In the middle of the Atlantean Epoch the spirit had drawn completely into its vehicles and commenced to work in the mind to produce Thought and Reason: the ability to trace a given cause to its inevitable effect, and to deduce from a given effect the cause which produced it. The faculty of Reasoning or Logic was to become more fully developed in the Aryan Epoch, and therefore the Original Semites (the fifth race of the Atlantean Epoch) were a "chosen people," to bring out that germinal faculty to such a ripeness that it would be impregnated into the very fiber of their descendants, who would thus become the New Race.

   To transmute Cunning into Reason proved no easy task. The earlier changes in man's nature had been easily brought about. He could then be led without difficulty because he had no conscious desire, nor mind to guide him, but by the time of the Original Semites he had become cunning enough to resent limitations of his liberty and to circumvent repeatedly the measures taken to hold him in line. The task of guiding him was all the more difficult because it was necessary he should have some liberty of choice, that he might in time learn self-government. Therefore a law was enacted which decreed immediate rewards for obedience and instant punishment for disregard of its provisions. Thus was man taught, coaxed and coerced into reasoning in a limited manner that "the way of the transgressor is hard," and that he must "fear God," or the Leader Who guided him.

   Out of all who were chosen as "seed" for the new Race, but few remained faithful. Most of them were rebellious and, so far as they were concerned, entirely frustrated the purpose of the Leader by intermarrying with the other Atlantean Races, thus bringing inferior blood into their descendants. That is what is meant in the Bible where the fact is recorded that the sons of God married the daughters of men. For that act of disobedience were they abandoned and "lost." Even the faithful died, according to the body, in the Desert of Gobi (the "Wilderness") in Central Asia, the cradle of our present Race. They reincarnated, as their own descendants of course, and thus inherited the "Promised Land," the Earth as it is now. They are the Aryan Races, in whom Reason is being evolved to perfection.

   The rebellious ones who were abandoned are the Jews, of whom the great majority are still governed more by the Atlantean faculty of Cunning than by Reason. In them the race-feeling is so strong that they distinguish only two classes of people: Jews and Gentiles. They despise the other nations and are in turn despised by them for their cunning, selfishness and avarice. It is not denied that they give to charity, but it is principally, if not exclusively, among their own people and rarely internationally, as was done in the case of the earthquake disaster in Italy, where barriers of creed, race and nationality were forgotten in the human feeling of sympathy.

   In such cases as that and the San Francisco disaster, the inner spiritual nature of man becomes more in evidence than under any other circumstances, and the close observer may then discern the trend of evolution. The fact then becomes manifest that though in the stress of ordinary life our actions may deny it, nevertheless at heart we know and acknowledge the great truth that we are brothers and the hurt of one is really felt by all. Such incidents, therefore, point out the direction of evolution. The control of man by Reason must be succeeded by that of Love, which at present acts independent of and sometimes even contrary to the dictates of Reason. The anomaly arises from the fact that Love, at present, is rarely quite unselfish and our Reason is not always true. In the "New Galilee," the coming Sixth Epoch, Love will become unselfish and Reason will approve its dictates. Universal Brotherhood shall then be fully realized, each working for the good of all, because self-seeking will be a thing of the past.

   That this much-to-be-desired end may be attained, it will be necessary to select another "chosen people" from the present stock to serve as a nucleus from which the new Race shall spring. This choosing is not to be done contrary to the will of the chosen. Each man must choose for himself; he must willingly enter the ranks.

   Races are but an evanescent feature of evolution. Before the end of the Lemurian Epoch there was a "chosen people," different from the ordinary humanity of that time, who became the ancestors of the Atlantean Races. From the fifth race of those another "chosen people" was drawn, from which the Aryan Races descended, of which there have been five and will be two more. Before a new Epoch is ushered in, however, there must be "a new Heaven and a new earth"; the physical features of the Earth will be changed and its density decreased. There will be one Race at the beginning of the next Epoch, but after that every thought and feeling of Race will disappear. Humanity will again constitute one vast Fellowship, regardless of all distinctions. Races are simply steps in evolution which must be taken, otherwise there will be no progress for the spirits reborn in them. But, though necessary steps, they are also extremely dangerous ones, and are therefore the cause of grave concern to the Leaders of mankind. They call these sixteen Races "the sixteen paths to destruction," because , while in previous Epochs the changes came after such enormous intervals that it was easier to get the majority of the entities in line for promotion, it is different with the Races. They are comparatively evanescent; therefore extra care must be taken that as few of the spirits as possible become enmeshed in the fetters of Race.

   This is exactly what happened to the spirits reborn in the Jewish Race-bodies. They attached themselves so firmly to the Race that they are drawn back into it in successive births. "Once a Jew, always a Jew" is their slogan. They have entirely forgotten their spiritual nature and glory in the material fact of being "Abraham's seed." Therefore they are neither "fish nor flesh." They have no part in the advancing Aryan Race and yet they are beyond those remnants of the Lemurian and Atlantean peoples which are still with us. They have become a people without a country, an anomaly among mankind.

   Because of their bondage to the Race-idea, their one-time Leader was forced to abandon them, and they became "lost." That they might cease to regard themselves as separate from other peoples, other nations were stirred up against them at various times by the Leaders of humanity and they were led captive from the country where they had settled, but in vain. They stubbornly refused to amalgamate with others. Again and again they returned in a body to their arid land. Prophets of their own Race were raised up who mercilessly rebuked them and predicted dire disaster, but without avail.

   As a final effort to persuade them to cast off the fetters of Race, we have the seeming anomaly that the Leader of the coming Race, the Great Teacher Christ, appeared among the Jews. This still further shows the compassion and Wisdom of the great Beings Who guide evolution. Among all the Races of the Earth, none other was "lost" in the same sense as the Jews; none other so sorely needed help. To send them a stranger, not one of their own Race, would have been manifestly useless. It was a foregone conclusion that they would have rejected him. As the great spirit known as Booker T. Washington incarnated among the Negroes, to be received by them as one of themselves, and thus enabled to enlighten them as no white man could, so the great Leaders hoped that the appearance of Christ among the Jews as one of their own might bring them to accept Him and His teachings and thus draw them out of the meshes of the Race-bodies. But sad it is to see how human prejudice can prevail. "He came unto His own and" they chose Barabbas. He did not glory in Abraham, nor any other of their ancient traditions. He spoke of "another world," of a new earth, of Love and Forgiveness, and repudiated the doctrine of "an eye for an eye." He did not call them to arms against Caesar; had He done so, they would have hailed Him as a deliverer. In that respect He was misunderstood even by His disciples, who mourned as greatly over their vanished hope of an earthly kingdom as over the Friend slain by Roman hands.

   The rejection of Christ by the Jews was the supreme proof of their thralldom to Race. Thenceforth all efforts to save them as a whole by giving them special prophets and teachers, were abandoned and, as the futility of exiling them in a body had been proven, they were, as a last expedient, scattered among all the nations of the earth. Despite all, however, the extreme tenacity of this people has prevailed even to the present day, the majority being yet orthodox. In America, however, there is now a slight falling away. The younger generation is commencing to marry outside the Race. In time, an increasing number of bodies, with fewer and fewer of the Race characteristics, will thus be provided for the incarnating spirits of the Jews of the past. In this manner will they be saved in spite of themselves. They become "lost" by marrying into inferior Races; they will be saved by amalgamating with those more advanced.

   As the present Aryan Races are reasoning human beings, capable of profiting by past experience, the logical means of helping them is by telling them of past stages of growth and the fate that overtook the disobedient Jews. Those rebels had a written record of how their Leaders had dealt with them. It set forth how they had been chosen and rebelled; were punished; but were yet hopeful of ultimate redemption. That record may be profitably used by us, that we may learn how not to act. It is immaterial that, in the course of ages, it has become mutilated, and that the Jews of today are still under the delusion of being a "chosen people"; the lesson that may be drawn from their experience is none the less valid. We may learn how a "chosen people" may harass their Leader, frustrate His plans, and become bound to a Race for ages. Their experience should be a warning to any future "chosen people". This Paul points out in unmistakable terms (Heb. ii. 3-4); "For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" and Paul was speaking to Christians, for the Hebrews to whom he wrote this were converted, had accepted Christ and were people whom he expected would, in some future life, be among the new "chosen people", who would willingly follow a Leader and evolve the faculty of Love and spiritual perception, the intuition which shall succeed self-seeking and Reason.

   The Christian teaching of the New Testament belongs particularly to the pioneer Races of the Western World. It is being specially implanted among the people of the United States, for as the object of the new Race of the Sixth Epoch will be the unification of all the Races, the United States is becoming the "melting pot" where all the nations of the earth are being amalgamated and from this amalgamation will the next "chosen people," the nucleus, be chiefly derived.

   Those spirits, from all countries of the earth, who have striven to follow the teachings of the Christ, consciously or otherwise, will be reborn here, for the purpose of giving them conditions suitable for that development. Hence the American-born Jew is different from the Jew of other countries. The very fact that he has been reborn in the Western World shows that he is becoming emancipated from the Race spirit, and is consequently in advance of the crystallized Old World orthodox Jew, as were his parents, or they would not have conceived the idea of severing the old ties and moving to America. Therefore the American-born Jew is the pioneer who will prepare the path which his compatriots will follow later.

