Chaldeans, Hierophants of The Aryan Root-Race

Chaldeans, Hierophants
of the Aryan Root-Race
Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018
Page 1 of 52
ON THE HIEROPHANTS OF THE FIFTH ROOT-RACE
ABSTRACT AND TRAIN OF THOUGHTS
Abstract and train of thoughts

Who were those dark-skinned, mysterious Chaldeans?
Were they Chaldean Vedas or Vedic Chaldees?
The Chaldeans were a pastoral nation and a priestly caste initiated in, and entirely
devoted to, the sciences of Astrology and Magic. 7
They were the aborigines of Western Europe and our distant ancestors — black and far
blacker, perchance, than any of those we now look upon as the races to us inferior — the
Asiatic Ethiopians! 9
Eusebius declares that the Ethiopians came from India. Arabia was the ancient Ethiopia,
and Arabi were placed at the mouth of the Indus, on the western bank. 9
They preceded the Turano-Akkadians, who themselves anticipated the Hamitic nation
brought along by Nimrod. Though dark-skinned, the Chaldeans were not necessarily
Negroes, nor even Hamites. 10
The dead letter of Chaldean Magic — useless and absurd incantations, ceremonial prayers
and talismans — have passed part and parcel under the guise of exorcisms, holy water,
ceremonies, pope-blessed amulets, and images of angels and saints, into the Catholic
Church. 13
The Chaldeans were a pre-Babylonian Brotherhood of Hierophants

from Kashmir, Tibet, Mongolia, Tartary, China, and India
They spread westward, from the plateau of Pamir, cradle of the Elect of
humanity’s Fifth Root-Race.
Occultism is intimately connected with Chaldean Wisdom, and its records show the
forefathers of the Aryan Brahmans at the head of arts and sciences, as Astronomers and
Seers, confabulating with the stars, and receiving instructions from the concealed deity.
Their sanctity of life and great learning made their name for long ages a synonym of
Divine Science. 18
The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being beyond the reach of modern
materialistic thought, the Chaldeans are accused of Sabæanism and Sun-worship, cults
which were simply those of the uneducated masses. 20
Clemens Alexandrinus testifies to the existence of 30,000 additional volumes of the Books
of Thoth, placed in the library of the tomb of Ozymandias, over the entrance of which
were inscribed the words, “A Cure for the Soul.” Extant fragments of works by Mercury
Trismegistus, Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., are rolls that escaped the holocaust of
the great Alexandrian Library. 21
More! The writings of the elusive Hermes Trismegistus spring from the same fountain and
source: for they are the faithful echo and expression of the most ancient verities.
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Scattered fragments are being discovered in the sanctuaries of Chaldea, India, Phoenicia,
Egypt, and Central Asia. 22
Amplifications and Elaborations

Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet.
The Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Wisdom-Religion and the trans-Himalayan Esoteric Doctrine
are one and the same. The Chaldeans were a hieratic caste of Hindu-Brahmans, now
called Aryans; their vernacular language was the Sanskrit of the Vedas; they instructed
the Babylonians in the Mysteries and taught them the sacerdotal or Mystery-language
which, even today, is used by Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical
evocations. 29
The population of Ur of the Chaldeans, where Magism flourished before the days of
Abraham, is related with those of Central and North America. 30
The cauldron of Christian Trinity has always been North-East of the Indus River, where
the Chaldeans worshipped the trinity of Deus-Lunus manifesting in three phases, and
completing the quaternary with the fourth. 30
And since Babylonia was situated on the way of the great stream of the Hindu
emigration, its peoples were the first to benefit. 30
The Chaldæan Moon-Worship, however, is likely to mislead the profane student who fails
to grasp the esoteric dimensions of archaic symbols. 31
The pioneers of humanity’ s Fifth Root-Race, the Aryan, came out of Central Asia. 32
The so-called “Akkadians” were no more a “Turanian” race than any of the modern
British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible
and yet absent from history. Belonging virtually through their original connection with
the Aryan, Central Asian stock, the old Aeolians were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of
their long residence in the now submerged continent, but also by intermarriage with
them. 32
The classification of ancient nations into Akkadians, Turanians, Semites, etc., is at best
arbitrary. The word “Chaldean” does not refer merely to a native or an inhabitant of
Chaldea, but to “Chaldeism” itself, the oldest science of Astrology and Occultism. 33
The Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom, “the light which shineth in
darkness,” though modern “darkness comprehended it not,” and today’ s Parsis know
nothing of it now. 33
The Aryan and Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance. The secret doctrine of the
Jewish Kabbalists is merely a late offshoot of these, suggests Subba Row. 35
As the Vedas came from the Manasarovara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmans from the far
North, the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine is Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Universal Wisdom-
Religion, confirms Blavatsky. 36
The country called Si-dzang by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is
mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fokien, as the great seat of
occult learning in archaic ages. Emperor Yu the Great established a system of
theocracy, the first one in China to unite ecclesiastical power with temporal authority
from Si-dzang. That system was the same as that of the old Egyptians and Chaldees,
has existed in the Brahmanical period in India, and exists now in Tibet. 36
Nebu is an abstract quality personified. It is man’ s seventh and highest principle, and the
synthetic attribute of Seven Chaldean Gods — the Planetary Spirits. 37
By the powers of goodness in man and nature, the Chaldean Magi performed the most
wonderful miracles. 37
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Unlike the Roman Catholics, who invented a Devil endowed with a power equalling that
of the Supreme Deity, and who allegedly transforms himself into wolves, snakes, and
dogs to satisfy his lust and procreate monsters. 38
Chaldean Magic was based upon a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and
minerals. It was only when the Theurgist needed divine help in spiritual and earthly
matters that he sought direct communication with pure spiritual beings. 39
To dare, to know, to will, and to remain silent, were their constant rules.
To be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were some of their spontaneous impulses. 39
All the discoveries of modern Astronomy were contained within the secret observatories
and Initiation Halls of the temples of old India and Egypt. It is in them that the Chaldean
made his calculations, revealing to the world of the profane no more than it was fit to
receive. 40
Cyprian of Antioch, a penitent sorcerer, had studied in Chaldea the true power of the
air, saw the planets as dissimilar as the plants on earth, understood that stars that
were like armies ranged in battle order, and learnt the Chaldean division of Ether into
365 parts. 40
The Kabbalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret
Doctrine of the Chaldeans
The Mysteries of the Jews are identical with those of the Pagan Greeks, who took them
from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldeans, who got them from the
Aryans, from the Atlanteans, and so on, far beyond the misty days of the Fourth Race. 41
The Greeks learned Occult Cosmology from the Egyptians, and the latter from the
Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmans of the Esoteric School. 41
A small tribe of presumably Egyptian runaway slaves obtained their primitive ideas about
creation from Moses, who compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions from the
Chaldeo-Akkadian account. 42
Their Kabbalistic literature can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the
Pentateuch down to the Talmud the documents of that literature were always written in a
kind of Mystery-language — a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied
from the Egyptian and the Chaldean Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own
national history, if history it can be called. 42
Hebrew is considered to be a very old language, and yet there exists no trace of it
anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldea. The Hebrew known to the
philologists does not date earlier than 500 BC and its characters belong to a far later
period still. 43
The original and authentic Gospel of Matthew was written in the Chaldaic language but
with Hebrew letters, says Jerome. 43
The Jewish Talmudists and the Christian Fathers borrowed many occult terms, such as
Virtue, Iao, Abraxas, etc., from the Chaldeans. 44
In the Chaldean or Jewish Kabbalah, Kosmos is divided into seven worlds: Original,
Intelligible, Celestial, Elementary, Lesser (Astral), Infernal (Kāma-loka or Hadēs), and
Temporal (of man). 45
The old Chaldeans were a Brotherhood of pre-Babylonian Philosophers and

Theurgists.
Their knowledge and teachings emerged much later in a caste of learned Kabbalists. 45
To sum up, the Kabbalah of the profane Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret
Doctrine of the Chaldeans. The Chaldean Book of Numbers, now in the possession of
some Persian Sufis, is the only key to the real Kabbalah. 46
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If Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every
Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it was
based, he is most likely the author of Genesis and other “scrolls.” 46
When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of Law were called Asideans or
Kasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees or Pharsi (Parsis). 48
Following successive Assyrian and Persian colonisations, the early plebeian Israelites
(originally Canaanites and Phoenicians) were modified to Asideans and Pharisees, and
then to asserters of sacerdotal rule (Sadducees) as contradistinguished from rabbinical.
The Pharisees were lenient and intellectual; the Sadducees, bigoted and cruel. 48
Appendix A. The Testimony of Theodas

Appendix B. Searching for the Lost Word
Page 5 of 52
ATLANTEAN REALITIES SERIES
THOSE DARK-SKINNED, MYSTERIOUS CHALDEANS
Were they Chaldean Vedas or Vedic Chaldees?

From Blavatsky Collected Writings, (CHALDEAN “VEDAS” OR “VEDIC” CHALDEES?) XIII pp. 327-40.
[The Manuscript of this essay in H.P. Blavatsky’ s handwriting exists in the Adyar Archives. It has been
originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 11, August 1962, pp. 287-301. — Boris de
Zirkoff.]
The oldest book in which the word “magic” is found — says the Christian Orientalist,
François Lenormant, with a superb oblivion of the Vedic and Zoroastrian works — is
the Bible. The first people who practiced it — he adds — are the Chaldeans. But who
were they? Neither philology nor ethnology are able to furnish us with any definite
answer; and whether geographically or ethnographically considered, Chaldea is the
subject of contradictory statements since the days of Herodotus down to our own.
Ptolemy the geographer tells us that Chaldea was the name of the S.W. part of an-
cient Babylonia, bordering on the confines of Arabia. At the same time, hardly a
quarter of a century ago, “Ur of the Chaldees” or Chasdim of Abraham, was consid-
ered by many a critic, to have been a place of Mesopotamia, a castle of that name
mentioned by Ammianus as situated between Nisibis and the Tigris. Of the Chalde-
ans as a nation, as little is known in history. Strabo calls them “a tribe” living on the
borderland of Arabia. Herodotus mentions them as a contingent of the army of the
1
Assyrians, though the latter conquered them ages after the Chaldeans had been a
civilized Empire; and Xenophon, in the history of the retreat of the ten thousand sees
in them “a free and warlike people in the Carduchian hills”; somewhere near the
2
mountains of Armenia then. Even the very language of the Cushite Chaldea — that
tongue in which the interlineary translation of the Akkadian inscriptions on the cyl-
inders dug out on the sites of ancient Chaldea is made — is generally called by our
philologists the “Assyrian,” whereas this language existed already in the days when
the very name of Asshur in Noah’s genealogy had not been yet invented. Thus, no
branch of Science being able to give the world anything definite about the Chaldeans,
we have to be contented with our own surmises. Therefore, will we try to find out at
least what this people could not be, since we cannot learn for a certainty what they
were.
1
[See The Histories of Herodotus, Vol. II, translated by George Rawlinson; Book VII § 63; p. 146 in Everyman’ s
Library ed., London: Dent & Sons, 1964.]
2
[See Book III, ch. 5, 16 of The Anabasis, or Expedition of Cyrus, etc., literally translated from the Greek of
Xenophon by Rev. J.S. Watson. New York: Harper & Bros., 1877.]
Page 6 of 52
The Chaldeans were a pastoral nation and a priestly caste initiat-

