IN CONSIDERING planetary evolution, we must form some idea of the Hierarchy of Powers engaged in the Cosmic Drama.

The Sages of old enthroned their gods upon Fire and Light, because these forces are the elements. Let us try to enumerate them from below upwards, in the ascending order of the human intelligence. We shall next see them acting from above downwards, in the descending order of creation.

The Old Testament sums up the Hierarchy of Powers, which are the divine faculties in action, in the dream of Jacob, who saw the angels descending and ascending the ladder of the universe. This dream represented symbolically the Hierarchy of the invisible world which animates and sustains the visible world. Esoterically interpreted, it reveals knowledge more profound than that obtained from our microscopes and telescopes.

Mount the steps of matter, and you find Spirit. Mount the steps of human consciousness, and you find God. Just as there exist, above the four elements, other elements more subtle, so above the four kingdoms of visible nature—mineral, vegetable, animal, human—there exist other kingdoms corresponding to the different states of imponderable matter.

These are the spheres of the Devas and Asuras of India, identical with the Elohim of Moses; and the Greek Gods were the anthropomorphic forms of the same. The esoteric Christian tradition, which can be traced back to Dionysius the Areopagite, divides them into nine categories, arranged in groups of three, and forming an organic whole.

Above man—as all prophets have said, and all peoples have believed—there are the Angels, the Ferohers of the Persians, the Genii of the Latins, who have sometimes been identified with the </WRAP>

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