   Thus we can see that the Bible contains the teaching peculiarly needed by the Western peoples, that they may be taught a lesson by the awful example of the Jewish Race as recorded in the Old Testament, and learn to live by the teachings of the Christ in the New, willingly offering up their bodies as a living sacrifice upon the altar of Fellowship and Love. 
Jehovah and his Mission

   There has been much learned discussion concerning the discrepancy between, and especially the authorship of the creation story of the first chapter and that which starts at the fourth verse of the second chapter. It is asserted that the two accounts were written by different men, because the Being or Beings, the name of Whom the translators have rendered as "God" in both the first and second chapters of the English version, are, in the Hebrew text, called "Elohim" in the first chapter, and "Jehovah" in the second chapter, It is argued that the same narrator would not have named God in two different ways.

   Had he meant the same God in both cases, he probably would not, but he was not a monotheist. He knew better than to think of God as simply a superior Man, using the sky for a throne and the earth for a footstool. When he wrote of Jehovah he meant the Leader Who had charge of the particular part of the work of Creation which was then being described. Jehovah was and is one of the Elohim. He is the Leader of the Angels who were the humanity of the Moon Period and He is Regent of our Moon. The reader is referred to diagram 14 for an accurate understanding of the position and constitution of Jehovah.

   As Regent of Our Moon, He has charge of the degenerate, evil Beings there, and He also rules the Angels. With Him are some of the Archangels, who were the humanity of the Sun Period. They are the "Race-Spirits".

   It is the work of Jehovah to build concrete bodies or forms, by means of the hardening, crystallizing Moon forces. Therefore He is the giver of children and the Angels are His messengers in this work. It is well know to physiologists that the Moon is connected with gestation; at least, they have observed that it measures and governs the period of intra-uterine life and other physiological functions.

   The Archangels, as Spirits and Leaders of a Race, are known to fight for or against a people, as the exigencies of the evolution of that Race demand. In Daniel x:20 an Archangel speaking to Daniel, says, "And now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come."

   The Archangel Michael is the Race-spirit of the Jews (Daniel xii:1), but Jehovah is not the god of the Jews alone; He is the Author of all Race-religions which led up to Christianity. Nevertheless, it is true that He did take a special interest in the progenitors of the present degenerate Jews--the Original Semites, the "seed-race" for the seven races of the Aryan Epoch. Jehovah, of course, takes special care of a seed-race, in which are to be inculcated the embryonic faculties of the humanity of a new Epoch. For that reason He was particularly concerned with the Original Semites. They were His "chosen people"--chosen to be the seed for a new Race, which was to inherit the "Promised Land"--not merely insignificant Palestine, but the entire Earth, as it is at present.

   He did not lead them out of Egypt. That story originated with their descendants and is a confused account of their journey eastward through flood and disaster out of the doomed Atlantis into the "wilderness" (the Desert of Gobi in Central Asia), there to wander during the cabalistic forty years, until they could enter the Promised Land. There is a double and peculiar significance to the descriptive word "promised" in this connection. The land was called the "promised Land" because, as land or earth suitable for human occupation, it did not exist at the time the "chosen people" were led into the "wilderness." Part of the Earth had been submerged by floods and other parts changed by volcanic eruptions, hence it was necessary that a period of time elapse before the new Earth was in a fit condition to become the possession of the Aryan Race.

   The Original Semites were set apart and forbidden to marry into other tribes or peoples, but they were a stiff-necked and hard people, being yet led almost exclusively by desire and cunning, therefore they disobeyed the command. Their Bible records that the sons of God married the daughters of man--the lower grades of their Atlantean compatriots. They thus frustrated the designs of Jehovah and were cast off, the fruit of such cross-breeding being useless as seed for the coming Race.

   These cross-breeds were the progenitors of the present Jews, who now speak of "lost tribes." They know that some of the original number left them and went another way, but they do not know that those were the few who remained true. The story of the ten tribes being lost is a fable. Most of them perished, but the faithful ones survived, and from that faithful remnant have descended the present Aryan Races.

   The contention of the opponents of the Bible, that it is a mere mutilation of the original writings, is cheerfully agreed to by occult science. Parts of it are even conceded to be entire fabrications and no attempt is made to prove its authenticity as a whole, in the form we now have it. The present effort is simply an attempt to exhume a few kernels of occult truth from the bewildering mass of misleading and incorrect interpretations under which they have been buried by the various translators and revisers. 
  Therefore it is necessary for someone much more highly evolved to help the individual spirit and gradually prepare the way for its complete union with its instruments. It was analogous to a new nation, over which, until it becomes capable of forming a stable government for itself, some stronger power establishes a protectorate, guarding it alike from external dangers and internal indiscretions. Such a protectorate was exercised over evolving humanity by the Race-spirit, and is exercised over the animals by the group-spirit, in a somewhat different way.

   Jehovah is the Most High. He is Race-God, as one might express it, having dominion over all Form. He is the Chief Ruler and the highest Power in maintaining the form and exercising an orderly government over it. The Archangels are the Race-spirits, each having dominion over a certain group of people. They also have dominion over animals, while the Angels have dominion over the plants.

   The Archangels have dominion over races or groups of people and also over the animals, for these two kingdoms have desire bodies and the Archangels are expert architects of desire matter, because in the Sun Period the densest globe was composed of that materials, and the humanity of that period, who are now Archangels, learned to build their densest vehicles of desire staff as we are now learning to build our bodies of the chemical elements whereof our Earth-globe is composed. Thus it will be readily understood that the Archangels are peculiarly qualified to help later life waves through the stage where they learn to build and control a desire body.

   For analogous reasons the Angels work in the vital bodies of man, animal and plant. Their densest bodies are composed of ether and so was the Globe D in the Moon Period when they were human.

   Jehovah and His Archangels, therefore, hold a similar relation to Races that the group-spirit does to animals. When individual members of a Race have evolved entire self-control and government, they are emancipated from the influence of the Race-spirit and kindred beings.

   As we have seen, the point of vantage of the group-spirit, as of any Ego in the dense body, is in the blood. The Masoretic text shows that this knowledge was possessed by the writer of Leviticus. In the fourteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter the Jews are prohibited from eating blood because ". . .the soul of all flesh is in the blood. . . ;" and in the eleventh verse of the same chapter we find these words: ". . .for the soul of the flesh is in the blood. . .the blood itself mediates for the soul," which shows that this applies to both man and beast, for the word here used in the Hebrew is neshamah and means "soul"--not "life," as it is rendered in the King James version.

   The Ego works directly through the blood. The Race-spirit guides the Races by working in the blood, as the group-spirit guides the animals of its species through the blood. So also does the Ego control its own vehicle, but with a difference.

   The Ego operates by means of the heat of the blood, while the Race (i.e., tribal, or family) spirit works by means of the air, as it is drawn into the lungs. That is why Jehovah, or His messengers, "breathed into man's nostrils," thereby securing admission for the Race-spirit, Community-spirits, etc.

   The different classes of Race-spirits guided their peoples to various climates and different parts of the Earth. To the trained clairvoyant, a tribal-spirit appears as a cloud enveloping and permeating the atmosphere of the whole country inhabited by the people under its dominion. Thus are produced the different peoples and nations. Paul spoke of "The Prince of the Power of the Air"; or "principalities and powers," etc., showing that he knew of the Race-spirits, but now not even an attempt is made to understand what they mean, although their influence is strongly felt. Patriotism is one of the sentiments emanating from and fostered by them. It has not now so much power over people as formerly. There are some who are being liberated from the Race-spirit and can say with Thomas Paine, "The world is my country." There are those who can leave father and mother and look upon all men as brothers. They are being liberated from the Family-spirit, or spirit of the Clan which is different from the race-spirit, an etheric entity. Others again, who are deep in the toil of the Race or Family spirit, will suffer the most dreadful depression if they leave home or country and breathe the air of another Race of Family spirit.

   At the time the Race-spirit entered human bodies the individualized Ego commenced to get some slight control of its vehicles. Each human entity became more and more conscious of being separate and distinct from other men, yet for ages he did not think of himself primarily as an individual, but as belonging to a tribe or family. The affix "son" to many present day surnames is a remnant of this feeling. A man was not simply "John," or "James." He was John Robertson, or James Williamson. In some countries a woman was not "Mary," or "Martha." She was Mary Marthasdaughter, Martha Mary's daughter. The custom was continued in some European countries until within a few generations of the present time; the "son" affix remains with us yet and the family name is still much honored.

   Among the Jews, even down to the time of Christ, the Race-spirit was stronger than the individual spirit. Every Jew thought of himself first as belonging to a certain tribe or family. His proudest boast was that he was of the "Seed of Abraham." All this was the work of the Race-spirit.

   Previous to the advent of Jehovah, when the Earth was yet a part of the Sun, there was one common group-spirit, composed of all the creative Hierarchies, which controlled the entire human family, but it was intended that each body should be the temple and pliable instrument of an indwelling spirit and that meant an infinite division of rulership.

   Jehovah came with His Angel and Archangels and made the first great division into Races, giving to each group the guiding influence of a Race-spirit--an Archangel. For each Ego He appointed one of the Angels to act as guardian until the individual spirit had grown strong enough to become emancipated from all outside influence.