ed in, and entirely devoted to, the sciences of Astrology and Mag-
ic.
1
In the Mosaic account we first read of Chaldea when Nimrod, the son of Cush and
the grandson of Ham, conquers the four cities respectively named “Babel and Erech,
and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar”; and again, when we are informed that
2
Abraham “went forth from Ur of the Chaldees.” The Bible, causing the world to be
created in the 710th year of the Julian period (4004 years B.C.), the Deluge to occur
in 2348 and Abraham to be born in 1996 B.C. (which would allow but a period of 289
for the Chaldean or Akkadian civilization, preceded by another still more archaic to
develop!), finally gets hopelessly entangled in its own chronology, and thus, owing to
3
its own contradictions and lapsus calami proves quite the reverse of what it evi-
dently intended to prove from the beginning. It plainly shows the existence of another
and distinct element in Chaldea. A race, neither Hamitic nor Semitic but what is now
called the Akkadian. Since the Bible mentions the city of Akkad as conquered by
Nimrod, whose race-name is due to his genealogy, that city must have then existed
before him; and the Cushite or Hamitic Nimrod himself not being a Chaldean by
birth, it is clear that they could not be so named before his arrival. This people then,
evidently preceded the savage race of the “mighty hunter before the Lord.” And they
must have been a highly civilized nation long before the days of the Noachian “uni-
versal” deluge (of which geology certainly shows no traces), as it is well proved that
Nimrod, now identified with Sargon I, found upon his arrival there a people, whose
high culture was then at its climax. That nation, which had long since abandoned
the nomadic pastoral state in which the patriarchal descendants of Shem indulged
for ages yet to come, were these “mysterious” Akkadians or Chaldeans, whose name
both upon classical and biblical authority designates not only a nation but that pe-
culiar priestly caste initiated in and entirely devoted to the Sciences of astrology and
magic. Held sacred in all ages, this peculiar learning was concentrated in Babylon
and known in the remotest periods of history as a system of religious worship and
Science which made the glory of the Chaldean.
Believed by some Orientalists to have belonged to the Indo-European or Caucasian
race, regarded by others — of no less a great authority in Science — as Mongolian or
Turanians, there is a deep veil of mystery thrown upon this people. We are told by
the Assyriologists that they were the inventors of the cuneiform writing; the authors
of the grand and elaborate literature so miraculously preserved on hundreds of thou-
sands of tiles now dug out by George Smith, Layard and others. But on the other
hand we know that the Akkadians, whether they be of the Turanian or Indo-
European race, were themselves preceded by another still more mysterious people,
. . . “most probably a darker race than they were” and whose remnants are found
4
here and there in isolated groups near the Persian Gulf, thinks Prof. Rawlinson. Of
1
Genesis x, 10
2
ibid., xi, 31
3
[slip of the pen]
4
The Five Great Monarchies . [See Ch. III, Vol. 1 & 2 of The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World,
etc., by George Rawlinson, M.A. London: John Murray, 1871; 2nd ed.]
Page 7 of 52
this people there now remains no remembrance whatever. Their very name has dis-
appeared, but “we have to recognize their existence in our explanations of the ethno-
graphical elements of primitive Chaldea,” says the author of the Sketches of Chalde-
an Culture.
For the better understanding of this theory which kills the last vestige of belief in or
the possibility of a “Universal” Deluge, we will briefly collate together the several
opinions of some men of science as of our latest Assyriologists and add them to the
data we find in ancient writers. The Turanians, think our Orientalists, were not the
first inhabitants of the Euphrates-Tigris valleys. Neither are they themselves a pure,
primitive race, as it is a mixture of the white and yellow races, and the people who
belong to it offer an infinite gradation of hues and types, a gradual descent from the
pure European down to the Chinese type. Notwithstanding this, their common origin
is shown in the affinities of language, religion and customs. The languages of the Tu-
ranian nations lack that firmness and definite form of a type which would enable us
1
to call them a step towards the formation of the human speech, says Max Müller. As
to their religions, they “never rose higher than a form of gross naturalism which
transforms all the phenomena of nature into two numberless hosts of Spirits good
and bad and whose cultus consists unexceptionally of magic and incantations,” de-
2
clares F. Lenormant.
Of the origin and primitive country of the Turanians as a race our men of science are
less positive. The Turks and the Mongols, in general have a tradition that their race
sprung somewhere near the southern slopes of the Mount Altai, in a valley hemmed
in between inaccessible mountains full of minerals. Fire having come out one day
from the bowels of the earth, one side of the mountain was destroyed and the primi-
tive race emerged into the wide world. This tradition agrees with that other one which
caused the Eastern populations of Syria and Mesopotamia to point out their birth
place East of their settlements, the Medo-Persians North. As to the Thibetans, they
maintain that the forefathers of their Hobilgans and Shaberons, or the higher and in-
itiated Lamas, were those wonderful men who lived on a fairy island, an Eden in the
centre of Gobi when that dreary desert was yet a vast sea. They were giants in whom,
passing from one to another, moved incessantly the Spirit of Fo, or Budda (the high-
est wisdom). As to the rest of the Lamas and Thibetans, they were ancestors created
by the former from pieces of every plant, mineral and animal on the globe, which
theory looks suspiciously like that of our modern evolutionists. In their turn, our
men of science, who, but a few years ago yet, had to pretend in their official capaci-
ties at least, that they believed in the fable of Eden, declared at one time unanimous-
ly that the cradle of humanity was on the plateau of Pamir, whence flow out the four
great rivers: Indus, Helmund, the Oxus, or Jehoona, and Jaxartes or Sir-Darya, the
ancient Sihon. The separation of the Turanians took place in two directions: one
branch went up northward and settled in the vicinity of Altai, the Aral Sea, and the
valleys of the Ural mountains, from where after that it scattered along the North of
Europe and Asia down to the Baltic on one side and up to the mouth of the Amur on
1
The Languages of the Seat of War in the East, p. 88; [see 2nd ed., London: Williams & Norgate, 1855.]
2
La Magie chez les Chaldéens, p. 184 ff. [François Lenormant, La magie chez les Chaldéens et les origines Ac-
cadiennes. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, 1874]
Page 8 of 52
the other; while the other and no less numerous tribes of Turan chose the Southern
and Western direction, when some of them reached Armenia and Asia Minor, and
others settled at the foot of the upland plateau of Iran in the valleys of Susiana and
the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates, where for ages they had anticipated the
appearance of the Semites and the Cushites.
They were the aborigines of Western Europe and our distant an-
cestors — black and far blacker, perchance, than any of those we
now look upon as the races to us inferior — the Asiatic Ethiopians!
Thus the traditions of the quite savage and of the civilized but “inferior races,” as well
as the scientific theories of the European or “superior” races, concur in this admira-
bly. Whether the cradle of humanity is here or there, it circles within the limits of
Central Asia. And, unless the catechism of Science accepts the doctrine of many and
simultaneous “cradles” where multi-coloured humanity evolved each its special type
and colour — a theory which would impair the prettily concocted fable of Eden and
1
the original sin still more, or at least limit it but to the forefathers of the Semites —
we the “superior” white races have to accept among other unpleasant things the dis-
agreeable truth that our ancestors were as black and far blacker, perchance, than
any of those we now look upon as the races to us inferior, for — they were the ASIAT-
IC ETHIOPIANS!
Eusebius declares that the Ethiopians came from India. Arabia was the
ancient Ethiopia, and Arabi were placed at the mouth of the Indus, on
the western bank.
This is the direct and logical deduction from the opinion of the men of Science, how-
ever many and contradictory these theories. Such are the facts drawn from the re-
cent achievements of philology and ethnology. And if we have to accept truth
whencesoever it comes, and vindicate facts, we will have to confess that a black or a
very dark-skinned race of men once occupied Western Europe, were in short the abo-
2
rigines of Europe. Writes Professor Rawlinson,
The Asiatic Ethiopians, by their very name, which connects them so closely
with the Cushite people inhabiting the country about Egypt, may be assigned
to the Hamitic family, and this connection is confirmed by the uniform voice of
primitive antiquity, which spoke of the Ethiopian as a single race dwelling along
the Southern Ocean, from India to the Pillars of Hercules . . .
It is indeed true that the first men that appear on the arena of civilization were
evidently of the stock which we denominate somewhat indiscriminately Hamit-
ic, Cushite and Ethiopian,
— says Dr. A. Wilder in his Black Nations of Europe. Their abodes were in no circum-
scribed region . . . Their ethnical names imply as much. In ancient times Egypt was
3
called “the land of Ham” from Kham, its chief deity; Susiana and Arabia were styled
Kissoea and Cush; and the countries of the Hamitic races were called Æthiopia. He-
1
[See “The Original Sin is a Jewish invention,” in our Black versus White Magic Series. — ED. PHIL.]
2
[op. cit.; see pp. 47-49 on the “Cushite Origin of the Chaldeans”]
3
Psalms cv, 23
Page 9 of 52
rodotus repeatedly mentions the Æthiopians of Asia, placing their country at the
South of modern Afghanistan, now Kerman and Baluchistan. Homer speaks of Mem-
non as the son of Eos, or the Dawn; and Diodorus declares that he was King of the
Ethiopians and built a palace at Susa, the Shushan of the Bible. The tradition to the
effect that the Ethiopic race held Media, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia and Asia Minor,
including Iberia and Georgia seems to be corroborated by the latest discoveries.
Rawlinson makes Baluchistan and Kerman their former centre; but J.D. Baldwin, in
1
his Prehistoric Nations, maintains that Arabia was the ancient Ethiopia. And, in
2
Long’ s Classical Atlas the Arabi are placed at the mouth of the Indus, on the West-
ern bank. Eusebius declares that the Ethiopians came from India, whether Eastern
or Western is not mentioned.
The India or Hoddu of the Book of Esther was Oude or the Puñjāb; but the
name India is vague and only signifies a river country. Sir W. Jones made Iran
or Bactriana the original source of these peoples and supposed that a black or
Ethiopian empire once ruled all Southern Asia, having its metropolis at Sidon.
Godfrey Higgins, in the Anacalypsis suggests that it was Babylon . . . The do-
minion of Nimrod (Sargon I of the Assyrian cylinders or tiles) would seem to be
3
thus indicated.
Finally, Strabo, quoting Ephorus, says:
The Ethiopians were considered as occupying all the Southern coasts of both
Asia and Africa, and as divided by the Red Sea into Eastern and Western Asiat-
4
ic, and African.
They preceded the Turano-Akkadians, who themselves anticipat-
ed the Hamitic nation brought along by Nimrod. Though dark-
skinned, the Chaldeans were not necessarily Negroes, nor even
Hamites.
All this generalization of peoples under the one name of Ethiopians does not give us
anything like a certain date as to who were the “dark race” which according to Prof.
Rawlinson, Lenormant and others, preceded the Turano-Akkadians who themselves
anticipated the Hamitic nation brought along by Nimrod; but it undeniably proves
that they were dark-skinned though not necessarily for that, Negroes, nor even Ham-
ites. The clearness of this scientifically ethnological exposition appears all the more
muddled yet by the philological attempt of Prof. Rawlinson to reconcile these contra-
dictions. Accepting in that the lead of Max Müller who himself only sanctifies the
suggestion of Professor Oppert, ascribing the original invention of the cuneiform
characters and “a civilization anterior to that of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian
or Scythian race” — Rev. George Rawlinson, the brother of our eminent archæologist,
Sir Henry — endeavours to assign to these Ethiopians a Turanian or Scytho-Tartar
origin. “Hamitism,” he says, “although no doubt the form of speech out of which
1
[John D. Baldwin, Pre-historic Nations, etc., p. 58-59. New York: Harper & Bros., 1869]
2
[See Map 3, “The Empire of Alexander the Great, with the adjoining regions,” in: An Atlas of Classical Geogra-
phy, constructed by William Hughes and edited by George Long. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1856]
3
The Black Nations of Europe
4
[As quoted by Rawlinson, op. cit., p. 47]
Page 10 of 52
Semitism was developed, is itself Turanian rather than Semitic,” and adds in the
shape of a more elaborate explanation “the Turanian is an earlier stage of the Hamit-
ic.”
We shall turn then to this Scytho-Tartar race and see whether we can find anything
in them to connect them either with the Turanian Chaldees or primitive “black race”
to which belonged the authors of the earliest history, and records of the “religion of
magic” now translated from the Assyrian cylinders.
1
On a quotation by Justinus from an historical work by Trogus Pompeius, a manu-
script lost since the second century of our era which states that primitively the whole
of the boundary parts of Asia were in the possession of the Scythians who are also
shown to be older than the Egyptians, in fact the most ancient people in the world: on
the strength of this quotation and the Bible jumble, we suppose, it is now generally
agreed to class these Asiatic Scythians with the Turanian races, attribute to them the
invention of the cuneiform letters and say of the Akkadian language in which they
are written, that, like the Sanskrit, it remained the language of the literature long af-
ter it had ceased to exist and had become a dead language.
Does this help us any more to learn who the Chaldeans were? Not at all. For we
know of the Scythians — a generic name given to all the Asiatic tribes of the antiqui-
ty whose history has remained unknown to us — as little, if not less than of the Ak-
kadians whose language at least has been approximately found out by the philolo-
gists. From the accounts of Herodotus and Hippocrates about the Scythians we learn
next to nothing, and it becomes next to impossible to connect them with the Chalde-
ans any more than with any other people before the seventh century B.C. And speak-
ing of these Hippocrates describes their personal appearance as different from that of
the rest of mankind and “like to nothing but itself.” Repulsive in the extreme,
. . . their bodies are gross and fleshly; their joints are loose and yielding; the
belly flabby. . . and all closely resemble one another.
A half-nomadic people, barbarous even in the days we are accustomed to look upon
as such; warlike savages, is it of them that our modern Assyriologists say that “they
2
took part in, and assisted in the most ancient culture of our human races”?
The foundation and progress of which culture relates in the opinion of our Oriental-
ists to such a hoary antiquity that the memory of it is lost even in the most ancient
records of humanity; and whose language — now proved as having been the lan-
guage of an immense literature — “was a dead language at least two thousand years
3
B.C.”?
Historically our records go no farther than a few centuries B.C. While the poet
Aristeas shows the “Griffins” of the extreme North expelling the Cimmerians from
their lands and, entering Media, by mistake, instead of Asia Minor, Niebuhr, contrary
1
[De Historiarüs Philippicis libri, II, ch. iii. See also Latin ed. of Otto Seel, Leipzig, B.G. Teubneri, Bk. II, ch. 3, §
15, p. 20]
2
François Lenormant, The First Civilizations. M.V. Nikolsky, Sketches of Chaldean Cultures and several others.
[H.P. Blavatsky cites the French edition of Lenormant later in this article.]
3
ibid.
Page 11 of 52
to the Herodotean account who quotes Aristeas makes the Median King Cyaxares
who was besieging Nineveh meet the unexpected inroad of the Scythians, who after
defeating him made themselves masters “as far as Palestine and the borders of
Egypt.” On one hand Niebuhr, Böckh, Thirlwall and Grote maintain that the He-
rodotean Scythians were Mongolians; and on the other, such authorities as Hum-
boldt, Grim, Klaproth, Sir H. Rawlinson, seek to prove that they belonged to the In-
do-European race.
With such a positive data in hand, we have no better means than to make the most
we can of one unimpeachable material at hand, the autobiography of these people
traced by their own hand for countless generations. But before we do so, we have to
explain to the readers how the men of science view these famous cylinders, and what
they are.
Owing to the constant efforts of the Orientalists a series of most unexpected, amaz-
ing discoveries were made for the last few years. Under heaps of garbage and moun-
tains of crumbling ruins a whole library, which when translated, will be composed of
many thousands of volumes, has recently been excavated. The subject of these rec-
ords refers mostly to the development of the religious ideas of the aborigines of these
regions where the world sees if not the cradle at least one of the cradles, and the
principal one where humanity evoluted into its present shape. But they also contain
the history of peoples and races of which we moderns had no idea. True, it is but a
fragmentary history, of which, owing to so many tiles being broken and as many
crumbled into dust, many a link is now missing; yet enough to show that, while cit-
ies and kingdoms and peoples, and whole races, some of them with the highest of
civilizations rose and developed, but to degenerate and fall; and religions and philos-
ophies, arts and sciences passing like Chinese shadows on the white walls of Time,
appear — like all concrete and temporary things — but to disappear into the abyss of
motionless Eternity; there are abstract ideas which never die. These ideas now at-
tributed to superstition of the grossest kind and called incantations, belief in good
and bad demons, in short MAGIC, are denounced in the most bitter way. On one
hand it is the Christians who arrogate to themselves the monopoly of teaching the
world about angels and devils in their own way; and on the other by the men of Sci-
ence who believe in neither and would destroy at one stroke every belief but in them-
selves.
The Orientalists think that the Turanians, the predecessors of Nimrod, entered the
Euphrates-Tigris valley, having already a certain culture which they brought with
them from another locality. Besides the cuneiform mode of writing which they had
invented before their arrival, either they or the “black race” which they found there
had another kind of characters, ideographic signs, a rude form of hieroglyphics
which was used for expressing the symbolical image of whether a concrete object or
an abstract idea. When these signs had acquired a phonetic value the ideographic
forms gradually lost their character, the signs represented no more the objects which
they symbolized but a simple combination of various arrow-headed lines mostly hori-
zontal. They read from left to right, are either stamped or cut, occur on tablets cut in
rocks, on stone-slabs, on bass-reliefs, on Assyrian winged bulls, on sun-baked or
kiln-burnt bricks or small cylinders, on seals, some of the inscriptions being so mi-
Page 12 of 52
nute as to require a microscope. All this system of signs answered fully to the agglu-
tinative idiom of the Turanians, and were accepted by the Cushites of the Tigro-
Euphratean valley at a much later period. The researches upon these elementary ar-
row-headed signs and their comparisons with material objects gave that important
result that the cuneiform characters are now known to have originated in a more
Northern region than Chaldea; in a land with quite another fauna and flora, where,
for instance there were no lions but of wolves and bears in abundance, where neither
the palm nor the vine were known but trees with acerose leaves, pines and firs
1
abounded.
The dead letter of Chaldean Magic — useless and absurd incanta-
tions, ceremonial prayers and talismans — have passed part and
parcel under the guise of exorcisms, holy water, ceremonies,
pope-blessed amulets, and images of angels and saints, into the
Catholic Church.
While palæography helped by palæology proved so much, archæology was discover-
ing that the “oldest tombs in Chaldea carry us back to as great an antiquity as the
2
Egyptian sarcophagi.” The religion of the aborigines who preceded the alleged Tura-
nians, notwithstanding the assertions of some Orientalists to the contrary, did not
differ essentially from the latest form of the Chaldeo-Babylonian beliefs as now
shown by the tiles and monuments. If one was a “rude form of primitive fetishism” so
was the other, though personally we are inclined to believe that both were as philo-
sophical at the bottom as any of the religious systems of antiquity or especially the
one which followed and aided by sword and fire supplanted them. The very sugges-
tive fact that the Chaldeans whose proficiency in mathematics and astronomy was
renowned from the first glimpse of history could not very well be at the same time
superstitious and fetish-worshipping fools, has never seemed to strike our Oriental-
ists. None of them was ever known to remark that the people whom Aristotle found to
have taken the most correct astronomical observations during a period of no less
than 1903 years, could not at the same time credit “magic” and belief in incanta-
tions, talismans and amulets as they did, had not all these a more philosophical ba-
sis of truth in them than is suggested by these terms in our own century. Unless one
makes a special study of that system by the light of occult Sciences, a student of
these religious systems risks never to rise higher than dead letter superficiality. And
it is not very likely that under the present circumstances and with the objurgation
which rests upon the claims of psychology and the misunderstood phenomena of
Spiritualism and Occultism especially, the Orientalist would go to that length. Their
surest though hitherto unacknowledged guide in their opinions and sentences
passed upon the “magic” of the ancients, are the magical rites and belief in good and
bad demons as practiced under the name of religious doctrines in the Roman Catho-
lic and Greek Eastern Church. For all the dead letter of Chaldean magic — useless
and absurd incantations, ceremonial prayers and talismans — have passed part and
1
G. Smith, The Phonetic Values of the Cuneiform Characters, p. 4; [see edition published in London: Williams &
Norgate, 1871]
2
François Lenormant, Les Premières Civilizations, Vol. I, p. 118; [see French edition, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1874,
2 vols.]
Page 13 of 52
parcel under the name of “exorcisms,” holy water, ceremonies and pope-blessed am-
1
ulets and images of angels and Saints into the Catholic Christian Church.
Hence we find it rather amusing to hear Mr. F. Lenormant, a zealous member of the
Popish Church, express his opinion upon the religion of the Chaldees by stating that,
no more than the rest of the ancient creeds, it “never rose higher than the worship of
nature.” That solitary fact that the Akkadians represented our Earth in the shape of
a boat, not oblong as those we are acquainted with, but perfectly round, like a slight-
ly flattened ball with the top cut off, as was in use with the Chaldeans, and in inces-
sant circling motion on the ocean of space, proves already that their Magi were far
ahead of the Christian fathers, the early as the mediæval ones. We doubt whether
any of the former, with their enormous knowledge of astronomy, would have com-
pared to an Augustine scouting the sphericity of the earth as it would prevent the
antipodes from seeing the Lord Christ when he descended from heaven at the second
advent; or a Lactantius, who thought it would make the men at the other side of the
earth walk with their heads downward; or finally the holy wiseacres who came very
nearly burning Galileo for his anti-scriptural blasphemy. Whether such prejudiced
ideas about “Magic” will be much dispelled even now is what we still doubt. That
Magic flourished among the Chaldeans as it did with the Egyptians, the Greeks, the
Āryans and every other people was always known. But what was never known, owing
to prejudice, was in what consisted that Magic. Even now that a whole library upon
the subject is found by Layard and Smith on the ancient sites of Chaldea, unless
they learn to read its contents by the light of other like works, our men of Science
will never understand its significance. For they had the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta
and the Book of the Dead, and found in them but the dead letter: the spirit escaped
them. And yet, never had they a better chance. Transported to the British Museum
that . . .
. . . now the Orientalists believe they know all about it, François Lenormant gave
these incantations even a name: he called them the “Chaldean Vedas”; but no more
than his predecessors did he succeed to show as he thinks “the origin and im-
2
portance of Magic with the Chaldeans.”
Before we can prove it more elaborately, we have to go back to the very sources of
Magic; at least as far as the first glimpses of it appear in the hardly dispelling dark-
ness of the past. Obliged to keep within the narrow limits of a journal article, we
must avoid every useless disquisition and hold as much as possible to facts. Hence
we will briefly pass in review the several hypotheses that various Orientalists and
men of Science have evolved out of their fancy from the very meagre material and da-
ta they have at their disposal.
What they call Magic is simply incantations to numberless cosmical powers personi-
fied under the form of good and bad spirits. Of the religion of the Chaldees, Assyrians
1
What are the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic priests but “magic” and “incantations”? See the new Ritual of
Exorcisms published in 1852 in Rome under the patronage of the Pope and compare.
2
See La Magie chez les Chaldéens; [op. cit., Preface. Also on p. 116 Lenormant refers to his section on a “Véda
Chaldéen” in Vol. II of his book Les Premières Civilisations, cited elsewhere.]
Page 14 of 52
and others they say what Max Müller said already of the early Āryans and Herbert
Spencer of the fetish-worshippers in general. A primitive and gross form of religion
presenting various shades of fetishism. Watching over and in nature, fancy depicts
as host of spirits which produce, guide and have control over every phenomenon in
nature. In the low moaning of the wind, in the rustle of the leaves, in the roaring of
the waves and the storm, in all the geological, astronomical and meteorological
changes, in short the untutored minds of these primitive savages saw, heard and felt
a special genius, a Spirit presiding over and inhabiting its respective element, ob-
scured, personified and deified. The Primitive Man “gives names to all the powers of
nature, and after he has called the fire ‘Agni,’ the sunlight ‘Indra,’ the storms . . . ”
. . . we have to learn that these men lived in the very dawn of civilization, that they
were what we now call pagans, or worse — fetish-worshippers. The light of Science,
helped and preceded by the still brighter light of Christianity, chased such religious
phantoms of polytheism and replaced them by exact knowledge and — Monotheism.
Page 15 of 52
CHALDEANS WERE A PRE-BABYLONIAN BROTHERHOOD OF HIEROPHANTS
They spread westward, from the plateau of Pamir, cradle

