Editor’s Note.— This text forms the first subsection of Section I of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” an early draft of The Secret Doctrine prepared by H. P. Blavatsky principally during 1885-1886, before the work was extensively reorganized and rewritten into the form published in 1888. It belongs to the historical and introductory material that originally constituted the first volume of the work and was later largely reassigned to the projected third volume.
“Explanation of the First Page of Isis Unveiled” was first published from the manuscript in The Theosophist, October 1932, pp. 27–36, as part of C. Jinarajadasa’s serial publication of the Würzburg Manuscript. It was not subsequently reproduced as a complete continuous text in H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, although excerpts from the manuscript appear there. The complete surviving section was published in The Secret Doctrine Würzburg Manuscript (Eastern School Press, 2014), pp. 17–25.
Substantial portions of this early draft were later revised and incorporated into the Introductory to the 1888 Secret Doctrine, vol. I, especially pp. xlii–xlvii. Other material was developed in different directions and reappears, in revised form, in Sections V, XXIX, and XXXVII of the posthumous 1897 Volume III. The present text therefore preserves an unusually revealing intermediate stage in the development of material that Blavatsky subsequently divided, expanded, and redistributed among several parts of The Secret Doctrine.
1—Explanation of the 1st page of “Isis Unveiled”—The Teachers and The Doctrine of Self—The “Souls” of the Stars.
Volume I of Isis begins with a reference to an old Book—[“]so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning—the Siphra Dzeniouta—was compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine Essence emanatic [emanating] from Adam1 like a luminous arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy until upon touching the ground it is as black as night.” Further on it is stated that—“A conviction founded upon seventy thousand years of experience as they allege, has been entertained by hermetic philosophers of all periods that matter has in time become, through sin, more gross and dense than it was at man’s first formation; that at the beginning the human body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall, mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since that time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that, before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died out, each giving place in its turn to another.”
Not one word would be changed in the above statements. Only the few lines may grow into Chapters—the logical and scientific necessity for accepting these hermetic views having to be shown.
The short allusion to “the seventy thousand years of experience” has also to be vindicated and shown correct and the claims of the Kabalists and the Occultists more definitely stated. The Eastern Adepts claim most decidedly their science to be older than that; for they place its origin with the First Race of men “whose thoughts were objectively expressed in colour” as Speech descended later on, on Earth. The query in Isis: “Were these precedent types more perfect? Did any of them belong to the winged race of men mentioned by Plato in Phaedrus”—having remained unanswered, a reply has to be given now. A ten year old experience, however, having shown that Science is as unwilling as ever to solve problems of this nature, nor is the general public quite ready to follow the landmarks left by the old Occultists and accepted by those of our modern days—the present work is intended for neither of the two. It is offered to the students of Occultism alone. It is the special task of the writer to prove what was stated in Isis as true. For instance, the following sentence has to be explained.
“As the cycle proceeded, man’s eyes were more and more opened, until he came to know ‘good and evil’ as well as the Elohim themselves. Having reached its summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the arc attained a certain point which brought it parallel with the fixed line of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature with ‘coats of skin,’ and the Lord God ‘clothed them.’[”]
The cycle having to follow its downward course for some yet, and man—though his eyes are still opening every day more and more owing to his alleged knowledge of “good and evil”—evidently preferring the latter, it has to be explained how it is, that [“]redemption of sin” and salvation notwithstanding, he has so little progressed in “good” and is actually becoming more sinful with every century since the year 33 A.D.—indeed, worse than he ever was when a pagan. This can be made plain only by showing who the “Lord the Gods” was (or were) who “clothed” men in Eden.
The problems will be solved, on the esoteric plane only now; for Isis was a first and cautious attempt to acquaint the public with Occultism. Having proved as unpalatable to many of those interested in psychic phenomena as to the skeptical, the present work will have in view the theosophists alone and those who have welcomed the first one.
Although the few lines cited from Isis have grown since into a volume known as “Esoteric Buddhism,”2 the latter work might yet be very easily amplified into 24 such volumes and still the hundredth part of the subject not be exhausted.