Mixing Blood in Marriage

   Christ came to prepare the way for the emancipation of humanity from the guidance of differentiating Race- and Family-spirit, and to unite the whole human family in One Universal Brotherhood.

   He taught that "Abraham's seed" referred to the bodies only, and called their attention to the fact that before Abraham lived [the] "I"--the Ego--was in existence. The threefold individual spirit had its being before all Tribes and Races and it will remain when they have passed away and even the memory of them is no more.

   The threefold spirit in man, the Ego, is the God within, whom the personal, bodily man must learn to follow. Therefore did Christ say that, to be His disciple, a man must forsake all he had. His teaching points to the emancipation of the God within. He calls upon man to exercise his prerogative as an individual and rise above family, tribe, and nation. Not that he is to disregard kin and country. He must fulfill all duties, but he is to cease identifying himself with part and must recognize an equal kinship with all the world. That is the ideal given to mankind by the Christ.

   Under the rule of the Race-spirit, the nation, tribe or family was considered first--the individual last. The family must be kept intact. If any man dies without leaving offspring to perpetuate his name, his brother must "carry seed" to the widow, that there might be no dying out (Due. XXV:5-10). Marrying out of the family was regarded with horror in the earliest times. A member of one tribe could not become connected with another without losing caste in his own. It was not an easy matter to become a member of another family. Not only among the Jews and other early nations was the integrity of the family insisted upon, but also in more modern times. As previously mentioned, the Scots, even in comparatively recent times, clung tenaciously to their Clan, and the old Norse Vikings would take no one into their families without first "mixing blood" with him, for the spiritual effects of haemolysis, which are unknown to material science, were known of old.

   All these customs resulted from the working of Race- and tribal-spirit in the common blood. To admit as a member one in whom that common blood did not flow would have caused "confusion of caste." The closer the inbreeding, the greater the power of the Race-spirit, and the stronger the ties that bound the individual to the tribe, because the vital force of the man is in his blood. Memory is intimately connected with the blood, which is the highest expression of the vital body.

   The brain and the nervous system are the highest expression of the desire body. They call up pictures of the outside world, but in mental image-making, i.e., imagination, the blood brings the material for the pictures; therefore when the thought is active the blood flows to the head.

   When the same unmixed strain of blood flows in the veins of a family for generations, the same mental pictures made by great-grandfather, grandfather and father are reproduced in the son by the family-spirit which lived in the hemoglobin of the blood. He sees himself as the continuation of a long line of ancestors who live in him. He sees all the events of the past lives of the family as though he had been present, therefore he does not realize himself as an Ego. He is not simply "David," but "the son of Abraham"; not "Joseph," but "the son of David."

   By means of this common blood men are said to have lived for many generations, because through the blood their descendants had access to the memory of nature, in which the records of the lives of their ancestors were preserved. That is why, in the fifth chapter of Genesis, it is stated that the patriarchs lived for centuries. Adam, Methuselah and the other patriarchs did not personally attain to such great age, but they lived in the consciousness of their descendants, who saw the lives of their ancestors as if they had lived them. After the expiration of the period stated, the descendants did not think of themselves as Adam or Methuselah. Memory of those ancestors faded and so it is said they died.

   The "second sight" of the Scotch Highlanders shows that be means of endogamy the consciousness of the inner World is retained. They have practiced marrying in the Clan until recent times; also in Gypsies, who always marry in the tribe. The smaller the tribe and the closer the inbreeding, the more pronounced is the "sight."

   The earlier Races would not have dared to disobey the injunction issued by the tribal God, not to marry outside of the tribe, nor had they any inclination to do so, for they had no mind of their own.

   The Original Semites were the first to evolve Will, and they at once married the daughters of the men of other tribes, frustrating temporarily the design of their Race-spirit and being promptly ejected as evil-doers who had "gone a-whoring after strange gods," thereby rendering themselves unfit to give the "seed" for the seven Races of our present Aryan Epoch. The Original Semites were, for the time being, the last Race that the Race-spirit cared to keep separate.

   Later, man was given free will. The time had come when he was to be prepared for individualization. The former "common" consciousness, the involuntary clairvoyance or second-sight which constantly held before a tribesman the pictures of his ancestor's lives and caused him to feel most closely identified with the tribe or family, was to be replaced for a time by a strictly individual consciousness confined to the material world, so as to break up the nations into individuals, that the Brotherhood of Man regardless of exterior circumstances may become a fact. This is on the same principle that if we have a number of buildings and wish to make them into one large structure, it is necessary to break them up into separate bricks. Only then can the large building be constructed.

   In order to accomplish this separation of nations into individuals, laws were given which prohibited endogamy or marriage in the family and henceforth incestuous marriages gradually came to be regarded with horror. Strange blood has thus been introduced into all the families of the Earth and it has gradually wiped out the involuntary clairvoyance which promoted the clannish feeling and segregated humanity into groups. Altruism is superseding patriotism, and loyalty to the family is disappearing in consequence of the mixture of blood.

   Science has lately discovered that haemolysis results from the inoculation of the blood of one individual into the veins of another of a different species, causing the death of the lower of the two. Thus any animal inoculated with the blood of a man dies. The blood of a dog transfused into the veins of a bird kills the bird, but it will not hurt the dog to have the bird's blood inoculated into its veins. Science merely states the fact, the occult scientist gives the reason. The blood is the vantage ground of the spirit, as shown elsewhere. The Ego in man works in its own vehicles by means of the heat of the blood; the race, family or community spirit gains entrance to the blood by means of the air we inspire. In the animals are also both the separate spirit of the animal and the group-spirit of the species to which it belongs, but the spirit of the animal is not individualized and does not work self-consciously with its vehicles as does the Ego, hence it is altogether dominated by the group-spirit which works in the blood.

   When the blood of a higher animal is inoculated into the veins of one from a lower species, the spirit in the blood of the higher animal is of course stronger than the spirit of the less evolved; hence when it endeavors to assert itself it kills the imprisoning form and liberates itself. When, on the other hand, the blood of a lower species is inoculated into the veins of a higher animal, the higher spirit is capable of ousting the less evolved spirit in the strange blood and assimilating the blood to its own purposes, therefore no visible catastrophe ensues.

   The group-spirit always aims to preserve the integrity of its domain in the blood of the species under its charge. Like the human Race-God, it resents the marriage of its subjects into other species and visits the sins of the fathers upon the children as we see in the case of hybrids. Where a horse and a donkey produce a mule for instance, the mixture of strange blood destroys the propagative faculty so as not to perpetuate the hybrid which is an abomination from the standpoint of the group-spirit, for the mule is not so definitely under the dominion of the group-spirit of the horses or of the group-spirit of the donkeys as the pure breed, yet it is not so far away as to be entirely exempt from their influence. If two mules could mate, their offspring would be still less under the dominion of either of these group-spirits, and so a new species without a group-spirit would result. That would be anomaly in nature, an impossibility until the separate animal-spirits should have become sufficiently evolved to be self-sufficient. Such a species, could it be produced, would be without the guiding instinct, so-called, which is in reality the promptings of the group-spirit; they would be in an analogous position to a litter of kittens removed from the mother's womb prior to birth. They could not possibly shift for themselves, so they would die.

   Therefore, as it is the group-spirit of the animals that sends the separate spirits of the animals into embodiment, it simply withholds the fertilizing seed-atom when animals of widely differing species are mated. It permits one of its charges to take advantage of an opportunity for re-embodiment where two animals of nearly the same nature are mated, but refuses to let the hybrids perpetuate themselves. Thus we see that the infusion of strange blood weakens the hold of the group-spirit and that therefore it either destroys the form or the propagative faculty where it has the power.

   The human spirit is individualized, an Ego, it is evolving free will and responsibility. It is drawn to birth by the irresistible law of Consequence, so that it is beyond the power of the race, community or family spirit to keep it from returning at the present stage of human development, and by the admixture of strange blood, by intermarriage of the individuals of different tribes or nations, the leaders of man are gradually helping him to oust the family, tribal or national spirit from the blood, but with it has necessarily gone the involuntary clairvoyance which was due to its working in the blood, whereby it fostered the family traditions in its charges, and so we see that also in the case of man a faculty was destroyed by the mixture of blood. That loss was a gain, however, for it has concentrated man's energy on the material world and he is better able to master its lessons than if he were still distracted by the visions of the higher realms.

   As man becomes emancipated he gradually ceases to think of himself as "Abraham's Seed," as a "Clan Stewart Man," as a "Brahmin" or a "Levite": he is learning to think more of himself as an individual an "I". The more he cultivates that "Self," the more he frees himself from the family and national spirit in the blood, the more he becomes a self-sufficient citizen of the world.

   There is much foolish, even dangerous, talk of giving up the Self to the Not-Self; only when we have cultivated a "Self," can we sacrifice ourselves and give up the Self to the whole. So long as we can only love our own family or nation we are incapable of loving others. We are bound by the tie of kin and country. When we have burst the tie of blood and asserted ourselves and become self-sufficient may we become unselfish helpers of humanity. When a man has reached that stage he will find that, instead of having lost his own family, he has gained all the families in the world, for they will have become his sisters and brothers, his fathers and mothers to care for and help.