of the Elect of humanity’s Fifth Root-Race.
First published in Lucifer, Vol. X, No. 58, June 1893, pp. 273-83; republished in Blavatsky Collected
Writings, (THE DENIALS AND MISTAKES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY) XIII pp. 224-42.
[The text of this article may also be found in the First Draft of The Secret Doctrine which H.P. Blavatsky
sent to Adyar in 1886. The First Draft version has a few additional paragraphs in it, which we have in-
corporated into the present article in their proper places. Similar material was published in the Volume
entitled: “The Secret Doctrine, Volume III” (1897), wherein it occupies Section 2 & 3, pp. 30-43. It is
therefore evident that Lucifer was the original place of publication for this text. — Boris de Zirkoff.]
At or near the beginning of the present century all the books called Hermetic were
loudly proclaimed and set down as simply a collection of tales, of fraudulent pretences
and most absurd claims, being, in the opinion of the average man of science, unwor-
thy of serious attention. They “never existed before the Christian era,” it was said;
“they were all written with the triple object of speculation, deceit and pious fraud”;
they were all, the best of them, silly apocrypha. In this respect, the nineteenth centu-
ry proved a most worthy progeny of the eighteenth. For in the age of Voltaire, as well
as in this, everything that did not emanate direct from the Royal Academy was false,
superstitious and foolish, and belief in the wisdom of the Ancients was laughed to
scorn, perhaps more even than it is now. The very thought of accepting as authentic
the works and vagaries of a false Hermes, a false Orpheus, a false Zoroaster, of false
Oracles, false Sibyls, and a thrice false Mesmer and his absurd “fluids,” was tabooed
all along the line. Thus all that had its genesis outside the learned and dogmatic pre-
cincts of Oxford and Cambridge, or the Academy of France, was denounced in those
days as “unscientific” and “ridiculously absurd.” This tendency has survived to the
present day.
We think we see the sidereal phantom of the old philosopher and mystic, Henry
More, once of Cambridge University, moving about in the astral mist, over the old
moss-covered roofs of the ancient town from which he wrote his famous letter to
Glanvill about “witches.” The soul seems restless and indignant, as on that day May
5th, 1678, when the Doctor complained so bitterly to the author of Sadducismus Tri-
umphatus of Scot, Adie and Webster. “Our new inspired Saints,” the soul is heard to
mutter,
. . . sworn advocates of the witches who thus madly and boldly, against all
sense and reason, against all antiquity, against all interpreters, and against the
inspired Scripture itself, will have no Samuel in this scene, but a cunning con-
Page 16 of 52
federate knave; whether the inspired Scripture, or these in-blown buffoons,

puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity, are to be
1
believed, let anyone judge.
Rest in peace, O restless soul. Lately things are somewhat changed; and since that
for ever memorable day when the Academical Committee (Franklin included) investi-
gated Mesmer’s phenomena and proclaimed them a clever knavery, every hour
brings in some fresh evidence in favour of Mesmerism and phenomena in general.
But in the first decades of our century the men of science were blind as bats — as
many are still even now — and Hermetic literature was denied, notwithstanding the
evidence of the most erudite men of all the ages.
One feels dwarfed and humbled in reading what the great modern “Destroyer” of eve-
ry religious belief, past, present and future — M. Renan — has to say of poor human-
ity and its powers of discernment. “Mankind,” he believes, “has but a very narrow
mind; and the number of men capable of seizing acutely (finement ) the true analogy
2
of things is quite imperceptible.” Upon comparing, however, this statement with an-
other opinion expressed by the same author, namely, that “the mind of the true critic
should yield, hands and feet bound, to facts, to be dragged by them wherever they
3
may lead him” one feels relieved. When, moreover, these two philosophical state-
ments are strengthened by that third enunciation of the famous Academician, who
4
declares that “tout parti pris a priori doit être banni de la science,” there remains lit-
tle to fear. Unfortunately M. Renan is the first to break the golden rule.
The evidence of Herodotus, called, sarcastically no doubt, “the father of history,”
since in every question upon which modern thought disagrees with him his testimo-
ny goes for nought; the sober and earnest assurances in the philosophical narratives
of Plato and Thucydides, Polybius and Plutarch, and even certain statements of Aris-
totle himself; all these are invariably laid aside whenever they are involved with what
modern criticism is pleased to regard as a myth. It is some time since Strauss pro-
claimed that “the presence of a supernatural element or miracle in a narrative is an
infallible sign of the presence in it of a myth,” and such is the criterion adopted tacitly
by every modern critic. But what is a myth — μύθος — to begin with? Are we not told
distinctly by the ancient classics that mythos is equivalent to the word tradition? Was
not its Latin equivalent the term fabula, a fable, a synonym with the Romans of that
which was told, as having happened in prehistoric time, and not necessarily an in-
vention? Yet with such autocrats of criticism and despotic rulers as M. Renan in
France, and most of the English and German Orientalists, there may be no end of
surprises in store for us in the century to come — historical, geographical, ethnologi-
cal and philological surprises — travesties in philosophy having become so common
1
[Glanvill, Sadducismus triumphatus, p. 48. Also quoted in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 206. In H.P. Blavatsky’ s
copy of Ennemoser’ s History of Magic, now in the Adyar Archives, from which she quotes further on in this arti-
cle, there is a reference to Henry More (Vol. I, p. 8). Underlining twice the words “Henry More,” Blavatsky wrote
in pencil the words: “God Bless him! ” Consult Col. Olcott’ s Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, pp. 237-39, for the role
played by Henry More in the production of Isis Unveiled.]
2
Études Religieuses
3
Études Historiques. Mémoire read at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1859. [In text form this
appeared as Études d’ Histoire Religieuse. Paris: Michel Levy Frères; many editions.]
4
[i.e., bias a priori must be banished from science.]
Page 17 of 52
of late that we can be startled by nothing in that direction. We have already been told
by one learned speculator that Homer was “simply a mythical personification of the
1
Épopée,” by another that Hippocrates, son of Æsculapius, “could only be a chime-
ra,” that the Asclepiadæ — their seven hundred years of duration notwithstanding —
“might after all prove simply a fiction”; that the city of Troy — Dr. Schliemann not-
withstanding — “existed only on the maps,” etc., etc. Why should we not be invited
after this to regard every hitherto historical character in days of old as a myth? Were
not Alexander the Great needed by philology as a sledge-hammer to break the heads
of Brāhmanical chronological pretensions, he would have become long ago simply a
symbol for annexation, or a genius of Conquest, as de Mirville neatly put it.
Blank denial is the only means left, the most secure refuge and asylum, to shelter for
some little time to come the last of the sceptics. When one denies unconditionally it
becomes unnecessary to go to the trouble of arguing, and, what is worse, of having to
yield occasionally a point or two before the irrefutable arguments and facts of one’s
opponent. Creuzer, greatest of the symbologists of his time, the most learned among
the masses of erudite German mythologists, must have envied the placid self-
confidence of certain sceptics, when he found himself forced in a moment of desper-
ate perplexity to admit,
. . . decidedly and first of all we are compelled to return to the theories of trolls
and genii, as they were understood by the ancients, a doctrine without which it
is absolutely impossible to explain to oneself anything with regard to the mys-
2
teries.
Occultism is intimately connected with Chaldean Wisdom, and its
records show the forefathers of the Aryan Brahmans at the head
of arts and sciences, as Astronomers and Seers, confabulating
with the stars, and receiving instructions from the concealed dei-
ty. Their sanctity of life and great learning made their name for
long ages a synonym of Divine Science.
Occultism, all over the globe, is intimately connected with Chaldean Wisdom, and its
records show the forefathers of the Āryan Brāhmans in the sacred offices of the
Chaldees — an Adept caste (different from the Babylonian Chaldeans and Caldees)
— at the head of the arts and sciences, of astronomers and seers, confabulating with
the “stars,” and “receiving instructions from the brilliant sons of Ilu” (the concealed
deity). Their sanctity of life and great learning — the latter passing to posterity —
made the name for long ages a synonym of Science. Yes; they were indeed mediators
between the people and the appointed messengers of heaven, whose bodies shine in
the starry heavens, and they were the interpreters of their wills. But is this Astrolatry
or Sabæanism? Have they worshipped the stars we see, or is it the modern (following
in this the mediæval) Roman Catholics, who, guilty of the same worship to the letter,
and having borrowed it from the later Chaldees, the Lebanon Nabatheans and the
baptized Sabians (not from the learned Astronomers and Initiates of the days of old),
would now veil it by anathematizing the source whence it came? Theology and
1
L.F. Alfred Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique, etc., Vol. I, p. 248; see also the speculations of
Holzmann in Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, ann. 1852, p. 487 et seq.
2
Creuzer’ s Symbolik III, 456
Page 18 of 52
Churchianism would fain trouble the clear spring that fed them from the first, to
prevent posterity from looking into it and thus seeing their reflection. The Occultists,
however, believe the time has come to give everyone his due. As to our other oppo-
nents — the modern sceptic and the epicurean, the cynic and the Sadducee — they
1
may find our answer to their denials in our earlier writings. We say now what we
said then, in reply to the many unjust aspersions thrown on the ancient doctrines:
The thought of the present-day commentator and critic as to the ancient learn-
ing, is limited to and runs around the exotericism of the temples; his insight is
either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the solemn adyta of old, where the
hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard the public worship in its true
light. No ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of creation, and
that the starry heaven and our mother earth were created for his sake.
2
When we find such works as Rivers of Life and Phallicism appearing in our day in
print, under the auspices of Materialism, it is easy to see that the day for conceal-
ment and travesty has passed away. Science in philology, symbolism, and compara-
tive religions has progressed too far to deny any longer, and the Church is too wise
and cautious not to be now making the best of the situation. Meanwhile, the
3
“rhombs of Hecate” and the “wheels of Lucifer,” daily exhumed on the site of Baby-
lon, can no longer be used as a clear evidence of Satan-worship, since the same
symbols are shown in the ritual of the Latin Church. The latter is too learned to be
ignorant of the fact that even the later Chaldees, who had gradually fallen into dual-
ism, reducing all things to two primal principles, had no more worshipped Satan or
idols than have the Zoroastrians, who are now accused of the same, but that their
religion was as highly philosophical as any; their dual and exoteric Theosophy be-
came the heirloom of the Jews, who, in their turn, were forced to share it with the
Christians. Parsīs are charged to this day with heliolatry, and yet in the Chaldean
Oracles, under the “Magical and Philosophical Precepts” of Zoroaster, the following is
found:
Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will of the father, not for your sake.
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon; for she runs always by the work
of necessity.
The progression of the stars was not generated for your sake.
There is a vast difference between the true worship taught to those who showed
themselves worthy, and the state religions. The Magians are accused of all kinds of
superstition, but the Chaldean Oracle proceeds:
1
See Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 535.
2
[Rivers of Life, or Sources and Streams of the Faith of Man in all Lands, etc., by Maj.-General James George R.
Forlong. London, 1883; 2 vols.; and Phallicism, by Hargrave Jennings. London: George Redway, 1884. — Boris
de Zirkoff.]
3
E. de Mirville, Des Esprits, Vol. III, p. 267 et seq.
Page 19 of 52
The wide aerial flight of birds is not true,

Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys,
The basis of mercenary fraud: flee from these
If you would open the sacred paradise of piety
1
Where virtue, wisdom, and equity, are assembled.
Surely it is not those who warn people against “mercenary fraud” who can be ac-
cused of it; as said elsewhere:
If they accomplished acts which seem miraculous, who can with fairness pre-
sume to deny that it was done merely because they possessed a knowledge of
natural philosophy and psychological science to a degree unknown to our
2
schools?
The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being beyond the
reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldeans are accused
of Sabæanism and Sun-worship, cults which were simply those of
the uneducated masses.
The above-quoted stanzas form a rather strange teaching to come from those who are
universally believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the starry host, as
Gods. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being beyond the reach of
modern materialistic thought, the Chaldean philosophers are accused, together with
the ignorant masses, of Sabæanism and sun-worship, cults which were simply those
of the uneducated masses.
Things of late have changed, true enough; the field of investigation has widened; old
religions are a little better understood; and, since that memorable day when the
Committee of the French Academy, headed by Benjamin Franklin, investigated Mes-
mer’ s phenomena but to proclaim them charlatanry and clever knavery, both “hea-
then philosophy” and mesmerism have acquired certain rights and privileges, and
are now viewed from quite a different standpoint. Is full justice rendered them withal,
and are they appreciated any better? We are afraid not. Human nature is the same
now, as when Pope said of the force of prejudice that:
The diff’ rence is as great between
The optics seeing as the objects seen.
All manners take a tincture from our own,
Or some discolour’d thro’ our passions shown;
Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies,
3
Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
1
[Marked Psellus, 4, and numbered cxliv in Cory’ s Ancient Fragments, p. 269, in 2nd ed., London, 1832. Cf.
Psellus in the App. to Gallæus, Sibyllina oracula, pp. 93-94. Amsterdam, 1689; and J.A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca
Græca (Hamburg, 1705-28), lib. V, cap. ii, § xl; also J. Opsopäus, Oracula Sibyllina, Paris, 1607. — Boris de
Zirkoff.] Full text in our Theosophy and Theosophists Series. — ED. PHIL.
2
Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, pp. 535-36
3
[Moral Essays i, 31-36]
Page 20 of 52
Clemens Alexandrinus testifies to the existence of 30,000 addi-

tional volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library of the
tomb of Ozymandias, over the entrance of which were inscribed
the words, “A Cure for the Soul.” Extant fragments of works by
Mercury Trismegistus, Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., are
1
rolls that escaped the holocaust of the great Alexandrian Library.
Thus, in the first decades of our century, Hermetic Philosophy was regarded by both
Churchmen and men of science from two quite opposite points of view. The former
called it sinful and devilish, the latter denied point-blank its authenticity, notwith-
standing the evidence brought forward by the most erudite men of every age, includ-
ing our own. The learned Father Kircher, for one, was not even noticed; and his as-
sertion, that all the fragments known under the titles of works by Mercury Trismegis-
tus, Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., were rolls escaped from the fire that de-
voured one hundred thousand volumes of the great Alexandrian Library, was simply
laughed at. Nevertheless, the educated classes of Europe knew then, as they do now,
that the famous Alexandrian Library — “the marvel of the ages” — was founded by
Ptolemy Philadelphus; and that most of its MSS. were carefully copied from hieratic
texts and the oldest parchments, Chaldean, Phoenician, Persian, etc., these translit-
erations and copies amounting in their turn to another hundred thousand, as Jose-
phus and Strabo assert.
Moreover, there is the additional evidence of Clemens Alexandrinus, that ought to be
2
credited to some extent, and he testifies to the existence of thirty thousand addi-
tional volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library of the tomb of Ozymandi-
as, over the entrance of which were inscribed the words, “A Cure for the Soul.”
1
See Appendix A on “The Testimony of Theodas.”
2
The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria [Stromateis, VI, iv] as having
existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus [De mysteriis, viii, 1], on the authori-
ty of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 20,000 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36, 525. But the
testimony of Iamblichus as a Neo-Platonist and theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who
is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage . . . ” with whom “none of the
later native historians can be compared . . . (see Egypt’ s place, etc., I, 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-
Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against magic and the
occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However, none of the archæologists doubts for a moment the
almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity
and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable
proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one kings before
the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years.
Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the
birth of the Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest
in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to
which Diogenes Lærtius [Lives, “Proemium,” Bk. I, ch. i, § 2] carries back the records of the priests, he is evi-
dently more embarrassed with his mention of their 373 eclipses (local and total or nearly so) of the sun, and
832 of the moon, and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they must have extended over 10,000
years” (Bunsen, op. cit., I, 14). “We learn, however,” he adds, “from one of their own chronological works . . .
that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of myriads of years.” (ibid.,
p. 15)
Page 21 of 52
More! The writings of the elusive Hermes Trismegistus spring

from the same fountain and source: for they are the faithful echo
and expression of the most ancient verities. Scattered fragments
are being discovered in the sanctuaries of Chaldea, India, Phoeni-
cia, Egypt, and Central Asia.
Since then, as everyone knows, entire texts out of the “apocryphal” works of the
“false” Poimandrēs, and the no less “false” Asklēpiades, were found by Champollion
inscribed within the most ancient monuments of Egypt. After having devoted their
whole lives to the study of the records of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champol-
lion-Figeac and Champollion Junior publicly declared, notwithstanding many biased
judgments, hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the Books of Hermes:
. . . truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions which are constantly corrobo-
rated by the most authentic records and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest
1
antiquity.
None will question the merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist, and if he declares
that everything demonstrates the accuracy of the writings of the mysterious Hermes
Trismegistus, that their antiquity runs back into the night of time, and that they are
corroborated in their minutest details, then indeed criticism ought to be fully satis-
fied. “These expressions,” says Champollion, “are only the faithful echo and expres-
2
sion of the most ancient verities.”
Since this was written by him, some of the apocryphal verses by the mythical Orphe-
us have also been found copied word for word in certain inscriptions of the Fourth
Dynasty in hieroglyphics, addressed to various deities.
Finally Creuzer discovered and pointed out the numerous passages borrowed from
Orphic hymns by Hesiod and Homer; and Christians appealed, in their turn, to the
testimony of Æschylus, as showing “prescience in at least one of the Sibyls of old,”
3
says de Mirville.
Thus gradually the ancient claims came to be vindicated, and modern criticism had
to submit to evidence. Many are now the writers who confess that such kind of litera-
ture as the Hermetic works of Egypt can never be dated too far back into the prehis-
toric ages. It was also found that the texts of many of those ancient works — Enoch
included — deemed and so loudly proclaimed apocryphal just at the beginning of this
century, are now discovered and recognized in the most secret and sacred sanctuar-
ies of Chaldea, India, Phoenicia, Egypt and Central Asia.
1
Champollion-Figeac, Égypte ancienne, p. 139; [Paris: Didot Frères, 1847]
2
Cf. “The books of Hermes Trismegistus contain the exoteric meaning, still veiled for all but the Occultist, of
the Astrology and Astrolatry of the Khaldi. The two subjects are closely connected. Astrolatry, or the adoration
of the heavenly host, is the natural result of only half-revealed Astrology, whose Adepts carefully concealed from
the non-initiated masses its Occult principles and the wisdom imparted to them by the Regents of the Planets
— the ‘ Angels.’ Hence, divine Astrology for the Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry for the profane. St. Justin as-
serts it:
“From the first invention of the hieroglyphics it was not the vulgar, but the distinguished and select men
who became initiated in the secrecy of the temples into the science of every kind of Astrology — even into
its most abject kind: that Astrology which later on found itself prostituted in the public thoroughfares.”
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (ASTROLOGY AND ASTROLATRY) XIV p. 544
3
Pneumatologie, Des Esprits on “Prometheus,” 1863, Vol. II, p. 373
Page 22 of 52
But even such proofs have failed to convince Materialism. The reason for it is very
simple and self-evident. Those texts, studied and held in universal veneration at one
time, copied and transcribed by every philosopher, and found in every temple; often
mastered, whole lives of incessant mental labour having been devoted to them, by
the greatest sages living, by statesmen and classic writers, kings and renowned
Adepts — what were they? Treatises on Magic and Occultism, pure and simple; the
now tabooed and derided Theosophy and Occult Sciences, laughed to scorn by mod-
ern Materialism. Were the people so simple and credulous in the days of Plato and
Pythagoras? Were the millions of Babylonia and Egypt, of India and Greece, during
the periods of learning and civilization that preceded the year One of our era (giving
birth but to the intellectual darkness of the fanaticism of the Middle Ages), so simple
and credulous that so many, otherwise great, men should have devoted their lives to
an illusion, a mere hallucination? It would seem so, had we to be content with the
word and conclusions of our modern philosophers.
Egypt gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. Asks
Ennemoser,
. . . how comes it that so little has become known of these mysteries . . .
through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people? The
answer is, that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. An-
other cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the written
memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity . . . Numa’s books,
described by Livy, consisting of natural philosophy, were found in his tomb; but
they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should reveal the most se-
cret mysteries of the state religion . . . The senate and the tribunes of the peo-
ple determined that . . . the books themselves be burnt, which was done before
1
the people . . .
Cassianus mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which
was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have re-
2
ceived it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam.
Herodotus tells us that the mysteries were brought by Orpheus from India. Orpheus
is called the inventor of letters and writing and placed anterior to both Homer and
3
Hesiod. Nevertheless, till very lately, Orphic literature and that of the Argonauts
were attributed to a contemporary of Pisistratus, Solon and Pythagoras, one named
Onomacritus, who is credited with having compiled them in their actual form to-
wards the middle of the VI th century B.C., or 800 years after the days of Orpheus. The
latest researches, however, lead the Orientalists to believe that this compilation was
simply a very late re-edition of the Orphic Hymns, whether ideographic or picto-
graphic. In their original texts these Hymns are now shown much older than the VI th
4
century B.C. In Pausanias’ Description of Greece, we are told that in his days there
1
J. Ennemoser, The History of Magic, Vol. II, Bohn Lib. London: George Bell & Sons, 1854; pp. 9-11
2
Joannes Cassianus. Collationes Patrum, Pt. 1, Coll. viii, ch. 21
3
[See “Orpheus’ legend and works” in our Hellenic and Hellenistic Papers Series. — ED. PHIL.]
4
[or Itinerary ] IX, xxx, 12
Page 23 of 52
1
was a sacerdotal family, which like the Brahmins with regard to the Vedas and the
Epic poems, had committed to memory those Orphic hymns and that the latter were
usually transmitted in that way from one generation to another. As to the poem of
the Argonauts, Vivien de Saint-Martin thinks that it really can be traced as far back
2
as the days of Orpheus.
Vivien de Saint-Martin is very impartial and fair and no doubt as learned; but there
are some who go still further back than that. It is not the writer’s province to argue
upon the dates of the many poems cited above, but only, by showing their indubita-
bly antediluvian — rather, prehistoric — origin, claim the same for the Occult Scienc-
es. And how these are, aware of the difference shown to Asiatic heathen chronol-
ogists, a Christian philosopher of the early ages may be asked to express our inti-
mate thought as to the date of — say — MAGIC. “If” — argues Clemens Alexandrinus,
the ex-pupil of the Neo-Platonist — “if there is a science, there must necessarily be a
professor of it.” And he goes on saying that Cleanthes had Zeno to teach him, The-
ophrastus — Aristotle, Metrodorus — Epicurus, Plato — Socrates, etc.; and then
when he arrived down to Pythagoras, Pherecydes and Thales, he had still to search
and enquire who was their master of masters. The same for the Egyptians, the Indi-
ans, the Babylonians, and the Magi themselves. He would not cease questioning, to
learn who it was they all had for their Masters. And when he [Clemens] would have
forcibly brought down the enquiry to the very cradle of mankind, to the birth of the
first man, he should reiterate once more his questioning and ask him — Adam — no
doubt.
Who was his professor? Surely it would prove no man this once . . . and when
we have reached the Angels, we shall have to ask even of them who was their
3
Master and doctor of science.
The aim of the good Father’s long argument is of course to discover two distinct Mas-
ters, one the preceptor of Biblical Patriarchs, the other, the teacher of the Gentiles.
But the Secret Doctrine need go to no such trouble. Her professors know well who
were the first instructors of mankind in Occult Sciences.
The two Masters traced out by Clemens are of course God and his undying enemy
and opponent the Devil, the subject of his enquiry relating to the dual aspect of Her-
metic Science, as cause and effect. Admitting the moral beauty and virtues preached
in every occult book he was acquainted with, Clemens wants to know the cause of
the apparent contradiction between doctrine and practice, good and bad magic, and
comes to the conclusion, it seems, that magic has two origins — divine and diaboli-
cal. He perceives its bifurcation into two channels — hence his deduction and infer-
ence. We perceive it too, without necessarily dating such a bifurcation — the “Right”
and “Left Path” we call it — to its very beginning. Otherwise, judging also by the ef-
fects of his [Clemens’] own religion, and the walk in life of its professors since the
death of his Master, the Occultists would have a right to come to just the same con-
1
[The Lycomidæ]
2
Vivien de Saint-Martin, Découvertes géologiques, Vol. I, p. 313. Cf. de Mirville, Pneumatologie, Des Esprits, Vol.
III, p. 205 fn.
3
Stromateis, Bk. VI, ch. vii
Page 24 of 52
clusion, and say that, while Christ, the Master of all true Christians, was in every
way godly, the Master of those who resorted to the horrors of the Inquisition, to the
burning and torture of heretic witches and Occultists by Calvin and pupils, etc.,
must have been evidently the DEVIL — if the Occultists were silly enough to believe in
one. Clemens’ testimony, however, is valuable as it shows
1 The enormous number of works on Occult Sciences during his epoch; and
2 The extraordinary powers acquired owing to these Sciences by certain men.
1
He devotes the whole of his sixth volume of the Stromateis to this research of the
first two “Masters” of the true and the false philosophies respectively, both preserved
2
in the sanctuaries of Egypt. And thereupon he apostrophizes the Greeks, asking
why they should not believe in the miracles of Moses when their own philosophers
claim the same privileges. “It is Æacus,” he says, “obtaining through his powers a
marvellous rain; it is Aristæus who causes the winds to blow, Empedocles quieting
3
the gale, and forcing it to cease,” etc., etc.
The books of Mercurius Trismegistus attracted his attention the most. Their extreme
4
wisdom, he remarks, ought always to be in everyone’s mouth — semper esse in ore.
He is loud in his praise of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp), and of the Sibylline Books and
even of astrology.
There have been use and abuse of Magic in all ages, as there are use and abuse of
Mesmerism and Hypnotism in our own. The ancient world had its Apolloniuses and
its Pherecydeses, and intellectual people could discriminate between them, as they
can now. While not one classic or pagan writer has ever found one word of blame for
Apollonius of Tyana, for instance, it is not so with regard to Pherecydes. Hesychius of
Miletus, Philo of Byblos and Eustathius charge him unstintingly with having built
his philosophy and science on demoniacal traditions. Cicero declares that Phere-
5
cydes is potius divinus quam physicus, “rather a soothsayer than a physicist”; and
Diogenes Lærtius gives a vast number of stories relating to his predictions. One day
Pherecydes of Syros prophesies the shipwreck of a vessel hundreds of miles away
from him; another time he predicts the capture of the Lacedæmonians by the Acadi-
6
ans; finally, he foresees his own wretched end.
Such imputations as these prove very little, except, perhaps, the presence of clair-
voyance and prevision in every age. Had it not been for the evidence brought forward
by his own co-religionists, that Pherecydes abused his powers, there would have
been no proof at all against him, either of sorcery or of any other malpractice. Such
evidence as is given by Christian writers is of no value. Baronius, for instance, and
1
[In: Writings of Clement of Alexandria, tr. by Rev. Wm. Wilson, Vol. XII of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library,
Edinburgh: T.T. Clark, 1869. See Bk. VI, ch. iii]
2
[addresses]
3
Therefore Empedocles is called Κωλυσάυεμος, “the dominator of the wind.” (Diogenes Lærtius, Lives, Bk. VIII,
ch. ii, 60)
4
Stromateis, Bk. VI, ch. iv
5
De divinatione, Bk. 1, 50, 112
6
Diogenes Lærtius, Lives, Bk. 1, ch. xi, 116
Page 25 of 52
de Mirville find an unanswerable proof of demonology in the belief of a philosopher in

