The reasons for the Flood are given in the Apocrypha as follows:
Owing to three things came the flood upon the earth, namely, owing to the fornication wherein the Watchers against the law of their ordinances went a-whoring after the daughters of men, and took themselves wives of all which they chose and they made the beginning of uncleanness — And everyone sold himself to work iniquity and to shed much blood.— After this they sinned against beasts and birds and much blood was shed on the earth.
In describing the destruction that overtook the Earth at this time, Enoch states that it was due to the discovery of hidden secrets. Corruption followed, whereupon the "earth labored and was shaken violently." He states, furthermore, that Noah saw the Earth incline as it approached its destruction. Plutarch, the Greek moralist, makes a similar statement, declaring that the Earth was bent and inclined to the south-which occultism ascribes to Yama, the God of the Dead. Plato's references to this subject are also in agreement with the above, and in conformity with the Teachings of the Grecian Mysteries.
The Earth is a vehicle of life and consciousness even as is our physical body. It has a nervous organization and psychic centers of force. The North and South Poles correspond to the two poles of spirit in man, the masculine and the feminine. One of these poles, or principles, fell in man, in consequence of which it later fell in the body of the Earth. Man holds the key to the progression or retrogression of both himself and the planet on which he dwells. Thought is the power with which he works. It shapes outer conditions in conformity with inner. Hence, the profound truth of Shakespeare's simple statement, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Bad thinking was the author of general disaster. Spiritual knowledge was perverted. The wisdom of the Mysteries was withdrawn. Man lived, not in obedience to the dictates of his spiritual nature, but after the lusts of the flesh. He fell into gross practices until nature, outraged, reacted in destructive upheavals that put an end to the evil imaginings of a humanity that had lost its way in wickedness.
In its more virtuous days humanity was in possession of wide knowledge concerning the finer forces in nature. It knew about the varying magnetic conditions in and on the Earth, and disposed itself accordingly. It knew the alchemical secrets by which it could transform base metals into gold. It was capable of prolonging life by tapping the fountain of youth, and it possessed magical powers with which it could hurl rays of death and destruction upon its enemies. But its high knowledge and power were diverted from their rightful use with the result that they reacted destructively on the whole. The Fall of man reached a depth where the very planet tilted over as if in sympathetic shame. The land areas fell beneath the flood waters, there to undergo a cleansing by the salt seas for long ages to come.
The inclination of the axis of the Earth is spoken of by occultists as the fall of the feminine pole of the planetary body. The alteration in the position of the Earth literally shut off the inflow of spiritual forces that had hitherto entered freely into the planetary atmosphere. The "squaring of the circle," one of the problems propounded in ancient Mystery Schools, deals with truths regarding this planetary event. How wise the masonic injunction, "Brother, study nature, for it bears the impress of divinity!"
When man arises from his Fall and re-establishes equilibrium between the two poles of spirit within him, the Earth will be restored to its former "upright" position. Then the prophetic promise of a new heaven and a new earth will be fulfilled.
The story of the Flood is one of many versions contained in various mythologies and religious Scriptures relating to the destruction of the continent of Atlantis by water, and the virtual disappearance of the civilization that had developed thereon. Destruction did not overtake the Earth and its inhabitants in a single brief catastrophe. It extended over a vast period of time. One Epoch, race, or civilization merges gradually into the next. Atlantis disappeared in four major cataclysmic submergences, the first of these occurring nearly a million years ago; the last not so many thousands of years ago, when the Island of Poseidon sank beneath the waves — as told by Egyptian priests to Plato, who incorporated the report in his writings and thereby made a substantial contribution toward bridging the gap between legend and history.
Atlantis belonged to the Fourth Epoch of the Earth Period. It was the fourth continent whereon developed the Fourth Root Race of the present Period. A remnant of Atlantis was saved. That remnant, from which the next or post-Atlantean, Fifth Epoch Race was developed, is represented in the Bible by Noah and his family. They were among the righteous, and the righteous ride out storms of iniquity and enter safely into quiet harbors of unchanging truths and into new lands of golden opportunities for progressing on the path to perfection.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was a just man, perfect in his generations and one who walked with God. Such was the Lord's own estimate of Noah.... As for the rest of humanity, it was corrupt. Violence filled the Earth. And God said unto Noah, "The end of all flesh is come before me; ... behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark ... And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it." Then follows a detailed description of the vehicle by which the God-fearing man and his near of kin were able to make the transition from a world of corruption into a new world where life was to be nourished into more abundant growth.
