This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
H. P. Blavatsky also noted the following in her book The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, Stanza I, Beginnings of Sentient Life:
…every Race in its evolution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the Planets: Race the first receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will be seen later on; while the third humanity — those who fell into generation, or from androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other female — are said to be under the direct influence of Venus, “the little sun in which the solar orb stores his light…”
“It is through Sukra that the ‘double ones’ (the Hermaphrodites) of the Third (Root-Race) descended from the first ‘Sweat-born,’” says the Commentary. Therefore it is represented under the symbol of [see image “A”] (the circle and diameter) during the Third (Race) and of [see image “B”] during the Fourth.
This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle, stands for female nature, for the first ideal World, self-generated and self-impregnated by the universally diffused Spirit of Life — referring thus to the primitive Root-Race also. It becomes androgynous as the Races and all on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the symbol is transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a vertical line:
expressive of male and female, not separated as yet — the first and earliest Egyptian Tau [see image “C”]; after which it becomes [see image “D”] or male-female separated [Blavatsky’s footnote, “Therefore, putting aside its religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross of the Christians is symbolically far more phallic than the pagan Svastica.”] (See first pp. of Book I) and fallen into generation. Venus (the planet) is symbolised by the sign of a globe over the cross, which shows it as presiding over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians symbolised Ank, “life,” by the ansated cross, or [see image “E”], which is only another form of Venus (Isis) [see image “F”], and meant, esoterically, that mankind and all animal life bad stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and fallen into physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third Race, has the same phallic significance as the “tree of life” in Eden Anouki, a form of Isis, is the goddess of life; and Ank was taken by the Hebrews from the Egyptians and introduced by Moses, one learned in the Wisdom of the priests of Egypt, with many other mystical words. The word Ank in Hebrew, with the personal suffix, means “my life,” my being, which “is the personal pronoun Anochi,” from the name of the Egyptian goddess Anouki. [Blavatsky’s footnote, “The ansated Cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus, “signifying the existence of parturient energy in the sexual sense, and this was one of the attributes of Isis, the Mother, of Eve, Hauvah, or Mother-Earth, and was so recognised among all the ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression.” (From a modern Kabalistic MS.)”]…
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our illusory universe. The two inseparables remain in the Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into Parabrahm, the One ever changeless. “The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-existent,” emanates a pure ethereal LIGHT — a dual light not perceptible to the elementary senses — in the Puranas, in the Bible, in the Sepher Jezirah, the Greek and Latin hymns, in the Book of Hermes, in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, in the esotericism of Lao-tse, everywhere. In the Kabala, which explains the secret meaning of Genesis, this light is the DUAL-MAN, or the Androgyne (rather the sexless) angels, whose generic name is ADAM KADMON. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by other divine, but far lower beings, who solidify the body with clay, or the “dust of the ground” — an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any Darwinian evolution and more true…
In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras Presidency, the hermaphrodite goddess Adanari (see also “Indian Pantheon“) has the ansated cross, the Svastica, the “male and female sign,” right in the central part, to denote the pre-sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now represented with a lotus growing out of his navel — or the Universe of Brahma evolving out of the central point Nara — is shown in one of the oldest carvings as double-sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmi) standing on a lotus-leaf floating on the water; which water rises in a semicircle and pours through the Svastica, “the source of generation” or of the descent of man.
H. P. Blavatsky further noted the following regarding symbolism in, Vol. 1, Stanza V:
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With these it was pre-eminently the generative number and 9 the male causative one, forming as shown by the Kabalists the
or otz — “the Tree of the Garden of Eden,”[1] the “double hermaphrodite rod” of the fourth race. Whereas with the Hindus and Aryans generally, the significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely metaphysical and astronomical truths. Their Rishis and gods, their Demons and Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings, and the Aryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done. This is found in the exoteric Hindu Scriptures.
Blavatsky’s footnote:
[1] This was the symbol of the “Holy of Holies,” the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation. Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the two letters — as shown above — one, the ayin, is a negative female letter, symbolically an eye; the other a male letter, tza, a fish-hook or a dart.
Elsewhere in this section she has this footnote:
The sentence in the Sepher Jezirah and elsewhere: “Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim” denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read: “ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life.” As said above, Echath (or Achath) is feminine, and Echod (or Achod) masculine, both meaning ONE.
In, Vol. 1, “IX The Moon, Deus Lunus, Phoebe,” Blavatsky wrote:
This idea of connecting the circle and its diameter line, that is, number ten, with the signification of the reproductive organs…It is the picture of a double-womb…This “double womb” also shows the duality of the idea carried from the highest, spiritual, down to the lowest or terrestrial plane; and by the Jews limited to the latter. With them, therefore the number 7 has acquired the most prominent place in their exoteric religion, a cult of external forms and empty rituals; as their Sabbath, for instance, the seventh day sacred to their deity, the moon, symbolical of the generative Jehovah.
