The Golden Star

VISION 2

Demons and Devas

ALEXANDRITE

In shifting colours, green and red,
Deceptive glamour shines
Upon the Face of Day or Night,
When Demons flit; or Devas
Benediction shed.

Silently Ma-u and Ma-uti stood beside the Messenger after he finished speaking, deeply impressed with what they had seen and heard.

A wan glimmer of light cast an eerie, unsubstantial illumination over the wide space where they waited expectantly for further instruction. Dead silence reigned everywhere; so great a contrast with that which had just gone before that the hush could almost be felt.

With hands clasped before him Neteru-Hem was mute also, as he too was waiting, deep in meditation.

Imperceptibly the Light began to change its hue to a lurid, murky, reddish tinge and it seemed as if it were alive and tremulant with unseen forces. A feeling of oppression made breathing difficult; there was a sense of foreboding, ominous, electric; which produced a feeling of inertness, difficult to overcome.

A slight tremor ran over the ground like a wind-made ripple across a field of corn; and a faint rumbling sound was heard, impossible to place. The air felt warmer too; not a pleasing warmth, but as if a distant blast from a fiery furnace was wafted across space. A deeper rumble from beneath the soil could now be felt and traced from its source; and a softly-heaving movement of the ground made Ma-u and Ma-uti grasp each other in sudden fright.

“Hold each my hand, my children, and have no fear”, the Messenger said, and eagerly the two did him obey; whilst with protective holy circle he made them safe.

Heavy clouds began to blot the paling stars and scurried across the face of heaven, and sudden gusts of wind increased the pressure of the elements, as if in sullen fits of temper, both air and earth stirred restlessly in easeless agony.

And now was heard another sound, this time from above, a rolling, sinister bombardment in the distant sky; and sudden flashes lit the reeling rim of earth with grey-black clouds above. At rapid pace the storm approached, and suddenly a mighty heave of restless soil all round threw high the cracking land, accompanied by heavy crashes, as if a thousand fearsome monsters tried to escape from deep below. And jaggéd flashes pierced the clouds and dived in sudden brilliant splendour deep in loam and mire of agitated squirming sods.

And trembling rolls of mighty thunder split all the firmament with dreadful bursts, as if the tympanies of all the spheres, with one loud crash of crazy drummers, were smashed in shivering booms of mad delight.

Now, with a splintering, shattering roar rose high the whole of all the earth; raised in a mighty sweep to heaven, with rending cannonades of shaking, blustering, vaunting uproar of the rocks and soil; tumultuous perturbation of unseen powers of the deeps; and in the distance rose a fierce volcano, shooting high aloft its fiery message of destruction, grim with booms and hollow humming; whilst from the rifts in writhing soil sprang up boiling, whistling streams of steam and seething watery jets and scalding vapours. And overhead the thunder rolled with droning roars, and from the clouds torrential streams of heavy rain descended on the tortured ground; the hills flung up, the mountains raised on high, as if the whole of Nature in a carnival of mad destruction held one final festival of wrath.

Dumb with terror did Ma-uti and Ma-u behold the fell upheaval; gripping the hands of Neteru-Hem, who silently and calmly regarded the dreadful scene.

And now came added consternation, for as the destruction of that even plain took place, a multitudinous horde of formidable demon forces rode the clouds, flung far the gruesome lightning, dived in the burning glow of that volcano, shrieked loudly and violently swooped all round the sky in mad delight.

From out the soil rose up the demons of the earthquake, yelling hoarsely, running up the shaking hills and mountains that now raised mighty crests on high; pledging with raucous curses their kinsfolk from above.

And from within the protecting shell, Ma-u and Ma-uti, though fascinated, watched that scene with terror in their hearts. Borne on the wings of windy gusts great regiments of demons now rode in the sky; grinning with malignancy, they swept above the mountains. The rain still fell in torrents, glittering crimson in the light cast by the flames; cascading rubies driven like vast walls, or garnet clouds, or waving blood-red curtains made of tinted crystals, shaking madly in the wind.

And still those rolling booms below and cracks above; a pandemonium so great that all the senses reeled.

“Thus were born in dreadful anguish lofty mountain ranges like the Alps, the Himalayas,” said the Messenger. “Great Civilizations that existed when the earth was round and even—as was this even plain we saw transformed—were then destroyed, and millions upon millions of beasts and birds and humans wiped from off the earth in one dread hour. Those Beings in the sky and on the land you see disporting here in such delight, are but the denizens of the sidereal World, inverted Gods and Angels, made of Astral fluid. They are sons of Dark Space; what the superstitious call devils; and theirs the task of evolution of Earth’s body, and the guiding of the mighty Forces that destroy or build. They are the entities that rule the World, but not humanity; and electricity is but one example of their nature, from which that unknown, useful, dreadful substance proceeds. Neither Gods nor Devils are they, but Nature’s Forces, blind and strong, intent alone on their great task, not knowing suffering such as mortals fear. Their Masters rule the Cardinal points; are called the Mahârâjahs, four in number, and those accursed ones in the North and West cause all destruction such as you see here. But from the South comes healing and from the East all Wisdom flows.

“There are ‘Four Winged Wheels,’ one at each Corner for the Four Great Ones and their Hosts, the Regents, they who rule the Cosmic Forces. Many names have been bestowed upon them and both the Kabalists and the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of Christos state that Bahak Zivo, the Father of the Genii, was ordered to construct creatures. He failed and called in Fetahil, a purer spirit, who failed even more completely, just as the Lords of Light failed one after the other. These are symbolical teachings of the ‘fall,’ and thus we get the kingdom of the reign of Spirits and spiritual action, which flow from and are the product of spirit-volition, in contradistinction to the Kingdom of Souls and Divine Action. In the Codex Nazaræus we learn how Bahak Zivo was separated from Spiritus, and the Genii, or Angels, from the Rebels. Then, the greatest of all—Mano—calls Kebar Zivo the Helm and the Vine of the Food of Life, and commiserating with the rebellious Genii, so foolish on account of the magnitude of their ambition, tells him that the Genii are the Princes, the Sons of Light, but that he, Kebar Zivo, is the Messenger of Life.

“So, in order to counteract the influence of the bad principles, Kebar produces seven other—the Cardinal Principles—in order to reestablish the balance between good and evil, light and darkness.

“In this way he produces the allegorical dual system we find in the early teachings, such as the Zoroastrian, in which lies the germ of dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future. An outline of the two ‘Supremes’—God and Satan. In the various religious tenets we find these Angels and Demons changing place; examples are the fight of Indra, the God of the Firmament, with the Asuras—now degraded from High Gods into Cosmic Demons; the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the Dragon—Jupiter and Lucifer—Venus—Lucifer, now an Angel of Light, again debased to Satan.

“We find in the Chaldean Oracles, as well as in the teachings of St. Paul, the Doctrine of the Seven Cosmo-Creators of the World, the World-Pillars, which are double; one set to rule the superior Worlds, spiritual and sidereal and the other to watch and guide matter. This is also the opinion of Iamblichus, who makes a distinction between the Archangels and the Archontes. An eternal above and below, Light and Darkness, good and evil; yet each completing the reverse side of each.”

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