Symbolically, the ark is the soul body. It is the higher principles evolved to a point where they enable the spirit to go forward and function in progressively changing conditions as these are ushered in by the Creative Hierarchies according to the preordained plan of the God of our system. In spiritual symbology a boat, in one form or another, is quite universally used with this significance. In the early Mystery Schools, for instance, priests carried lamps in the form of a boat. Isis, a goddess of Egypt, found the body of Osiris in an ark. The body of that sacred character was said to have resembled a man except that it lacked the organs of generation. These were said to have been eaten by a fish, symbol of the Initiate, or, in other words, the powers of the body had been absorbed by the spirit. It was these powers which, in this instance, were symbolized by the ark. The same significance is attached to the Hebrew word "Ani," since it means both ship and me-myself, the eternal identity within.
The deeper mystical aspects associated with the ark are touched upon by Albert Pike in Morals and Dogma. He writes: "The first principle of the Brazen Sea is Rain Water; from this comes salt which must undergo a sevenfold purification. Then sulphur or purest gold is extracted to which must then be added the purified or celestial salt. These are then placed in a vessel in the form of a ship and must, like Noah's Ark, stay afloat one hundred and fifty days."
In his volume, Man, Myth, and Monster, Professor Edgar Daque, a noted German paleontologist, identifies Noah with the pioneer race which advanced out of a primitive state into a new and more favorable environment for the unfoldment of added capacities. "Man's historic age," says he, "was about to dawn." Then, dealing with those who laid its foundations, he adds, "Noah's Ark is nothing but the very body of the Noah people themselves." Here academic science is writing in the very phraseology of the spiritual scientist. The ark does represent the pioneer, or initiate body, of the Fifth Root Race.
Professor Dacque, it is interesting to note, maintains that there is a universal truth underlying the fundamental elements of mythology, religion and science. He believes, in common with occultists whose beliefs are based on first-hand investigation in the Memory of Nature, that the hoary myths of the past, both sacred and profane, are records of actual events or conditions which have been transmitted to us from prehistoric times through super-individuals and impressed on the subconscious memory of the race. He continues: "They are records impressed on man's dawning consciousness by terrible and cataclysmic experiences, often personified by strange gods and heroes, probably misunderstood by the first humans who reduced it to writing, but essentially true in its inner and original meanings. The description and picture of these myths with their giants and dragons, their superhuman feats and magic, and their strange astronomic events, have had startlingly exact counterparts in prehistoric nature as discovered by modem science. These myths are found to be weirdly accurate."
When the above truths are fully grasped by an earnest student, new doors open to the great Hall of Learning. The sacred truths of the Bible will not be lost to him even if this Textbook of Life be read only as a myth. In that aspect also it will be found to contain the story of man's primitive beginnings, present development and future destiny. When interpreted aright, religion, science and history unite to testify to identical truths.
Noah, like Adam, is a generic term referring to pioneers of Atlantis who made the evolutionary grade and entered into the new land of the current Fifth Epoch, scene for the civilization succeeding the one that suffered destruction. We mean the land areas occupied by the pioneering post-Atlantean race of today. The earliest migrations from doomed Atlantis — which occupied the area now covered by the Atlantic Ocean — went eastward into what is now the Gobi desert. There the new race was cradled; from there went forth migrations that have since developed into the successive subraces of the present post-Atlantean or Fifth Root Race. Conclusions of ethnologists and anthropologists are in virtual agreement with the teachings of occult science in this matter.
The earliest migrations were led by Initiate-Priests who, in their great wisdom, knew what was about to overtake a corrupted people. They gave repeated warnings to the multitude that destruction was their inevitable end unless they repented of their evil ways; at the same time beseeching all who would listen to depart, not only from evil practices but from an environment inimical to their progress. Such Initiates led the way to both spiritual and physical safety.
When leaving Atlantis, these Initiate Leaders carried with them the esoteric teachings of the Atlantean Mystery Schools. These were perpetuated in Egyptian, Chinese and East Indian Schools of Initiation. The Ancient Wisdom has never been completely obliterated from the world. While it has not always been alive in the consciousness of the race as a whole, it has always existed among a few, and has been available in secure retreats where a qualified seeker would never fail to find the light needful for his further advance on the Path.
The story of the rise, fall and destruction of Atlantis may be read in the stars. The successive steps, as enumerated, occurred in successive cycles of time and under conditions which were recapitulated in lesser cycles described in the Sun's passage by precession through the signs of Cancer, Gemini and Taurus.
Similarly, the story of the past, present and future of the post-Atlantean, or Fifth Root Race may be read in the precessional cycles of Aries, extends over only three cycles of approximately two thousand years each, but that these small cycles exhibit the fundamental qualities and characteristics belonging to the larger series of ever expanding cycles of which they are a part.
