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The Secret Doctrine,

Vol I - Cosmogenesis

 

 
 
  The ancients made the polar circles seven instead of two, as Europeans do; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps leading to it.  
 

 

 

The Secret Doctrine,

Vol II - Anthropogenesis

 
 
  The "HYPERBOREAN" will be the name chosen for the Second Continent, the land which stretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole to receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known as Northern Asia.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially - whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two poles were denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents - hence good and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the "Sons of God" (Sons of Spirit and Matter): the good and bad Magicians.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  But one ought to discriminate between the characters of this symbol. For instance: Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine; and when, as an example, we read in the Vendidad complaints uttered against the "Serpent," whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana-Vaego, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, at the same time as mental and psychic consumption, every occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, as also the pole of the heavens. Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a Serpent with a hawk's head. The latter produces the seasons according to the angle at which it penetrates the centre of the earth.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  Meru - the abode of the gods - was placed, as before explained, in the North Pole, while Patala, the nether region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric philosophy has seven keys, geographically, Meru and Patala have one significance and represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean "the two poles", which meanings ended by their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism - the "Mountain" and the "Pit", or Heaven and Hell. If we hold at present only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern astronomers; they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the "Mountain" and the other the "Pit." As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same: "Heli-on is the Sun in the highest" (Helios, Heli-on, the "most high"); "and Acheron is 32 deg. above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, being therefore called the PIT, while observing, toward the Northern pole that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon - they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by which (astronomically) the Zodiacal gods were meant, the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the heaven." "In that age," adds the author of that curious work, the "Sphinxiad" and of "Urania's Key to the Revelations" - "at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the North Pole to the north horizon; crossing the eight coils of the Serpent (eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years), which would seem like an imaginary ladder with eight staves reaching from the earth up to the pole, i.e., the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, then, the Gods, i.e., the signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. (Jacob's ladder and the angels). . . .

It is more than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this ladder."

 
 

 

 

 

 
 
  Herodotus (Thalia, No. 77) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he went into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate "the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the Heaven," as perceived by Mackey.1 But they represented also the poles inverted, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, bringing each time as a result the displacement of the Oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versa. These Kabirim were the "Deluge" gods.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  It is certain that, whether "chimera" or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source: the universal tradition about the third great continent which perished some 850,000 years ago. The first continent, or island, if so preferred, "the cap of the North Pole," has never perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven Races.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.
"In the first beginnings of (human) life, the only dry land was on the Right end2 of the sphere, where it (the globe) is motionless.3 The whole earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid . . . . There man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.4 There was eternal spring in darkness. (But) that which is darkness to the man of today, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the gods rested, and Fohat5 reigns ever since.... Thus the wise fathers say that man is born in the head of his mother (earth), and that her feet at the left end generated (begot) the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon.... Between the first and second (races) the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life. (begot) the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon . . . . Between the first and second (races) the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life.6

"It flows around and animates her (mother earth's) body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet (the Southern Pole). It gets purified (on its return) to her heart - which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then (in the beginnings) was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling (the earth) that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.7 During the first and second (races) the belt was covered with the great waters. (But) the great mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear (the cap). She travailed harder for the third (race) and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the world.8 She broke toward the setting sun from her neck downward (to the south west), into many lands and islands, but the eternal land (the cap) broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the world. All these perished (in their turn). Then appeared the abode of the wicked (the Atlantis). The eternal land was now hid, for the waters became solid (frozen) under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth," etc., etc.

