Book excerpts

Excerpts of from the Book of Dzan from ‘The Secret Doctrine’ by the occultist Madame H P Blavatsky. It is inferred that this ‘found’ scripture in its verses contains the origins of beings that predated us on the Earth. For all it’s cryptic nature, it reads like larger than life poetry of existence, of Higher Beings that made the Earth into what it is. 

Naturally read with an open mind and a pinch of salt for all errors in translation to our understanding of today. The book itself is worth reading, but presented here are the seamless verses that create a magnificent arc of imagery to ancient divinities :

The Precursor

“Strange noises are heard proceeding from every point. . . . These are the precursors of the Night of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind the thirteenth degree of Makara ( Capricorn sign of the Zodiac). . . . 

Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Surya (the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, and, his task being accomplished, he falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and continues until the future dawn.”

The book of Dzan

Stanza 1

“The Eternal Parent (Space), wrapped in her ever invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration. Universal mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi (celestial beings) to contain (hence to manifest) it. 

The seven ways to bliss (Moksha or Nirvana) were not. The great causes of misery (Nidana and Maya) were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more one, and the Son had not awakened yet for the new wheel and his pilgrimage thereon. 

The seven sublime Lords and the seven Truths had ceased to be, and the Universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grub) to be out-breathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was. 

The causes of existence had been done away with; the visible that was, and the invisible that is, rested in eternal non-being, the one being.

Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that All-Presence which is sensed by the Opened Eye.” 

Stanza 2

Where were the builders, the luminous sons of manvantaric dawn? . . . In the unknown darkness in their Ah-hi (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) Paranishpanna, the producers of form (rupa) from no-form (arupa), the root of the world — the Devamatri and Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-being.

Where was silence? Where were the ears to sense it? No! there was neither silence, nor sound. Naught save ceaseless, eternal breath (Motion) which knows itself not.

The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ; the matri-padma (mother lotus) had not yet swollen.

Her heart had not yet opened for the one ray to enter, thence to fall as three into four in the lap of Maya.

The Seven (Sons) were not yet born from the Web of Light. Darkness alone was Father-Mother, Svabhavat, and Svabhavat was in darkness.

These two are the Germ, and the Germ is — one. The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought and the Divine Bosom. 

— 1: 53-61 

Stanza 3

The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The mother swells, expanding from within without like the bud of the lotus.

The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing (simultaneously) the whole universe, and the germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes (moves) over the slumbering waters of life. 

“Darkness” radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the waters, into the mother deep. The ray shoots through the virgin-egg; the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal (periodical) germ, which condenses into the world egg.

The root of life was in every drop of the ocean of immortality (Amrita) and the ocean was radiant light, which was fire and heat and motion. Darkness vanished and was no more. It disappeared in its own essence, the body of fire and water, of father and mother.

Behold, oh Lanoo! the radiant Child of the two, the unparalleled refulgent Glory, Bright Space, Son of Dark Space, who emerges from the depths of the great Dark Waters. . . . He shines forth as the Sun. He is the blazing Divine Dragon of Wisdom. . . .

Behold him lifting the Veil, and unfurling it from East to West. He shuts out the above and leaves the below to be seen as the great Illusion. He marks the places for the shining ones (stars) and turns the upper (space) into a shoreless Sea of Fire, and the One manifested (element) into the Great Waters…

Father-Mother spin a web whose upper end is fastened to Spirit (Purusha), the light of the one Darkness, and the lower one to Matter (Prakriti) its (the Spirit’s) shadowy end; and this web is the Universe spun out of the two substances made in one, which is Svabhavat. 

— 1: 62-83 

Parts of Stanza 4

Listen, ye Sons of the Earth, to your instructors — the Sons of the Fire. Learn there is neither first nor last; for all is one number, issued from no number.

Learn what we who descend from the Primordial Seven, we, who are born from the Primordial Flame, have learned from our Fathers. 

— 1: 86-8 

Excerpts from the book of Dzan by Helena Blavatsky.