In identifying Aries, for instance, with the beginning of post-Atlantean civilization, we deal first with the time when the Sun last passed through this sign by precession. That was the two-thousand-year period preceding the advent of Christ. It was the age of patriarchal shepherds (Aries) and culminated in the appearance of the Christ, the Lamb of God (Aries). This marked a new and fundamental departure in the development of the Fifth Root Race and its religion. It was an historical occurrence similar to what had happened before in prehistoric post-Atlantean times when the solar system was passing through Aries. The note of Aries was then sounded as the keynote for the Fifth Root Race throughout the Great Sidereal Year that followed. That year, wherein the Sun passes by precession through the entire zodiacal circle of twelve signs, is approximately 26,000 solar years in duration. Embracing this Sidereal Year are other cycles of greater duration. Through them all the keynote of Aries is dominant for the entire period of the present Fifth Epoch.
According to Max Heindel, preparation for the Christian religion was begun about 13,000 B. C., when the religious impulses then released into the race consciousness unfolded in varying phases as the Sun passed through Virgo, Leo and Cancer. The Sun's passage through the watery sign of Cancer about 8,000 B.C. was approximately the time when the last of Atlantis disappeared beneath the ocean, as recorded by Plato. Then followed further preparatory work under Gemini and Taurus. With Aries the Christian religion was given to the world; and for the Great Sidereal Year that follows, Aries, sign of the Lamb, set the keynote of the evolving Christ or Western Wisdom religion.
From this we see that the Christian religion is only in its infancy. Admittedly, practice falls short of profession. Yet that does not necessarily constitute failure. Far from being a failure, it is simply a case of its reach being beyond our grasp. Its inherent powers are capable of carrying us onward and upward for ages yet to come. Its culmination will elevate us to heights undivined in man's noblest dreams.
Physical science has emphasized nature's apparent indifference to the safety of individual forms, but its obvious concern is for the maintenance of species. This is a reflection in nature of a higher truth of spirit. The love of God was not contradicted by a sweeping destruction that blotted out the physical bodies of men and beasts in a flood that covered all the Earth. Only forms perished. Life survived. The all-important consideration is not the preservation of the form but the progress of the spirit. Spiritual values persist. These are directed by Divine Mind toward the perfect pattern which exists in the heaven world, and into the likeness of which they are one day to be fashioned. The pairs of all living creatures that Noah was commanded to take into the Ark refer to the archetypal patterns that are safely sheltered within the spiritual sphere, and from which new forms will spring forth to accommodate ever-progressing life. These patterns carry over from one age to another; no external catastrophe can affect them. They belong to the indestructible order of things.
The clean beasts were taken by sevens; the unclean by two. Two expresses itself on the physical plane in generation by means of the two sexes; on the spiritual plane it manifests as the two poles of spirit in polarity or union. Seven embraces the number three of spirit and the number four of matter. It is the number of transmutation. The process of bodily purification is sevenfold. Since this is the Great Work before humanity, and since the Bible is man's textbook, it is not surprising that the number seven appears so frequently throughout its pages. It occurs repeatedly in the story of the Flood. The Lord announced that in seven days He would cause it to rain. It began on the seventh day, and on the seventeenth (10 plus 7) day of the seventh month the Ark rested on Mount Ararat.
The Flood rains were upon the Earth forty days and forty nights. Herein occurs another number carrying a significance that can scarcely be missed by even the more casual student of the Bible. It is four raised to a higher power. It is the "four square" on which a superstructure can be erected. It provides a foundation for further building. It signifies preparation.
The forty-day Flood was preparatory to a new world in which a new race and a new civilization might arise. The forty years of wandering in the wilderness has an identical significance. Noah's forty-day passage from Atlantis to the current Fifth Epoch corresponds to Moses' forty-year journey from Egypt to Canaan. Both Noah and Moses escaped from symbolical lands of darkness. The Pharaoh of Egypt parallels the black magicians of Atlantis. They held their people captive, and the parallel extends to the end. Noah and his family, like Moses and his people, entered into a Promised Land that the Lord had provided for those who loved His ways and sought to obey His commandments. The stories of the Flood and of Exodus are but variations of the same historical facts in nature and alchemical processes in man. It is because they deal with identical things in different ways that confusion sometimes arises when students attempt to place events in their proper historical sequence.
As in the past, so today. Similar processes are at work leading man forward to new attainments. Evolution is a spiral; on each successive level there is a recapitulation of previous levels. As in Atlantis and Egypt, so in the closing days of another cycle. The worthy shall again be separated from the unworthy, the pioneers from the stragglers. Another Promised Land lies ahead, and the greatest of all teachers leads the way. That land is Aquaria, and before its Leader every knee shall bow. This is the land of brotherhood (Aquarius) governed by the law of love (Leo). In this land the Tree of Life is, in the words of Jacob Boehme, "rooted no farther down in the body than the heart, while its branches encircle the larynx and the head." Thus humanity climbs from day to day and age to age the cosmic spiral of attainment that reaches upward to self-conscious union with God.
— Corinne Heline
