customs and traditions that continue to be among them the themes for useless controversies.
The twelve scallops which surround the outer circle are the twelve houses or resting-places of the sun; that is, the twelve months of the solar year, or twelve signs of the zodiac. As to the four double rays, those nearest to the houses of the sun typify the primordial Four, direct emanations from the central sun—the four Heavenly Giants who helped in fashioning the material universe. The lower ones symbolize the four primordial substances known to modern scientists as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, whose various combinations form the four primitive elements—fire, water, air, and earth—into which these can again be resolved.
In the Appendix the esoteric explanation of the diagram is presented as it was given by the Maya sages to their pupils in the secrecy of the mysterious recesses of their temples. It corresponds precisely to the doctrine of the cosmic evolution contained in that ancient Sanscrit book of "Dzyan," which forms the groundwork of Madame H. P. Blavatsky's "The Secret Doctrine."[1]
The Maya colonists who carried their conceptions of cosmic evolution to India, fearing lest the meaning of this diagram, purposely made so simple by the wise men in their mother country, should not be sufficiently intelligible to the new ini-
- ↑ H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 27–35. "Is it a mere coincidence that the name Dzyan of the archaic Indian MS., whose translation, with commentaries, Madame Blavatsky gave to the world, is a pure Maya word? To write it according to the accepted manner of writing Maya, we must replace the double consonant dz by its equivalent ɔ. We then have the word ɔian, which means "to be swollen by fire." In the book Dzyan, stanza iii., § 1, we read: "The mother swells, extending from within without, like the bud of the lotus;" … and § 9: "Light is cold flame, and flame is fire, and fire produces heat, which yields water; the water of life in the great mother." …
