Sacred Animals

The idea of Sacred Animals is present in all religious traditions in the world.

According to Mme. Blavatsky there are different keys to interpret their meaning. In a general sense, the sacred animals may refer to some universal archetypes (prototypes):

As explained, the “sacred animals” and the Flames or “Sparks” within the “Holy Four” refer to the prototypes of all that is found in the Universe in the Divine Thought, in the ROOT, which is the perfect cube, or the foundation of the Kosmos collectively and individually. They have all an occult reference to primordial Cosmic forms and its first concretions, work, and evolution.

When talking about the process of cosmic evolution, they represent the development of consciousness and the germs of animal life:

That which is meant by “animals,” in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness or of apperception . . . It is Archibiosis, or life-origination—“origination,” so far, of course, as the manifestation of life on all the seven planes is concerned . . . Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of the Dhyan Chohan of the third group or hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation, before those “gods” can become rûpa (embodied in their first ethereal form), so animal creation has to precede, for that same reason, divine MAN on earth. And this is why we find in the Purânas: “The fifth, the Tairyagyonya creation, was that of animals, and—
(VI). The Urdhvasrotas creation, or that of divinities (Vishnu Purâna Book I. chap. i).

The esoteric meaning of the expression “animals” is the germs of all animal life including man. Man is called a sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the only one among animal creation who sacrifices to the gods.

This connection between the sacred animals and the angels can also be found in the Kabbalah:

The “Sacred Animals” are found in the Bible as well as in the Kabala, and they have their meaning (a very profound one, too) on the page of the origins of Life. In the Sepher Jezirah it is stated that “God engraved in the Holy Four the throne of his glory, the Ophanim (Wheels or the World-Spheres), the Seraphim, the Sacred Animals, and the ministering angels.

From the "astronomical key" the Sacred Animals represent "the signs of the Zodiac".

Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for instance, the dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected the sacred animals. The Evangelical zoolatry—the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Angel (in reality the Cherub, or Seraph, the fiery-winged Serpent), is as much pagan as that of the Egyptians or the Chaldeans. These four animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four elements, and of the four lower principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond physically and materially to the four constellations that form, so to speak, the suite or cortège of the Solar God, and occupy during the winter solstice the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These four “animals” may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments where the portraits of the evangelists are given. They are the animals of Ezekiel’s Mercabah.

This order of evolution is found also in Genesis (ch. 1 and 2) if one reads it in its true esoteric sense, for chapter i. contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to that moment when Man is called to conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In the first chapter, animals, whales and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam* (* An allegorical reference to the “Sacred Animals” of the Zodiac and other heavenly bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals.) In the second, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him.

(V.) The Tiryaksrotas (or Tairyagyonya) creation, that of the “(sacred) animals,” corresponding only on Earth, to the dumb animal creation. That which is meant by “animals,” in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness or of apperception, that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic monera. On our globe, during the first round, animal “creation” precedes that of man, while the former (or mammal) evolves from the latter in our fourth round—on the physical plane: in Round I. the animal atoms are drawn into a cohesion of human physical form; while in Round IV. the reverse occurs according to magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is metempsychosis (See “Mineral Monad” in “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 276). This fifth stage of evolution, called exoterically “Creation,” may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary periods, one as the Spiritual and Cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial.