“We read the sound advice to students of the Rig-Veda hymns, to collect, collate, sift, and reject. “Let him study the commentaries, the Sutras, the Brahmanas, and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which information can be derived. He [the scholar] must not despise the traditions of the Brahmans, even where their misconceptions…are palpable. …Not a corner in the Brahmanas, the Sutras, Yaska, and Sayana, should be left unexplored before we propose a rendering of our own. …When the scholar has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish it.
Poor chance for a “philosopher” to step into the shoes of a learned philologist and presume to correct his errors! We would like to see what sort of a reception the most learned Hindu scholar in India would have from the educated public of Europe and America, if he should undertake to correct a savant, after he had sifted, accepted, rejected, explained, and declared what was good, and what “absurd and childish” in the sacred books of his forefathers. That which would finally be declared “Brahmanic misconceptions”, by the conclave of European and especially German savants, would be as little likely to be reconsidered at the appeal of the most erudite pundit of Benares or Ceylon, as the interpretation of Jewish Scripture by Maimonides and Philo-Judaeus; by Christians after the Councils of the Church had accepted the mistranslations and explanations of Irenaeus and Eusebius.
What pundit, or native philosopher of India should know his ancestral language, religion, or philosophy, as well as an Englishman or a German? Or why should a Hindu be more suffered to expound Brahmanism, than a Rabbinical scholar to interpret Judaism or the Isaian prophecies? Safer, and far more trustworthy translators can be had nearer home. Nevertheless, let us still hope that we may find at last, even though it be in the dim future, a European philosopher to sift the sacred books of the wisdom-religion, and not be contradicted by every other of his class.
Meanwhile, unmindful of any alleged authorities, let us try to sift for ourselves a few of these myths of old. We will search for an explanation within the popular interpretation and feel our way with the help of the magic lamp of Trismegistus – the mysterious number seven. There must have been some reason why this figure was universally accepted as a mystic calculation.
With every ancient people, the Creator, or Demiurge, was placed over the seventh heaven. “And were I to touch upon the initiation into our sacred Mysteries”, says Emperor Julian, the kabalist, “which Chaldean bacchised respecting the seven-rayed God, lifting up the souls through Him, I should say things unknown, and very unknown to the rabble, but well known to the blessed Theurgists.” In Lydus it is said that The Chaldeans call the God IAO, and SABAOTH he is often called, as He who is over the seven orbits (heaven or spheres), that is the Demiurge.”
One must consult the Pythagoreans and Kabalists to learn the potentiality of this number. Exoterically the seven rays of the solar spectrum are represented concretely in the seven-rayed god Heptaktis. These seven rays epitomized into THREE primary rays, namely, the red, blue, and yellow, form the solar trinity, and typify respectively spirit-matter and spirit-essence. Science has also reduced of late the seven rays to three primary ones, thus corroborating the scientific conception of the ancients of at least one of the visible manifestations of the invisible deity, and the seven, divided into a quaternary and a trinity.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 