The esoteric meaning of fish and the symbolism of the Arc.

Third Root-Race appeared as an entirely new race physiologically. It is this “destruction” which is called allegorically the great “Vaivasvata Manu Deluge,” when the account shows Vaivasvata Manu (or “Humanity”) remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven Rishis “with him.” The allegory is very plain: —

In the Symbolism of every nation, the “Deluge” stands for Chaotic unsettled matter — Chaos itself: and the Water for the feminine principle — the “Great Deep.” As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it — “[[Arche]] (ark) answers to the Hebrew rasit, or Wisdom . . . . and (at the same time) to the emblem of the female generative power, the Arg or Arca, in which the germ of nature (and of mankind) floats or broods on the great Abyss of the waters, during the interval which takes place after every mundane (or racial) cycle.” Ark is also the mystic name of the divine spirit of life which broods over chaos. Now Vishnu is the divine Spirit, as an abstract principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of life — the third person of the Trimurti (composed of Brahma, the Creator, Siva, the Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver). Vishnu is shown in the allegory as guiding, under the form of a fish, the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu clean across the waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric meaning of the word fish. (See Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, etc.) Its theological meanings is phallic, but the metaphysical, divine. Jesus is called the “Fish,” and so were Vishnu and Bacchus: [[Ies]], the “Saviour” of mankind, being but the monogram of the god Bacchus called [[Ichthus]], the fish.* As to the Seven Rishis in the Ark, they symbolised the seven principles, which became complete in man only after he had separated, and become a human, and no longer a divine creature. (See for further details, “The Seventh Manu.”)

Nor have we many details about the submersion of the continent inhabited by the Second Root Race. But the history of the Third, “Lemuria,” is given, as is that of Atlantis, the others being only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene),† and it is during this Deluge also — an actual geological deluge this time — that Vaivasvata Manu is again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind, or a portion of it, the Fourth Race, which is saved); so also he saves the Fifth Race during the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the remnants that perished 850,000 years ago,* after which there was no great submersion until the day of Plato’s Atlantis, or Poseidonis, known to the Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.

It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting. It is of this cataclysm that the old records (See the “Book of Enoch”) say that “the ends of the Earth got loose;” and upon which the legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deukalion and all the tutti quanti of the Elect saved, have been built. Tradition, taking into no account the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both indifferently “deluges.” Yet there is a great difference. The cataclysm which destroyed the huge continent of which Australia is the largest relic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor — the fourth continent — was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial rotation. It began during the earliest tertiary periods, and, continuing for long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis, with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, remained in the annals of history, save in the Sacred records of the East.

Hence, Modern Science denies Atlantis and its existence. It even denies any violent shiftings of the Earth’s axis, and would attribute the reason for the change of climates to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr. Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the effects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are other men of Science, such as Sir H. James (Athenaeum, Aug. 25, 1860), and Sir John Lubbock (ibid), who feel more inclined to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the astronomers are again arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have they not denounced — only to accept it later on whenever the hypothesis became undeniable fact?

How far our figures agree, or rather disagree with modern Science will be seen further in the Addenda to this Book, where the geology and anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the same in Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned in the Secret Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree 

Footnote(s) ———————————————

* Says St. Augustin of Jesus, “For he is a fish that lives in the midst of waters.” Christians called themselves little fishes — pisciculi — in their sacred mysteries. “So many fishes bred in the water, and saved by one great fish,” says Tertullian of the Christians and Christ and the Church.

Footnote(s) ———————————————

* This event, the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and the smaller one Daitya, which occurred 850,000 years ago in the later Pliocene times, must not be confounded with the submersion of the main continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. Geologists cannot place the Miocene only so short a way back as 850,000 years; whatever they do, it is several million years ago that the main Atlantis perished.

Helena Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, Page  313

Source : http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-1-18.htm