Kumāras

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

At the beginning of the process of creation, Brahmā creates the four Kumāras. They are thus described as the first mind-born creations and sons. However, they refuse his order to procreate and instead devote themselves to worship God and celibacy. They are said to wander throughout the universe without any desire but with purpose to teach.

Theosophical view

Kumâra (Sk.). A virgin boy, or young celibate. The first Kumâras are the seven sons of Brahmâ, born out of the limbs of the god, in the so-called ninth creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their formal refusal to “procreate their species”, and so they “remained Yogis”, as the legend says.

After the Earth had been made ready by the lower and more material powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful and multiply,” the higher powers, the Archangels or Dhyanis, were compelled by the evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to construct the crown of its evolution—MAN. Thus the “Self-created” and the “Self-existent” projected their pale shadows; but group the Third, the Fire-Angels, rebelled and refused to join their Fellow Devas. Hindu exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse creating, as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras, “Virgin Youths,” in order to, if possible, anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvana—the final liberation. But, agreeably to esoteric interpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The “Rebels” would not create will-less irresponsible men, as the “obedient” angels did; nor could they endow human beings with only the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for even the latter, belonging to another and a so-much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of a higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on earth—the lowest and most material plane—for one who on that plane, at all events, is inherently perfect and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Man remaining the pale shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real I am that I am, would have been doomed to pass through life on earth as in a heavy dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. Of all the seven great divisions of Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas, there is none with which humanity is more concerned than with the Kumâras. Imprudent are the Christian Theologians who have degraded them into fallen Angels.

It thus becomes clear why the Agnishwatta, devoid of the grosser creative fire, hence unable to create physical man, having no double, or astral body, to project, since they were without any form, are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogis, Kumaras (chaste youths), who became “rebels,” Asuras, fighting and opposing gods,* etc., etc.

“The Kumâras,” explains an esoteric text, “are the Dhyanis, derived immediately from the supreme Principle, who reappear in the Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind.” [Footnote]: They may indeed mark a “special” or extra creation, since it is they who, by incarnating themselves within the senseless human shells of the two first Root-races, and a great portion of the Third Root-race—create, so to speak, a new race: that of thinking, self-conscious and divine men.

In the esoteric teaching, they are the progenitors of the true spiritual SELF in the physical man—the higher Prajâpati, while the Pitris, or lower Prajâpati, are no more than the fathers of the model, or type of his physical form, made “in their image.” Four (and occasionally five) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three Kumâras being secret.

The Exoteric four are: Sanât-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana; and the esoteric three are: Sana, Kapila, and Sanatsujâta.

The Kumâra (in this case an anagram for occult purposes) are five in esotericism, as Yogis—because the last two names have ever been kept secret; they are the fifth order of Brahmadevas, and the five-fold Chohans, having the soul of the five elements in them, Water and Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both aquatic and fiery.

Makara

But very few are those who know—even in India, unless they are initiated—the real mystic connection which seems to exist, as we are told, between the names Makara and Kumâra. The first means some amphibious animal called flippantly ‘crocodile,’ as some Orientalists think, and the second is the title of the great patrons of Yogins (See “Saiva Purânas,”) the Sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Siva); a Kumâra himself. It is through their connection with Man that the Kumâras are likewise connected with the Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara means.

Regarding the symbolic meaning of the term, T. Subba Row wrote:

The letter Ma is equivalent to number five and Kara means hand. Now in Samskrt Tribhuja means a triangle, bhuja or kara (both are synonymous) being understood to mean a [Page 16] side. So, Makara or Pañchakara means a Pentagon.

Mme. Blavatsky adds "the five-pointed star or pentagon representing the five limbs of man" and in a footnote says: "What is the meaning and the reason of this figure? Because, Manas is the fifth principle, and because the pentagon is the symbol of Man—not only of the five-limbed, but rather of the thinking, conscious MAN".