race.