In the _Zend Avesta_ the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows _Intelligence_”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as _sevenfold_. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow _Intelligence_,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country. Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.(212) The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who _refuse to create_, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the _orthodox_ Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become _A_‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are _cursed_ by Brahmâ to be _born as men_. They are hurled _down to Earth_, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the _Infernal_ Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial _illusive_ life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐ sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through _self‐conscious_ efforts; and it is these worshippers of _form_ who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.