Occultism divides the “creators” into twelve classes, of which four have reached “liberation” to the end of the “great age;” the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct karmic law. These last act on the man-bearing globes of our chain.

Among other arts and sciences, the ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the Atlanteans—had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac. As already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these with the zodiacal signs. The whole world’s history is recorded in the latter.

Secret गुप्त रहस्य।

THE

शब्द

ZODIAC

X

मा three preceding articles on the zodiac the difference between the movable and the stationary signs has been set forth: that whereas the movable signs symbolize the periods of manifestation which in the “Secret Doctrine” are called rounds, or manvantaras, the stationary signs stand for the perpetual law and design according to which all such manifestations are involved, developed and progress toward final attainment. We have also had a general view of the working out of the plan of the rounds and of the races. The present article will deal with this our present fourth round, or period of evolution, according to the signs of the zodiac, with references from the “Secret Doctrine.”

The stationary zodiac, as we know it, represents twelve great orders, creators, powers or forces through space, governed by great intelligences, by and through whom cosmic matter is transformed into systems of worlds and beings, which beings come into existence by the planetary chains, are educated and developed through the races as represented by the signs, and who pass on to enjoy the attainment or fulfill a self-appointed duty which their degree of intelligence directs, or to go around the wheel again.

Vol. II., p. 81. Occultism divides the “creators into twelve classes, of which four have reached “liberation” to the end of the “great age,” the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, which seven are still under direct karmic law. These last act on the man-bearing globes of our chain.

Four of these great orders have passed through all experience which it was possible for them to obtain below the line of manifestation, and they have little to do with ordinary humanity. A fifth order is directly concerned with humanity, in that they are the leaders and teachers who remain to show to human egos the way and to help them on to attain individual immortality. This class or order is ready to pass on, but will do so only when the now incarnated egos have sufficiently developed to take their places and to help less advanced egos on the cyclic uphill path. The order of intelligences which thus remain to help the human egos still in bondage to ignorance are represented by the sign capricorn (♑︎), the mysterious tenth sign of the zodiac. Connected with and relating to this sign are numerous references in the mythologies and legends of all peoples. These myths and legends are that a dual being, who was part fish, part man, known as Makara, Matsya, Dagon, Oannes, and by other names, would, as a man-fish, leave his native element to come among men and teach them. This man-fish, it is said, revealed to men the laws of life, the lines along which their civilizations were to be built up and developed, and the purpose of life. Capricorn (♑︎) is the sign of individuality, having attained which the human fulfills his obligations to others and becomes a god.

Vol. II., p. 85.

Between man and the animal—whose monads, or jivas, are fundamentally identical—there is the impassable abyss of mentality and self-consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it be not a portion of the essence—and, in some rare cases of incarnation the very essence—of a higher being; one from a higher and divine plane? Can man—a god in the animal form—be the product of material nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, monad—seeing that the intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the glow-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal plus a living god within his physical shell?

Vol. II., p. 279.

The doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame, is that in some the various “fires” are latent, and in others they are active. The vital fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them. But no animal has the three higher “principles” awakened in him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus non-existing. And so would the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came out from the bodies of their progenitors, whose shadows they were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces imminent in matter.

Vol. II., pp. 280, 281.

The third race was preeminently the bright “shadow,” at first, of the gods, whom tradition exiles on to the earth after the allegorical war in heaven. This became still more allegorical on earth, for it was the war between spirit and matter. This war will last till the inner and divine man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till then the dark and fierce passions of that self will be at eternal feud with his master, the divine man. But the animal will be tamed one day, because its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more between the two as before the “fall,” when even mortal man was “created” by the elements and was not born.

Aquarius (♒︎), मीन (♓︎), aries (♈︎) and taurus (♉︎) characterize the four orders who have reached liberation and passed beyond the human state. Aquarius (♒︎) represents the cosmic divine soul which wells up as the I-am-thou-and-thou-art-I principle in humanity, and which prompts all acts of unselfish love—which sees and feels and acts for others as though all was one self.