the co-eternity of matter and spirit. Says de Mirville:
Pherecydes . . . postulating in principle the primordiality of Zeus or Æther, and
then admitting on the same plane another principle, co-eternal and co-working
1
with the first one, which he calls the fifth element or ōgenos. For some time
people have wondered just exactly what he meant by that term; however, in the
last analysis, the following translation seems correct: “something that con-
2
strains, retains,” in one word, hadēs or hell.
The first statement is “known to every school-boy” without de Mirville going to the
trouble of explaining it; as to the deduction, every Occultist will deny it point-blank,
and only smile at the folly. But now we come to the conclusion.
The résumé of the views of the Latin Church — as given by various authors of the
same type as the Marquis — is that the Hermetic Books — their wisdom notwith-
standing, and this wisdom is fully admitted in Rome — are “the heirloom left by
Cain, the accursed, to mankind.” It is “absolutely proven,” says the modern memori-
alist of “Satan in History,” “that immediately after the Flood, Ham and his descend-
ants had propagated anew the ancient teachings of the accursed Cainites and of the
3
submerged race.” This proves at any rate that Magic, or Sorcery as he calls it, is an
Antediluvian Art, and thus one point is gained. For, as he says,
4
. . . the evidence of Berosus is there, and he shows Ham to be identical with
the first Zoroaster (!), the famous founder of Bactria (!!), and the first author of
all the Magic Arts of Babylonia. Zoroaster, on the same authority, is the
5 6
Chemesenua or Ham (Cham), the infamous, who left the faithful and loyal No-
achians, the blessed, and he is the object of the adoration of the Egyptians,
who after receiving from him their country’s name χημεία . . .
7
(whence chemistry!), built in his honour a town called Chemmis, or the “city of fire.”
Ham adored fire, and it is said, whence the name Cham-main, given to the pyramids;
1
[Ωγενός or Ωκεανός, Ocean]
2
Pneumatologie, Des Esprits, Vol. III, p. 209
3
op. cit., p. 208
4
Antiquities, Bk. III
5
The English-speaking people who spell the name of Noah’ s disrespectful son “Ham,” have to be reminded that
the right spelling is Kham or Cham.
6
Black Magic, or Sorcery, is the evil result obtained in any shape or way through the practice of Occult Arts;
hence it has to be judged only by its effects. The name of Ham or Cain, when pronounced, has never killed any-
one; whereas, if we are to believe that same Clemens Alexandrinus, who traces the professor of every Occultist,
outside Christianity, to the Devil, the name of Jehovah (pronounced yevo and in a peculiar way) had the effect
of killing any man at a distance. The mysterious Shem-ha-mephorash were not always used for holy purposes
by the Kabbalists, especially on the Sabbath, or Saturday, sacred to Saturn or the evil Śani.
7
Chemmis, the prehistoric city, may or may not have been built by Noah’ s son, but it was not his name that
was given to the town, but that of the very mystery-goddess Khaemnu or Chaemnis (Greek form), the deity that
was created by the ardent fancy of the neophyte, who was thus tantalized during his “twelve labours” of proba-
tion before his final initiation. Her male counterpart is Khem; Chemmis or Khemmis (today Akhmim) was the
chief seat of the god Khem. The Greeks, identifying Khem with Pan, called the city Panopolis.
Page 26 of 52
which, in their turn, having become vulgarized, passed on their name to our modern
1
“chimney” (cheminée ).
The zealous defender of Satan anthropomorphized is wrong, we believe. Egypt was
the cradle of chemistry and its birthplace — this is pretty well known by this time.
Kenrick and others show the root of the word to be chemi or chem, which is not
Cham or Ham, but Khem, the Egyptian Phallic God of the Mysteries.
But this is not all. De Mirville is bent upon finding a Satanic origin even for the now
innocent Tarot.
As to the means for the propagation of this bad Magie, tradition points it out to
us in certain Runic characters traced on metallic plates (lames), which escaped
2
destruction in the deluge. This might have been regarded as legendary, but
what is not so is the daily discovery of certain plates covered with special char-
acters with the quite undecipherable characters of an undefinable antiquity, to
3 4
which the Hamites of every country attribute marvellous and terrible powers. ,
We may leave the pious Marquis to his own orthodox beliefs, as he, at any rate,
seems quite sincere in his views; nevertheless, his able arguments will have to be
sapped at their foundation, for it must be shown on mathematical grounds who, or
rather what, Cain and Ham really were. De Mirville is only the faithful son of his
Church, interested in keeping Cain in his anthropomorphic character and present
place in Holy Writ. The student of Occultism, on the other hand, is solely interested
in the truth. But the age has to follow the natural course of its evolution. As I said in
Isis Unveiled:
We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides
the intellectual progress of the universe during every cycle into fertile and bar-
ren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements re-
main eternally in perfect harmony with the divine nature, he says; “but their
parts,” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the
earthly (which is matter, and therefore the realm of evil), “are sometimes ac-
cording, and sometimes contrary to (divine) nature.” When those circulations —
which Éliphas Lévi calls “currents of the astral light” — in the universal ether
which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the divine
spirit, our earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The oc-
cult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the
“superior natures,” and the divine soul of man is in perfect intelligence with the
1
Des Esprits, Vol. III, p. 210. This looks more like pious vengeance than philology. The picture, however, is in-
complete, as the author ought to have added to the “chimney” a witch flying out of it on a broomstick.
2
How could they escape from the deluge — unless God so willed it? [H.P. Blavatsky]
3
[Quoting from de Mirville’ s Pneumatologie, Des Esprits, Vol. III, p. 210]
4
There is a curious work in Russia, written in the Slavonian Sacerdotal language, by the famous Archbishop
Peter Mogila (the Tomb). It is a book of Exorcisms (and, at the same time, Evocations) against the dark powers
that trouble the monks and nuns in preference to all. Some who had the good fortune to get it — for its sale is
strictly forbidden and kept secret — tried to read it aloud for the purposes of exorcising these powers. Some be-
came lunatics; others died at the sight of what took place. A lady got it by paying two thousand roubles for an
incomplete copy. She used it once, and then threw it into the fire the same day, thereafter becoming deadly pale
whenever the book was mentioned.
[The quoted passage is from de Mirville’ s Pneumatologie, Des Esprits, Vol. III, p. 210]
Page 27 of 52
“inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sym-
pathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose
every notion of the superior powers of its own divine spirit. We are in a barren
period: the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism
broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary disease upon
the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone phi-
1
losophizes.
1
Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 247
Page 28 of 52
ARHAT AND TRANS-HIMALAYAN DOCTRINES ARE IDENTICAL
Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary,

China and Tibet.
The Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Wisdom-Religion and the trans-
Himalayan Esoteric Doctrine are one and the same. The Chaldeans
were a hieratic caste of Hindu-Brahmans, now called Aryans; their
vernacular language was the Sanskrit of the Vedas; they instruct-
ed the Babylonians in the Mysteries and taught them the sacerdo-
tal or Mystery-language which, even today, is used by Hindu fa-
kirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical evocations.
Following the Christian dogmas seriatim, if we concentrate our attention upon one
which provoked the fiercest battles until its recognition, that of the Trinity, what do
we find? We meet it, as we have shown, northeast of the Indus; and tracing it to Asia
Minor and Europe, recognize it among every people who had anything like an estab-
lished religion. It was taught in the oldest Chaldean, Egyptian, and Mithraïtic
schools. The Chaldean Sun-god, Mithra, was called “Triple,” and the trinitarian idea
of the Chaldeans was a doctrine of the Akkadians, who, themselves, belonged to a
race which was the first to conceive a metaphysical trinity. The Chaldeans are a tribe
of the Akkadians, according to Rawlinson, who lived in Babylonia from the earliest
1
times. They were Turanians, according to others, and instructed the Babylonians
into the first notions of religion. But these same Akkadians, who were they? Those
scientists who would ascribe to them a Turanian origin, make of them the inventors
of the cuneiform characters; others call them Sumerians; others again, respectively,
make their language, of which (for very good reasons) no traces whatever remain —
Kasdean, Chaldaic, Proto-Chaldean, Kasdo-Scythic, and so on. The only tradition
worthy of credence is that these Akkadians instructed the Babylonians in the Mys-
teries, and taught them the sacerdotal or Mystery-language. These Akkadians were
then simply a tribe of the Hindu-Brahmans, now called Āryans — their vernacular
2
language, the Sanskrit of the Vedas; and the sacred or Mystery-language, that
which, even in our own age, is used by the Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in
3
their magical evocations. It has been, from time immemorial, and still is employed
1
[Cf. “ . . . the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows
an undeniably Vedic influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly
declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning.” Secret Doctrine, I
p. xxxi ]
2
Let us remember in this connection that Col. Vans Kennedy has long ago declared his opinion that Babylonia
was once the seat of the Sanskrit language and of Brāhmanical influence.
3
“The Agrushada-Parikshai, which discloses, to a certain extent, the order of initiation, does not give the for-
mula of evocation,” says Jacolliot, and he adds that, according to some Brahmans, “these formulæ were never
written, they were and still are imparted in a whisper in the ear of the adepts”; (“mouth to ear, and the word at
low breath,” say the Masons).
Page 29 of 52
by the initiates of all countries, and the Tibetan lamas claim that it is in this tongue
that appear the mysterious characters on the leaves and bark of the sacred
1 2
Koumboum. ,
The population of Ur of the Chaldeans, where Magism flourished
3
before the days of Abraham, is related with those of Central and
4
North America.
If the consecutive attempts at the creation of man described in the Quiché Cosmogo-
5
ny suggests no comparison with some Apocrypha, with the Jewish sacred books,
and the Kabbalistic theories of creation, it is indeed strange. Even the Book of
6
Jasher, condemned as a gross forgery of the twelfth century, may furnish more than
7
one clue to trace a relation between the population of Ur of the Kasdeans, where
Magism flourished before the days of Abraham, and those of Central and North
America. The divine beings, “brought down to the level of human nature,” performed
no feats or tricks more strange or incredible than the miraculous performances of
Moses and of Pharaoh’ s magicians, while many of these are exactly similar in their
nature. And when, moreover, in addition to this latter fact, we find so great a resem-
blance between certain Kabbalistic terms common to both hemispheres, there must
8
be something else than mere accident to account for the circumstance.
The cauldron of Christian Trinity has always been North-East of
the Indus River, where the Chaldeans worshipped the trinity of
Deus-Lunus manifesting in three phases, and completing the qua-
ternary with the fourth.
And since Babylonia was situated on the way of the great stream of the
Hindu emigration, its peoples were the first to benefit.
Babylonia happened to be situated on the way of the great stream of the earliest
Hindu emigration, and the Babylonians were one of the first peoples benefited there-
9
by. These Khaldi were the worshippers of the Moon-god, Deus Lunus, from which
fact we may infer that the Akkadians — if such must be their name — belonged to
the race of the Kings of the Moon, whom tradition shows as having reigned in
Prayāga — now Allāhābād. With them the trinity of Deus-Lunus was manifested in
1
[Terminalia arjuna or Kumbuk Tree]
2
Isis Unveiled, II pp. 45-46
3
i.e., non-Brāhmana.
4
[See “Atlantean Credentials of the New World” in the same series. — ED. PHIL.]
5
[Popol Vuh, Part I, ch. ii, pp. 17-27]
6
[Sefer haYashar (Hebrew ‫הישר ספר‬, “Book of the Upright One”). In English, Jashar was traditionally left un-
translated and rendered Book of Jasher.]
7
[In the Hebrew Bible, prophet Abraham has originally been from “Ur of the Chaldees” or “Ur Kaśdim.”]
8
Isis Unveiled, I p. 549
9
Jacolliot seems to have very logically demonstrated the absurd contradictions of some philologists, anthropol-
ogists, and Orientalists, in regard to their Akkado and Semito mania. He writes:
“There is not, perhaps, much of good faith in their negations. The scientists who invent Turanian peo-
ples know very well that in Manu alone, there is more of veritable science and philosophy than in all that
this pretended Semitism has hitherto furnished us with; but they are the slaves of a path which some of
them are following the last fifteen, twenty, or even thirty years. . . . We expect, therefore, nothing of the
present. India will owe its reconstitution to the scientists of the next generation.” (La Genèse de
l’ Humanité, pp. 60-61)
Page 30 of 52
the three lunar phases, completing the quaternary with the fourth, and typifying the
death of the Moon-god in its gradual waning and final disappearance. This death was
allegorized by them, and attributed to the triumph of the genius of evil over the light-
giving deity; as the later nations allegorized the death of their Sun-gods, Osiris and
Apollo, at the hands of Typhon and the great Dragon Python, when the sun entered
the winter solstice. Babel, Arach, and Akkad are names of the sun. The Chaldean
1
Oracles are full and explicit upon the subject of the Divine Triad.
A triad of Deity shines forth throughout the whole world, of which a Monad is
the head,
2
admits the Reverend Dr. Maurice.
The Chaldæan Moon-Worship, however, is likely to mislead the
profane student who fails to grasp the esoteric dimensions of ar-
3
chaic symbols.
What is known of Chaldæan Moon-Worship, of the Babylonian god, Sin, called by the
Greeks “Deus Lunus,” is very little, and that little is apt to mislead the profane stu-
dent who fails to grasp the esoteric significance of the symbols. As popularly known
to the ancient profane philosophers and writers (for those who were initiated were
pledged to silence) the Chaldeans were the worshippers of the moon under her (and
4
his) various names, just as were the Jews, who came after them.
1
[Cory, op. cit., p. 6; full text in our Theosophy and Theosophists Series. — ED. PHIL.]
2
Isis Unveiled, II p. 48
3
[The Moon, “this archaic symbol is the most poetical of all symbols, as also the most philosophical. The an-
cient Greeks brought it into prominence, and the modern poets have worn it threadbare. . . .
“The Sun is the giver of life to the whole planetary system; the Moon is the giver of life to our globe; and the ear-
ly races understood and knew it, even in their infancy. She is the Queen and she is the King, and was King So-
ma before she became transformed into Phœbe and the chaste Diana. She is pre-eminently the deity of the
Christians, through the Mosaic and Kabbalistic Jews, though the civilized world may have remained ignorant of
the fact for long ages; in fact, ever since the last initiated Father of the Church died, carrying with him into his
grave the secrets of the pagan temples. For the “Fathers” — such as Origen or Clemens Alexandrinus — the
Moon was Jehovah’ s living symbol: the giver of Life and the giver of Death, the disposer of being — in our
World. For, if Artemis was Luna in Heaven, and, with the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child-birth
and life; with the Egyptians, she was Heqet (Hecatē) in Hell, the goddess of Death, who ruled over magic and
enchantments.
“More than this: as the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecatē-Luna is the three in one.
For she is Diva triformis, tergemina, triceps — three heads on one neck (the goddess Τρίμορφος in the statuary of
Alcamenes), like Brahmā-Vishnu-Śiva. Hence she is the prototype of our Trinity, which has not always been en-
tirely male. The number seven, so prominent in the Bible, so sacred in its seventh (Sabbath) day, came to the
Jews from Antiquity, deriving its origin from the four-fold number 7 contained in the 28 days of the lunar
month, each septenary portion thereof being typified by one quarter of the moon.” Secret Doctrine, I pp. 386-87]
4
Secret Doctrine, I p. 388
Page 31 of 52
The pioneers of humanity’ s Fifth Root-Race, the Aryan, came out

