14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators are perplexed how to create a _thinking_ man. 17. What is needed for the formation of a perfect Man. 14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL‐BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE‐GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE. They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors _breathed_ out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly‐created Men, were the “shadows of the Shadows.” With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his _left side_, can fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a _birth_? If there are in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose _incorporeal_ essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of _nothing_, according to the dead letter of _Genesis_, or a first man born from a fantastic link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the “true ape.”(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in.