Pisces (♓︎) is the silent, the passionless, the all-comprehensive will, who is the source of all power and who grants to every creature the power to act according to its development and its capacity to act. The passionless power is the path which man must discover in himself if he is to win his immortality and become all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, and all-conscious.

मेष (♈︎) symbolizes all-consciousness—the immutable, changeless, permanent, one reality. To humanity it is the Higher Self. To speak about it in terms of absoluteness is all that may be done, for any attempt to describe it seems only to bewilder and confuse. But one may aspire to it, and according to his aspiration he will become conscious of its all-presence.

वृष (♉︎), motion, is the law. The “ever-existent,” the “ancient of the ancients,” the unmanifested “logos,” the “word,” are terms by which it has been named by the seers, by sages, and by those who have become one with it, and who are known as “saviors,” or “divine incarnations.” By whatever name, it is taurus (♉︎), motion, who starts gemini (♊︎), substance, into action, and who causes the homogeneous substance to differentiate itself into duality, spirit-matter, and to emanate all germs of spirit-matter and all entities which it had received into itself at the close of the past evolution. Taurus (♉︎), motion, is the law which is destiny, in that it causes all things to take up and carry on their development from the point at which they left it off when pralaya, the great periodic night, overtook them. Thus the four orders of the zodiac who have passed beyond human development are depicted by their respective signs, as well as is the fifth, who is at present concerned with humanity. There remains one order, gemini (♊︎), substance, above the line of manifestation, and another order, cancer (♋︎), breath, which is on the line—being above as well as below it.

मिथुन (♊︎), substance, is the source from which all has come or will come. It is the root of nature, from which nature, matter, has its origin. Non-intelligent in itself, it is the primordial stuff which, under the guidance of and used by intelligences, becomes intelligent by its passage through all phases of matter and manifestation.

It now becomes necessary to speak of the sign cancer (♋︎), breath, and how our fourth round and its races were developed. At the close of any manvantara, or round, certain entities of that manifestation—in the “Secret Doctrine” they are called the “sishta,” or seed—attain freedom from the necessity of repeating their experiences. Such was the case at the close of the last manvantara. Some of the egos who took part in that manvantara graduated; that is to say, they graduated from their class, attained to their individuality, and were initiated into the higher order of aquarius (♒︎). Other egos of the same course and term failed to attain their individuality when the term ended. Of those who had attained some pledged themselves to help and teach the entities of the following term.

It follows, therefore, that there were two classes of beings who took part in ushering in the early races of our fourth round. One of these two classes were those who had attained freedom and immortality in the past round and who of their own choice had determined to remain and help those who had failed to attain. The other class was made up of those who had failed. The first class, the great teachers, stimulated and encouraged the second class in the duties to be performed by them when the third race should be in existence. The first race gave independent existence to the new matter which was to be used in the round. They, the great teachers, caused bodies to be provided for the different grades of that class who had failed. This was the first root race which passed through its periods of seven. This race, with its subdivisions, was spherical in form and graded in the degrees of intelligence which they had developed in the past period of evolution. The first race furnished the ideal and pattern of what was to be and will be developed by the races to follow during the remainder of the present fourth round. This first race did not live on the earth, but in a sphere surrounding the earth. The characteristic of this spherical first race was breath. They created by breath, they lived by breath, they gave form to creatures through breath, they separated by breath, they energized forms by breath, they transformed energy through breath, and they were individualized as breaths. This first race did not die, as did the races which followed.

Vol. II., p. 121.

The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles, of their fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed entities from a preceding though lower sphere, the shell of which is now our moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, the moon having generated the earth, its phantom, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters.

Vol. II., p. 90.

STANZA IV., SLOKA 14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL-BORN LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING, SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.

They threw off their “shadows” or astral bodies—if such an ethereal being as a “lunar spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an astral, besides a hardly tangible body. In another commentary it is said that the ancestors breathed out the first man, as Brahma is explained to have breathed out the suras, or gods, when they became asuras (from asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly-created men, were the “shadows of the shadows.”

The first race gave birth to the second race by emanations of breaths from themselves, which emanations were similar to their own spherical forms; and the first race, together with these its emanations, set into action another sphere, the life sphere, the matter of which sphere is differentiated substance, spirit-matter. This matter moved in currents, vortices and orbits, within its sphere of action. The characteristic of the second race was life. It was breathed into existence by breath, and it lived on its own property of life which is that force from which our electricity comes. This life race, taking the form given it by its parent breaths, continued its existence in these forms in its first and second periods, which were its sub-races. In its third period it became elongated in form; in its later periods the early forms diminished in size and continued themselves by budding or putting forth from themselves shoots and gradually transforming themselves into the new shoots. Phases of plant life illustrate the process of budding and thus propagating a species, but, whereas the parent plant continues its life, it differs from the second race in that the second race passed into and disappeared into its own progeny.

Vol. II., pp. 122, 123.

STANZA V., SLOKA 19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A-SEXUAL FROM THE SEXLESS. THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED.

What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this a-sexual race, the second, the fathers of the “sweat-born” so-called, and perhaps still more the third race, the “egg-born” androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of occult metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies.

Vol. II., p. 124.

The early second (root) race were the fathers of the “sweat-born”; the later second (root) race were “sweat-born” themselves.

This passage from the commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a race to its close. The “sons of yoga,” or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but nature herself. Thus the first sub-races of the second race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each race, each covering aeons of time.

Vol. II., p. 146.

STANZA VI., SLOKA 23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHAYAS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM.

This verse cannot be understood without the help of the commentaries. It means that the first root-race, the “shadows” of the progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or fire. But their “sons,” the second root-race, could be and were so destroyed. As the progenitors merged wholly in their own astral bodies, which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “sweat-born.” These were the second humanity—composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters—the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands (Greenland, among others), of the second continent were transformed, successively, from edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their beds; and the bulk of the second race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four. And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.

The third race was created by the second race. The breath forms of the breath race breathed into the later life race and awoke the dual life force within the bodies of the life race, and these bodies put forth new forms similar to themselves. These new forms were the beginnings of the third race, and were distinctive from their parents, the second race, in that the dual forces were more perfectly expressed in their forms, and that the sphere with which they were surrounded gradually disappeared or was transformed into the dual force now working within the form instead of outside it. This form gradually became human in its second period, but without the distinctiveness of sex. At the end of the third period its dual energy took form and was born from its parents, and this form had the organs of both sexes in one. This development was carried on by these early races under the direction of the great teachers of the first race. At this point it became the duty of the second class of the first race, before mentioned, who had failed in the previous evolution, to incarnate and thus to perform the double duty of lighting up with mind the forms into which they incarnated, and of qualifying and taking their degree which they had before failed to take. Some of these incarnated, passed through the development necessary, illuminated the forms into which they had incarnated, and became the teachers of that third race. The dual sexed bodies separated into sexes; that is to say, the dual sex characteristics became inoperative in one of the functions and operative in the opposite function in the same body. In some of the bodies the masculine sex became the dominant functionating sex, and in the other bodies the female sex remained as the dominant feature. Of the second class of the first race some incarnated; others would not, as they saw the dangers to which they would be subject and preferred to remain where they were in the breath sphere. Others, again, only partially incarnated, wishing to partake of the sensations of the animal bodies, but also desiring the joys of their own state. In this third race were enacted the transformations through which the fourth race also passed, through some portions of which our present fifth race has passed, and to which it must develop. The more advanced entities who had incarnated remained with the third race during its earlier periods after the development of the forms into male and female bodies. But as the less advanced egos incarnated in the remaining forms, or refused to so incarnate, these incarnations and forms became gross and still more gross and sensual, and the bodies provided were not fit habitations for the teachers; and as the humanity became more degraded they lost the ability to see, and they even refused to receive instruction from their teachers, the gods. The gods then withdrew from humanity.

Vol. II., pp. 173, 174, 175.

First come the self-existent on this earth. They are the “spiritual lives” projected by the absolute will and law, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These lives are the divine “shishta” (the seed-manus, or the prajapatis and the pitris).

From these proceed:

1. The first race, the “self-born,” which are the (astral) shadows of their progenitors. The body was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). The inner Being (the Higher Self, or monad), though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the manas, was not there as yet.

2. From the first (race) emanated the second, called the “sweat-born” and the “boneless.” This is the second root-race, endowed by the preservers (rakshasas) and the incarnating gods (the asuras and kumaras) with the first primitive and weak spark (the germ of the intelligence.) . . .

And from these in turn proceeds:

3. The third root-race, the “two-fold” (androgynes). The first races thereof are shells, till the last is “inhabited” (i. e., informed) by the dhyanis. The second race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the third, androgyne race by an analogous, but already more complicated process. As described in the commentary, the very earliest of that race were:

Vol. II., p. 183.

The third race had thus created the so-called “sons of will and yoga,” or the “ancestors”—the spiritual forefathers—of all the subsequent and present arhats, or mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the fourth race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “fall of man.” For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, the calling forth out of it the primordial divine light and eternal life. They were the “holy seed grain” of the future saviours of humanity.

Vol. II., p. 279.

The third race fell—and created no longer; it begat its progeny. Being still mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the “lords gods” of the Bible, the “sons of wisdom,” the dhyan chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit forbidden by nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the unfitness—we must not say sin—of what they had done, only when too late; after the angelic monads from higher spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the distinction?

Vol. II., p. 122.

Evolutionary law compelled the lunar fathers to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this globe; but at the end of the third round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed monads, whose turn was to incarnate.

Vol. II., p. 128.

STANZA V., SLOKA 21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS (A). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND (B). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING (C).

(a) The old or primitive race merged in the second race, and became one with it.

(b) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first forms—shadowy, ethereal, and negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the forms of the second race. The commentary explains this by saying that, as the first race was simply composed of the astral shadows of the creative progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its own—the race never died. Its “men” melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own “sweat-born” progeny, more solid than their own. The old form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the golden age; but the first, or parent, material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the body and even the inner or lower principles or bodies of the progeny.

(c) When the “shadow” retires, i. e., when the astral body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a physical body. The “wing,” or the ethereal form that produced its shadow and image, became the shadow of the astral body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and original.

Vol. II., p. 140.

Stanza VI., Sloka 22 (b) This is a very curious statement as explained in the commentaries. To make it clear: The first race having created the second by “budding,” as explained above, the second race gives birth to the third—which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern natural history. While the early sub-races of the third humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a foetus and child, the mode of procreation by the later sub-races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier sub-races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one knows; but those of the later sub-races were born androgynous. It is in the third race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women.

Vol. II., pp. 143, 144.

Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human third root-race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “gods,” because that race represented their “divine dynasty.” The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of the primeval mankind were “male and female.”

Vol. II., p. 284.

No sooner had the mental eye of man opened to understanding than the third race felt itself one with the ever-present, as also the ever to be unknown and invisible, All, the one universal deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his inner god, each felt he was a man-god in his nature, though an animal in his physical self. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of the fruit of the tree of wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual and the psychic, the mastery over the body, joined the “sons of light.” Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of the matter. From “sons of light and wisdom” they ended by becoming the “sons of darkness.” They fell in the battle of mortal life with life immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future generations of psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the lower “principles” by obtaining Atlanteans.

The fourth race began when sexes were distinctly developed, which was in the middle of the third race development. The third race was overcome by the fourth race, and has almost disappeared from the earth. The forms of the third race were not, in their beginnings, of the earth; they inhabited a sphere which is not now visible, but which, nevertheless, is in contact with the earth. As the third race forms became more material they condensed in stature and texture into solid animal beings, and then the earth became the sphere on which they lived. In the early third race the forms could pass away from the earth or come to it, could rise above or descend below the solid earth, but with their materiality and sensuality they lost the power to rise and live in their own sphere, and became creatures of the earth. The fourth race is strictly a race of sex. Its home is the earth, and its period of existence is limited to the earth. The fourth race, beginning and taking their forms from the middle of the third race, continued and passed in their development over the face of this globe until, in the natural course of evolution, they were gradually destroyed as a race; however, certain tribes of some of the family races still exist. The characteristics of the fourth race are desire and form as expressed and manifested through sex. Our bodies are fourth-race bodies; all sex bodies are fourth-race bodies.

Vol. II., pp. 285, 286.

It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi-divine man after his separation into sexes—hence the first begotten and humanly-born mortals—who became the first “sacrificers” to the god of matter. They stand, in the dim far-away past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built, as the first Anthropomorphists who worshipped form and matter—a worship which very soon degenerated into self-worship, and thence led to phallicism, which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolism of every exoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve became matter, or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel—the latter the life-bearing soil, the former “the tiller of that ground or field.”

As each race developed from the other, that which was the outermost became the innermost. That which was the within became the without. The first breath race breathed out or emanated from themselves the second life race, and the breath became the inner principle of that second life race. The second race put forth the third form race; the life became the inner principle of the form. The form race developed the physical bodies of the fourth race and became the inner principle on which the physical was built, so that each human physical body is built on its inner principle of form, which was of the third race, and the form has for its inner actuating principle the body of the life race, which in turn has for its inner principle the breath or mind.

From the first race to the fourth was the involutionary arc and cycle of development. From the fourth to the seventh races the lives and forms and desires and thoughts must be on the upward arc or cycle of evolution.

The great period of evolution or manvantara of which this earth is a part is made up of seven lesser periods, called rounds. In each of the rounds there is developed a principle. Each such principle developed is distinct in itself, but is nevertheless related to every other. As three rounds have been passed, three principles have been developed. We are now in the fourth round, and the fourth principle is now in the process of development. As each principle is developed it influences and aids in the development of the principles which will follow it in order and kind according to the signs of the zodiac. As we are in the fourth round and sign, cancer (♋︎), breath, or mind, we are influenced and aided by the three preceding signs, with their characteristic names or principles, which are aries (♈︎), the all-conscious principle; taurus (♉︎), motion, or atma, and gemini (♊︎), substance, or buddhi. There are, therefore, four principles which are intelligent which influence and aid in the development of humanity, and in the efforts of humanity to stimulate the matter represented by the signs leo (♌︎), life, or prana, virgo (♍︎), form, or linga-sharira, and libra (♎︎ ), sex or desire, as represented in its physical aspect of form–desire. The intelligent principles who influence and aid in the development of those which follow do not all act at once and at the same time on each of those whom they help. They aid at the proper time and when the conditions afford the opportunity. The time and condition is according to the progress of the races in any particular round.

In the first round the most condensed aspect of the all-conscious principle was cancer (♋︎), breath or mind. Therefore, as aries (♈︎) was the first round and the all-conscious principle now aids our fourth round through breath (♋︎), which is the nascent mind of humanity, the influence and aid was given in the first race of this our fourth round through the sign cancer (♋︎) (हेर्नुहोस चित्रा 29). The principle of motion (♉︎), atma, of the second round acted through the sign leo (♌︎), life, on the second or life race of our round. The principle of gemini (♊︎), substance, acted through the sign virgo (♍︎), form, on the third race of our round. The breath or mind is the principle now in progress of development toward perfection, and although not perfect as regards its humanity, is acting on desire through its lowest body, libra (♎︎ ), sex, and endeavoring to aid by controlling the desire. This line of action was described in शब्द, Vol. IV., No. 1, चित्रहरू 20, 21, 22, 23. We thus see that in the first race the aid and influence from the first principle was given by aries (♈︎); that in the second, the life race, the influence from taurus (♉︎) was given; that in the third race the influence from gemini (♊︎) was given; and that in the fourth race the influence from cancer (♋︎) is being given. The aid thus given is symbolized in Hindu writings by the names of “Kumaras,” the “virgin youths,” who have sacrificed themselves for the good of humanity. It is said that only four out of seven kumaras have sacrificed themselves. These kumaras correspond to the first four signs of the zodiac already mentioned, in their higher aspects, but they are actually the development of the first, second, third and fourth races of the humanity of this our fourth round.

Vol. II., pp. 294, 295.

The inner man of the first * * * only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor nirvana, spurning devachan and remaining constantly on earth for the salvation of mankind. . . . Out of the seven virgin-men (kumara) four sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the end of the present manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When people say of one of them, “he is dead;” behold, he is alive and under another form. These are the head, the heart, the soul, and the seed of undying knowledge (jnana). Thou shalt never speak, O lanoo, of these great ones (maha . . .) before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will understand.

As three rounds have been completed, the three corresponding principles represented by kumaras have fully incarnated. The fourth round being in process of completion, has the fourth principle and kumara incarnated to a large degree. These four kumaras, acting through the four rounds on the four races, are influencing them directly. Not so with the fifth kumara, because the fifth round has not yet begun; and, as a race, our fifth race cannot receive the same impetus and influence from life (♌︎) as it does from the fully incarnated kumara. What will be the fifth kumara is at present spirit-matter, as represented by life, prana (♌︎). The same is true of the sixth and seventh kumaras, represented by the signs ♍︎ र ♎︎ , which, as kumaras, would influence the sixth and seventh races when these shall come into existence.

The “Secret Doctrine” speaks of seven pitris, or fathers, but only mentions two. These two are called the barhishad and agnishwatta pitris, or fathers. The barhishad pitri is particularly related to cancer (♋︎), the breath, and the agnishwatta to capricorn (♑︎), individuality, and are those already mentioned in this article as taking part in the development of our first race. The five other pitris, or fathers, are represented by leo (♌︎), life; virgo (♍︎), form; libra (♎︎ ), sex; scorpio (♏︎), desire, and sagittary (♐︎), सोचे।

Vol. II., p. 81.

Exoteric Hindu books mention seven classes of pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of progenitors or ancestors: The barhishad and the agnishvatta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of it.

Vol. II., p. 96.

The pitris being divided into seven classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the puranas agree that three of these are arupa, formless, while four are corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the asuras who form the first three classes of pitris—“born in the body of night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “body of twilight.” Their fathers, the gods, were doomed to be born fools on earth, according to the Vayu Purana. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy; the pitris being in one the sons of the gods, and, in another, those of Brahma; while a third makes them instructors of their own fathers. It is the hosts of the four material classes who create men simultaneously on the seven zones.

The fifth race began in Asia in the fifth period of the fourth race, and continues to-day. The characteristic of the fifth race is desire-mind, but, whereas the fourth race was on a plane by itself, though having desire and form in its make-up, the fifth race is on the same plane as the third race. What the third race went through from its beginnings to its end, or, rather, its remnants, the fifth race will also pass through, but in reverse order. The third race began by being great and ending in degradation. The beginnings of the fifth race were simple. They were led and instructed by teachers from a plane corresponding to the third race (see चित्रा 29). As the fifth race grew older, they asserted their individuality and carried on their own development. This development has had its cycles of the appearance and disappearance of civilizations, and it has passed through nearly five of its seven periods on as many different portions of the globe. It is now beginning its sixth great period on the sixth portion formed and being formed for it here in America. It should be able in this period to have the powers that the third race in its corresponding inverse order had on its own plane.

The elements or kingdoms to which man is restricted, or which he uses, indicate his individual and racial development.

Man has been restricted to the continent or land on which he was born, seldom venturing on longer excursions by water than along his own shores. At first these excursions were made in small boats by the use of oars; then larger boats were built and sails were adjusted. So the element of air was made use of. One of the first great voyages of modern history was made by Columbus and ended in the discovery of the American continent, the continent on which the new race—the sixth sub-race—is to be born.