The very “old Book” is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-te were compiled. Not only this, and the Sepher Dzeniouta, but even the Sepher Jezirah3 attributed by the Hebrew Kablists to their Patriarch Abraham, and the book of Shu-King, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Chaldean Book of “Numbers” and the Pentateuch itself—are all due to that small Parent Volume. Tradition tells us that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue from the words of the Divine Being who dictated it to the Sons of Light in Central Asia at the very beginning of the 5th (our) Race. For there was a time when its language—the Senzar—was known to the Initiates of every nation, and that the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis who inherited it in their turn from the sages of the 3rd Races the Manooshis [Manushis] who learnt it by heart from the Devas of the 1st and 2nd Races. The “illustration” spoken of, relates to the evolution of these Races in our “Vaivasvata Manvantara” composed of the Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed, and nearly the middle point of the 5th is reached. The illustration is symbolical. When it is said that as it approaches nearer to our planet the emanation becomes more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it becomes as black as night! Two facts are meant—the falling of spirit into matter, or that which always mars its purity, and the state of our present Humanity especially in Kali-Yug or the “Iron Age” we are in. The “old Book” having described Cosmic Evolution, and explained the origin of everything on earth including man, and given the true history of the Races—from the 1st down to the 5th Race goes no further. It stops short at the beginning of Kali-Yuga, just 4986 years ago at the death of Krishna—the bright Sun-god and the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ancient as it was born with, and is only as old as the Black Age, namely about 5,000 years ago. In about 13 to 14 years hence, the first cycle of the first five millenniums that began with the great Cycle of the Kali-Yuga will end. And then the last prophecy contained in that Book, Volume I, of the prophetic Record for the Black Age will be accomplished. We have not long to wait and many of us will witness the dawn of the new Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races.
Volume II of the Prophecies is nearly ready, having been in preparation since Gautama Buddha’s time. But this work is really concerned only with the first one. It contains all and much more of that which is permitted to be known to the Humanities of our Fifth Root race, with the sole exception of its recorders—the INITIATES.
“What do they know—what can they know, those Initiates”—“more than any profane man of science knows,” the reader is often asked [often asks]. “The imagery of the ancients, their mythology and theories are at best poetic fancies, imagination.” Probably some of them are. But poetry—said Campbell—is also “the eloquence of truth.” It may sometimes be no doubt the natural language of excited feeling, and “a work of imagination wrought into form by art.” But imagination [—] as Pythagoras justly expressed it—is the memory of our preceding births. And if “imagination” leads us, as it has led the Samian Sage, to discover and proclaim such great truths as he has—one of which (the heliocentric System) [—] then it may be not altogether empty of meaning. Furthermore it is complained—by those who do believe in both the teachers and their science—that the latter is withheld from the public. The reason for this secrecy was stated in Isis Unveiled and elsewhere.
Says Isis: [“]From the very day when the first mystic found the means of communication between this world and the worlds of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and that of pure spirit, he concluded that to abandon this mysterious science to the profanation of the rabble was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with explosive batteries, and furnishing them with matches. The first self-made adept initiated but a select few and kept silence with the multitudes. He recognized his ‘God’ and felt the great UNIT within himself. The ‘Atman’ the Self,4 the mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the I ‘am,’ the ‘Ego Sum’ the ‘Ahmi’ showed is [its/his] full power to him who could recognize the ‘still small voice.’ From the days of the Primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates repeating to himself as well as to his fellow men, the noble injunction, ‘Oh man, know thyself,’ he succeeding in recognizing his God within himself. ‘Ye are gods,’ the king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding the scribes that the expression, ‘Ye are gods,’ was addressed to other mortal men claiming for himself the same privilege without any blasphemy.5 And as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we are all ‘the temple of the living God’ cautiously adds, that after all these things are only for the ‘wise,’ and it is ‘unlawful’ to speak of them.[”]6
We must accept the reminder and simply add that throughout the mystic literature of the whole ancient world we detect the same idea of esoterism [esotericism] and of the personal God existing within nowhere outside of us. But that personal God is no vain breath or a fiction, but an immortal Entity—the INITIATOR of the Initiates now that the Heavenly or Celestial Initiators of primitive Humanity—the SISHTA of the preceding Cycles are no more among us. Like an undercurrent rapid and clear it runs without mixing its crystalline purity with the muddy and troubled waters of dogmatism, an enforced Anthropomorphic Deity and religious intolerance. We find the idea in the tortured and barbarous phraseology of the Codex Nazareenes [Nazaraeus], and the superb Neoplatonic language of the Fourth Gospel of the later religions; in the oldest Veda and in the Avesta, in the Abhid[h]arma and Kapila’s Sankhya, in the B[h]agavat-Gita and in Pantanjali [Patanjali]. We cannot attain Adeptship and Nirvana, Bliss and the Kingdom of Heaven unless we link ourselves indissolubly with our Rex Lux, the Lord of Splendour and of Light, our immortal God within us. AHAM EVA PARAM BRAHMA. “I am myself a God” has ever been the one living truth in the heart and mind of the Adept,7 and it is that, which helped him to become one. We must first recognize our immortality and then conquer it and “take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence” offered to our material selves—never reached by the latter. [“]The first man is of earth earthy; the second (inner) man from heaven. Behold, I shew you a mystery,” says St. Paul in Corinthians (I, xv, 47).
