H. P. Blavatsky - The Secret Doctrine, Volume II. Anthropogenesis

The Secret Doctrine, Volume II. Anthropogenesis
By H. P. Blavatsky.
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My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.

John vii. 16.

Modern Science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human reason and the Secret Doctrine, and the idea is corroborated by the ancient legends and myths, and even by the Bible itself, when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the latter, with all its predetermined programme of physical transformation, and its invisible, therefore spiritual, forces which gradually develop its form, colour, and odour? The word evolution speaks for itself. The germ of the present human race must have prexisted in the parent of this race, as the seed, in which lies hidden the flower of next summer, was developed in the capsule of its parent flower; the parent may be but slightly different, but it still differs from its future progeny. The antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the progenitors of our human race have been the giants of the Vedas, the Voluspa, and the Book of Genesis? While it is positively absurd to believe the transformation of species to have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views of the Evolutionists, it is but natural to think that each genus, beginning with the molluscs and ending with monkey-man, has modified from its own primordial and distinctive form.Isis Unveiled, I. 152-3.

Facies totius universi, quamvis infinitis modis variet,

Manet tamen semper eadem.Spinoza.

The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Volume, are drawn from the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Volume I. As far as possible a verbatim translation is given: but some of the Stanzas are too obscure to be understood without explanation, and therefore, as in Volume I, they are first given in full as they stand, and then, when taken verse by verse with their Commentaries, an attempt is made to make them clearer, by words added in foot-notes, in anticipation of the fuller explanation of the Commentary.

As regards the Evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to Modern Science as well as to current religious dogmas. It teaches: (a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human Groups on seven different portions of our globe; (b) the birth of the astral, before the physical body, the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round, preceded every mammalianthe anthropoids includedin the animal kingdom.

The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval Men born simultaneously on the seven divisions of our Globe. In the Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus, we find the same seven primeval Men evolving from Nature and the Heavenly Man, in the collective sense of the word, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments of Chaldan tablets, collected by George Smith, on which is inscribed the Babylonian Legend of Creation, in the first column of the Cutha tablet, seven human Beings with the faces of ravens, that is to say, of black swarthy complexions, whom the [seven] Great Gods created, are mentioned. Or, as explained in lines 16, 17 and 18:

In the midst of the earth they grew up and became great,

And increased in number,

Seven kings, brothers of the same family.

These are the seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the Kabalah; the First Race, which was imperfect, that is to say, was born before the balance (sexes) existed, and which was therefore destroyed.

Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and begat children, 6,000 in number were their peoples. The God Nergas [death] destroyed them. How did he destroy them? By bringing into equilibrium [or balance] those who did not yet exist.

They were destroyed, as a Race, by being merged in their own progeny (by exudation): that is to say, the sexless Race rencarnated in the (potentially) bisexual; the latter, in the androgynes; these again, in the sexual, the later Third Race. Were the tablets less mutilated, they would be found to contain word for word the same account as is given in the Archaic Records and in Hermes, at least as regards the fundamental facts, if not as regards minute details; for Hermes is a good deal disfigured by mistranslations.

It is quite certain that the seeming supernaturalism of these teachings, although allegorical, is so diametrically opposed to the dead-letter statements of the Bible, as well as to the latest hypotheses of Science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists, however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty. Besides, we have the Egyptian Books of Thoth, and Book of the Dead, and the Hind Purnas with their seven Manus, as well as the Chaldo-Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven primitive Men, or Adams, the real meaning of which name may be ascertained by means of the Kabalah. Those who know anything of the Samothracian Mysteries will also remember that the generic name of the Kabiri was the Holy Fires, which created on seven localities of the island of Electria, or Samothrace, the Kabir born of the Holy Lemnosthe island sacred to Vulcan.

According to Pindar, this Kabir, whose name was Adamas, If, coupling with this the fact that Samothrace was colonized by the Phnicians, and before them by the mysterious Pelasgians who came from the East, we also remember the identity of the Mystery Gods of the Phnicians, Chaldans, and Israelites, it will be easy to discover whence came also the confused account of the Noachian Deluge. It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from the Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions, when rewritten by Ezra and others, from the Chaldo-Akkadian account. It is, therefore, sufficient to examine the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and other inscriptions to find also therein, scattered here and there, not only the original meaning of the name Adam, Admi, or Adami, but also the creation of seven Adams or roots of Men, born of Mother Earth, physically, and of the Divine Fire of the Progenitors, spiritually or astrally. The Assyriologists, ignorant of the Esoteric teachings, could hardly be expected to pay any greater attention to the mysterious and ever-recurring number seven on the Babylonian cylinders, than they pay to it on finding it in Genesis and the rest of the Bible. Yet the numbers of the ancestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are on the cylinders, notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, and are to be found as plainly, as they are in Pymander and in the Book of the Concealed Mystery of the Kabalah. In the latter Adam Kadmon is the Sephirothal Tree, as also the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that Tree, says verse 32, hath around it seven columns, or palaces, of the seven creative Angels operating in the Spheres of the seven Planets on our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a