1nCnVqgFI

—
500 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
drinus,* a gigantic curtain, .supported by five pillars, separated the
sa7ictum soMctoricm—now represented by the altar in
Christian churches
—wherein the priests alone were permitted to enter, from the part
accessible to the profane. By its fo7ir colours this curtain symbolized
the four principal Elements, and with the five pillars signified the
knowledge of the divine that the Jive senses can enable man to acquire
with the help of \hQ.four Elements.
In Cory's Ancient Fragments, one of the "Chaldean Oracles" expresses
ideas about the elements and Ether in language singularly like
that of The Unseen Universe, written by two eminent Scientists of our day.
It states that from Ether have come all things, and to it all Avill
return; that the images of all things are indelibly impressed upon it;
and that it is the store-house of the germs, or of the remains of all
visible forms, and even ideas.
It appears as if this case strangely corroborates
our assertion that whatever discoveries may be made in our
days will be found to have been anticipated by many thousand years by
our "simple-minded ancestors."
Whence came the Four Elements and the Malachim of the Hebrews
They have been made to merge, by a theological sleight of hand on
the part of the Rabbins and the later Fathers of the Church, into
Jehovah, but their origin is identical with that of the Cosmic Gods of
all other nations. Their symbols, whether born on the shores of the
Oxus, on the burning sands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests,
weird and glacial, which cover the slopes and peaks of the sacred
snowy mountains of Thessaly, or again, in the pampas of America
their symbols, we repeat, when traced to their source, are ever one and
the same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian, Aryan or Semitic, the
Genius Loci, the L,ocal God, embraced in its unity all Nature; but not
especially the four elements any more than one of their creations, such
as trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The Genius L,oci, a very late afterthought
of the last sub-races of the Fifth Root-Race, when the primitive
and grandiose meaning had become nearly lost, was ever the
representative, in his accumulated titles, of all his colleagues. It was
the God of Fire, symbolized by thunder, as Jove or Agni ; the God of
Water, symbolized by the fluvial
bull, or some sacred river or fountain,
as Varuna, Neptune, etc. ; the God of Air, manifesting in the hurricane
and tempest, as Vayu and Indra; and the God or Spirit of the Earth,
who appeared in earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others.
• Stromala, I. v. 6.