The Third Stanza follows the earliest development of the Third Root-Race in nature's attempt to create a true "MAN" who possesses all the higher principles, middle principles, and lower principles throughout his constitution. This is why H.P. Blavatsky discussed the distinction between Agnishvattas and Barhishads in The Secret Doctrine 2:78-79. Agnishvattas are composed of various classes. The highest Agnishvattas as the loftiest Kumaras are too pure to incarnate in the early Root-Races. They rebelled against nature's evolutionary intent since nature must unfold. Other Agnishvattas eagerly incarnate as Manasaputras and are also said to have rebelled against nature's evolutionary intent in that such unfoldment is slow and cautious. But the reality is that "most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind." At first, the Agnishvattas through their crowning classes of the Kumaras can only provide the higher principles. The Barhishads can only provide the lower principles or the Astral bodies underlying the physical realm. What is needed to create a true "MAN" of the Third Root-Race are the middle principles to connect the two extremes.
To understand this, a study of the sacred planets and the Gnostic tradition is necessary. In G. de Purucker's Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary under the sub-heading "Sabaoth," the Gnostics believed that Jehovah as the Tetragrammaton (Yod-He-Vav-He) corresponded to four main sacred planets: Adonai, Eloi, Sabbath, and Iao. Adonai as the first sacred planet is Intra-Mercury, Eloi as the second sacred planet is Jupiter, Sabaoth as the sixth sacred planet is Mars, and Iao as the seventh sacred planet is the Planet of Death. This outline is confirmed in The Secret Doctrine 1:577. With Jehovah being intimately connected to the hosts of the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th sacred planets, Isaiah 44.6 referred to him as the "first" and the "last," or the "Alpha" and the "Omega." The middle planets, and therefore the middle human principles, are missing. It is crucial to unite the 1st and the 7th sacred planets, and commensurately the 1st and the 7th human principles, through the 4th. This union is achieved through the figure of Ilda-Baoth who rules in Cosmic Kama, or the fourth cosmic principle. He has many children and Jehovah is one of them. In The Secret Doctrine 2:75, Jehovah is the "Lord of the Moon." The Moon is the field of the kama-rupa or the 4th principle around the Earth. It is the 7th principle or the seventh sacred planet as Iao that reflects itself into this kama-rupa as the 4th. In The Secret Doctrine 2:538, this is why Iao is identified as the "genius of the moon." It is the Moon that serves as the connection between the higher and the lower principles. The actual middle principle itself is provided by the 4th sacred planet, Saturn (figurative or otherwise). In G. de Purucker's Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary under the sub-heading "Saturn," the planet Saturn can be interchangeably identified with Ilda-Baoth, Seth, and Cain. This supports H.P. Blavatsky's position in The Secret Doctrine 2:389 that "Cain had been generated by Samuel or Satan." H.P. Blavatsky equated Jehovah with Ilda-Baoth-Jehovah and Saturn, "Jao-Jehovah is an emanation of Ilda-Baoth." Ilda-Baoth, as the father in Cosmic Kama, operates through his children in the hosts (Elohim) of the planetary chains. As the 4th sacred planet, Saturn reflects its powers into the Moon (as the corresponding 4th principle of Kama) and the Planet of Death (as the 7th sacred planet) also reflects its powers into the Moon (once again, as the receptive 4th principle of Kama). The middle principle is now established. The readiness of the middle principle to unite the higher and lower extremes is demonstrated in The Secret Doctrine 2:63, "all the planets except Saturn, were on the same side of the heavens as the Sun [ed. Intra-Mercury or 1st] and Moon [ed. the Planet of Death or 7th] and hence were his [ed. Saturn or 4th] opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish 'Moon-god,' who is shown as prevailing." Saturn prevails because he connects the two extremes.
The Sacred Mysteries are all about figures and numbers. To see how this works in relation to the coupling of the sacred planets and the human principles, one can review The Secret Doctrine 2:45. An array of planets is introduced: the Moon as "Soma," Mercury as "Budha," Venus as "Lucifer" or the "morning star," Jupiter as the "exoteric," and the Earth as their "progeny." To begin, Venus (the 3rd sacred planet) is the "morning star" in relation to Mercury (the 5th sacred planet). Mercury is "Budha" because the Venusian "morning star" (a central point of sorts for the planetary system) suffuses it with its essence. In The Secret Doctrine 2:79, the "triangle becomes a pentagon (five-fold) on Earth." As the 3rd, Venus is the triangle. Its influence becomes five-fold because it spreads through the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th principles or sacred planets. This means that Venus's influence extends to the Planet of Death. Now, the Planet of Death as the 7th reflects itself into the 5th as its messenger for a more complete mirroring into the 4th, "the Moon (Soma) is Budha (Mercury)." But "Soma" is the "genius of the moon" or the Planet of Death; the 7 reflects itself into the 5 and they become united. Then Mercury as the "elder brother of the Earth" gives its "Spirit" to the "body" of its younger brother. In this way, we see how a syzygy of the Earth, the Moon, the Planet of Death, Venus, and Mercury lead to the portals of the Solar Sun in initiation. Jupiter is classified as the "exoteric" planet because it does not fit into this particular planetary alignment in this specific initiation and hides the passage to the Central Sun. If one sees G. de Purucker's diagram in Fundamentals on page 341 (inspired by H.P. Blavatsky's outline in The Secret Doctrine 1:435-436), the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon correspond to the Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels at the base of the Celestial Waters of Space.
The higher initiations include Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn as the Virtues, Dominations, and Thrones in the Celestial Waters of Space outward into the expanse of the galaxy. In The Four Sacred Seasons on page 83, G. de Purucker elaborated, "In the initiation of the Winter Solstice the planets visited usually are the Moon, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun, and then there is a return; whereas in this fourth initiation of the Autumnal Equinox these same planets are passed through--during the process of what we may perhaps justly call a dissolution of the constitution--and the superior planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, are likewise visited, and thence the freed monad wings its way outwards into the kosmic spaces [ed. a speck of the Central Sun as the Divine Monad leaves our solar system through these greater, outer planets]." From one perspective, Saturn's importance in the higher initiations is emphasized by G. de Purucker in Dialogues 1:41, "Saturn opens the peregrination before the Sun is reached, and closes it after the Sun is left behind." With Saturn being the "first" and the "last," this once again explains why it is identified with Jehovah. Being the gateway on the paths to the Solar Sun and the galaxy, Saturn opens the "Golden Age" in Greek mythology. Saturn is identified with Kronos as the beginning of Time. He breaks up Chaos into measurable segments since the Monad strikes out on a journey into the eternal memory of the Great Breath as the Cherubim and the Seraphim at the head of the glorious thread-self along the Via Straminis to the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, per Fundamentals on page 341.
The combination of the seven sacred planets eventually provides mankind with his connecting middle principles. Humanity evolves into the early Third Root-Race and ultimately falls under the direction of Daksha, the "chief of the Prajapti (creators)," in the middle of the Third Root-Race (and more distinctively during its 5th Sub-Race) with the establishment of modern sexual reproduction, per The Secret Doctrine 2:82.
Sources:
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
G. de Purucker, The Dialogues of G. de Purucker (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1948).
G.de Purucker, Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary. Retrieved from theosociety.org.
G. de Purucker, The Four Sacred Seasons (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1979).
G. de Purucker, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1979).
(Photo by Ayumi Kubo on Unsplash)