“For these words that I am writing now, and those which I have written on this subject, are not in any sense my own. They are drawn from the traditions of the lodge of the Great Brotherhood, which was once the secret splendour of Egypt.”
(The Master Hilarion, “Light on The Path” p. 73-74, transcribed by Mabel Collins)

“Out of Egypt have I called my Son.”
(The Gospel of Matthew, 2.15, spoken in regard to Jesus)

“The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages [Note: It does not say “separated from them by ages upon ages” but that they had been separated from them for “ages upon ages”; a subtle but very important difference]; they were themselves descended from an alien race [i.e. an ethnic group foreign from, and not indigenous to, Egypt], and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before [i.e. before “the latest” or very last Atlanteans], but their Initiates had preserved all the records.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 750)

“The Egyptians . . . were remnants . . . of the . . . Ruta Atlanteans. . . . The human Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the knowledge of the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 436)

Who were the Ruta Atlanteans? “For 1,000,000 of years are allowed for our present Root-race (the Fifth),” writes HPB, “and about 850,000 years since the submersion of the last large island (part of the Continent), the Ruta of the Fourth Race, or the Atlanteans; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the glacial period or thereabouts (vide Book II.).” (“The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 650-651) And the last Atlanteans and their comparatively much smaller island – the Atlantis famously written about by Plato and also referred to as Poseidonis – sank around 11,500 years ago.

“The Atlanteans . . . it is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis [i.e. those “latest Atlanteans” mentioned in the first quote], which built the first Pyramids in the country [of Egypt], and that certainly before the advent of the “Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. [Note: According to “The Secret Doctrine,” which provides historical and astronomical references to back this up, the oldest Egyptian pyramids were built around 75,000 years ago.] This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that “there are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost.” These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 429)

There thus seem to be three main stages of Egypt’s history implied in the above passages:

(1) The very earliest, most ancient Egyptians, who were descended from Atlanteans who had lived on the Ruta island of Atlantis which sank around 850,000 years ago. Roughly 450,000 years after that, some of those Ruta-descendants moved to and established themselves in Egypt, or whatever it was called in those days. In “The Secret Doctrine” it is stated numerous times that the survivors of the major Atlantean cataclysm (that of Ruta) had fled to the high peaks of various Central Asian mountain ranges for safety and had stayed in and around those areas for long millennia afterwards. So those very earliest settlers in Egypt presumably went there from Central Asia, and this at a time when Daitya and other parts of Atlantis were still in existence.

(2) At some point, some of the last Atlanteans – those of “Poseidonis” – went to Egypt and began building the pyramids. If this was roughly 75,000 years ago (as suggested above), it was while “Poseidonis” was still in existence and thriving. These Atlantean (or, by this time, Aryo-Atlantean) immigrants to Egypt “had been separated from the . . . earliest Egyptians . . . for ages upon ages.”

(3) The Egyptians of today, who are recognised by science as being descended in varying degrees from the ancient Egyptians, although by “ancient Egyptians” academics mean those of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, rather than any residents of Egypt as long ago as those spoken of in Esoteric Philosophy. The Copts or Coptic Egyptians are generally acknowledged to have the most direct genetic link with the ancient Egyptians. “The Secret Doctrine” makes mention of “the Dendera Zodiac as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek adepts.” (Vol. 2, p. 432)

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In the article Theosophy is ONE with the Christianity of Christ, it was said:

“As students of Theosophy, we would also do well to guard against the mistaken notion that the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood or Eastern Brotherhood in general constitutes the whole of the Great Brotherhood or Great White Lodge of Mahatmas, Adepts, and Initiates. It does not. The Brotherhood is Western as well as Eastern and we must not forget about the Egyptian Lodge, which is closer to us both geographically and in modes of thought than the Eastern. Although the ultimate aim of all branches or divisions of the GREAT LODGE is the same, and although the philosophy they teach is in essence identical, there are many surface differences between them. For striking proof of this, see in the article Find God and Know Yourself the comparison between the thoroughly different views or statements on the subject of God from the Master K.H. of the Trans-Himalayan Lodge and the Master Serapis of the Egyptian Lodge. One can also see there, and in other letters in the series from which those words are excerpted, that the Egyptian Brothers endorse and recommend a practice of praying for other people, whereas HPB and her Trans-Himalayan Teachers famously do not.

“The Master Christ is seen “beyond any doubt, as an Initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries,” says HPB in her article “Traces of The Mysteries.”

“She alludes to this in “The Secret Doctrine” when remarking that “the narrow upward passage leading to the King’s chamber [i.e. in the Great Pyramid at Giza, used for initiatory purposes] had a “narrow gate” indeed; the same “strait gate” which “leadeth unto life,” or the new spiritual re-birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew vii. 13 et seq; and that it is this gate in the Initiation temple, that the writer who recorded the words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking of.” (Vol. 1, p. 318)

“The Master Hilarion, in assuming responsibility for the inner direction and guidance of The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York following Katherine Tingley’s attempt to dissolve the Society in early 1898 (see The Forgotten Theosophical Society), made it privately known via his disciple Genevieve Griscom (or Cavé) that he is part of the Egyptian Lodge, not the Trans-Himalayan, although the two naturally work very closely together. The Master’s Egyptian connection (though Greek-Cypriot himself) was in fact strongly indicated some years before, in two of his books produced through the agency of Mabel Collins: “The Idyll of the White Lotus” and the most celebrated “Light on The Path.””