of Central Asia.
The so-called “Akkadians” were no more a “Turanian” race than any of
the modern British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so con-
spicuously present in the Bible and yet absent from history. Belonging
virtually through their original connection with the Aryan, Central Asian
stock, the old Aeolians were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long
residence in the now submerged continent, but also by intermarriage
1
with them.
Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe, comprised
many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval root-languages of
the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Races), we may return to Poseidonis — its last surviving link
12,000 [years] ago. As the chief element in the languages of the 5 th race is the Āryan-
Sanskrit of the “Brown-white” geological stock or race, so the predominating element
in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of some Amer-
ican Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the
2
mountainous tribes of Kiangsi — a language which was an admixture of the agglu-
tinate and the monosyllabic as it would be called by modern philologists. It was, in
short, the language of the “Red-yellow” second or middle geological stock [we main-
tain the term “geological”]. A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race was,
of course, to be found in the Āryans of the 5th. But this did not prevent in the least
the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure Āryan races in it. A number of
small islands scattered around Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of
earthquakes long before the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the
memory of men — thanks to some written records. Tradition says that one of the
small tribes (the Æolians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far
Northern countries had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge. If, in spite of
the Orientalists and the conjecture of Mr. F. Lenormant — who invented a name for a
people whose shadowy outline he dimly perceived in the far away Past as preceding
the Babylonians — we say that this Āryan race that came from Central Asia, the cra-
dle of the 5th race Humanity, belonged to the “Akkadian” tribes, there will be a new
historico-ethnological difficulty created. Yet, it is maintained, that these “Akkads”
were no more a “Turanian” race than any of the modern British people are the myth-
ical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible and — absent from his-
3
tory. With such remarkable pacta conventa between modern exact (? ) and ancient
occult sciences, we may proceed with the fable. Belonging virtually through their
original connection with the Āryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old Æo-
lians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence in the now sub-
merged continent, covering some thousands of years, but by the free intermingling of
blood, by intermarriage with them. Perhaps in this connection, Mr. Huxley’s disposi-
tion to account for his Melanochroi (the Greeks being included under this classifica-
tion or type) — as themselves “the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and
1
As much as the Basques are now southern Europeans, although originally belonging to the Dravidian South-
ern Indian stock.
2
[Jiangxi, 江西]
3
[articles of agreement]
Page 32 of 52
the Australioids” — among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and the
Egyptians to a degree is not far off from fact. Anyhow the Æolians of Atlantis were
Āryans on the whole, as much as the Basques — Dr. Prichard’s Allophylians — are
now southern Europeans, although originally belonging to the Dravidian S.I. stock
[their progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the first Āryan
immigration, as supposed]. Frightened by the frequent earthquakes and the visible
approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have
sailed from beyond the pillars of Hercules, and to have landed, sailing along the
coasts after several years of travel, on the shores of the Ægean Sea in the land of
1
Pyrrha (now Thessaly) to which they gave the name of Æolia.
The classification of ancient nations into Akkadians, Turanians,
Semites, etc., is at best arbitrary. The word “Chaldean” does not
refer merely to a native or an inhabitant of Chaldea, but to “Chal-
deism” itself, the oldest science of Astrology and Occultism.
The Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom, “the light which
shineth in darkness,” though modern “darkness comprehended it not,”
and today’s Parsis know nothing of it now.
More even than the Brahmans, are the Parsīs heirs to Chaldean wisdom, since they
are the direct, though the latest, offshoots of Āryan Magianism. The Occultists are
very little concerned with the apparent difficulty that the Magian “Chaldees” with all
their priests and initiates, whether of the Medes, the Scythians, or the Babylonians
are regarded by the Orientalists as of Semitic origin, while the ancient Iranians are
Āryans. The classification of those nations into Turanians, Akkadians, Semites and
what not, is at best arbitrary. The word “Chaldean” does not refer merely to a native
or an inhabitant of Chaldea, but to “Chaldeism,” the oldest science of astrology and
occultism. And in that sense the Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom,
“the light which shineth in darkness,” though (modern) “darkness comprehended it
not,” and the Parsīs themselves know nothing of it now. The Hebrew Kabala is but
the loud echo of the Chaldean; an echo which passing through the corridors of Time
picked up in its transit all kinds of alien sounds that got mixed up with the original
keynotes struck beyond the epochs known to the present profane generations; and
thus it reached the later student of Hebrew lore as a confused and somewhat distort-
ed voice. Yet, there is much to learn in it, for him who has the patience and the per-
severance required, since first of all he would have to learn the Gematria, Notaricon,
2 3
and Themura. When speaking of the Kabala, the Lecturer meant by it, the univer-
sal, not any special, esoteric system, already adapted to a later exoteric creed as is at
present the Jewish secret science. The word “Kabala” is derived from a Hebrew root
meaning reception of knowledge; and practically speaking it refers to all the old sys-
tems handed down by oral transmission, and is very nearly allied to the Sanskrit
4
“Smriti” and “Śruti,” and the Chaldaic “Zend.”
1
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (LEAFLETS FROM ESOTERIC HISTORY) V pp. 216-18; [full text under the title “An-
tiquity of the Atlanto-Aryan tribes in Europe,” in the same series. — ED. PHIL.]
2
The Jewish methods of examining the Scriptures for their hidden meaning.
3
[H.S. Olcott]
4
Of course, as found out by the Orientalists, the word “Zend” does not apply to any language, whether dead or
living, and never belonged to any of the languages or dialects of ancient Persia. (See Farhang-i-Jahāngīrī the
Page 33 of 52
There would be little use for the Parsī or Hindu beginner to study only the Hebrew or
even the Chaldean Kabala, since those works upon them which are now extant are
written either in Hebrew or Latin. But there would be a great deal of truth unearthed
were both to apply themselves to the study of the identical knowledge veiled under
the exoteric symbolisms of both the Zend-Avesta and the Brāhmanical books. And
this they can do by forming themselves into a small society of intelligent earnest stu-
dents of symbolism, especially the Zend and Sanskrit scholars. They could get the
esoteric meanings and the names of the works needed from some advanced chelas of
our Society.
The Colonel recommends the translating of prayers. Does he mean that the
translations of prayers in their present state will better enlighten the youths? If
not, then does he imply that the meaning of the whole Zend-Avesta can be
made intelligible and philosophical by the aid of a thorough Occultist?
It is precisely what he meant. By a correct translation or rather a correct explanation
of their liturgical prayers, and a preliminary knowledge of the true meaning of even a
few of the most important symbolisms — generally those that appear the most mean-
ingless and absurd in the sight of the modern Zend scholars, as the dog, e.g., which
1
plays such an important part in Parsī ceremonies — the “Parsī youth” would acquire
thereby the key to the true philosophy that underlies their “wretched superstitions
and myths,” as they are called by the missionaries who would fain force upon the
world their own instead.
Prayer is repugnant to the principles of atheists. How then does the learned
Colonel reconcile his advice to the Parsīs to throw better heart into their pray-
ers? Does he also mean that Occult philosophy will justify the prayers in Zend-
Avesta, offered to the sun, the moon and almost all the supposed pure things of
the creation? If he thinks that the fixing of attention upon such objects is con-
ducive to being freed from worldly desires and thoughts, does he think also that
Persian dictionary) It means, as in one sense correctly stated, “a commentary or explanation,” but it also means
that which the Orientalists do not seem to have any idea about, viz., the “rendering of the esoteric into exoteric
sentences,” the veil used to conceal the correct meaning of the Zen-( d ) -zar texts, the sacerdotal language in use
among the initiates of archaic India. Found now in several undecipherable inscriptions, it is still used and stud-
ied unto this day in the secret communities of the Eastern adepts, and called by them — according to the locali-
ty — Zend-zar and Brahma or Dewa-Bhashya.
1
Compare the so-called “Akkadian formulæ of exorcism” of the earliest period known to the Orientalists to
which the collection of charms and amulets belong (in truth very late periods) with most of the injunctions
found in Vendidad (Fargard XIII) concerning the dog. It seems almost incredible that even the dullest among the
Zend scholars should not perceive that verse 49 (163) of the same Fargard, for instance, which says: “For no
house could subsist on the earth made by Ahura [in this case the “house” — not the earth — made by Ahura],
but for those two dogs of mine, the shepherd’ s dog and the house dog” — cannot refer really to these animals.
The commentary made on it (Saddar, 31) is absurd and ridiculous. It is not, as it says, that “not a single head
of cattle would remain in existence but for the dogs” — but that all humanity, endowed as it is with the highest
intellect among the intelligences of the animal kingdom, would, under the leadership of Angra-Mainyu, mutual-
ly destroy themselves physically and spiritually, but for the presence of the “dogs” — the two highest spiritual
principles. The dog Vanghāpara (the hedgehog, says the commentator! ) “the good creature among the creatures
of the Good Spirit that from midnight [our time of ignorance] till the sun is up [spiritual enlightenment] goes
and kills thousands of the creatures of the Evil Spirit” (Fargard XIII, 1) is our spiritual conscience. He who “kills
it” (stifles its voice within himself) shall not find his way over the Chinvat bridge (leading to paradise). Then
compare these symbolisms with those of the Akkadian talismans. Even as translated by G. Smith, distorted as
they are, still the seven dogs described — as the “blue,” the “yellow,” the “spotted,” etc., can be shown to have
all of them reference to the same seven human principles as classified by Occultism. The whole collection of the
“formulæ of exorcism” so-called of the Akkadians is full of references to the seven evil and the seven good spirits
which are our principles in their dual aspect.
Page 34 of 52
these views or prayers will be believed in, or acted upon, by the present genera-
tion?
Colonel Olcott was never an atheist “to our knowledge,” but an esoteric Buddhist, re-
jecting a personal God. Nor was genuine prayer — i.e., the exercise of one’s intense
1
will over events (commonly brought about by blind chance) to determine their direc-
tion ever repugnant to him. Even prayers as commonly understood, are not “repug-
nant” in his sight, but simply useless, when not absurd and ridiculous as in the case
of prayers to either stop or bring about rain, etc.
By “prayer” he means — WILL, the desire or command magnetically expressed that
such and such a thing beneficent to ourselves or others should come to pass. The
Sun, the moon and the stars in the Avesta are all emblematical representations —
the Sun, especially — the latter being the concrete and most appropriate emblem of
the one universal life-giving principle, while the stars are part and parcel of the Oc-
cult sciences. Yima never “prayed” but went to “meet the sun” in the vast space of
heavens, and bringing down with him “the science of the stars, pressed the earth
with the golden seal” and forced (thereby) the Spenta Ārmaiti (the Genius of the
2 3
Earth) to stretch asunder and to bear flocks and herds and men. ,
The Aryan and Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance. The
secret doctrine of the Jewish Kabbalists is merely a late offshoot
of these, suggests Subba Row.
. . . Probably the Āryan (we shall for the present call it by that name) and the
Chaldeo-Tibetan esoteric doctrines are fundamentally identical and the secret
doctrine of the Jewish Kabbalists merely an offshoot of these. Nothing, perhaps,
can be more interesting now to a student of occult philosophy than a compari-
son between the two principal doctrines above mentioned. Your letter seems to
indicate two divisions in the Chaldeo-Tibetan doctrine:
1 That of the so-called Lamaists; and
2 That of the so-called Arhats (in Buddhism, Arahats, or Rahats) which has
been adopted by the Himalayan or Tibetan Brotherhood.
What is the distinction between these two systems? Some of our ancient Brāh-
manical writers have left us accounts of the main doctrines of Buddhism and
the religion and philosophy of the Arhats — the two branches of the Tibetan es-
oteric doctrine being so called by them. As these accounts generally appear in
treatises of a polemical character, I cannot place much reliance upon them.
It is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Āryan doctrine. If an
enquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis and comparison of all the
various systems of esotericism prevailing in India, he will soon be lost in a maze
4
of obscurity and uncertainty.
1
[thought to be]
2
Fargard II, 10
3
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (ZOROASTRIANISM AND OCCULT PHILOSOPHY) IV pp. 516-20
4
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE ĀRYAN-ARHAT ESOTERIC TENETS ON THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN) III
p. 400; [quoting from T. Subba Row’ s article, The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 4, January 1882, pp. 93-99]
Page 35 of 52
. . . the Āryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance, differing
but in names given and the way of putting it, a distinction resulting from the fact
that the Vedāntin Brahmans believe in Parabrahman, a deific power, impersonal
1
though it may be, while the Buddhists entirely reject it.
As the Vedas came from the Manasarovara Lake in Tibet, and the
Brahmans from the far North, the trans-Himalayan esoteric doc-
trine is Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Universal Wisdom-Religion, con-
2
firms Blavatsky.
The country called Si-dzang by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geog-
raphers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of
Fokien, as the great seat of occult learning in archaic ages. Emperor Yu
the Great established a system of theocracy, the first one in China to
unite ecclesiastical power with temporal authority from Si-dzang. That
system was the same as that of the old Egyptians and Chaldees, has ex-
isted in the Brahmanical period in India, and exists now in Tibet.
In this connection it will be well to draw the reader’s attention, to the fact that the
country called “Si-dzang” by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is men-
tioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fokien (the chief headquarters
of the aborigines of China) — as the great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages.
According to these records, it was inhabited by the “Teachers of Light,” the “Sons of
Wisdom” and the “Brothers of the Sun.” The Emperor Yu the “Great” (2207 B.C.), a
pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult wisdom and the system of
theocracy established by him — for he was the first one in China to unite ecclesiasti-
cal power with temporal authority — from Si-dzang. That system was the same as
with the old Egyptians and the Chaldees; that which we know to have existed in the
Brāhmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet: namely, all the learning, pow-
er, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the hierarchy
of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a ques-
tion which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present. They practice the
Bön religion, their sect is a pre- and anti-Buddhistic one, and they are to be found
mostly in the province of Kham — that is all that is known of them. But even that
would justify the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants of
mighty and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Tura-
nians, and their rites — now those of sorcery, incantations, and nature worship, re-
mind one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records
preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious practices of the Chinese
sect of Tao-sse — (a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality) — as alleged
by some. Generally, little or no difference is made even by the Khelang missionaries
who mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahul — and ought to
know better — between the Böns and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps
and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tsong-Kha-pa from
the first and have always adhered to old Buddhism so greatly mixed up now with the
practices of the Böns. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the
1
p. 406
2
[Editorial Appendix — Note 1]
Page 36 of 52
ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Böns, they would find
an undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the
origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which
superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (invented
by F. Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees and Assyrians — is out of the
question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric doc-
trine, Chaldeo-Tibetan. And, when we remember that the Vedas came — agreeably to
all traditions — from the Mānasarovara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmans themselves
from the far North, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every peo-
ple who once had or still have it — as having proceeded from one and the same
source; and, to thus call it the “Āryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan” doctrine, or Universal WIS-
DOM — Religion.
Seek for the LOST WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet,
1, 2
was the advice of Swedenborg, the seer.
Nebu is an abstract quality personified. It is man’s seventh and
highest principle, and the synthetic attribute of Seven Chaldean
Gods — the Planetary Spirits.
The name Nebuzardan, or Nebo and Nebu, seems to mean only in Hebrew “Nebu is
the Lord”; but in Persian and with the ancient people it had always signified Nebu,
the wise (Lord). Hence the prefix Nebu attached to the name of every initiated adept
consecrated to the service of Bel and Nebo “the overseer of all the celestial and terres-
trial legions” — or “hosts.” Hence Nebu-Kadan-Assur, Nebu-Pal-Assur, Nebu-
Zaradan, etc., etc. Nebu, in short, was an abstract quality: personified — when the
seventh principle, the “Higher Self” of man was meant, an adjective — when applied
to any special subject, and finally the synthetic attribute of the Seven Chaldean gods
— the Planetary Spirits. Mercury was no more entitled than any other of his six col-
leagues to the appellation of Nebo, but was so-called owing to later thought seeking
to combine the identity of God, planet and attribute in one. There is also a profound
thought hitherto of . . . by modern Jew or Christian in the fact that Moses dies, and
3
is buried on Pisgah of Mount NEBO.
By the powers of goodness in man and nature, the Chaldean Magi
performed the most wonderful miracles.
The Chaldeans, whom Cicero counts among the oldest magicians, placed the basis of
all magic in the inner powers of man’s soul, and by the discernment of magic proper-
ties in plants, minerals, and animals. By the aid of these they performed the most
wonderful “miracles.” Magic, with them, was synonymous with religion and science.
It is but later that the religious myths of the Mazdean dualism, disfigured by Chris-
tian theology and euhemerized by certain fathers of the Church, assumed the dis-
gusting shape in which we find them expounded by such Catholic writers as des
1
[See Appendix B, “Searching for the Lost Word”]
2
pp. 418-20
3
ibid., (NEBO OF BIRS-NIMRUD) XIII p. 277; [full text in our Blavatsky Speaks Series. — ED. PHIL.]
Page 37 of 52
1
Mousseaux. The objective reality of the mediæval incubus and succubus, that
abominable superstition of the middle ages which cost so many human lives, advo-
cated by this author in a whole volume, is the monstrous production of religious fa-
naticism and epilepsy. It can have no objective form; and to attribute its effects to the
Devil is blasphemy: implying that God, after creating Satan, would allow him to
adopt such a course. If we are forced to believe in vampirism, it is on the strength of
2
two irrefragable propositions of occult psychological science:
1 The astral soul is a separable distinct entity of our ego, and can roam far away
from the body without breaking the thread of life.
2 The corpse is not utterly dead, and while it can yet be re-entered by its tenant,
the latter can gather sufficient material emanations from it to enable itself to
appear in a quasi-terrestrial shape.
Unlike the Roman Catholics, who invented a Devil endowed with a power
equalling that of the Supreme Deity, and who allegedly transforms him-
self into wolves, snakes, and dogs to satisfy his lust and procreate mon-
sters.
But to uphold, with des Mousseaux and de Mirville, that the Devil, whom the Catho-
lics endow with a power which, in antagonism, equals that of the Supreme Deity,
transforms himself into wolves, snakes, and dogs, to satisfy his lust and procreate
monsters, is an idea within which lie hidden the germs of devil-worship, lunacy, and
sacrilege. The Catholic Church, which not only teaches us to believe in this mon-
strous fallacy, but forces her missionaries to preach such a dogma, need not revolt
against the devil-worship of some Parsī and South India sects. Quite the reverse; for
when we hear the Yezidi repeat the well-known proverb:
Keep friends with the demons; give them your property, your blood, your ser-
vice, and you need not care about God — He will not harm you,
we find him but consistent with his belief and reverential to the Supreme; his logic is
sound and rational; he reveres God too deeply to imagine that He who created the
1
[Cf. “Incubus (Lat.). Something more real and dangerous than the ordinary meaning given to the word, viz.,
that of ‘ nightmare.’ An Incubus is the male Elemental, and Succuba the female, and these are undeniably the
spooks of mediæval demonology, called forth from the invisible regions by human passion and lust. They are
now called ‘ Spirit brides’ and ‘ Spirit husbands’ among some benighted Spiritists and spiritual mediums. But
these poetical names do not prevent them in the least being that which they are-Ghouls, Vampires and soulless
Elementals; formless centres of Life, devoid of sense; in short, subjective protoplasms when left alone, but called
into a definite being and form by the creative and diseased imagination of certain mortals. They were known
under every clime as in every age, and the Hindus can tell more than one terrible tale of the dramas enacted in
the life of young students and mystics by the Piśāchas, their name in India.” (Theosophical Glossary: Incubus)
“Meanwhile, let those who would learn something about the doings of the Incubus and Succubus forms of
Piśācha obsession, consult some of our Hindu Theosophists, and read the highly interesting works of the
Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux (Mœurs et Pratiques des Démons; La Magie au Dix-neuvième Siècle, etc.,
etc.). Though a bigoted Catholic whose sole aim is to bolster up the devil theory of his Church, this author’ s
facts are none the less valuable to Spiritualists and others.” Blavatsky Collected Writings, (A STORM IN A TEA
CUP) IV p. 141
Also cf. “Victims may have been experiencing waking dreams or sleep paralysis. Nocturnal arousal or nocturnal
emission could be explained away by creatures causing otherwise guilt-producing behaviour. On the other
hand, some victims of incubi could well have been the victims of real sexual assault. Rapists may have attribut-
ed the rapes of sleeping women to demons in order to escape punishment. A friend or relative is at the top of
the list in such cases and would be kept secret by the intervention of ‘ spirits.’ The victims and, in some cases,
the magistrates, may have found it easier to explain the attack as supernatural rather than confront the idea
that the attack came from someone in a position of trust.” — Wikipedia]
2
[indisputable]
Page 38 of 52
universe and its laws is able to hurt him, poor atom; but the demons are there; they
1
are imperfect, and therefore he has good reasons to dread them.
Chaldean Magic was based upon a profound knowledge of the
powers of simples and minerals. It was only when the Theurgist
needed divine help in spiritual and earthly matters that he sought
direct communication with pure spiritual beings.
Baptista Porta, in his treatise on Natural Magic, enumerates a whole catalogue of se-
cret formulæ for producing extraordinary effects by employing the occult powers of
nature. Although the “magicians” believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a world of
invisible spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under their control or
through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult it is to keep away the ele-
mentary creatures when they have once found the door wide open. Even the magic of
the ancient Chaldeans was but a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and
minerals. It was only when the theurgist desired divine help in spiritual and earthly
matters that he sought direct communication through religious rites, with pure spir-
itual beings. With them, even, those spirits who remain invisible and communicate
with mortals through their awakened inner senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience
and trance, could only be evoked subjectively and as a result of purity of life and
prayer. But all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge
of natural forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain, practiced in
our days by conjurers.
To dare, to know, to will, and to remain silent, were their

