III 18).  Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom “of the right hand,” or occult knowledge); that Prometheus is the brother of Atlas; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus—­the antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning; and that he is also the antetype of Deukalion.  Prometheus is the creator of man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus—­a mountain in Greece—­is chained on a mount in the far-off Caucasus.  From Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance.  The Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on the Atlantean continent—­our Antipodes in a certain sense—­the 5th was generated and developed in Asia. (The ancient Greek geographer Strabo, for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates, Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.) The fable of Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the 4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved partially “for future seed.”  But the origin of the fable antecedes the destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however incredible it may seem.  The seven great continents of the world, spoken of in the Vishnu Purana (B.  II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of course, under another name.  Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms (see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil; and Ilavrita is a portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was but an insignificant remnant.  And now, while every Brahmin will understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more explanations.

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* Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living
man.
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If, in that generally tabooed work, “Isis Unveiled,” the “English F.T.S.” turns to page 589, vol.  I., he may find therein narrated another old Eastern legend.  An island .... (where now the Gobi desert lies) was inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours:  a handful of “Adepts”—­the “Sons of God,” now referred to as the Brahman Pitris; called by another yet synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala.  “Isis Unveiled” may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who know nothing of Occult Sciences.  To the Occultist it is correct, and while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious attempt to let into