Synopsis Chaldeans, Hierophants of the Aryan Root-Race by : Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Who were those dark-skinned, mysterious Chaldeans? Were they Chaldean Vedas or Vedic Chaldees? The Chaldeans were a pastoral nation and a priestly caste initiated in and entirely devoted to the sciences of Astrology and Magic. They were the aborigines of Western Europe and our distant ancestors — black and far blacker, perchance, than any of those we now look upon as the races to us inferior — the Asiatic Ethiopians! Eusebius declares that the Ethiopians came from India. Arabia was the ancient Ethiopia, and Arabi were placed at the mouth of the Indus, on the western bank. They preceded the Turano-Akkadians, who themselves anticipated the Hamitic nation brought along by Nimrod. Though dark-skinned, the Chaldeans were not necessarily Negroes, nor even Hamites. The dead letter of Chaldean Magic — useless and absurd incantations, ceremonial prayers and talismans — have passed part and parcel under the guise of exorcisms, holy water, ceremonies, pope-blessed amulets, and images of angels and saints, into the Catholic Church. The Chaldeans were a pre-Babylonian Brotherhood of Hierophants from Kashmir, Tibet, Mongolia, Tartary, China, and India. They spread westward, from the plateau of Pamir, cradle of the Elect of humanity’s Fifth Race. Occultism is intimately connected with Chaldean Wisdom, and its records show the forefathers of the Aryan Brahmans at the head of arts and sciences as Astronomers and Seers, confabulating with the stars, and receiving instructions from the concealed deity. Their sanctity of life and great learning made their name for long ages a synonym of Divine Science. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being beyond the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldeans are accused of Sabaeanism and Sun-worship, cults which were simply those of the uneducated masses. Clemens Alexandrinus testifies to the existence of 30,000 additional volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library of the tomb of Ozymandias, over the entrance of which were inscribed the words, “A Cure for the Soul.” Extant fragments of works by Mercury Trismegistus, Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., are rolls that escaped the holocaust of the great Alexandrian Library. More! The writings of the elusive Hermes Trismegistus spring from the same fountain and source: for they are the faithful echo and expression of the most ancient verities. Scattered fragments are being discovered in the sanctuaries of Chaldea, India, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Central Asia. The Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Wisdom-Religion and the trans-Himalayan Esoteric Doctrine are one and the same. The Chaldeans were a hieratic caste of Hindu-Brahmans, now called Aryans; their vernacular language was the Sanskrit of the Vedas; they instructed the Babylonians in the Mysteries and taught them the sacerdotal or Mystery-language which, even today, is used by Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical evocations. The population of Ur of the Chaldeans, where Magism flourished before the days of Abraham, is related with those of Central and North America. The cauldron of Christian Trinity has always been North-East of the Indus River, where the Chaldeans worshipped the trinity of Deus-Lunus manifesting in three phases, and completing the quaternary with the fourth. And since Babylonia was situated on the way of the great stream of the Hindu emigration, its peoples were the first to benefit. The Chaldæan Moon-Worship, however, is likely to mislead the profane student who fails to grasp the esoteric dimensions of archaic symbols. The pioneers of humanity’s Fifth Root-Race, the Aryan, came out of Central Asia. The so-called “Akkadians” were no more a “Turanian” race than any of the modern British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible and yet absent from history. Belonging virtually through their original connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, the old Aeolians were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence in the now submerged continent, but also by intermarriage with them. The classification of ancient nations into Akkadians, Turanians, Semites, etc., is at best arbitrary. The word “Chaldean” does not refer merely to a native or an inhabitant of Chaldea, but to “Chaldeism” itself, the oldest science of Astrology and Occultism. The Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom, “the light which shineth in darkness,” though modern “darkness comprehended it not,” though today’s Parsis know nothing of it now. The Aryan and Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance. The secret doctrine of the Jewish Kabbalists is merely a late offshoot of these, suggests Subba Row. As the Vedas came from the Manasarovara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmans from the far North, the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine is Aryan Chaldeo-Tibetan Universal Wisdom-Religion, confirms Blavatsky. The country called Si-dzang by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fokien, as the great seat of occult learning in archaic ages. Emperor Yu the Great established a system of theocracy, the first one in China to unite ecclesiastical power with temporal authority from Si-dzang. That system was the same as that of the old Egyptians and Chaldees, has existed in the Br?hmanical period in India, and exists now in Tibet. Nebu is an abstract quality personified. It is man’s seventh and highest principle, and the synthetic attribute of Seven Chaldean Gods — the Planetary Spirits. By the powers of goodness in man and nature, the Chaldean Magi performed the most wonderful miracles. Unlike the Roman Catholics, who invented a Devil endowed with a power equalling that of the Supreme Deity, and who allegedly transforms himself into wolves, snakes, and dogs to satisfy his lust and procreate monsters. Chaldean Magic was based upon a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and minerals. It was only when the Theurgist needed divine help in spiritual and earthly matters that he sought direct communication with pure spiritual beings. To dare, to know, to will, and to remain silent, were their constant rules; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were some of their spontaneous impulses. All the discoveries of modern Astronomy were contained within the secret observatories and Initiation Halls of the temples of old India and Egypt. It is in them that the Chaldean made his calculations, revealing to the world of the profane no more than it was fit to receive. Cyprian of Antioch, a penitent sorcerer, had studied in Chaldea the true power of the air, saw the planets as dissimilar as the plants on earth, understood that stars that were like armies ranged in battle order, and learnt the Chaldean division of Ether into 365 parts. The Kabbalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldeans, The Mysteries of the Jews are identical with those of the Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldeans, who got them from the Aryans, from the Atlanteans, and so on, far beyond the misty days of the Fourth Race. The Greeks learned Occult Cosmology from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmans of the Esoteric School. A small tribe of presumably Egyptian runaway slaves obtained their primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions from the Chaldeo-Akkadian account. Their Kabbalistic literature can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud the documents of that literature were always written in a kind of Mystery-language — a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldean Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history, if history it can be called. Hebrew is considered to be a very old language, and yet there exists no trace of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldea. The Hebrew known to the philologists does not date earlier than 500 BC and its characters belong to a far later period still. The original and authentic Gospel of Matthew was written in the Chaldaic language but with Hebrew letters, says Jerome. The Jewish Talmudists and the Christian Fathers borrowed many occult terms, such as Virtue, Iao, Abraxas, etc., from the Chaldeans. In the Chaldean or Jewish Kabbalah, Kosmos is divided into seven worlds: Original, Intelligible, Celestial, Elementary, Lesser (Astral), Infernal (Kama-loka or Hades), and Temporal (of man). The old Chaldeans were a Brotherhood of pre-Babylonian Philosophers and Theurgists. Their knowledge and teachings emerged much later in a caste of learned Kabbalists. To sum up, the Kabbalah of the profane Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldeans. The Chaldean Book of Numbers, now in the possession of some Persian Sufis, is the only key to the real Kabbalah. If Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it was based, he is most likely the author of Genesis and other “scrolls.” When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of Law were called Asideans or Kasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees or Pharsi (Parsis). Following successive Assyrian and Persian colonisations, the early plebeian Israelites (originally Canaanites and Phoenicians) were modified to Asideans and Pharisees, and then to asserters of sacerdotal rule (Sadducees) as contradistinguished from rabbinical. The Pharisees were lenient and intellectual; the Sadducees, bigoted and cruel. With two Appendices, on “The Testimony of Theodas,” and “ Searching for the Lost Word.”