constant rules.
To be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were some of their
spontaneous impulses.
Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently toiled for
something better than the vain glory of a passing fame. Seeking it not, they became
immortal, as do all who labour for the good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illumi-
nated with the light of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention
upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing inscrutable
but the First Cause, and finding no question unsolvable. To dare, to know, to will,
and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpre-
tending, were, with them, spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty
traffic, spurning wealth, luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge
as the most satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger, toil, and
the evil report of men, as none too great a price a pay for its achievement. They, who
might have lain on downy, velvet-covered beds, suffered themselves to die in hospi-
tals and by the wayside, rather than debase their souls and allow the profane cupidi-
ty of those who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows. The lives of Paracel-
sus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known to repeat the old, sad sto-
2
ry.
1
Isis Unveiled, I p. 459
2
ibid., I pp. 66-67
Page 39 of 52
All the discoveries of modern Astronomy were contained within

the secret observatories and Initiation Halls of the temples of old
India and Egypt. It is in them that the Chaldean made his calcula-
tions, revealing to the world of the profane no more than it was
1
fit to receive.
Cyprian of Antioch, a penitent sorcerer, had studied in Chaldea the true
power of the air, saw the planets as dissimilar as the plants on earth,
understood that stars that were like armies ranged in battle order, and
learnt the Chaldean division of Ether into 365 parts.
I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and rains, between the
2
motion of the earth and the motion of the seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants
plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a
3
man carrying a burden on his shoulders.
When thirty, I travelled to Chaldea to study there the true power of the air,
placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light [Ākāśa]. I was
taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants
on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the
4
Chaldean division of Ether into 365 parts, and I perceived that every one of the
5
demons who divide it among themselves was endowed with that material force
that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the move-
6
ments therein [in the Ether]. They [the Chaldees] explained to me how those
Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition
7
to the Council of Light.
1
Cf. Blavatsky Collected Writings, (PAGAN SIDEREAL WORSHIP, OR ASTROLOGY) XIV p. 332
2
Pity the penitent Saint had not imparted his knowledge of the rotation of the earth and heliocentric system
earlier to his Church. That might have saved more than one human life — that of Bruno for one.
3
Chelas in their trials of initiation, also see in trances artificially generated for them, the vision of the Earth
supported by an elephant on the top of a tortoise standing on nothing — and this, to teach them to discern the
true from the false.
4
Relating to the days of the year, also to 7 x 7 divisions of the earth’ s sublunary sphere, divided into seven up-
per and seven lower spheres with their respective Planetary Hosts or “armies.”
5
Daimon is not “demon,” as translated by de Mirville, but Spirit.
6
All this is to corroborate his dogmatic assertions that Pater Æther or Jupiter is Satan! and that pestilential
diseases, cataclysms, and even thunderstorms that prove disastrous, come from the Satanic Host dwelling in
Ether — a good warning to the men of Science!
7
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (ST. CYPRIAN OF ANTIOCH) XIV p. 165; [confession of a penitent Sorcerer made in
Antioch in the middle of the 3rd century C.E., as quoted by Marquis de Mirville, Des Esprits, Vol. VI, pp. 169 et
seq.]
Page 40 of 52
THE KABBALAH IS A DI STORTED ECHO OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE
The key to the real Kabbalah is the Chaldean Book of Numbers.

The Mysteries of the Jews are identical with those of the Pagan
Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them
from the Chaldeans, who got them from the Aryans, from the At-
lanteans, and so on, far beyond the misty days of the Fourth Race.
Clement, who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries says, that:
The doctrines there taught contained in them the end of all instructions as they
1
were taken from Moses and the prophets,
a slight perversion of facts pardonable in the good Father. The words admit, after all,
that the Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those of the Pagan Greeks, who
took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them, in their turn, from the Chalde-
ans, who got them from the Āryans, the Atlanteans and so on–far beyond the days of
that Race. The secret meaning of the Gospel is again openly confessed by Clement
when he says that the Mysteries of the Faith are not to be divulged to all.
But since this tradition is not published alone for him who perceives the mag-
nificence of the word; it is requisite, therefore, to hide in a Mystery the wisdom
2 3
spoken, which the Son of God taught. ,
The Greeks learned Occult Cosmology from the Egyptians, and the
latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmans
of the Esoteric School.
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the oldest conceptions
of Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were nearly all Initiates of the Mys-
teries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who
4
had been the pupils of Brahmans of the esoteric school.
1
Stromateis, Bk. V, ch. xi
2
op. cit., Bk. I, ch. xii
3
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE SECRECY OF INITIATES) XIV pp. 36-37
4
Secret Doctrine, I p. 117
Page 41 of 52
1
A small tribe of presumably Egyptian runaway slaves obtained
their primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who compiled
their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions from the Chaldeo-
Akkadian account.
Those who know anything of the Samothracian mysteries will also remember that the
generic name of the Kabir was the “Holy Fires,” which created on seven localities of
the island of Electris (or Samothrace) the “Kabir born of the Holy Lemnos” (the island
sacred to Vulcan).
According to Hippolytus, this Kabir, whose name was Adamas, was, in the traditions
of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man born from the bosom of the Earth. He was
the Archetype of the first males in the order of generation, and was one of the seven
2
autochthonous ancestors or progenitors of mankind. If, while coupling with this the
fact that Samothrace was colonised by the Phoenicians, and before them by the mys-
terious Pelasgians who came from the East, one remembers also the identity of the
mystery-gods of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Israelites, it will be easy to discover
whence came also the confused account of the Noachian deluge. It has become un-
deniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their primitive ideas about creation from
Moses, who had them from the Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first Cosmo-
gonic traditions — when these were rewritten by Ezra and others — from the Chal-
3
deo-Akkadian account.
Their Kabbalistic literature can be traced only from the time of
the Captivity, yet from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud the
documents of that literature were always written in a kind of
Mystery-language — a series of symbolical records which the
Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldean Sanctuaries,
only adapting them to their own national history, if history it can
be called.
Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the tribulations of that
very same Zohar, as we know of them from trustworthy tradition and documents. We
need not stop to discuss whether it was written in the first century B.C. or in the first
century A.D. Suffice it for us to know that there was at all times a Kabbalistic litera-
ture among the Jews; that though historically it can be traced only from the time of
the Captivity, yet from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud the documents of that lit-
erature were ever written in a kind of Mystery-language, were, in fact, a series of
symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldean
Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history — if history it can be
called. Now that which we claim — and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced
Kabbalist, is that although Kabbalistic lore had passed orally through long ages
down to the latest pre-Christian Tannaïm, and although David and Solomon may
have been great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared to write it down till the
1
Cf. Blavatsky Collected Writings, (POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS) XIII p. 318
2
Philosophumena, Bk. I, ch. 7: M.E. Miller’ s edition (Oxford, 1851), pp. 98, 108. [Duncker & Schneidewin’ s ed.,
Göttingen, 1859; and ANF, Vol. V (1965), wherein it occurs in Bk. V, ch. iii.]
3
Secret Doctrine, II pp. 3-4
Page 42 of 52
days of Shimon ben-Yochai. In short, the lore found in Kabbalistic literature was
1
never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era.
Hebrew is considered to be a very old language, and yet there ex-
ists no trace of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in
Chaldea. The Hebrew known to the philologists does not date ear-
lier than 500 BC and its characters belong to a far later period
still.
We are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the Septuagint as con-
taining direct divine revelation: Documents originally written in a tongue about
which nobody now knows anything; written by authors that are practically mythical,
and at dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible surmise; docu-
ments of the original copies of which there does not now remain a shred. Yet people
will persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the
world who now knows one word of it. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that both
the Septuagint and the New Testament had to be written in a heathen language (the
Greek), and no better reasons for it given than what Hutchinson says, namely, that
the Holy Ghost chose to write the New Testament in Greek.
The Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no trace of it
anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldea. Among the great number of
inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that country:
One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language has never been found; nor has
a single authentic medal or gem in this new-fangled character been ever dis-
2
covered, which could carry it even to the days of Jesus.
The original Book of Daniel is written in a dialect which is a mixture of Hebrew and
Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a few verses interpolated
later on. According to Sir W. Jones and other Orientalists, the oldest discoverable
languages of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit, and there is no trace of the “He-
brew” in these. It would be very surprising if there were, since the Hebrew known to
the philologists does not date earlier than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far
3
later period still.
The original and authentic Gospel of Matthew was written in the
Chaldaic language but with Hebrew letters, says Jerome.
One can understand now why the Gospel of Matthew, the Evangel of the Ebionites,
has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world’s curious gaze.
Jerome found the authentic and original evangel, written in Hebrew, by Mat-
thew the apostle-publican, in the library collected at Cæsarea, by the martyr
Pamphilius. “I received permission from the Nazaroeans, who at Beroea of Syria
used this [gospel], to translate it,” he writes toward the end of the fourth centu-
4
ry. “In the evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use,” adds Jerome,
1
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE EASTERN GUPTA-VIDYA AND THE KABALAH) XIV pp. 169-70
2
Book of God, p. 453
3
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE EASTERN GUPTA VIDYA AND THE KABALAH) XIV pp. 179-80
4
Jerome, De viris illustribus liber, cap. 3 [Footnote continued overleaf.]
Page 43 of 52
“which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek, and which is called by
1
most persons the genuine Gospel of Matthew,” etc.
That the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, and that he him-
self taught one, is evident from the following words of Jerome, who confessed it
in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus,
he complains that
. . . a difficult work is enjoined, since this translation has been command-
ed me by your Felicities, which St. Matthew himself, the Apostle and
Evangelist, DID NOT WISH TO BE OPENLY WRITTEN, For if this had not been
SECRET, he [Matthew] would have added to the evangel that what he gave
forth was his; but he made this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters:
which he put forth even in such a way that the book, written in Hebrew
letters and by the hand of himself, might be possessed by the men most
religious; who also, in the course of time, received it from those who pre-
ceded them. But this very book they never gave to anyone to be tran-
2 3
scribed; and its text they related some one way and some another. ,
The Jewish Talmudists and the Christian Fathers borrowed many
occult terms, such as Virtue, Iao, Abraxas, etc., from the Chalde-
ans.
[C.W. King] . . . points out that the Durgā, or female counterpart of each Asiatic god,
4
is what the kabbalists term active Virtue in the celestial hierarchy, a term which the
Christian Fathers adopted and repeated, without fully appreciating, and the meaning
5
of which the later theology has utterly disfigured.
“It is remarkable that, while all Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, the whole of them
use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the Hebrew Mat-
thew has to our Greek one! It had many peculiar additions which are wanting in our [Greek] Evangel.”
(Olshausen, Nachweis der Echtheit der sämtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test., p. 35)
1
Comment. to Matthew, Bk. II, ch. xii, 13. Jerome adds that it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with
Hebrew letters. [Dial. contra Pelag., iii, 2]
2
Jerome, Opera omnia, ed. Johannes Martianay: Paris, 1693-1706, Vol. V, col. 445. Cf. Dunlap, Sōd, the Son of
Man, p. 46. [See also Blavatsky Collected Writings., Vol. VIII, pp. 233-38.]
3
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (FACTS UNDERLYING ADEPT BIOGRAPHIES) XIV p. 149; & quoting Isis Unveiled, II
pp. 181-83.
4
“Although this science is commonly supposed to be peculiar to the Jewish Talmudists, there is no doubt that
[they] borrowed the idea from a foreign source, and that from the Chaldeans, the founders of magic art,” says
King, in The Gnostics.
“The titles Iaō and Abraxas, and several others, instead of being recent Gnostic figments, were indeed
holy names, borrowed from the most ancient formulæ of the East. Pliny must allude to them when he
mentions the virtues ascribed by the Magi to amethysts engraved with the names of the Sun and Moon,
names . . . not expressed in either the Greek or Latin tongues. [Nat. Hist., xxxviii, § 41. In the ‘ Eternal
Sun,’ the ‘ Abraxas,’ the ‘ Adonai,’ of these gems, we recognize the very amulets ridiculed by the philo-
sophic Pliny.”
(Gnostics, pp. 79-80; p. 283 in 2nd ed.); Virtutes (miracles) as employed by Irenæus.
5
Page 44 of 52
In the Chaldean or Jewish Kabbalah, Kosmos is divided into seven

worlds: Original, Intelligible, Celestial, Elementary, Lesser (As-
tral), Infernal (Kāma-loka or Hadēs), and Temporal (of man).
The eternal kosmos, the Macrocosm, is divided in the Secret Doctrine like man, the
1
Microcosm, into three Principles and four Vehicles, which in their collectivity are the
seven Principles. In the Chaldean or Jewish Kabbalah, the Kosmos is divided into
seven worlds: the Original, the Intelligible, the Celestial, the Elementary, the Lesser
(Astral), the Infernal (Kāma-loka or Hadēs), and the Temporal (of man). In the Chal-
dean system it is in the Intelligible World, the second, that appear the “Seven Angels
of the Presence,” or the Sephīrōth (the three higher ones being, in fact, one, and also
the sum total of all). They are also the “Builders” of the Eastern Doctrine: and it is
only in the third, the celestial world, that the seven planets and our solar system are
built by the seven Planetary Angels, the planets becoming their visible bodies. Hence
— as correctly stated — if the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal One
Substance or Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the Absolute Deity, that
builds it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, the Angels or Dhyāni-Chohans,
that emanate from the One Element, which becoming periodically Light and Dark-
2
ness, remains eternally, in its Root-Principle, the one unknown, yet existing Reality.
The old Chaldeans were a Brotherhood of pre-Babylonian

