This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...the angels of the Vlth ch. of Genesis, and the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as the present Secret Doctrine endeavors to show--unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity. In Indian exotericism, these angels (Asuras) are also denounced as "the enemies of the gods "; those who opposed sacrificial worship offered to the latter. In Christian theology they are broadly referred to as the " Fallen Spirits," the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends about them, gathered from Pagan sources. The coluber tortuosus "the tortuous snake," a qualification said to have originated with the Jews, had quite another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it: --among others, a purely astronomical meaning. The " Serpent" fallen from on high, deorsum fluens," was credited with the possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead, rov Oavarav dpxij, to that day, when Jesus saw it " falling like the lightning from heaven," " the Roman Catholic interpretation of cadebat ut fulgur to the contrary, notwithstanding; and it means indeed that even "the devils are subject" to the Logos--who is Wisdom, but who, as the opponent of ignorance, is Satan or Lucifer at the same time. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like lightning on, and quickening the intellects of those who fight the devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the shape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life, humanity--if it can be so called in its animal, senseless state--was of course doomed to moral as well as to physical death. The Angels fallen into generation are referred to metaphor...