The Golden Star

VISION 2

Demons and Devas

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Quite overcome by the prodigious phenomena they had just witnessed, their ears still ringing with the uproar of that mad contest and turbulence of overbearing violence, and that Majestic Figure, noble, exalted, Lordly in that One Mandate, that swept the upper regions clear of all iniquity, Ma-u and Ma-uti knelt at the feet of the Messenger and wept . . .

Gently he raised them up and told them that all danger was past and that now they were free to walk around and see the wonders of that vast upheaval.

“The demon spectacle you have seen was what the old philosophers imagined when they wrote their classifications of the different Orders of Spirits.

“The leading tenets of these doctrines can be traced to the Jews and early Christians; but in the Dark Ages the Moors of Spain, who were then the principal Philosophers, matured and developed these teachings and communicated them to the natives of France and Italy.

“In those days great schools of Magic were to be found in Salamanca, Toledo and Seville. There it was taught that from the Fallen Angels all knowledge and power might be obtained. They were masters of the abstract sciences, in alchemy, of the languages of mankind and the animals, of poetry, pneumatology, moral philosophy, magic, history, divinity and prophecy. They had power over the winds, the waters and the influence of the stars: to raise earthquakes, induce diseases, or cure them, and release souls from purgatory.

“The King of all the Demons was not Satan, but Beelzebub. Satan was considered by Wierus to be a dethroned monarch; Leader of the Opposition.

“Moloch was Chief of the Army; Pluto Prince of Fire; and Leonard Master of the Sphere. Then, there were the masters of the infernal courts, such as Adramelech, Grand Chancellor; Astaroth, Grand Treasurer; Nergal, Chief of the Secret Police; and Baal, Chief of the Satanic Army.

“Each State in Europe had its Infernal Ambassadors:

Belphegor, in France; Mammon, in England; Belial, in Turkey; Rimmon, in Russia; Thamuz, in Spain; Hutjin, in Italy; and Martinet, in Switzerland.

“There were also earthly representatives:

“There was Moreau, magician and sorcerer of Paris, who represented Beelzebub; Pinel, a doctor of Salpetrière, represents Satan; Bouge represents Pluto; Nicholas, a doctor of Avignon, represents Moloch.

“Altogether there are in the infernal regions 6,666 legions, each composed of the same number of devils or demons. So those ancient thinkers built a universe of spirits, based on dim memories of the still more ancient arcana. Never forget that thoughts like that take shape in a more or less solid form, according to the amount of thought-power expended upon them, or the intellectual strength of their creators.

“In the Stanzas of Dzyan we read that the third and the fourth Races took wives from the mindless, the narrow-headed, who were fair to look on. And then they bred monsters, wicked demons; male and female did they breed them. The Giants of the Fourth Race obtained the sovereignty of all the earth and defeated the Minor Gods; and the Gods of our fathers became our devils. This sort of thing often happened quite suddenly, as, for example, in the case of Set, or Typhon, who conferred on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth Dynasties in Egypt the symbols of Life and Power. But in the course of the twentieth Dynasty this God, who was once universally worshipped and adored throughout Egypt, suddenly was treated as an evil Demon, and all his effigies and names were obliterated on all the monuments that could be reached.

“It is told in the ancient teachings that when Brahmâ wished to create the world anew and construct progeny through His Will, he began by creating Demons, who thus take precedence over Gods and Angels. There is a deep esoteric reason for this belief, as the so-called Demons are the Self-asserting and intellectually active Principle; are the positive pole of creation; and are therefore first produced. Just as in every ancient Theogony without exception down to the times of Hesiod, in the order of Cosmogonical evolution, Night is placed before Day; Darkness before Light; Chaos before Order.

“The rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as Holy Ascetics and Yogîs in the Āryan allegory. Nârada, a Son of Brahmâ, refuses to marry and is cursed by Daksha, who brings 10,000 Sons for the purpose of peopling the world, and Nârada is condemned to perish in his Angelic form and to become a man; and thus these Gods were degraded into Demons. Many reasons are given why these Sons of Brahmâ refused to become men; some refused because they had no Astral body, others because they had been Adepts of long past Ages; but in the end they sacrificed themselves for the salvation of these Monads which were waiting, and who otherwise for countless Ages would have to linger in human form, with only animal understanding. Thus these Gods endowed Man with a conscious immortal Higher Mind, reflected in the Lower Mind. Those men into whom the Gods projected their Divine Selves became Arhats; those who received but a spark remained destitute of Wisdom; for the spark burned low; some remained without intellect altogether, for they were not ready.

“In Genesis you may read how the Sons of God become enamoured of the daughters of men; marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learned by them in Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the ‘Fall of the Angels.’

“It is said that divine wisdom falls like lightning from Heaven, but this is only a symbolical synonym for inspiration and initiation. Each time that an Angel decides that there is a man who has evolved sufficiently to receive that Initiation, there is another ‘Fall’ when the Spirit of that Angel descends upon that man. But that ‘Fall’ does not turn either Angel or man into Demon, but rather transcends both into more perfect realizations of their Divine Prerogative.

“We are taught that Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven, and conscious, self-active Wisdom on Earth. It is the Marriage of the Heavenly Man with the Virgin of the World—or Nature as described in The Divine Pymander; the result of which is their progeny—immortal Man. This is in exact opposition to that dogmatic horror of fiction of Western Theology—that the ‘Fallen’ Angel is Satan. Therefore, the ancient doctrine teaches that the Angels and Divine Rebels preferred the curse of incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if unconscious, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their Brethren, through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. If man’s uses of life should be such as neither to animalize nor to spiritualize but to humanize self, to do so, he must be born human—not Angelic. So the Celestial Beings became sometimes voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity, and the ‘Fallen’ Angels became part of humanity itself.

“It is taught, therefore, that the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the Angel of Death, are the same; and that Jehovah (mankind, or Ja-hovah) and Satan, or the tempting Serpent are also one and the same in every particular. There is thus no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil. Evil is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life; so that man may live for ever in true spiritual intuition, intellect and Wisdom. This is the Secret Wisdom; and it is not necessary to worship Nebo, the Deity of the planet Mercury, or Hermes, or Buddha, called Kokab by the Jews, and Nabo by the Greeks; it is not necessary to worship this oldest God of Wisdom, as he was worshipped in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, to find this Wisdom; for it is hidden within all men’s souls.

“It is said that ‘Satan is always near and inextricably interwoven with man,’ and in the Book of Jude it is written that: ‘For even Michael the Archangel . . . durst not bring against him (Satan) a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee’; and this is repeated in the Talmud.

“In the Zohar and other Kabalistic works we find that Satan is simply the personification of the abstract Evil, latent or active in man. And all beings, whether Angels or Demons, are governed by the Law; there is no escape; and both are inherent in man.

“Man must become proud enough to believe in the God-principle within him, brave enough to find release from evil at the price of suffering, strong enough to keep full control and Faith in darkness and agony, and to build himself a throne out of the pyre of his destruction. An apotheosis of self-sacrifice for the sake of his brothers, whom he can then lead onwards, and up the Golden Stairway with a strong hand, a pure mind, and unfaltering Love and Wisdom.

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