   Then he will regain the viewpoint of the Spiritual World which he lost by the mixing of blood, but it will be a higher faculty, an intelligent, voluntary clairvoyance where he can see what he wills and not merely the negative faculty imprinted in his blood by the family spirit which bound him to the family to the exclusion of all other families. His viewpoint will be universal, to be used for universal good.

   For aforementioned reasons, intertribal, and later international, marriages came gradually to be regarded as desirable and preferable to close intermarriages.

   As man progressed through these stages, and gradually lost touch with the inner world, he sorrowed over the loss and longed for a return of the "inner" vision. But by degrees he forgot, and the material world gradually loomed up before his mind as the only reality, until at last he has come to scout the idea that such inner Worlds exist and to regard a belief in them as foolish superstition.

   The four causes contributing to this condition were:

    The clearing of the foggy atmosphere of the Atlantean continent.
    The indrawing of the vital body, so that a point at the root of the nose corresponds to a similar point in the vital body.
    The elimination of inbreeding and the substitution therefore of marriages outside the family and tribe.
    The use of intoxicants. 

   The Race-spirits still exist in and work with man, but the more advanced the nation, the more freedom is given the individual. In countries where people are most fettered, the Race-spirit is strongest. The more in harmony a man is with the law of Love, and the higher his ideals, the more he frees himself from the spirit of the Races. Patriotism, while good in itself, is a tie of the Race- spirit. The ideal of Universal Brotherhood, which identifies itself with neither country nor race, is the only path which leads to emancipation.

   Christ came to reunite the separated races in bonds of peace and good will, wherein all will willingly and consciously follow the law of Love.

   The present Christianity is not even a shadow of the true religion of Christ. That will remain in abeyance until all race feeling shall have been overcome. In the Sixth Epoch there will be but one Universal Brotherhood, under the Leadership of the Returned Christ, but the day and the hour no man knows, for it is not fixed, but depends upon how soon a sufficient number of people shall have commenced to live the life of Fellowship and Love, which is to be the hall-mark of the new dispensation.

The Fall of Man
 Under the old dispensation the desire bodies of people in general were improved by means of the law. This work is still going on in the majority of people, who are thus preparing themselves for the higher life.

   The higher life (Initiation) does not commence, however, until the work on the vital body begins. The means used for bringing that into activity is Love, or rather Altruism. The former word has been so abused that it no longer conveys the meaning here required.

   During the old dispensation the path of Initiation was not free and open, except to the chosen few. The Hierophants of the Mysteries collected certain families about the Temples, setting them apart from all the other people. These chosen families were then rigorously guarded as to certain rites and ceremonies. Their marriages and sexual intercourse were regulated by the Hierophants.

   The effect of this was to produce a race having the proper degree of laxity between the dense and vital bodies; also to wake the desire body from its state of lethargy during sleep. Thus a special few were made fit for Initiation and were given opportunities that could not be given to all. We see instances of this method among the Jews, where the tribe of Levi were the chosen Templars; also in the caste of the Brahmins, who were the only priestly class among the Hindus.

   The Mission of Christ, in addition to saving the lost, was to make Initiation possible to all, therefore Jesus was not a Levite of the class to which priesthood came by inheritance. He came from the common people and though not of the teacher class, His teaching was higher than that of Moses.

   Christ Jesus did not deny Moses, the law, nor the prophets. On the contrary, He acknowledged them all and showed the people that they were His witnesses, as they all pointed to One Who was to come. He told the people that those things had served their purpose and that henceforth Love must supersede Law.

   Christ Jesus was killed. In connection with this fact, we come to the supreme and fundamental difference between Him and the previous teachers, in whom the Race spirits were born. They all died and must be reborn again and again to help their peoples bear their destiny. The Archangel Michael (the Race-spirit of the Jews) raised up Moses, who was taken up to Mount Nebo to die. He was reborn as Elijah. Elijah returned as John the Baptist; Buddha died and was reborn as Shankaracharya; Shri Krishna says, "Whenever there is decay of Dharma. . .and. . .exaltation of Adharma, then I myself come forth for the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers, for the sake of firmly establishing Dharma. I am born from age to age."

   When death came Moses' face shone and Buddha's body become alight. They all reached the stage when the spirit begins to shine from within--but then they died.

   Christ Jesus reached that stage on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is of the very highest significance that His real work took place subsequent to that event. He suffered; was killed--and resurrected.

   Being killed is a very different thing from dying. The blood that had been the vehicle of the Race-spirit must flow and be cleansed of that contaminating influence. Love of father and mother, exclusive of other fathers and mothers, must go--otherwise Universal Brotherhood and an all-embracing Altruistic Love could never become an actuality.

The Cleansing Blood

   When the Savior Christ Jesus was crucified His body was pierced in five places; in the five centers where the currents of the vital body flow; and the pressure of the crown of thorns caused a flow from the sixth also. (This is a hint to those who already know these currents. A full elucidation of this matter cannot be publicly given out at this time.)

   When the blood flowed from these centers, the great Sun-spirit Christ was liberated from the physical vehicle of Jesus and found Himself in the Earth, with individual vehicles. The already existing planetary vehicles He permeated with His own vehicles and, in the twinkling of an eye, diffused His own desire body over the planet, which has enabled Him thenceforth to work upon the Earth and its humanity from within.

   At that moment a tremendous wave of spiritual sunlight flooded the Earth. It rent the veil which the Race-spirit had hung before the Temple to keep out all but the chosen few, and it made the Path of Initiation free thenceforth to whomsoever will. So far as concerned the Spiritual Worlds, this wave transformed the conditions of the Earth like a flash of lightning, but the dense, concrete conditions are, of course, much more slowly affected.

   Like all rapid and high vibrations of light, this great wave blinded the people by its dazzling brilliance, therefore it was said that "the Sun was darkened." The very opposite was what actually occurred. The Sun was not darkened, but shone out in glorious splendor. It was the excess of light that blinded the people, and only as the entire Earth absorbed the desire body of the bright Sun-spirit did the vibration return to a more normal rate.

   The expression, "the cleansing blood of Christ Jesus," means that as the blood flowed on Calvary, it bore with it the great Sun-spirit Christ, Who by that means secured admission to the earth itself and since that moment has been its Regent. He diffused His own desire body throughout the planet, thereby cleansing it from all the vile influences which had grown up under the regime of the Race-spirit.

   Under the law all sinned; nay, more--they could not help it. They had not evolved to where they could do right for Love's sake. The desire nature was so strong that it was an impossibility for them to rule it altogether, therefore their debts, engendered under the law of Consequence, piled up to monstrous proportions. Evolution would have been terribly delayed and many lost to our life wave altogether it some help had not been given.

   Therefore did Christ come "to seek and to save that which was lost." He took away the sin of the world by His cleansing blood, which gave Him entrance to the Earth and its humanity. He purified the conditions and we owe it to Him that we are able to gather for our desire bodies purer desire-stuff than formerly, and He continues working to help us, by making our external environment constantly purer.

   That this was and is done at the expense of great suffering to Himself, no one can doubt who is able to form the least conception of the limitations endured by that Great Spirit in entering the hampering conditions of physical existence, even in the best and purest vehicle possible; nor is His present limitation as Regent of the Earth must less painful. True, He is also Regent of the Sun, and therefore only partially confined to the Earth, yet the limitations set by the crampingly slow vibrations of our dense planet must be almost unendurable. 
NOVEMBER, 1915

THE WAR AN OPERATION FOR SPIRITUAL CATARACT

   You are aware from the teachings of the COSMO that there was one race at the end of the Lemurian Epoch, there were seven in the Atlantean Epoch, seven in the Aryan, and there will be on in the coming Galilean Epoch, making in all sixteen races. You also remember that these sixteen races are called by the Elder Brothers "the sixteen paths to destruction" because enmeshed in the bodies of any race to such an extent that it will be unable to follow the others along the path of evolution. During the Periods and Epochs there is always plenty of time so that the Leaders of humanity can marshal their flocks into line. But the Jews are an example of what may happen to people who become so intensely imbued with the racial spirit that they absolutely refuse to let go. They continue as an anomaly among the rest of humanity, a people without a country, king, or any other of the factors that make for racial evolution.

   This was the tendency among the nations of Europe up to the present war. Patriotism, and the racial ideal fostered thereby, were leading them away from God. An age of doubt and skepticism had been ushered in by the many scientific discoveries, and the pioneer races in the Western world were steering very close to the brink of destruction. Therefore it became necessary for the Elder Brothers to devise measures whereby mankind might be brought from the path of pleasure to the path of devotion, and this could only be done by removing the spiritual cataract from a sufficiently large number of people so that they would then override the doubt and skepticism of the rest.

   When we dwelt under the water in the early Atlantean Epoch, we were, as you know, unable to see the body or even to feel it, because our consciousness was focused in the spiritual realm. We saw one another, soul to soul. We were unaware of either birth or death, and we felt no separation from those we loved. But when we gradually became aware of our bodies, and our consciousness was focused in the physical world from birth to death, and in the spiritual world from death to birth, there was a separation, and consequent sorrow on account of the advent of death. In bygone ages however, there were still many who were able to see both worlds; they formed quite a considerable number of the populace. Their testimonies to the continuity of life were a great comfort to those who had been bereaved, for they believed thoroughly that those whom they had lost were still alive and happy, though unable to make themselves known. But gradually the world became more and more materialistic; faith in the reality of the hereafter faded, and sorrow at the loss of the loved ones grew more and more intense, until today many believe the separation is final. To them the word "rebirth" is an empty sound, and therefore grief is overwhelming.

