Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

(the Sun) are made therein parallel to the Seven Worlds (of every planetary chain), to the seven rivers of heaven and
earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the Seven men, or primitive human groups. The Seven
ancient Rishis -- the progenitors of all that lives and breathes on earth -- are the seven friends of Agni, his seven "horses,"
or seven "HEADS." The human race has sprung from fire and water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the FATHERS,
or the ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Aswins, the Adityas (Rig-Veda III., 54, 16, II., 29, 3, 4), are all
synonymous with that "sacrificer," or the fathers, variously called Pitar (Pitris, fathers), Angirases** (Ibid, 1, 31, 17, 139, et
seq.), the Sadhyas, "divine sacrificers," the most occult of all. They are all called deva putra rishayah or "the Sons of God"
(X., 62; 1, 4). The "sacrificers," moreover, are collectively the ONE sacrificer, the father of the gods, Visvakarman, who
performed the great Sarva-Medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself. (See Rig-Vedic Hymns.)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "who like [[Aisa]] gives to all their portion of good and evil," and is therefore
Karma (Vide Liddell). By this abbreviation, however, the subject to Destiny or Karma is meant, the SELF or Ego, and that
which is reborn. Nor is [[Antimimon Pneumatos]] our conscience, but our Buddhi; nor is it again the "counterfeit of Spirit"
but "modelled after," or a counterpart of the Spirit -- which Buddhi is, as the vehicle of Atma (Vide Ar. Theism, 17; and
Liddell's definitions).
* C. W. King's Gnostics, p. 38.
** Prof. Roth (in Peter's Lexicon) defines the Angirases as an intermediate race of higher beings between gods and men;
while Prof. Weber, according to his invariable custom of modernising and anthropomorphising the divine, sees in them
the original priests of the religion which was common to the Aryan Hindus and Persians. Roth is right. "Angirases" was
one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors ("guru-deva"), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth
Race Initiates.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 606 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
In these Hymns the "Heavenly Man" is called purusha, "the Man," (X. 90, 1) from whom Viraj was born (X. 90, 5); and
from Viraj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna (now drawn from his sublime position to be the chief of the lords-Dhyanis or
Devas) who regulates all natural phenomena, who "makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow." The seven rivers of the
sky (the descending creative gods) and the seven rivers of the earth (the seven primitive mankinds) are under his control,
as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna's laws (Vratani, "courses of natural action," active laws) is punished by Indra
(X. 113, 5), the Vedic powerful god, whose Vrata (law or power) is greater than the Vratani of any other god.
Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all the known ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the occult teachings in
almost every respect. Its hymns -- the records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our race) concerning the
primordial teachings -- speak of the Seven Races (two still to come) allegorising them by the "seven streams" (1, 35, 8);
and of the Five Races ("panca krishtayah") which have already inhabited this world (ibid) on the five regions "panca
pradicah" (IX, 86, 29), as also of the three continents that were.*
It is those scholars only who will master the secret meaning of the Purushasukta (in which the intuition of the modern
Orientalist has chosen to see "one of the very latest hymns of the Rig-Veda"), who may hope to understand how
harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric doctrines. One must study in all the abstruseness of
their metaphysical meaning the relations in it between the (Heavenly) man "Purusha," SACRIFICED for the production of
the Universe and all in it (See Visvakarman), and the terrestrial mortal man (Hymn X. 20, 1, 16), before one realizes the
hidden philosophy of this verse:--
"15. He ("Man," purusha, or Visvakarman) had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and thrice seven layers of fuel; when the
gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim" . . . . This relates to the three Septenary primeval Races, and
shows the antiquity of the Vedas, who knew of no other, probably in this earliest oral teachings; and also
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, continents -- the first "continent" of the First Race prevailing to the last and
existing to this day -- are described in the occult Doctrine, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting the name now known
in Science), and the Atlantean. Most of Asia issued from under the waters after the destruction of Atlantis; Africa came
still later, while Europe is the fifth and the latest -- portions of the two Americas being far older. But of these, more anon.
The Initiates who recorded the Vedas -- or the Rishis of our Fifth Race -- wrote at a time when Atlantis had already gone
down. Atlantis is the fourth continent that appeared, but the third that disappeared.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 607 THE SEVEN EARTHS AND THE SEVEN RACES.
to the seven primeval groups of mankind, as Visvakarman represents divine humanity collectively.*
The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, and must have come down to us disfigured and
misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsis, who read it in their Vendidad and elsewhere, without understanding the
allusions they contain any better than the Orientalists do; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works. (See the
enumeration of the seven spheres --not the "Karshvare of the earth," as believed -- in Fargard XIX., 30). But see further
on.
Comparing the esoteric teaching with the interpretations by James Darmesteter (the Vendidad, edited by Prof. Max
Muller), one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus:--
"The Indo-Iranian Asura (Ahura) was often conceived as seven-fold; by the play of certain mythical (?) formulae and the
strength of certain mythical (?) numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,** and
the Supreme God was often made seven-fold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled." (Vide the foot note). "The