Category: Isis Unveiled, Volume II: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

“The esoteric doctrine, then, teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the persecuted Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the “day” and the “night” of Brahma. The latter [...]

“The grand cycle, as we have heretofore remarked, includes the progress of mankind from its germ in the primordial man of spiritual form to the deepest depth of degradation he can reach – each successive step in the descent being accompanied by a greater strength and grossness of the physical form than its precursor – [...]

“Professor Müller and Jacolliot may have ever so great claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other ancient Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand and one mysteries of the old secret doctrine and its philosophy. Only, while the German philologist does not even take the trouble to [...]

“We have quoted from the Chaldean and Phoenician records in our first volume; we will now glance at the Hindu books. “When this world had issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetal seed which animated first the plants; from the plants, life passed into fantastical bodies which were born in the [...]

“We have said above, that according to the secret computation peculiar to the students of the hidden science, Messiah is the fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish Kabala, where the ten Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon, (placed below the crown), he comes fifth. So in the Gnostic system; so in the Buddhistic, in which [...]

“In the collection of Mose de Garcia, a Portuguese kabalist, there is a drawing representing the interior of the temple of Dagon. In the middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body is human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an aperture which can be closed like [...]

“We say again, we desire to give nothing on our sole authority. Therefore we cite Jacolliot, who, however criticized and contradicted on other points, and however loose he may be in the matter of chronology, (though even in this he is nearer right than those scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the [...]

“It is well-known, that the earliest Christian emblems – before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus – were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and the Fish. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archeologist, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily ascertained fact [...]

“The Brahmâtma, the chief of the Hindu initiates, had on his headgear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-like; and, in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner daghôba, and the porticos [...]

“The fears of the Christians were but too well founded, and their pious zeal and prophetic insight was rewarded from the very first. In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the bloody riot between the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect [...]