   But this very grief is nature's remedy for the spiritual cataract. As surely as the desire for growth built the complicated alimentary canal from the simplest beginning so that the craving for growth might be satisfied; as surely as the desire for motion evolved the wonderful joints, sinews, and ligaments wherewith this is accomplished; just as surely will the intense yearning to continue the relationships severed by death build the organ for its gratification--the spirit eye. Therefore this wholesale slaughter of millions of men ha helped and is helping more to bridge the gulf between the invisible and the visible world than a thousand years of preaching could do. All through the history of the world it has been recorded that warriors have seen so-called supernatural manifestations, and there is plenty of testimony that those visions have also been seen in the present war. The shock of the wound, the suffering in the hospital, and tears of the widows and orphans, all are opening the spiritual eyes of Europe, and the age of doubt and skepticism will pass away. Instead of being ashamed of having faith in God, the world will honor a man for his piety rather than for his prowess in a not very distant future. And let us all pray for that day.
  At that point when the Sun entered the sign of the Lamb, Aries, the Aryan religions were inaugurated. The religion of the Lamb is to hold sway for the next Great Sidereal Year, while the Sun by precession passes around the twelve signs of the Zodiac, as the religion of the Bull has held sway during the previous celestial year from the time the Sun entered Taurus, until it left the same sign on its next passage.

   New religions, however, are not revealed in their fullness at the beginning; they are started and go through a period of gestation long before the religion which they are to succeed ends its material existence, and similarly, and ancient religion about to be abrogated survives along after the religion which succeeds it has become the official source of upliftment for humanity. The original Semites, chosen to inaugurate the worship of the Lamb, Aries, during the Aryan Epoch, were taken from "Egypt," the home of the Bull "Taurus." Not our modern Egypt however. The story of Pharaoh, who endeavored to prevent their emigration and was drowned, has reference to Atlantis which was submerged thousands of years before Moses is supposed to have made his escape with the Israelites through the "Red Sea." The facts underlying the story are that a multitude of people left the land where the bull "Taurus" was worshiped, (Atlantis or Egypt) whose inhabitants were then drowned, to seek a :promised land" beyond the water which had engulfed an "ungodly nation." There they were dedicated to the worship of the "Lamb" Aries which had been slain in "Egypt" (Atlantis); through its blood these pioneers had been preserved from death, and it was thus "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the (present) World" which we call the Aryan Epoch. Noah's escape presents another phase of the same occurrence relating that the mists which had enveloped Atlantis condensed to rain, and flooded the basis of the earth, leaving a clear atmosphere in which the Rainbow was seen for the first time at the opening of the New Age, the Aryan Epoch, where a new Covenant was made with the pioneers of the polity then ushered in.

   Atlantis was the home of the Bull, Taurus, and when the Sun, by precession, was leaving that sign the last time, the Religion of the Lamb Aries was definitely ushered in. Thenceforth, the worship of the Bull was abrogated and when any of the pioneer race, brought out from the ancient Atlantean dispensation by the blood of the Lamb, Aries, backslid and worshiped the Taurean "Calf," they acted contrary to the law of progress and were therefore "Idolaters," and an abomination to the divine hierarchs whose task it was to guide them during the ages preceding the advent of Christ. On account of repeated transgressions many were "lost," and they are the Jews of today who still retain their Atlantean traits (see Cosmo- Conception).

   Apart from the Astrological key, the Bible is truly a closed book, but with this key, the matter is different. In the Old Testament reference is made of two classes of animals: Bulls, which were Taurean, Sheep and Goats, which were Arian. These alone were used as Sacrifices. (Turtle doves were permitted as a concession to poverty). All the principal characters of the Old Dispensation were shepherds (Arian) and Christ also announces Himself as the Great Shepherd.

   In the New Testament we find another animal, the Fish, attaining great prominence, and the apostles were called to be "Fishers of Men," for then the sun by precession was nearing the cusp of Pisces, the Fishes, and Christ spoke of the time when the Son of Man (Aquarius) shall come. Thus our evolutionary journey is mapped out in the hidden astrological allusions of the Bible.

   The student now has a line on the march of events, which it is well to keep in mind.

   Jesus taught the multitudes in parables but explained the mysteries of the Kingdom to His disciples. Paul gave spiritual meat to the strong, but the milk of doctrine to the multitude, for there has always been an esoteric and an esoteric side to every religion. Taking Taurus, the sign of the Bull, to symbolize the worship of that animal as practiced in Egypt, Persia and other countries at that time, then we shall find that the opposite sign, Scorpio, symbolizes the esoteric doctrine if the priesthood, who were the guardians of the ancient Atlantean Mysteries.

   In this connection we will note first that the sign Scorpio is represented in the pictorial Zodiac by a Scorpion or Serpent, and we wish to impress particularly on the student's mind that the Scorpion has its sting in the tail, while the Serpent has the venom in its teeth. This is very significant, as well shall see presently.

   On looking up the word "serpent" in the Bible, we shall find that there are about seven words that have thus been translated; but one of them, which was borrowed from Egypt, is Naja. This word is found on the old tablets in the ancient temples of Egypt where Osiris, the Sun God, is hailed when arising from the primordial deep. He was then crowned with glory and has the Uraeus Naja, an emblem of cosmic wisdom. The Uraeus was a part of a serpent's body, with its head depicted as protruding from a point in the forehead just above the nose, where the human spirit has its seat; and Christ therefore referred to the ancient Serpent-Initiates, when He said: "Be ye wise as serpents." 
 The initiates of the temples in Egypt were called "phree messen" which means "children of light" because they had received the light of knowledge, and it is this which has been changed into "Free Mason."

   In the religion of Judaism we hear of a God making certain promises to a man by the name of Abraham. He promised that he would make Abraham's seed as numerous as the sands upon the seashore; and we are told how he dealt with Abraham's grandson, Jacob, who was the husband of four wives, by whom he had 12 sons and one daughter. These are looked upon as the forefathers of the Jewish nation.

   This also is an astronomical allegory dealing with the migration of the heavenly bodies, as will be evident from a careful perusal of the 49th chapter of Genesis and the 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy, where the blessings of Jacob upon his sons show how they are identified with the 12 signs of the Zodiac; Simon and Levi sharing the sign of Gemini, the twins, and the feminine sign Virgo being allotted to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah. The four wives are the four phases of the Moon and Jacob is the Sun.

   This is similar to the teaching we find among the Greeks, where Gaia, the Earth, is the wife of Apollo, the Sun; and among the Egyptians, where heat and moisture, the Sun and the moon, were personified as Osiris and Isis. The sacred rivers Jordan and Ganges are also connected etymologically with the river Eridanus, which is one of the constellations. It means "source of descent," and for agriculturists such as were these ancient people, these rivers were the source of the waters of life. Josephus tells us that the Jews carried the 12 signs of the Zodiac on their banners, and camped around the tabernacle which held the seven-branched candlestick representing the Sun and the heavenly bodies which move inside the circle formed by the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

   The Jews located their temples so that the four corners pointed N.E., S.E., S.W., and N.W., and the sides directly North, East, South, and West, and like all solar temples the main entrance was in the East, so that the rising Sun might illumine its portal and herald each day the victory of light over the powers of darkness; this to bring to the nascent humanity the message that the contest of light and darkness on the material plane is but the counterpart of a similar contest in the moral and mental worlds where the human soul is groping its way towards the light, for the battle of light and darkness in the material world, like all other phenomena, is a suggestion of the realities in the invisible realms, and these truths were given to man as myths by divine leaders who led him until his growing intellect gave birth to arrogance which caused his benefactors to withdraw, and let him learn by the hard knocks of experience. Then he forgot them and has come to regard the ancient stories of gods and demi-gods as imaginary. Yet, even the early Christian church was imbued with this knowledge of the significance of the solar myth, for the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome is built facing East, like all other solar temples, telling humanity of the "Great Light of the World" who is to come and dispel the spiritual darkness which as yet envelops us; the Light-bringer who shall bring peace on Earth and good will among men, causing the nations to beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning-hooks.

   The Jews greeted the Sun with the Morning-sacrifice; and took leave of him at sunset in a similar manner by an evening oblation, offering up on their sabbath and additional sacrifice to the lunar "Race-god," Jehovah. Him they also worshiped by sacrifice at the New Moon.

   One great feast was Easter, when they celebrated the Passover; the time when the Sun "passes over" his "easter(n) node; leaving the southern hemisphere where he winters and commencing his northern journey in his chariot of fire, hailed with joy by men as their savior from hunger and cold which would inevitably result if he stayed in south declination always.

   The last of the Jewish feasts and the most important is the feast of the Tabernacles, when the Sun crosses its western node in autumn, having yielded to man the "bread of life" wherewith to sustain his material being until the next return of the Sun to the northern heavens.

