is not the “righteousness of saints,”(537) but rather the blood of the saints she has “slain upon the earth.”(538) Thus the remark made by the great Initiate, in _Luke_—referring allegorically to the ray of enlightenment and reason, _falling like lightning_ from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom‐Religion, then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)—was distorted out of all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in with one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological dogmas. But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan—in all the dogmatic horror of that fiction—other nationalities and religions have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct meaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the semi‐esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindûism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The _Purânas_ teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, to all those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have _to be born in every age_—to reïncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent to saying that the “Flames” born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary Law, had—without any gradual transition—landed on this Earth, after having, as in _Pymander_, broken through the “Seven Circles of Fire,” or, in short, the seven intermediate Worlds. There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re‐births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from reïncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons—by the highest and the earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these “Gods” to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The Gods who had “_fallen_ into generation,” whose mission it was to complete _Divine_ Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended by these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)