Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

* This verse in the Veda (X. 5-6), "The seven wise ones (rays of wisdom, Dhyanis) fashion seven paths (or lines as also
Races in another sense). To one of these may the distressed mortal come" -- which is interpreted solely from the
astronomical and cosmic aspect -- is one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The "paths" may mean lines
(maryadah), but they are primarily beams of light falling on the paths leading to wisdom. (See Rig Veda IV. 5-13.) It
means "ways" or paths. They are, in short, the seven Rays which fall free from the macrocosmic centre, the seven
principles in the metaphysical, the seven Races in the physical sense. All depends upon the key used.
** "Rig Veda," X. 10, 5, 2.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 192 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) The "Fall" occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as Daksha (the
reincarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race) disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind
which had "separated." This is how the Commentary explains the details that preceded the "Fall":--
"In the initial period of man's Fourth evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and various directions. The
outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles (the egg-like, external shells, in which the future
fully physical man gestated) were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now unknown,
and which belonged to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals,
half men, were produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, though the
intrinsically paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the 'Egg-Born'
Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal
species and human races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated and mated no longer. Man created no more --
he begot. But he also begot animals, as well as men in days of old. Therefore the Sages (or wise men), who speak of
males who had no more will-begotten offspring, but begat various animals along with Danavas (giants) on females of
other species -- animals being as (or in a manner of) Sons putative to them; and they (the human males) refusing in time
to be regarded as (putative) fathers of dumb creatures -- spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this (state of things),
the kings and Lords of the Last Races (of the Third and the Fourth) placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful
intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it developed new (Karma).* They (the divine Kings) struck the culprits with sterility.
They destroyed the Red and Blue Races.**
In another we find:--
"There were blue and red-faced animal-men even in later times; not from actual intercourse (between the human and
animal species), but by descent."
And still another passage mentions:--
"Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their hands again) who speak
as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore-mothers."
Perchance in these specimens, Haeckelians might recognize, not the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old Commentaries. We are often obliged to give the meaning
only, and thus retranslate the verbatim translations.
** Rudra, as a Kumara, is Lilalohita -- red and blue.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 193 THE BONELESS RACE.
Homo primigenius, but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these
are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi-human mothers, or, to speak more
correctly, from human monsters -- those "failures" mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Haeckel's
Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee
and cynocephalus are the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of
the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid* blood in his veins. Thus saith
old Wisdom and universal tradition.
How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam
yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana without
any reservation; as the former hides an esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact
than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when we read in Genesis that Eve was
made out of the rib, it only means that the Race with bones was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were
"boneless." This is an esoteric tenet spread far and wide, as it is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian
tradition states that man was created out of Araea, "red
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: "The primitive human form, whence as
we think all human species sprang, has perished this long time." (This we deny; it has only decreased in size and
changed in texture.) "But many facts point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic." (African races are
even now dolichocephalic in a great measure, but the palaeolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of a large
size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla's cranium than that of any other now-living man). "Let us, for the time
being, call this hypothetical species Homo primigenius. . . . This first species, or the Ape-man, the ancestor of all the