"The Races with the Third Eye" – Selections from Theosophy’s Sacred Teachings in “The Secret Doctrine,” Part 2 of 2

Mazdean Symbolism “The Egyptian ram-headed god makes man of clay on a potter's wheel, and so in Genesis do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material. When the ‘Maker of the material world’ (Ahura Mazda) is asked, furthermore, what is to give light ‘to the Vara which Yima made,’ he is told that ‘There are uncreated lights and created lights’ and that ‘there’ (in Airyana Vaego, where Vara is built), ‘the stars, the moon, and the Sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set’ and a year seems only as a day (and night) a clear reference to the ‘land of the Gods’ or the (now) polar regions. Moreover, another hint is contained in this verse: a distinct allusion to the ‘uncreated lights’ which enlighten man within – his principles.”

Angels Called Birds “Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the MAN of the Fourth Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the moon, and even Noah's ark, if one will so have it – this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura Mazda and Zarathustra. Thus when the latter asks – ‘O Maker of the Material World, thou Holy One! Who is he who brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?’ ‘Ahura Mazda answered: 'It was the bird Karshipta, O holy Zarathustra.' ‘The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the earth he would be king of birds. He brought into the vara of Yima and recites the Avesta in the language of birds.’ ‘Like a bird that is flying from its nest, and that is the Soul from which the Shekeenah (divine wisdom or grace) does not move away.’ ‘The Nest of the eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life, is boundless space,’ says the Commentary, meaning Hansa, the bird of Wisdom. It is Adam Kadmon who is the (Sephirothal) tree, and it is he who becomes the ‘Tree of knowledge of good and evil’ esoterically. And that ‘tree hath around it seven columns (seven pillars) of the world, or Rectores’; the same ‘Progenitors’ or ‘Sephiroth’ again ‘operating through the respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets,’ etc., one of which orders begets giants (Nephilim) on Earth.”