Philosophers and Theurgists.
Their knowledge and teachings emerged much later in a caste of
learned Kabbalists.
[The Chaldeans or Kasdim were] . . . at first a tribe, then a caste of learned kabba-
lists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The
famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean.
Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine” found
3 4
in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees. ,
1
The three root-principles are, exoterically: Man, Soul, and Spirit (meaning by “man” the intelligent personali-
ty), and esoterically: Life, Soul, and Spirit; the four vehicles are Body, Astral double, Animal (or human) Soul,
and Divine Soul (Sthūla-śarīra, Linga-śarīra, Kāma-rūpa, and Buddhi, the vehicle of Ātman or Spirit). Or, to
make it still clearer:
1. the Seventh Principle has for its vehicle the Sixth (Buddhi);
2. the vehicle of Manas is Kāma-rūpa [However, cf. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. XII, pp. 707-9.];
3. that of Jīva or Prāna (life) is the Linga-śarīra (the “double” of man; the Linga-śarīra proper can never
leave the body till death; that which appears is an astral body, reflecting the physical body and serving
as a vehicle for the human soul, or intelligence); and
4. the Body, the physical vehicle of all the above collectively. The Occultist recognizes the same order as
existing for the cosmical totality, the psycho-cosmical Universe.
2
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE ZOHAR ON CREATION AND THE ELOHIM) XIV pp. 209-10
3
[Part III, ch. v]
4
Isis Unveiled, I p. xxviii
Page 45 of 52
To sum up, the Kabbalah of the profane Jews is but the distorted
echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldeans. The Chaldean Book
of Numbers, now in the possession of some Persian Sufis, is the
only key to the real Kabbalah.
If Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every
Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it
was based, he is most likely the author of Genesis and other “scrolls.”
The word “Kabbalah” comes from the root “to receive,” and has a meaning identical
with the Sanskrit Smriti (“received by tradition”) — a system of oral teaching, passing
from one generation of priests to another, as was the case with the Brāhmanical
books before they were embodied in manuscript. The Kabbalistic tenets came to the
Jews from the Chaldeans; and if Moses knew the primitive and universal language of
the Initiates, as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numeri-
cal system on which it was based, he may have — and we say he has — written Gen-
esis and other “scrolls.” The five books that now pass current under his name, the
1
Pentateuch, are not withal the original Mosaic Records. Nor were they written in the
old Hebrew square letters, nor even in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets
belong to a date later than that of Moses, and Hebrew — as it is now known — did
not exist in the days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet.
As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are re-
garded as of any value by the world in general, and since, to be understood by and
convince the reader, one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments and
proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts may perhaps
demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of Occult
Records:
 The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the antiquity of the
so-called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square Hebrew characters in
which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which we use in printing, were prob-
ably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the
Hebrew Bible is written merely in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words.
The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on:
A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cu-
2
neiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.
 The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Es-
dras (B.C. 458) have all failed.
 It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their
captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now-known Hebrew square let-
3
ters beyond the late period of the fourth century A.D.
1
There is not in the decalogue one idea that is not the counterpart, or the paraphrase, of the dogmas and eth-
ics current among the Egyptians long before the time of Moses and Aaron. (“The Mosaic Law,” a transcript from
Egyptian Sources: vide Geometry in Religion. London: E.W. Allen, 1890)
2
Kenealy, Book of God. Apocalypse of Adam-Oannes, p. 383 [London: Reeves & Turner, 1867. The reference to
Klaproth is also from this page.]
3
See Asiatic Journal, N.S. vii, p. 275, quoted by Kenealy, p. 384.
Page 46 of 52
The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in
1
English letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.
 Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syriac or Chalda-
ic have to see what is said in Jeremiah, wherein the Lord is made to threaten the
house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty and ancient nation of the Chalde-
ans:
A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they
2
say.
3
This is quoted by Bishop Walton against the assumption of the identity of Chaldaic
and Hebrew, and ought to settle the question.
 The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity, when the Is-
raelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their own language, the
fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of Chaldaic, the Hebrew tincturing it very
4
slightly, and ceasing from that time to be a spoken language.
As to our statement that the present Old Testament does not contain the original
Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that:
1 The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and their “Law of Mo-
ses.” They will have neither the Psalms of David, nor the Prophets, nor the Tal-
mud and Mishnāh: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in quite a different
5
edition. The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured out of recognition by
the Talmudists, they say.
2 The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India — who know nothing of the Baby-
lonian Captivity or of the ten “lost tribes” (the latter a pure invention of the
Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India before the year 600
B.C. — have their Books of Moses which they will show to no one. And these
Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls. Nor are they written in
the square Hebrew characters (semi-Chaldaic and semi-Palmyrene) but in the
archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them — letters entirely unknown
to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.
3 The Karaim Jews of the Crimea — who call themselves the descendants of the
true children of Israel, i.e., of the Sadducees — reject the Torah and the Penta-
teuch of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will
1
Book of God, loc. cit.
2
op. cit., v, 15
3
Prolegomena iii, 13, quoted by Kenealy, p. 385.
4
See Book of God, p. 385. “Care should be taken,” says Butler (quoted by Kenealy, p. 489), “to distinguish be-
tween the Pentateuch in the Hebrew language but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet, and the version of
the Pentateuch in the Samaritan language. One of the most important differences between the Samaritan and
the Hebrew text respects the duration of the period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham. The Samari-
tan text makes it longer by some centuries than the Hebrew text; and the Septuagint makes it longer by some
centuries than the Samaritan. It is observable that in the authentic translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Roman
Church follows the computation expressed in the Hebrew text; and in her Martyrology follows that of the Seven-
ty,” both texts being inspired, as she claims.
5
See Rev. Joseph Wolff’ s Journal, p. 200; [quoted in Book of God, pp. 382-83]
Page 47 of 52
have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the Psalms — nothing but their own
Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law.
This makes it plain that the Kabbalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Se-
cret Doctrine of the Chaldeans, and that the real Kabbalah is found only in the
Chaldean Book of Numbers now in the possession of some Persian Sūfīs. Every na-
tion in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Āryan Secret Doctrine; and
each nation points to this day to a Sage of its own race who had received the primor-
dial revelation from, and had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine
Being. Thus it was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult
Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilat-
1
ed them.
When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of Law
were called Asideans or Kasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Phar-
isees or Pharsi (Parsis).
It was Darius Hystaspes who was the first to establish a Persian colony in Judæa;
Zoro-Babel was perhaps the leader.
The name Zoro-babel means ‘the seed or son of Babylon’ — as Zoro-aster is the
2
seed, son, or prince of Ishtar.
The new colonists were doubtless Judæi. This is a designation from the East. Even
Siam is called Judia, and there was an Ayodhyā in India. The temples of Shadom or
Peace were numerous. Throughout Persia and Afghanistan the names of Saul and
David are very common. The “Law” is ascribed in turn to Hezekiah, Ezra, Simon the
Just, and the Asmonean period. Nothing definite; everywhere contradictions. When
the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of the Law were called Asideans or
Kasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees or Pharsi (Parsīs). This indicates that
Persian colonies were established in Judæa and ruled the country; while all the peo-
ple that are mentioned in the books of Genesis and Joshua lived there as a common-
3 4
alty. ,
Following successive Assyrian and Persian colonisations, the early
plebeian Israelites (originally Canaanites and Phoenicians) were
modified to Asideans and Pharisees, and then to asserters of sac-
erdotal rule (Sadducees) as contradistinguished from rabbinical.
The Pharisees were lenient and intellectual; the Sadducees, big-
oted and cruel.
“The early plebeian Israelites were Canaanites and Phœnicians, with the same wor-
ship of the Phallic gods — Bacchus, Baal or Adon, Iacchos — Iaō or Jehovah”; but
even among them there had always been a class of initiated adepts. Later, the char-
acter of this plebs was modified by Assyrian conquests; and, finally, the Persian col-
onisations superimposed the Pharisean and Eastern ideas and usages, from which
1
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE EASTERN GUPTA VIDYA AND THE KABALAH) XIV pp. 171-74
2
Prof. A. Wilder, “Notes”
3
See Ezra ix, 1
4
Page 48 of 52
the Old Testament and the Mosaic institutes were derived. The Asmonean priest-
kings promulgated the canon of the Old Testament in contradistinction to the Apoc-
1 2
rypha or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews — kabbalists. Till John Hyrcanus
they were Asideans (Chasidim) and Pharisees (Parsīs), but then they became Saddu-
cees or Zadokites — asserters of sacerdotal rule as contradistinguished from rabbini-
3
cal. The Pharisees were lenient and intellectual, the Sadducees, bigoted and cruel.
1
The word Apocrypha was very erroneously adopted as doubtful and spurious. The word means hidden and se-
cret; but that which is secret may be often more true than that which is revealed.
2
[Yohanan Hyrcanus (‫הורקנוס יוחנן‬, Ιωάννης Υρκανός), C2 BCE, Asmonean or Maccabean leader.]
3
Page 49 of 52
APPENDICES
Appendix A.
The Testimony of Theodas
From Isis Unveiled, II pp. 27-28.
There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East — on Mount Athos
and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance — among certain monks, and with learned
Rabbis in Palestine, who pass their lives in commenting upon the Talmud. They say
that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by
Cæsar, by the Christian mob in 389, and by the Arab General Amru, perished as it is
commonly believed; and the story they tell is the following: At the time of the contest
for the throne, in 51 B.C., between Cleopatra and her brother Dionysius Ptolemy, the
Bruchion, which contained over seven hundred thousand rolls, all bound in wood
and fireproof parchment, was undergoing repairs, and a great portion of the original
manuscripts, considered among the most precious, and which were not duplicated,
were stored away in the house of one of the librarians. As the fire which consumed
the rest was but the result of accident, no precautions had been taken at the time.
But they add, that several hours passed between the burning of the fleet, set on fire
by Cæsar’s order, and the moment when the first buildings situated near the har-
bour caught fire in their turn; and that all the librarians, aided by several hundred
slaves attached to the museum, succeeded in saving the most precious of the rolls.
So perfect and solid was the fabric of the parchment, that while in some rolls the in-
ner pages and the wood-binding were reduced to ashes, of others the parchment
binding remained unscorched. These particulars were all written out in Greek, Latin,
and the Chaldeo-Syriac dialect, by a learned youth named Theodas, one of the
scribes employed in the museum. One of these manuscripts is alleged to be pre-
served till now in a Greek convent; and the person who narrated the tradition to us
had seen it himself. He said that many more will see it and learn where to look for
important documents, when a certain prophecy will be fulfilled; adding, that most of
1
these works could be found in Tartary and India. The monk showed us a copy of the
original, which, of course, we could read but poorly, as we claim but little erudition
in the matter of dead languages. But we were so particularly struck by the vivid and
picturesque translation of the holy father, that we perfectly remember some curious
paragraphs, which run, as far as we can recall them, as follows:
When the Queen of the Sun (Cleopatra) was brought back to the half-ruined
city, after the fire had devoured the Glory of the World; and when she saw the
mountains of books — or rolls — covering the half-consumed steps of the es-
trada; and when she perceived that the inside was gone and the indestructible
covers alone remained, she wept in rage and fury, and cursed the meanness of
1
An after-thought has made us fancy that we can understand what is meant by the following sentences of Mo-
ses of Choren:
“The ancient Asiatics, five centuries before our era — and especially the Hindus, the Persians, and the
Chaldeans, had in their possession a quantity of historical and scientific books. These works were par-
tially borrowed, partially translated in the Greek language, mostly since the Ptolemies had established
the Alexandrian library and encouraged the writers by their liberalities, so that the Greek language be-
came the deposit of all the sciences.” (History of Armenia, Bk. I, ii)
Therefore, the greater part of the literature included in the 700,000 volumes of the Alexandrian Library was due
to India, and her next neighbours.
Page 50 of 52
APPENDICES
her fathers who had grudged the cost of the real Pergamos for the inside as well
as the outside of the precious rolls.
Further, our author, Theodas, indulges in a joke at the expense of the queen for be-
lieving that nearly all the library was burned; when, in fact, hundreds and thousands
of the choicest books were safely stored in his own house and those of other scribes,
librarians, students, and philosophers.
Appendix B.
Searching for the Lost Word 1
First published in The Theosophist, Vol. II, No. 9, June 1881, pp. 193-96. This excerpt is from Blavatsky
Collected Writings, (LAMAS AND DRUSES) III pp. 179-80. See full text under the title “Lamas and Druses,
descendants of the Elect Race” in the same Series.
Swedenborg, the Northern seer, advised his followers to search for the LOST WORD,
among the hierophants of Tartary, Tibet and China. To this we may add a few ex-
planatory and corroborative facts. Lhasa, the theocratic metropolis of Tibet, is com-
monly translated as “God-land,” that is to say, this is the only English equivalent
2
that we can find. Though separated by the Karakorum range and little Tibet, the
great Tibet is on the same Asiatic plateau in which our Biblical scholars designate
3
the tableland of Pamir as the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of the mythi-
cal Adam. Tibet or Ti-Boutta, will yield, etymologically, the words Ti, which is the
equivalent for God in Chinese, and Buddha, or wisdom: the land, then, of the Wis-
dom-Deity, or of the incarnations of Wisdom. It is also called “Bod-Yid.” Now “Yid”
and “Yōd” are synonymous apocalyptic and phallic names for the Deity — YOD being
the Hebrew name for God. G. Higgins shows in his Celtic Druids the Welsh Druids al-
tering the name of Bod-Yid into Budd-ud which with them meant the “wisdom of Yid”
4
or what people now call “god.”
1
[See “The Ineffable Name” in our Secret Doctrine’ s First Proposition Series. — ED. PHIL.]
2
And a most unsatisfactory term it is, as the Lamaists have no conception of the anthropomorphic deity which
the English word “God” represents. Fo or Buddha (the latter name being quite unknown to the common people)
is their equivalent expression for that All-embracing, Superior Good, or Wisdom from which all proceeds, as
does the light from the sun, the cause being nothing personal, but simply an Abstract Principle. And it is this
that in all our theosophical writing, for the want of a better word, we have to term “God-like” and “Divine.”
3
There are several Pamirs in Central Asia. There is the Alichur Pamir which lies more north than either — the
Great Pamir with Victoria Lake in its vicinity, Taghdumbash Pamir and the Little Pamir, more south; and east-
ward another chain of Pamir dividing Muztagh Pass and Little Guhjal. We would like to know on which of these
we have to look for the garden of Eden?
4
The name in Hebrew for sanctuary is Thebah, which also means a “vessel,” the “ark” of Noah and the floating
cradle of Moses.
[As to the derivation of the term Tibet, it should be borne in mind that the land is known to the natives as Bod
or Bod-yul. In colloquial pronunciation the word is aspirated into Bhöd or Bhöt. The term Tö-bhöt means “high
plateau-land. — Boris de Zirkoff.]
Page 51 of 52
Chaldeans synonymous terms

1
Akkadians , Asideans, Chaldees, Kaldis, Kasdeans, Kasdim.
“Egyptian Magic, good and bad,” “Occultism and Kabbalah are only masks to hide
the sacred truth from the profane,” “The Origin of Good and Evil,” and “The Original
Sin is a Jewish invention,” — in our Black versus White Magic Series.
“The Ineffable Name” — in our Secret Doctrine’s First Proposition Series.
“Cory’s Ancient Fragments (1832)” — in our Theosophy and Theosophists Series.
1
Term coined by F. Lenormant.
Page 52 of 52

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Chaldeans, Hierophants

of the Aryan Root-Race

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Abstract and train of thoughts

The Chaldeans were a pre-Babylonian Brotherhood of Hierophants

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Amplifications and Elaborations

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

The old Chaldeans were a Brotherhood of pre-Babylonian Philosophers and

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Appendix A. The Testimony of Theodas

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Were they Chaldean Vedas or Vedic Chaldees?

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

The Chaldeans were a pastoral nation and a priestly caste initiat-

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

They spread westward, from the plateau of Pamir, cradle

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

federate knave; whether the inspired Scripture, or these in-blown buffoons,

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

The wide aerial flight of birds is not true,

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Clemens Alexandrinus testifies to the existence of 30,000 addi-

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

More! The writings of the elusive Hermes Trismegistus spring

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

de Mirville find an unanswerable proof of demonology in the belief of a philosopher in

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary,

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

The pioneers of humanity’ s Fifth Root-Race, the Aryan, came out

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

To dare, to know, to will, and to remain silent, were their

Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race v. 14.13, www.philaletheians.co.uk, 7 June 2018

All the discoveries of modern Astronomy were contained within