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Volume 2:109-124

The Fifth Stanza in The Secret Doctrine 2:117 covers the transition from the First Root-Race to the Second Root-Race. H.P. Blavatsky wrote, "The astral form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by the egg-shaped sphere of aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life." The Monad is the first layer, the astral form is the second layer, and the aura is the third layer of the gradually condensing human frame. In a general way, these three layers correspond to Ibn Tufail's description of the three congealing bubbles within Hai bin Yaqzan's inner constitution in The Journey on page 8. Further, 'When the season of reproduction arrives, the sub-astral 'extrudes' a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from the parent, carrying with it its own sphere of aura." The fermenting mud around Hai bin Yaqzan corresponds to the egg-shaped aura which the growing embryo feeds upon. When it is time to be born, the embryo tears open the "membranes" of the mucky atmosphere and steps outside. Of course, the similarities between Ibn Tufail's account and H.P. Blavatsky's account are not exact. After all, when Hai bin Yaqzan breaks out from the muddy aura there is a "doe" waiting for him--a symbol of the mammalians of the later Second Root-Race. The later Second Root-Race is "Sweat-born" and gestation is more "in utero, i.e., within the cell" in that period than in the early Second Root-Race which H.P. Blavatsky is describing.

The First Root-Race is considered a sexless "shadow." It merely melts away into the shape and consistency of its progeny. The Second Root-Race is considered an a-sexual "form." As H.P. Blavatsky wrote, "Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each covering aeons of time." When Hai bin Yaqzan returns to Earth from his journey to the heavens on page 52, he spends "seven times seven years" in various meditative states, which means that the seven Sub-Races of the Second Root-Race have been completed and the Third Root-Race has begun. At this point, Hai bin Yaqzan meets the brothers, Salaman and Asal. Salaman is the materialistic brother; Asal is the spiritual brother. Jointly, they represent the two main divisions of the Third Root-Race. Salaman and Asal in the Islamic tradition are the Castor and Pollux in the Greek tradition. Like Salaman, Castor is the mortal brother. Like Asal, Pollux is the immortal brother. Therefore, Castor and Pollux are the Kabiri and Titans of the Third Root-Race.

It is an easy assessment considering that their sister Helen hatches from an egg (a Lemurian cliche) in Apollodorus's The Library of Greek Mythology in 3.10.7. Regarding the production of the Third Root-Race, Zeus rapes Nemesis. She produces two eggs containing Helen and Pollux which she gives to Leda to watch over and hatch. Nemesis's mother is Nyx who represents the Night, the veil hiding the light of Aether, the first child of Chaos, the Air, or the First and early Second Root-Races. Nemesis herself represents duality and revenge--that is, karmic revenge against the crimes perpetrated by the later Second Root-Race. She gives birth to the Third Root-Race which exacts revenge on the Hyperborean peoples. In other Greek myths, Zeus rapes Leda and she conceives Pollux as the spiritual twin. But Leda also sleeps with her husband Tyndareus the same night and she conceives Castor as the mortal twin. The twin brothers share the same mother, though not the same father.

But Castor and Pollux do not start out this way. They are both rumored (as opposed to Pollux alone) to be the sons of Zeus. Robin Hard noted in his translation of The Library on page 233 that the term "Dioscuri" implies that they are both divine. Naturally, they must be divine since they symbolize the Third Root-Race, and it has already been emphasized that the first Sub-Races of the Third Root-Race overlap with the close of the First Root-Race. H.P. Blavatsky explained in Collected Writings 14:81 that the "First Root-Race shall come to an end during the second Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race." The anonymous 7th century BC Homeric Hymns in "To the Dioscuri" told of "Castor and Polydeuces, the Tynaridae, who sprang from Olympian Zeus. Beneath the heights of Taygetus stately Leda bare them, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had privily bent her to his will." In the same way that the father "Cronos" introduces the division of Time into the universe with his defeat of Uranos, the son Zeus introduces the division of Time into the evolution of the Root-Races with his rape of Nemesis (the child of darkness and chaos) or Leda (the egg-hatcher). In one special moment in Ovid's 1st century AD poem, Metamorphoses, in 8.348-381, the twin brothers ("not stars of heavens as yet") have a chance to prevent their separation during an assault on a wild "boar" which symbolizes the division between the physical and cosmical principles. It is no ordinary boar, with "anger" flashing like "lightning" and "flames" issuing from its throat. But they fail to slay it and so must become divided like the boar itself in obeying the god's cycle. In a later battle, Castor is mortally wounded, Pollux agrees to take his place half the time in the Underworld, and the twin brothers become separated.

In The Secret Doctrine 2:121-123, Castor and Pollux begin as the Dioscuri, but they lose this status as twin sons of Zeus when the sexless shadows of the First Root-Race melt away into the a-sexual forms of the Second Root-Race. They can now die. This is why Helen looks for her brothers in Homer's Iliad 3.275-295 but is unable to find them. They already sleep "inhumed in Lacedemon, in their native soil." They are deceased. Only afterwards do they become the "highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal." As such, they are allowed to come alive again, one at a time, in Homer's Odyssey 11:299. They have "won honor like unto that of the gods." Both brothers are boxers and horsemen. Castor is a "boxer" because he is no longer a mere pudding bag of the First Root-Race, but now he has arms! Pollux's Greek name, Polydeuces, signifies that he is a leader of young horses--a reference to the Lemurian humanity ruling over the newly-born mammals. H.P. Blavatsky clarified in The Secret Doctrine 2:684, "The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period [ed. see The Secret Doctrine 2:710], were evolved from purely astral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race." All this is an "allusion" to the eventual development of the "Egg-born" of the Third Root-Race: "the first half of which is mortal" and the "latter half of which becomes immortal in its individuality, by reason of its fifth principle being called to life by the informing gods, and thus connecting the monad with this Earth." In unison with the awakening of the "fifth principle" (Zeus in his passion) that separates Castor and Pollux into the lower four and the upper three (like the human heart), the 5th Sub-Race, stirred by the "fifth principle," stimulates further the division between the male and female sexes.


Sources:

Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, trans. Robin Hard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Volume 14 (Wheaton: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1985).

H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).

Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. William Cowper. Retrieved from gutenberg.org.

Homer, Odyssey, trans. A.T. Murray. Retrieved from theoi.com.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A.D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Abu Bakr Muhammad Bin Tufail, The Journey of the Soul: The Story of Hai bin Yaqzan, trans. Riad Kocache (London: The Octagon Press, 1982).

Hugh G. Evelyn-White, trans., The Homeric Hymns: To the Dioscuri, No. 17. Retrieved from gutenberg.org.

(Photo by Kim Shing Lai on Unsplash)



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