While with other nations the number seven was typical of theogonic evolution, of cycles, cosmic planes, and the Seven Forces and Occult Powers in Kosmos, as a boundless whole, whose first upper triangle was unreachable to the finite intellect of man — while other nations, therefore, busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos in Space and Time, only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred this member solely in the moon, and based all their sacred calculations thereupon.
Hence we find the thoughtful author of the MSS. just quoted [an “unpublished MSS. on the Art Speech”], remarking, in reference to the metrology of the Jews that: “If 20,612 be multiplied by 4/3 the product will afford a base for the ascertainment of the mean revolution of the moon, and if this product be again multiplied by 4/3, this continued product will afford a base for finding the exact period of the mean solar year…this form…becoming, for the finding of astronomical periods of time, of very great service.” [the previous two ellipses in original]
This double number (male and female) is symbolized also in some well-known idols: e.g., “Ardanari-Iswara, the Isis of the Hindus, Eridanus, or Ardan, or the Hebrew Jordan, or source of descent. She is standing on a lotus-leaf flowing on the water. But the signification is, that it is androgyne or hermaphrodite, that is phallus and yoni combined, the number 10, the Hebrew letter Jod, the containment of Jehovah. She, or rather she-he, gives the minutes of the same circle of 360 degrees”…
In religious rites the moon served a dual purpose. Personified as a female goddess for exoteric purposes, or as a male god in allegory and symbol, in occult philosophy our satellite was regarded as a sexless Potency to be well studied, because it was to be dreaded. With the initiated Aryans, Khaldii, Greeks and Romans, Soma, Sin, Artemis Soteira (the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute is the lyre, and the bearded Diana of the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus, and especially Osiris-lunus and Thot-lunus, [Blavatsky’s footnote, “Thot-Lunus is ‘Budha-Soma’ of India, or ‘Mercury and the Moon.’”] were the occult potencies of the moon.
But whether male or female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the Occult mystery of mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of good. Her seven phases (original, esoteric division) are divided into three astronomical phenomena and four purely psychic phases. That the moon was not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in which the death of the moon-god (the three phases of gradual waning and final disappearance) was allegorized by the moon standing for the genius of evil that triumphs for the time over the light and life-giving god (the sun), and all the skill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic was required to turn this triumph into a defeat.
It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the third Race of our Round, the Hermaphrodites, to whom the male-moon became sacred, when after the “Fall” so-called, the sexes had become separated. “Deus Lunus” then became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to serve finally, for purposes of sorcery, as a dual power, to the Fourth Root-race, the Atlanteans. With the Fifth (our own) the lunar-solar worship divided the nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps.
It led to events described aeons later in the Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is the fabulous, to the Hindus and Occultists the historical, strife between the Suryavansas and the Indovansas. Originating in the dual aspect of the moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively, it ended in distinct solar and lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the sun was for a very long time feminine and the moon masculine — the latter notion being adopted by them from the Atlantean traditions. The moon was called “the Lord of the sun,” Bel-Skemesh, before the Shemesh worship.
Blavatsky’s footnote:
During that period which is absent from the Mosaic books — from the exile of Eden to the allegorical Flood — the Jews worshipped with the rest of the Semites Dayanisi “the Ruler of Men,” the “Judge,” or the SUN. Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the sun become the “Lord God” and Jehovah in the Bible, yet the latter is full of indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah the sun, and Astoreth the moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present metaphorical element given to it.
God is a “consuming fire,” appears in, and is encompassed by fire.” It was not only in vision that Ezekiel (viii., 16) saw the Jews “worshipping the sun.” The Baal of the Israelites (the Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites) was the identical “Sun-Jehovah,” and he is till now “the King of the Host of Heaven,” the Sun, as much as Astoreth was the “Queen of Heaven” — or the moon. The “Sun of Righteousness” has become a metaphorical expression only now.
This section also includes the following statement:
It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the third Race of our Round, the Hermaphrodites, to whom the male-moon became sacred, when after the “Fall” so-called, the sexes had become separated. “Deus Lunus” then became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to serve finally, for purposes of sorcery, as a dual power, to the Fourth Root-race, the Atlanteans…
The ancients taught the, so to speak, auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence, unmanifested, perpetually begetting a second-self, manifested, which second-self, androgynous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to everything macro- and micro-cosmical in this universe. This was shown in the Circle and the Diameter, or the Sacred 10, a few pages back.
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