   For the above reasons the six southern signs which the Sun occupies in winter are always called "Egypt," the "land of the Philistines," etc.-- a name for something that is bad for "God's people"; whereas the northern signs in which the Sun is in the fruitful season are "heaven," "the promised land," which "flows with milk and honey."

   We see this in such passages as the one where the celebration of the Passover is enjoined "to remember the coming out of Egypt." This feast is a rejoicing over the emergence of the Sun from the southern signs, also from the recorded fact that Jacob was with Joseph in Egypt when he died. At the winter solstice when the Sun of the past year has completed its journey and reached its lowest degree of south declination it is in the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. By reference to Genesis 49:24 where the dying Jacob speaks of the "bow" of Joseph, it is easy to identify him with the sign Sagittarius which represents a centaur in the act of drawing his bow, and thus the story of Jacob dying in Egypt with Joseph, is reenacted each year when the Sun dies in the sign Sagittarius at the winter solstice. 
  In the middle third of Atlantis all that is changed. He begins to separate into communities, for the watery atmosphere is clearing somewhat and he is beginning to breathe by the means of lungs. The human Ego was very weak, and had to get help from someone else. Therefore Jehovah, the highest Initiate of the Moon Period, the ruler over the angels and archangels that work with men, breathes into man's nostrils, gives him lungs, and gives him the Race Spirit in the air that is to curb the hardening tendencies of the desire body and help him to get it under control. The desire body has control of the voluntary muscles, every movement we make is caused by desire, and every exertion breaks down tissue, and hardens more and more every particle of our tissue. Therefore Jehovah aimed to help mankind out of their dense condition, by means of law.

   The race religions are all based upon law. "I am a jealous God, and if you fulfill my commandments I will bless you abundantly and make your seed as multitudinous as the sands upon the seashore," says the Race God, "but if you do not obey I will send your enemies upon you and they shall gain the victory over you." Jehovah is the ruler of all the races and all the religions. He gave to each of these races an archangel to be their ruler, to be their special Prince. In Daniel 12:1, it is said that Michael is Prince over the Jews, and in the tenth chapter another race spirit says: "I am going to fight with the Prince of Persia, and the Prince of Persia shall come."

   Thus these Race Spirits work with man, punishing him by means of other people, and giving him rewards or punishments for his good or bad deeds. The fear of God and the desire for material reward was pitted against the desires of the flesh and therefore these race religions under Jehovah are such as to build up the national spirit. They subjected, or rather they neglected, the individual for the sake of the nation. The interests of the individual are always made subservient to the interests of the nation. The Jew never thought of himself as Solomon Levi; first and foremost he thought of himself as being of the seed of Abraham. What he wanted most to emphasize was that he was a Jew. If he thought of his status any farther than that he would identify himself with his tribe, but last and least only would he think of himself as an individual.

   The Race Spirit took a special care of certain sets of people, for example, the Levites among the Jews, who were destined specially for priesthood and they were herded around the temples and were specially bred to be the forerunners and teachers of their brethren. Their system of mating and regulation of the sex life of these special protégés produced a more lax connection between the vital body and the dense body which was necessary in order that initiation might take place and help man to advance. As long as the Race Spirit works with us we are under the law, we are only overcoming the influence of the desire body; therefore Paul says well that the law was until Christ--not until Christ came 2,000 years ago, but "UNTIL CHRIST BE FORMED IN YOU." When we release ourselves from the toils of the desire body and live up to the vibrations of the vital body, we become imbued by the Christ Spirit. Then and only then do we rise out of the national, the separating principle. Then do we become capable of being brothers to men.

   Now we see why Christ said so emphatically, "Before Abraham was, I am." The Ego was before the nation and must be exalted over the nation. To that end Christ came, because as long as there were nations, there could not be brotherhood. If we have a number of houses, and they built of bricks, they are unavailable for building one building until torn down. When all the bricks have been separated we may begin building. When all nations have been chopped into individuals we may begin to build the grand Universal Brotherhood of man.

   That is why the race religions failed, they separate men into antagonistic groups. So the race religions must be abrogated. We cannot do away with nations except we separate the individual. Therefore, we have wars, therefore we have had revolutions, where men have rebelled against kings and rulers, and have instituted republics. But they are not enough. We want to be free individually. We want to be every man a law unto himself--and this is where a great, great danger lies. We cannot be laws unto ourselves- -WE CANNOT BE FREE, UNTIL WE HAVE LEARNED TO RESPECT EVERYBODY ELSE'S RIGHTS.

   So then, under the race religion, men grew by obedience to the law. Under the Christ regime that is to come in, man is to rise above law, and to be a law unto himself. As Goethe says--
   Race pertains to the body, and when a new race is to be bred a Great Leader selects the most likely among the old stock and regulates their marriage relations with a view to produce the right kind of a body for the coming race. When his "chosen people" marry contrary to his directions they frustrate his object. In the earlier epochs before man become endowed with a mind it was easy to lead him, but at the time when the Original Semites were "chosen" they had already become sufficiently evolved to resent a curb on their liberty; besides, that curb must not be too strong, for it was necessary that they should have a certain amount of free will rather than remain God-guided automatons.

   Therefore it was hard to guide such a "stiff-necked people," and many of "the sons of God married the daughters of men" and frustrated the designs of their leader. It was therefore necessary to segregate them and their offspring from the faithful who were led away from them and thus became "lost" in the estimation of the rebels who do not realize to this day that in reality they are the "lost" ones and are no longer a chosen people.

   The faithful ones were secluded in Central Asia and there become the forbears of the Aryan races which have merged thence and are now inhabiting "the promised land," not insignificant Palestine, but the whole earth as now constituted. The rebels are the Jews.

   In the coming Sixth Epoch there are to be no races. Universal Brotherhood is to obtain again, and therefore a new "chosen people" must be taken out to usher in the new dispensation; but now man has progressed so far that no outside influence may be exerted to coerce him, and therefore each must choose himself as dictated to from within; and as he is now a reasoning, intellectual being, what better method could be devised than to bring before him the awful example of how a former pioneer-race, a chosen people, had frustrated the designs for their advancement and had become the "lost sheep of Israel"?

   Surely, example is a better teacher than precept, and as these people had kept a record of their choosing and of the dealing of their leader with then, what better could be done than to give to the pioneer-race, whence the nucleus for the coming race is to come, that record? It does not matter that these rebels still think themselves "a chosen people," or that their records have been mutilated; the lesson is as valid, the example is an awful one, and it is needful for us, for, as Paul says, "If the word spoken by the angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord?" The Christian religion as popularly expounded suffices for the spiritual needs of the great majority of the Western people who are yet working out the material phase of evolution and for those who desire to be among the pioneer nucleus for the coming race it is but necessary to seek and they shall find the esoteric Christianity which will be the universal religion of the Sixth Epoch, superseding the race-religions of Hinduism, Buddhism. Judaism, etc., as Universal Brotherhood will supersede races and nations.

   To realize properly the dreadful example of the Jews it must be noted that they have from the beginning become imbued with the idea of being a chosen people, and all other people have been despised by them as Gentiles. Thus, instead of progressing through the races this class of spirits have incarnated again and again in the Jewish race-bodies and have become so crystallized in them that they cannot progress along with the rest of the human race, if they keep on. They were lost by marrying outside the race, and it is probable that at that time there came to them a slight realization of their mistake so that since they have persistently married within their own tribes. The Great Leaders in evolution have tried to help them by exiling them repeatedly among other nations, but in vain; they have always refused to amalgamate, and again and again they have returned to their arid land, happy if they could but shut themselves away from others. Therefore, as a last resort, when the Great Leader Christ Jesus, came to teach that Universal Brotherhood is to supersede nations and tribes He went to those who needed it most, the crystallized Jewish people. Other people may stand lower in the scale of evolution, but none were or are "lost" in the same dreadful sense as they. All other Spirits are progressing from race to race, they alone are continually reborn as Jews, and in time they will be behind all others; may even have to go into Chaos when they have been left too far behind, and they will then have to take up their progression when a future evolution has advanced sufficiently to accord them the necessary facility, as probably is the case with the Lucifer spirits.

   To save them from such a fate Jesus was born among them. A stranger could certainly not have helped them, him they would have despised, so he was born among them as Booker T. Washington has been born among the Negroes to help them, for being one of their own from the standpoint of color he can help them as no one in a white body can, and it was for a similar reason thought that the Jews might accept the teachings of Christ Jesus if they could be brought to regard these teachings as coming from one who seemed a Jew. Thus it was said that "He came to his own," but alas, "they choose Barabbas" and crucified Christ Jesus.

   That was the last straw; the Great Leaders saw that henceforth it would be useless to make further attempts to save them in a body. Therefore the Jews have been scattered over the face of the earth, a people without a country. In spite of all, such is the tenacity with which these spirits hold on to their race, that despite all persecutions they are as much Jews as ever, they despise their neighbors as Gentiles yet, and are therefore in turn hated and despised. Besides, they are strongly imbued with the Atlantean faculty of cunning, and that is what holds them back more than anything else. They do not want to amalgamate now any more than they have always wanted to, so far as the Jews of Europe and Asia are concerned, but in America there is now a distinctly observable falling off from Orthodoxy, particularly among the younger generation of Jews. More and more they are marrying among the other nationalities fathered here in the "melting-pot" where the nations are being welded together to form a new race having all the best qualities of all the different race-bodies. In time, as they come here in greater numbers these Jews will do their share and bring their quota of mixed children in the world, furnishing the excarnate Jewish Spirits bodies having less and less of the Jewish race characteristics, and in time these Spirits will be saved by marrying into a higher race as they were temporarily "lost" by marrying into an inferior nation.