 
 

 

 

 

 
 
  If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few arctic travellers who perceived it.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  It is the north pole, the country of "Meru," which is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the occult calculation, for it represents the region of Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  .he (Seneca) says that "when the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day of the world shall come, the southern pole shall crush, as it falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North Pole shall overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  So occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is made to reappear even in Revelation (xii.) as the woman clothed with the Sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being with child "cries, travailing in birth, pained to be delivered." A great red Dragon, etc., stands before the woman ready to devour the child. She brings forth the man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and who was caught unto the throne of God (the Sun). The woman fled to the wilderness still pursued by the Dragon, who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a flood, when the earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood; and the Dragon went to make war with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandment of God, etc. (See xii., 1, 17.) Anyone, who reads the allegory of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognise the identity of the two versions. Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to persecute and destroy Latona and devour her babe. The latter is Apollo, the Sun, for "the man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" of Revelation, is surely not the meek "Son of God," Jesus, but the physical Sun, "who rules all nations"; the Dragon being the North Pole, gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the lands which became more and more Hyperborean and unfit to be inhabited by those who were fast developing into physical men, for they now had to deal with the climatic variations. The Dragon will not allow Latona "to bring forth" - (the Sun to appear). "She is driven from heaven, and finds no place where she can bring forth," until Neptune (the ocean), moved with pity, makes immovable the floating isle of Delos (the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from Jupiter under the waves of the ocean) on which Latona finds refuge and where the bright god Dhvlio" is born, the god, who no sooner appears than he kills Python, the cold and frost of the Arctic region, in whose deadly coils all life becomes extinct. In other words, Latona-Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son Apollo, or the Sun, reigns - with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus makes the Atlantes curse his too great heat. This allegory is reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another of the seven keys) in the chapter just cited of the Apocalypse. Latona became a powerful goddess indeed, and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in almost every fane of antiquity. In his occult aspect Apollo is patron of Number 7. He is born on the seventh of the month, and the swans of Myorica swim seven times around Delos singing that event; he is given seven chords to his Lyre - the seven rays of the sun and the seven forces of nature. But this only in the astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  It was already shown that while the South Pole is the pit (or the infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the first continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma, the throne of Jupiter, etc. It was already shown that while the South Pole is the pit (or the infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the first continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma, the throne of Jupiter, etc.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  For in the age when the gods forsook the earth and were said to ascend into heaven, the ecliptic had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to descend from the North Pole to the north horizon.  
 

 

 

 

 
 
  It is from this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were commenced. The student has to remember also, that when Ganymedes (Aquarius) is raised to heaven (or above the horizon of the North Pole) Virgo or Astraa, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards below the horizon of the South Pole, or the pit; which pit, or the pole, is also the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by placing these facts together; no more can be said.  
 

 

 

. - Footnotes - .

1 Who adds that the Egyptians had various ways of representing the angles of the Poles. Also in Perry's View of the Levant there is "a figure representing the South Pole of the Earth in the constellation of the Harp," in which the poles appear like two straight rods, surmounted with hawks" wings, but they were also often represented as serpents with heads of hawks, one at each end.

2 The two poles are called the right and left ends of our globe - the right being the North Pole - or the head and feet of the earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence "right" and "left" hand magic. The two poles are called the right and left ends of our globe - the right being the North Pole - or the head and feet of the earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence "right" and "left" hand magic.

3 The more one approaches the poles the less rotation is felt; at the poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Thence the expression that the sphere is "motionless."

4 It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the North Pole like a skull-cap, is the only one which prevails during the whole Manvantara of our "Round." All the central continents and lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, but this land will never change.

5 Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestian name of Fohat is Apam-Napat. In the Avesta he stands between the fire-yazatas and the water-yazatas. The literal meaning is "Son of the Waters," but these "waters" are not the liquid we know, but Ether - the fiery waters of space. Fohat is the "Son of Ether" in its highest aspect, Akasa, the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or LOGOS. Fohat is the light of the latter.

6 This "water" is the blood or fluid of life which animates the earth, compared here to a living body.

7 Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the existence of a fountain of life in the bowels of the earth and in the North Pole. It is the blood of the earth, the electromagnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries; and which is said to be found stored in the "navel" of the earth.

8 Occultism points to the Himalayan chain as that "belt," and maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the globe. The navel is described as situated to the setting sun or to the west of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain is north of the Himalaya. Meru is not "the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth," but its roots and foundations are in that navel, though it is in the far north itself. This connects it with the "central" land "that never perishes";
 
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