Theos-Talk Archives (September 1996 Message tt00018)

> Regarding your thoughts about the races. In the Stanzas; the
> first race is in the preparing step to descend to the three
> worlds of person evolution, when you read the third Stanza with
> the name of Ymir.

Sveinn:

I'd like to continue to use the Voluspa I got from UCLA's library
for awhile, even if there is a conflict. I think this makes it
rather fascinating, don't you?

I'd like to say that when I compare the verses following the
mention of Ymir with the verses following the mention of "The
High Gods gathered in council," I get something closer to the
order of the Cosmogenesis in THE SECRET DOCTRINE with Ymir, while
the verse of the council definitely reminds me of a passage found
in the first few pages of Anthropogenesis.

Continuing on with the verses:

> When Ymir lived long ago
> Was no sand or sea, no surging waves,
> Nowhere was there earth nor heaven above,
> But a grinning gap and grass nowhere.
>
> The Sons of Bur then built up the lands,
> Moulded in magnificence Middle-Earth:
> Sun stared from the south on the stones of their hall,
> From the ground there sprouted green leeks.
>
> Sun turned from the south, Sister of Moon,
> Her right arm rested on the rim of Heaven;
> She had no inkling where her hall was,
> Nor moon a notion of what might he had,
> The planets knew not where their places were.
>
> The High Gods gathered in council
> In their Hall of Judgement, all the rulers:
> To Night and to Nightfall their names gave,
> The morning they named and the Mid-Day,
> Mid-Winter, Mid-Summer, for the assigning of years.

On p. 58-60 in Stanza II, Sloka 7's HPB's commentary on the
ancient catechism (commentary) of the SD there is first a
reference to the Vishnu Purana:

> In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsna (dawn), Ratri (night), Ahan
> (day) and Samdhya (evening twilight), are the four bodies of
> Bahma." and then "As Parasara explains it, when Brahma wants to
> create the world anew and construct progeny through his will, in
> the fourfold condition (or the four orders of beings), termed
> gods (Dhyani-Chohans), Demons (i.e., more material Devas),
> Progenitors (Pitris) and men, "he collects Yoga-like (Yuyuje) his
> mind.

She says later:

> Every ancient theogony without exception - from the Aryan and the
> Egyptian down to that of Hesiod - places, in the order of
> Cosmogonical evolution, Night before the Day; even Genesis....

It continues to describe how in each creation, Brahma assumes a
certain form and then casts off that form in order to take the
next one. The last of the sequence of four (like the four
directions in space or the four times in the day) is considered
the "Pitris, the progenitors of men, because, as the text
explains, "Brahma thought of himself [during the process] as the
father of the world.""

Anyway I really loved this part of Stanza II because it went into
some detail describing the four classes of beings which here in
theVOLUSPA we see only symbolically as "night, nightfall,
morning, and mid-day." This is slightly different from the order
in the SD of "night, day, dawn, and evening twilight," which
isn't the exact order of the VISHNU PURANA version either. It
doesn't progress like normal time, but as a cross might be
formed.

Did HPB put this in Stanza II of Anthropogenesis because it is a
necessity when unfolding the story of man's time on earth?