   As the Lemurians evolved DESIRE through the desire body, the Atlanteans evolved CUNNING through the mind. We are evolving reason by the activity of the Ego which is the threefold Spirit acting solely through its outermost veil, the Human Spirit, and in the Sixth Epoch the Life-Spirit will implant and ripen the faculties of INTUITION and LOVE. Those who aspire to become the pioneers of the coming race must therefore strive to cultivate these faculties within themselves.

   As in former cases, the breeding of a race means generation and at the present time that is performed through passion rather than love. Marriages are made for convenience, a home, or other ulterior considerations. Therefore so many who desire to live the higher life seek to escape marriage and parenthood; which is a great mistake, for of all people these who have become imbued with a higher knowledge are the best fitted for the duty of bringing up children; they can best control passion and perform the generative act from love, as a sacrifice laid upon the altar of humanity. 

QUESTION NO. 26

   WHY IS THE NEGRO COMMONLY SAID TO BE MARKED WITH THE CURSE OF CAIN? IF HE IS THE DESCENDANT OF HAM, ACCORDING TO BIBLICAL ETHNOLOGY, HOW CAN THAT RACE BE ANY OLDER THAN THE SONS OF SHEM OR JAPHET? IS NOT THE MOST INTELLECTUAL, SUCCESSFUL AND ENDURING RACE THAT HISTORY RECORDS, NAMELY, THE JEW, THE ONE THAT HAS LEFT ITSELF MOST FREE FROM A MIXTURE?

   ANSWER: The Bible does not state anywhere that the Negroes are the descendants of Ham; besides it is well known that the Biblical ethnology as commonly understood among orthodox people is an utter impossibility in view of the facts of geology and ethnological research. We are past the day when anyone will dare to make a statement such as, for instance, was made by a learned Dean of Cambridge University less than a century ago, namely, that the World was created on Friday, the 10th of October, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning. The Biblical ethnology also has the exact year of the flood and similar events fixed, but from the occult point of view, which as derived from a direct reading in the picture gallery of the past, which we call THE MEMORY OF NATURE, the case is very different. We find there that there have been various epochs or great stages of unfoldment in the earth's history, and that the Negro was the humanity of the third of these epochs, the Lemurian. The whole human race of that time was black skinned. Then came a time, called the Atlantean Epoch, when humanity was red, yellow, except one race which was white. These people were the Original Semites, the fifth of the Atlantean Races. These Atlanteans are called Niebelungen, or CHILDREN OF THE MIST, in the old folk stories, for at that time the atmosphere of the earth was a very dense fog. In the latter half of the Atlantean Epoch this atmosphere condensed, floods resulted and gradually the sea covered the larger part of the globe. Then the atmosphere became clear above the earth. This point in evolution is described in the Bible where Noah, the leader of the Semites, came out from the drowning Atlantis and first saw the rainbow, a phenomenon impossible in the foggy atmosphere of early Atlantis. We also hear of that emigration in the story of Moses and the Israelites coming out from Egypt while the Egyptian king and his men drown in the waters of the Red Sea. These people had been chosen to become the progenitors of our present Aryan races, but not all of them were true to the commands of their leader. There were some of them who "went after strange flesh," and that is the greatest crime possible at such a time, for when a leader is aiming to instill new faculties into a new race, the admixture of strange blood has a tendency to frustrate his plans. Therefore, some of these chosen people were lost, that is to say, they were abandoned by their leaders and did not become the forbears of the new humanity.

   THOSE WHO WERE THUS LOST OR LEFT BEHIND ARE, STRANGE TO SAY, THE PRESENT DAY JEWS, who at one time married into the families of their Atlantean brethren, contrary to the commands of their divine leader, and yet today think themselves the "chosen people" of God. There is no doubt that the earliest Jews remember their sin in marrying outside of their tribes. Thus they instilled into their descendants the strong dislike against mixing with other tribes, and so these rebels have since been faithful to the injunction not to marry among the Gentiles.

   As for their being intellectual as a race, we say No! In the Polarian Epoch man evolved a dense body, and the vitalizing principle in the Hyperborean Epoch. In the Lemurian Epoch came the desire body to give incentive to action, and the mind was added in the Atlantean Epoch, giving to man CUNNING. Thought, or reason, is the faculty to be evolved in this Aryan epoch, and a study of facts will reveal to us that the Jews still are strongly actuated by the Atlantean faculty--CUNNING.

   The leaders of humanity have been endeavoring to get these people to mix with the other races in order that they might be lifted out of their present condition. Their Bible tells us how they have been exiled time and again, without avail; they have remained a people apart. The Christ was sent to them as one of their own, because it was thought that they would take the word of one from among their midst, but "they chose Barabbas." That as was the last straw; it was seen that it was impossible to save them IN A BODY. Since then they have been scattered over the whole world, a people without a country, to induce them to amalgamate in that way, but such is the stiff-neckedness of this people that to this day they are still separate. Here in America, however, in "the Great Melting Pot," they are beginning to slowly amalgamate. They were lost by marrying outside their tribe into a lower race, but in time they will be saved by marrying into the more advanced races, here upon the American continent.

QUESTION NO. 96

   WAS NOT JESUS A JEW? IF SO, WHAT DID HE MEAN BY SAYING "BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM"? FOR EVEN IF HE REINCARNATED, ABRAHAM WAS THE FATHER OF THE JEWISH RACE.

   ANSWER: In olden times, and even up to the present day, patriotism is looked upon as one of the prime virtues, but from the occult standpoint there is of course but the One Spirit, and the races are but an evanescent phase of the scheme of evolution; in fact, a very dangerous phase, for while in the Periods and great Epochs of evolution there is an abundance of time, and it is possible for the leaders to bring most of the spirits in line for promotion, the races and nations are born and die in such a comparatively short time, there is great danger that the spirits may become enmeshed in the race bodies and not follow the bulk of humanity in their progress.

   This is just what happened to the Jews. They were so intensely patriotic that no Jew thought of himself as an individual at all. Primarily, and when using the highest terms, he would speak of himself as "Abraham's seed." Secondarily, he thought of himself as belonging to a certain tribe, and lastly, perhaps he was Solomon Levi or Moses Cohen.

   The Christ combated this idea of IDENTITY WITH THE RACE when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am." The Ego existed before Abraham; Abraham was an incarnation of an Ego, a spirit. He, and the Jewish race descended from him, were simply BODIES, but the Egos which inhabited them existed before the race bodies. Thus the Christ advised his hearers to look from the evanescent to the eternal.

   In another place He said, "Unless a man leave Father and mother, he cannot follow me." Father and mother are also RACE BODIES. We have no right to leave dependent relatives to follow the higher life; we must fulfill all our duties here before we selfishly take up the study of the higher life, but we are not to identify ourselves with the race, the nation, or the family into which we are born. EVERY ONE OF US IS AN INDIVIDUAL SPIRIT, WHICH EXISTED BEFORE THE BODIES WE CALL RACES AND WILL EXIST AFTER THEY HAVE CEASED TO BE. Failing to keep that fact in mind, we may crystallize and stay with the race instead of progressing. That is just what the Jews have done. Their intense patriotism has caused them as spirits to reincarnate in the Jewish race bodies for millenniums.

   The leaders of humanity had sought in various ways to get them to amalgamate with others, that they might progress, but always in vain, and Christ was sent to them for the same reason that Booker T. Washington has been sent to the Negroes. Though a more advanced soul than his race brethren, he was incarnated in a black body to enable him to help the Negroes in the most efficient manner. Had he been embodied in a white skin, there would always have been a seeming patronage. Similar reasons decreed the birth of Christ as a Jew. It was hoped that they would receive His teachings because coming from one of their own race. But instead of honoring their traditions and looking up to Abraham in a reverential attitude of mind, He cast down their ideals, He spoke of a new heaven and a new earth, He asserted the priority of the individual to the race, and, therefore, they would have none of Him--"they chose Barabbas."
CHAPTER VIII
GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE

   When we read the history of the Hebrews as recorded in the Bible and chronicled in medieval and modern records of the various peoples inhabiting the Western world, one inescapable fact stands out with startling clearness, to wit, that they have been led into exile and slavery, hated in every country where they have been scattered, and persecuted wherever the temperament of the nations among whom the Jews dwelt would allow them to resort to such measures. According to the Bible, esteemed the "Word of God" by the Western peoples, the Jews are "God's chosen people" in a peculiar sense, yet among these very nations the Jews are despised and discredited. When we investigate the reason of this tragedy, two salient facts present themselves:

   (1) Everywhere the Jews have proclaimed themselves God's chosen people, destined by divine favor in time to become masters of the world, to whom all nations will eventually have to pay homage and tribute.

   (2) Their dealings with the gentiles have almost invariably been marked by such sharp practices that in public mind Shakespeare's Shylock, exacting his "pound of flesh," agrees with the general conception of their nature.

