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COMBAT OF THE REBEL ANGELS.

had no place in Caiomorrh, the first man, who was made for life eternal,* and a special genius appointed to watch over him. All men have likewise a tutelar spirit defending them against the productions of the evil principle. † But Ormusd, foreseeing that man could not resist the efforts of Ahriman, gave to him the name Gneie merethro, signifying mortal life, in distinction from that of Amschaspands, immortal, excellent. Before creating Caiomorrh, Ormusd had produced a water called Khei, with which he anointed him, and which rendered him young and beautiful as a youth of 15.‡

Man saw the world, obscured as through a black night, and the earth burned by the Kharfesters. (Evil productions.)

Ahriman, accompanied by Astomad, father of death, and a thousand other Dews, threw himself upon the pure Caimorrh, but they could not then prevail.

The enemy of nature approached fire and mingled with it smoke and darkness.

Seconded by the Dews, he assaulted heaven. Ormusd and the genii, together with the stars, fought with Ahriman and his productions for ninety days and nights.

The conquered Dews were precipitated into hell (douzakh.) Several of the evil genii had formerly been attached to the heavens of the

reaches him in the form of intuition, of which the visceral ganglia are the organic fountains. See, for farther proof on this subject, the works of the physiologist Bichat-on life and death-and elsewhere.

* Observe that Caimorrh, the human ideal, type of the collective man, or human race, is essentially good and immortal, like the other Amschaspands. But individual men are mortal, and their pledge of a future life is derived entirely from their relation to their race, whose identical type or ideal is reproduced like that of other animals and plants in successive generations and resurrections, from the womb of the great earth-life impregnated by the solar ray. † This is the same as the Dæmon of Socrates, and with the assertion of Swedenborg and other persons, either natural or artificially clairvoyants, who have seen themselves and others accompanied by guardian spirits, whose suggestions are felt by man as intuitions, and supposed to originate in himself.

How curious to observe the fantastic forms in which the intuition of a great natural truth, such as that of the sanative and renovating power of water, manifests itself in all ages and nations. Did De Soto and his companions, in their chivalric wanderings through Florida and our Southwest, in search of the fountain of eternal youth, suspect that their dream was the same with that of the old Magian Khei? Or would either they or the Magians been prepared to find in the hands of a peasant at Græfenberg the practical solution of their symbolic idea.

EVIL PERVADES THE CREATION.

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seven planets and charged with its revolutions. The earth succored the Izeds, so that Ahriman could have no more power over them. Soon, from the midst of hell, the evil principle perceived the earth and appeared there.

He mixed himself everywhere, seeking to do evil and to discharge his fury on the productions with which Ormusd had enriched the earth. Caiomorrh died overwhelmed with these evils. His seed, purified by the light of the sun, (as that of the bull had been by the light of the moon,) was confided to Nerioseugh, one of the genii, who presided over fire, and to Sapendomad, genius of the earth. After eighty years, there sprang from the seed a from the seed a plant representing two human bodies, which bore fruits representing ten species of men. The twin bodies became Meschia and Meschiane, male and female, parents of the human race. The name signifies mortal, from maschi,

death.

In all this it must be remembered that Zoroaster only formulized the crude traditions and popular fables which had preoccupied the oriental mind.

GOOD AND EVIL PRINCIPLES.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE COMBAT OF THE TWO PEOPLES OR ORDERS OF BEINGS PRODUCED BY THE GOOD AND EVIL PRINCIPLES.

MESCHIA and Meschiane were created to be happy: they were so, and the purity of their souls should have preserved them in this state.* But the master of evil, seeing that the death of the Bull and that of Caimorrh had not diminished the power of Ormusd, sought to corrupt the new creatures of his hand, and to render them guilty in the eyes of Ormusd, by influencing them to ascribe the creation to him and not to Ormusd. In allusion to this, Ormusd says, in another place: "If Meschia had made izeschne in naming me, as izeschne is made to the Izeds in naming them, when the time of man created pure should have arrived, the soul, created pure and immortal, would have at once attained the abodes of bliss."

*Healthy, and reposing in the strength of their unbroken instincts-acting spontaneously from the attractions profusely nourished by a beneficent Eden earth-to love and to be happy, was with them the same as to exist.

We perceive that the horrible and preposterous idea of a Supreme Being requiring from his creatures, as the proof of their allegiance, living sacrifices, blood, tortures, and self-crucifixion, did not occur to the primitive men.

†The term Ized, commonly applied to angels, secondary, and ministering spirits, beings to whom we are to make izeschne, address prayers accompanied with gracious actions, makes in the plural Iezdan, which is one of the names of God, thus showing, in the very construction of the Persian language, some conception of the Serial Order in the life of the Divine Being. Some of the Izeds enumerated are—Adir, connected in its deriviation with the Zend word Athri, fire—Aban, with Apo, water-Khorshid, significant of brilliant lightMah, connected with the moon-Tyr, which runs-Goshoroun, soul of Bull— Meher, blood, justice, kindness-Serosch, the pure-Rashne Zast, the justFarvardin, souls of the law-Behram, the victorious-Ram, desirable pleasures-Vad, the wind spirit-Asman, the heaven-Zemin, the earth-genius; and many others.