It stands to reason, therefore, that in such a work as this one, the true meaning of expressions hitherto misinterpreted, such as “God, the Gods, the God of Gods” etc., should be given. They are met with in the symbolism of every great religion and nation. Moreover, truth has to be vindicated by showing also the distinction to be made—one that has always existed—between bodies and their souls or what we call the “informing principles” in nature. Saturn the “Father of the Gods” and Saturn, the planet with its seven moons and then rings, must be separated and yet shown virtually united—as man and his Spirit are two, yet only One. Thus with regard to the stars, as heavenly bodies, and the “host of the stars,” Sabaoth Elohim;8 or again, the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra Sikhandina [Sikhandin] “the bright-crested,” and the Rishis, the mortals and Sages who have appeared on earth during the Satya-Yuga. If all of these have been so closely united in the visions of the Seer of every age—the Bible Seers included—there must have been a reason for it. Nor need we go back so far into the periods of superstition and unscientific fancies, to find great men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the eminent astronomer, as many other great men who believed the heavenly bodies ruling favorably or adversely the fates of men and nations, fully credited besides this the idea that all heavenly bodies—even our own earth, are endowed with living and thinking Souls.
So far, the conquests achieved by astronomy in the domain of material infinitudes have only led the profane to the utter loss of any conception of spiritual infinitudes—in our present century at any rate. As remarked somewhere, by Baron du Potet, Spirit sees better than the eye.
Perchance the day is not far off when the spiritual telescope of the ancients may thus be shown superior for the increase of human knowledge—to its successor of wood, glass and brass.
With a view of preparing the reader to understand more clearly the teachings on Cosmic Evolution and the birth of man in Chapter II, we will show on the authority of numberless works, ancient, mediæval and modern, the actual existence of a WISDOM-RELIGION whose origin is lost in prehistoric periods. By introducing also to the Reader, for his reminder, some of the most celebrated proficients in the so-called “Magic art,” whose existence and fame (the latter having crossed, in some cases, two millenniums) cannot be denied, though their post-mortem memory is still slandered, we shall pave the better the way to what follows. If the independent and often unwilling testimony of modern historians and scholars is added to all this, the minds of the readers unacquainted, so far, with the archaic doctrine as propounded by the Teachers. We have to show that the numerous and often (to the profane) contradictory Cosmogonies of various nations are all based upon one—the primitive Revelation to mankind as taught in the oldest record in the world, now in possession and the safe keeping of the few surviving Initiates in Central Asia.
1. The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ANTHROPOS.
2. By A. P. Sinnett. Fifth Edition with annotations. Chapman & Hall, London.
3. Rabbi Jehoshua ben Chananea who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed “miracles” by means of the Book of Sepher Jezirah, and challenged every skeptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshai (see “Jerusalem Talmud Synhedrin,” c. 7, etc.; and “Franck,” pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Medieval Occultists claimed the same and even our modern Kabalist—Eliphas Levi proclaims in print the same thing.
4. This “self” which the Greek philosophers called Augoeides, the “Shining One,” is impressively and beautifully described in Max Müller’s “Veda.” Showing the “Veda” to be the first book of the Aryan nations, the Professor adds that “we have in it a period of the intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the ‘Veda’ we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world . . . . He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still with all these gods . . . beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at rest with himself. There, too in his own breast, he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is ‘Brahman;’ for Brahman meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he calls it ‘Atman’ for Atman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone; Self whether divine or human; Self, whether creating or suffering; Self, whether one or all; but always Self, independent and free. ‘Who has seen the first-born,’ says the poet, [‘]when he who had no bones (form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from anyone who knew it?[’] (RigVeda, 1, 164, 4.) This idea of a Divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; Self is the Lord of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all Selves are contained in this Self.[”] (Ibid., p. 478; ‘Khândogya Upanishad[’]; viii, 3, 3, 4.)
5. John X, 34-35.
6. 2 Corinth. VI-16.
7. Ye are “the temple of God” addressed by St. Paul to the Corinthians means precisely the same thing. Only the Vedantists who never refer to their bodies as being themselves formulate the idea still better, who then would identify himself with his house or lodging? And Paul adds: “Ye are God’s building and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” But fanciful interpretation will go a long way!
8. The meaning of Sabaoth or Tzabaoth from the Hebrew word Tzaba (army) shall be explained further on and the relation of the Hebrew Angelogogy [Angelology]— the Chaldaic and Magian rather—to the Dhyan-Chohans shown.