The greatness of modern civilization dates from the discovery of the American continent. Since then man has begun in earnest to harness the forces of nature and compel them to do his bidding. The pioneers of the new race have brought each element into use to overcome the other and itself. The products of earth were made to ride the water; then wind impelled the vessels; later, fire was made to generate steam from water, which thus overcame itself. So from the sons of the new continent, America, we have the steam engine, which has reduced distances by land and water. Although the waterwheel and windmill were in use before the discovery of steam, it was not until after the discovery of America that water was turned to steam and electricity drawn from the air—and now both the wheels are moved by modern commerce. Franklin, the representative American, was the first in our times to intelligently use electricity, the great force of the air. From his experiments came the later triumphs of the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, electric light and power.

And now, turning to further triumphs, having drawn the treasures from her rock-hewn chambers and subterranean beds and railroaded the surface of the earth, having steamed trackless paths over the ocean, made incursions into and fathomed its depths, the American will ascend and travel the air and discover the forces which will bear him up as easily as birds may soar.

It is to be noted that nearly every invention or discovery which changes modern modes and methods and long-established customs is made in America or by Americans. These statements are not intended to praise the present Americans, but rather to point out the line of development of humanity, through the races, in their times, and on the continents furnished for the development. The inpouring streams from Europe and Asia, together with the African and aboriginal strain, prevent the future distinctive American type from being readily seen in its beginnings by any except the few who are of that special type, or by those who can read the past and future from the present.

Indications of the equality or balancing of the sexes preparatory to the return to propagation and inhabiting of dual-sexed bodies are: that in the United States there is a more pronounced tendency to the equality of the sexes than in any other part of the globe. In the United States woman is further developed than the women of other nationalities. The woman of the United States has more freedom of action in industrial and professional occupations, in politics, travel, and in social life, than in any other country in the world. These are some of the signs that in the United States there is now being prepared the beginnings of the new race which will furnish the bodies for the generations of the sixth sub-race, in which sixth sub-race the sexes will be more evenly balanced than has ever been known to our short history.

Vol. II., pp. 366, 367.

STANZA XII., SLOKA 47. FEW REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED WERE GONE FOR EVER.

48. THE FIFTH PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.

49. * * * THE SERPENTS WHO RE-DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH, WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT. * * *

(a) This Sloka relates to the fifth race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever-recurring tradition does. History—or what is called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub-divisions of the first sub-race of the fifth root-race which are referred to in the sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The “moon-coloured”—i. e., the first and second races—were gone forever; ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third “Deluge” of the third Lemurian race, that “great dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the verse in the commentary which says:

The great dragon has respect but for the serpents of wisdom, the serpents whose holes are now under the triangular stones.

Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”

Vol. II., p. 449.

Among other arts and sciences, the ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the Atlanteans—had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the knowledge of the zodiac.

As already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these with the zodiacal signs. The whole world’s history is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the Dendera zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sufi, the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past—and also of the future—history of our globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably.

Vol. II., pp. 462., 463.

Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything else in nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have claimed that every root-race, with its sub-races and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and succeeding race.

It is only such “transformations” in physical nature, as much as in the memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of modern science, based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records of its sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call their “history,” the old science says to us : listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of humanity.

The human races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, and die. Their sub-races and nations follow the same rule. If your all-denying modern science and so-called philosophy do not contest that the human family is composed of a variety of well-defined types and races, it is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman.

Since the beginning of the Atlantean race many million years have passed, yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one race over the race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes new features of the younger race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races.

Vol. II., pp. 463, 464.

Now, occult philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.

Pure Anglo-Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong admixture of various nationalities and inter-marriage, almost a race sui generis, not only mentally, but also physically.

Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a “primary race,” temporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of cataclysms—the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles—the sixth root-race will have appeared on the stage of our round.

(फेरि जारी राखौंला)