   Thus, unconsciously, there has grown up in the mind of the other nations a resentment toward the Jews' claim to be divinely favored children of God, while they class all others as stepchildren, heathen, and gentiles reserved for the day of wrath when Israel shall triumphantly rule them with a rod of iron. This resentment is accentuated by contemplation of the present day practices of the Jews.

   If the Jews had backed up their claim of being divine favorites by lives of noble and lofty conduct, they would probably have inspired the admiration of many of the people among whom they have dwelt. They would have stirred some to emulation; even those who were envious of their preferment would probably have respected them. But because their high professions and their practices are so widely divergent, it is sad but not to be wondered at that they are hated and persecuted on every hand.

   The student is warned not to view the foregoing merely as a criticism of the Jews,; it is wrong to expose the faults of others and to criticize them unless we have a constructive end in view. It is always so easy to see the mote in our brother's eye, but far easier to overlook the beam in our own. The reason for bringing up the subject of the Jews with their high professions and divergent practices is but to inquire if, by turning the searchlight upon the mote in their eye, we shall not find a large beam in our own. If so, we shall have accomplished something worth while and put ourselves in line to remove the beam.

   So long as we live at the level of the world, doing the things others do, good, bad and indifferent, no one takes particular notice of us; but the moment we, like the Jews, make professions to be something different, the searchlight of society at once singles us out as objects of observation to determine what ratio of agreement there is between our professions and our practices. We are watched wherever we go and whatever we do; hence a great responsibility rests upon us to acquit ourselves well in order that we may do credit to the teachings of our Elder Brothers and stimulate in others a desire to embrace these teachings.

   Therefore let us pause and take stock of our actions and accomplishments in the past year; then let us make such resolutions as we feel will make the future more profitable from the standpoint of the soul.

   In the first place let us acknowledge that we have been especially favored, far beyond our merit, by receiving the Rosicrucian teachings from our Elder Brothers. Let us hope that we have expressed our gratitude to them through all the past year, and let us at this time send them special thoughts of love and gratitude. Needless to say they do not crave our gratitude, they are beyond that; but we may make more soul growth by being grateful.

   Then let us consider how we have used these precious teachings during the past year: have we dealt justly with our fellows, have we been lenient in our judgments and criticisms of others, have we striven to curb our temper, cultivate equipoise, and overcome whatever may be our particular besetting sin?

   What measure of success have we had? Let us hope our accomplishments have been at least moderate, for as the sincerity of the Jews' high professions have been judged by their performance, so, right or wrong, the teachings of the Elder Brothers will be rated in the community by the actions of those who profess to be their followers.

   But it is a foregone conclusion that we shall have to admit at the end of our retrospection that we have fallen far short of the lofty ideals placed before us. This is always a critical point where our spiritual career is in danger of shipwreck upon the rock of faintheartedness, that is, if we are of the temperament that broods over or magnifies failure. Such an attitude of mind precipitates disaster by robbing us of the will to win; it makes us believe that there is not use in struggling, that the odds against us are too great. Excuses are found in the antagonism of friends and family to our belief, duties that take our time, etc. But, as a matter of fact, the trouble is within ourselves, and if we yield, we shall find that our friends will despise us in their hearts even if they do not show it openly as in the case of the Jews.

   Instead, so far from causing us to forsake the path of progress, our failures should act as a spur to greater efforts, and we should make our resolution with greater determination so that during the coming year we may be invincible with respect to the matter covered by it.

   We all know our own particular shortcomings, "the sin which doth so easily beset us," and each will naturally have to formulate the proper resolutions for himself. But in carrying these resolutions into effect so that they may be productive of soul growth and help to weave the glorious GOLDEN WEDDING GARMENT, it will undoubtedly help us immensely to fasten our eyes and thoughts upon one who possessed the virtue we are seeking to cultivate. Such a great example we have in Christ, who "was tempted in all things like ourselves, yet without sin." Let us therefore keep Him closely before our mind's eye during the coming year, and we shall surely make great soul growth. This is also the best propaganda we can make for the Rosicrucian teachings, for by living close to them we shall surely evoke in others a desire to share in their blessings.
  In the first place let it be understood, as previously said in speaking of the Christian mysteries, that the four Gospels are not merely accounts of the life of a single individual, written by four different people, but that they are symbolical of different Initiations. Paul says, "Until Christ be formed in you." Everyone will some day go through the four stages that are depicted in the four Gospels, for everyone is unfolding the Christ spirit within himself. And in saying this of the four Gospels, we may also apply the same assertion to a great part of the Old Testament, for it is a wonderful book of occultism. When we hoe potatoes, we do not expect to find only potatoes and no earth; neither should we expect to dig into the book we call the Bible and find every word an occult truth, for as there must be soil between the potatoes, so must there be dross between occult truths in the Bible.

   The four Gospels were written in a manner such that only those who have the right to know can unveil what is meant and understand the underlying facts. So likewise in the Old Testament we find great occult truths that become very plain when we can look behind the veil that blinds most of us. Many for the present must forego occult sight in order to master the conditions of material evolution and thereby perfect themselves for the pursuits of the material world. But we of the Western world are now on the occult arc; we are on the shore of the spiritual sea, where we individually shall gather the pearls of knowledge that have been hidden by the matter that has blinded us.

   We will now discuss a form of Initiation depicted in a part of the Bible, describing the journey of man from the clod to God. When we enter into the collection of writings which we call the Bible, we find that it begins with five books which are commonly called the five Books of Moses. These tell of the journey of a so-called "chosen people" from Egypt to a promised land, and how they passed through the water called the Red Sea, guided in a manner called supernatural; after many, many years and after many of those who first set out upon that journey had perished, they finally reached the land that was promised. And yet Paul in his letter to the Hebrews speaks of that covenant as having been unable of fulfillment, for that which should have been accomplished failed. This is a fact. When we make a law, there is also a means for transgressing that law; therefore it is impossible for law to save.

   There was a time when humanity was in such a state that it was impossible to guide them at all without law--law telling them in all cases what they must do and what they must not do. Therefore it was the mission of their leader to give them such laws, and these were embodied in the five Books of Moses. Historically the Israelites were a people who traveled not from Egypt to Palestine, but who were taken by their leaders from doomed Atlantis, where the condensing moisture in the atmosphere caused floods that rendered the land uninhabitable, into the central part of Asia. This company of men and women had been selected as a nucleus for a chosen race, and they have since become what is known as the Aryan race. While this may be a historical interpretation, still there is within this story a great spiritual lesson, particularly in that part of the story which we are considering.

   In the COSMO-CONCEPTION is given an illustration of two men standing on a street corner; one knocks the other down. An observer might say that an angry thought knocked the man down. Another would contradict that statement and say that he saw the arm lifted and a blow landed upon the man's face, causing him to fall to the ground. The latter version is true, but there was a thought also; the arm was but an irresponsible instrument. It is thought that moves everything, and when we look upon the hidden or occult side of effects, we get a far deeper understanding of causes. It is from this viewpoint that we shall speak of the Temple in the Wilderness.

   In our Bible there is a description of the first people upon earth. They are called Adam and Eve; but properly interpreted this means the human race, which gradually arrogated to itself the power of procreation and thereby became free agents. Humanity was thus given its freedom and made responsible to the law of Consequence, for it had arrogated to itself the power to create new bodies, and was then separated from the Tree of life and the state which we are now cognizant of as etheric. When we learn that we have a vital body made of ether, and that it is the tree of life to everyone of us and furnishes us the vitality whereby we are enabled to make the movements of the body, we may understand why the power to recreate and regenerate ourselves was taken away from us lest we learn how to vitalize the imperfect dense body; and we also see why as stated in the Bible, there were placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden Cherubim with flaming swords to guard that region.

   This story is told in the beginning of the Bible, but in the end of the book, in Revelation, we are told about a city where there is peace among the people. Two cities are mentioned in the Bible; one, Babylon, a city of sorrow and tribulation, where confusion started, where humanity first became estranged, one from another, where brotherhood ceased; also another city, a new one, a New Jerusalem, is described where there will be peace. We are further told in Revelation that in this New Jerusalem is the Tree of life, symbolizing the power to regenerate ourselves, whereby we shall regain that health and beauty that we at present lack.

   It was for a good purpose that this power was taken away. It was not through malice in order that man should suffer in sorrow and pain, but because it was only by repeated existences in an inferior body that we could learn to build for ourselves such a vehicle as would be fit to immortalize. Man gradually came down from the etheric state as easily then as he can today dwell in the present three elements of the physical world. In the past etheric state he contacted internally the life currents that we now contact unconsciously. He was then able to center the energy of the sun in his body and draw it in a manner different from that at present used. This power was gradually taken away from him as he entered the more solid state of the present.

   Then began the journey through the wilderness, a wilderness of space and of matter; and we shall continue to so journey until we reenter the etheric realm consciously--that realm called the New Heaven and the New Earth, where righteousness will dwell and where there will be no more sin. At the present time we are still traveling through the wilderness of space, as we shall see if we study the Bible understandingly. Not the English version, however, as that was prepared by translators who were hampered by an edict of King James instructing them not to translate anything that would in any manner interfere with the existing belief of that time.