Man, in order to make izeschne to Ormusd in naming him, as to the Izeds in naming them, must look through nature and the revealed law up to nature's God, the source and fountain of inspiration to all men of all ages. The mere

AHRIMAN'S CHILDREN AND PETS.

47

The distribution of the waters over the earth is ascribed to the genii who were combatted by the Sharfesters. The latter, though vanquished, infected the greater part of the waters with salt and bitter. The evil principle filled nature with Daroudjs, appearing in the forms of serpents, wolves, toads; even in those of men and monsters of both sexes. It corrupted the air, placed in trees maleficent properties, and afflicted the earth by the evils produced at the change of seasons.*

naturalist and man of industry and of practical science, and the mere Scribe Pharisee, doctor and slave of the law, are here alike condemned as insufficient; and while Ormusd approves our scientific, industrial, and poetic reverence for natural powers and scriptural revelation, he requires of us, as the condition of our salvation by the unison of our souls and loves with him, that we should never give way to that weakness, stupidity, inertia of matter, which stops at the symbol, the inferior and fragmentary expression of his power.

*The destructive venomous and hideous creatures of our present vegetable and animal kingdom, find earnest defenders among the philosophers, theologists, and physicians, who, once fairly bewildered in the vicious circle of evils, have fine work in showing how providentially they devour each other. They prove that the cockroach is a great friend in the house, because it devours the bedbug; and the ant, because it devours the cockroach: the spider, because it rids us of flies and gnats; and the toad, in eating. grubworms and garden vermin, atones for its unsightly presence. Thus of the crocodile and alligator, whose havoc among the fishes protect our southern river shores from stench.

Doubtless there is here compensation, and equilibrium of population with sustenance attained by destruction and torments, but is this the only sort of equilibrium possible? The primitive Sun worshipers, as we perceive, instinctively refused to ascribe these horrors to a beneficent Providence; in his relations with his creatures, the intuition of their hearts taught them that He was always and only Love, Intelligent Love, whose productions must harmonize with each other, and with man, the chief of mortal creatures.

It was not then to Ormusd or to the Sun, either spiritual or material, that they ascribed the vicious creation, but to Ahriman, the evil principle, and whose forces are convertible to the service of Ormusd and of his creatures, at the resurrection or grand triumph, when, after long struggle, God, acting through the Sun and through man, shall have with their assistance transformed the vicious spheres presented by the earth; swamps, and deserts, frozen and torrid regions; and reduced these hells with their correspondents in the false societies into order and adaptation to harmonic life; when the true incarnation will replace the false, and bodies be no longer an obstruction and torment, but a condition of beatific development to the souls connected with them. See note to Chateaubriand, in my work on Harmonies of Nature.

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MATERIALISM DARKENS THE SOUL OF MAN,

Meschia and Meschiane, after their sin, covered themselves with black garments.

*

Ahriman continued to tempt and deceive them, sometimes in form of a white goat offering them milk, at another by fruits, and at last attained to deprive them of all their advantages. They then became hunters, and eat the flesh of beasts, and clothed themselves with their skins, and built dwellings without praising God.‡

* Black being the color of darkness, absorbing all the luminous rays, was in symbolic correspondence with the spiritual darkness which now enshrouded their souls. They were averted from the love and intelligence of God, they must then wear in correspondence the color expressive of the privation or absence of the Solar ray, and the opposite of white, the light color, in which all the other colors blend, as the harmonic passions or natural and human sympathies are blended in the religious sentiment, or love and faith in the Lord.

But in this very correspondence, we perceive their interior sense of the divine presence whence they averted themselves, and whose memory remains to embitter remorse, to revive hope, and to germinate as a seed of happier destinies.

†Their advantages consisted, in the marriage of the spiritual with the material life, that they might be the chief agents of that incarnation, in which matter tends continually to become spiritualized, lucid, and active. When man yields to the sensual principle, and fails to subordinate it to the ministry of the spiritual, his peculiar advantages are lost.

Having outraged the instincts of harmony, and relations of affection towards their humbler fellow-creatures, by violence, treachery, and gluttony, connected with killing and eating beasts; they had degraded and materialized their souls, so that they no longer felt in their action that a divine spiritual force was acting through them, no longer were conscious how their immediate attainment or object was bound in a circle of uses and spiritualized principles, with the infinite universe. This, which was at first all intuition, had now to be revived in the mind and heart of man through painful centuries, by the elaboration of the natural sciences, of mathematics and poetry.

Newton, La Place, St. Pierre, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Goethe, Emerson, are our prophets of this order of religious truths, through which man re-ascends from the animal into the spiritual sphere of his being. Byron thus chants this blending of the finite with the infinite, of human with stellar life, and his sympathy with the Earth Soul.

Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven

If in your bright leaves we would read the fate

Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,

That in our aspirations to be great,