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With all of the above in mind, these excerpts from “The Katha Upanishad and the Great Initiation” by Charles Johnston (“Theosophical Quarterly” July 1919) may now be more meaningful. In referring to the Rajputs, he means not only the Rajput ethnic group in India (of which H. P. Blavatsky’s Guru the Master Morya is one) but the Kshatriya caste (the kingly, warrior caste) of India in general. Historically, Rajput and Kshatriya were synonymous.

Johnston often contrasts the esoteric knowledge and scriptures of the Brahmins (or Brahmans) such as found in the Vedas, with that of the Kshatriyas, such as found in the Upanishads. He traces this distinction – which highlights the vastly superior occultism and wisdom of the Kshatriyas or Rajaputras (literally “Sons of Kings”) – to differing ancient ethnic origins, these two distinct groups having historically been the possessors and guardians of two different divisions, categories, or aspects of the Secret Doctrine. But in line with what we have discussed above, he recognises – in these passages and on the numerous other occasions when he visited this theme – that the origins of both can ultimately be traced to Central Asia and, before that, to survivors of the Atlantean disaster who had gone there in its wake, as the “seed” of the Fifth Root Race. That is, they can be thus traced by Initiates and students of Esoteric Philosophy; historians and empirical researchers, on the other hand, would consider all this to be fantastical fiction. But while one of these ethnic groups eventually, after long ages, went southwards into what we today call India, the other went to what we nowadays know as Egypt, and only much later relocated from there to India. But let us see how Charles Johnston expresses it:

“The Hymns of the Rig Veda, which were simply rearranged to make up the Sama Veda and the Yajur Veda, belong pre-eminently to the Brahmans, the white race that entered India by the Hindu Kush passes, descending from Central Asia where they had dwelt for ages, in close contact with the ancestors of the Chinese and Babylonians. The Upanishads have their origin in quite another source: they were handed down among the red Rajputs, as an immemorial teaching, of which Krishna speaks thus in the Bhagavad Gita [Ch. 4]:

“”This imperishable teaching of union I declared to the Solar lord. The Solar lord imparted it to Manu, and Manu told it to Ikshvaku. Thus the Rajanya sages knew it, handed down from Master to disciple. This teaching of union has been lost in the world through long lapse of time, O consumer of the foe. This same immemorial teaching of union I have declared to thee to-day; for thou art my beloved, my companion; and this secret doctrine is the most excellent treasure.”

“The stock of the red Rajputs was not Asiatic but Egyptian. From Egypt, they came to Western India, bringing with them the holy knowledge of the occult schools which, as a Master of the Egyptian Lodge has said, “were the secret splendour of Egypt.” This very truth is contained in the sentences quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, for the Solar lord is Ra, the Logos, the Sun God of Egypt. Manu is the genius of the older Egyptian race, the race which came from Atlantis, in the period of its submergence, and for this reason Manu is the central figure of the Indian tradition of the Deluge. Ikshvaku is the leader and founder of the Rajanya race in India, through whom, as King Initiate, the occult wisdom was handed down.

“In this way was founded the Lodge of Masters in India, which, therefore, drew its occult knowledge from Egypt. It is true that the White Brahmans, who entered India from the Central Asian tableland (whither they had fled from Atlantis ages earlier), were in possession of secret wisdom, embodied in the mantras which were afterwards collected in the ten Circles of the Rig Veda. But, while they had the casket, they had lost the key. This key was restored to them by the red Rajanya sages, who had brought it with them from the occult schools of Egypt.

“The secret wisdom of Egypt, thus brought to India by the Rajanya or Rajput race, had two forms; or, perhaps, it would be truer to say that it had a living soul and an outer vesture. The living soul was the actual process of the Great Initiation, with the complete practical training leading up to it; the vesture was the ritual of Initiation, the form of that august ceremony, together with the body of teachings of the Lesser Mysteries. Both were perpetuated in the Indian Lodge, which the red race from Egypt then formed. And while the soul of this Indian occult school was withdrawn, after the lapse of millenniums, to the heart of the Himalaya mountains, the outer vesture remains in India today.

“”The Upanishads contain all wisdom,” a Master has said, as recorded in The Secret Doctrine, “they no longer reveal it.” The Upanishads are, in fact, in their most vital part, the very ritual of Initiation brought from Egypt, and later translated into Sanskrit. They embody both the Greater and the Lesser Mysteries, and much of their substance is cast in the form of dialogues between Guru and Chela, between Master and disciple, or disciples.”

As H. P. Blavatsky (the aunt of Charles Johnston, via the latter’s marriage to HPB’s niece Vera) observes:

“The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. . . . The “Kshatriya Kings” were in the olden times, like the King-Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors – the Dhyâni Buddhas or Kumâras. There was a time, æons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one “lip”, one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments.” (“The Theosophical Glossary” p. 353-354, Entry for “Upanishad”)

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