THE NEW RACE

Who has never heard of Komainu? Located at the entrance to places of worship, these statues of dogs and lions are emblematic of the Japanese landscape. They are found not only in Buddhist temples, but also in some Shinto shrines to protect the deity that hosts them. His mission? Drive back the evil spirits and thus preserve the tranquility of the place they watch over! An important function, which the Komainu actually inherited from the Shishi, their ancestors from China... Shishi's descendants Appearing during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) when the Persian Empire offered a royal lion to the Chinese Empire, Shishi are stone statues modeled after the king of animals. The emperor defeated by the force of the Persian cat, the latter decided to make stone replicas of them to place them in front of Buddhist temples and the houses of nobles as protection. The statues were then installed in pairs: the woman on the left of the entrance with a lion cub under her paw to symbolize education, and the man on the right with a globe to represent political power, two notions in which the middle empire based its omnipotence on at that time. Shishi pairings flourished in China for decades before reaching Japanese shores. And it was only during the fifth century that lion statues reached the land of the rising sun. Then they will be readapted to the taste of the Japanese to give birth to the Komainu, these guardians half dog half lion. Although the Japanese Guardians are direct descendants of the Shishi, they differ from their elders in many ways. Unlike Chinese mind guardians that are made of bronze or stone, Japanese statues are initially carved from wood. A manufacturing difference that means that they are not in front of the rods, but inside them so that they do not suffer damage from the weather. Their arrangement is also different there as the two statues do not have the same appearance: one of them represents a horned lion, while the other takes the appearance of a half-dog half-lion animal that we call "Komainu". This cult of difference, Japanese statues will continue to be cultivated over time. And in the 14th century, Japanese statues continue to evolve to completely emancipate themselves from the Shishi model. Now they are carved in stone, which allows them to find their original place at the entrance of places of worship, and they become more harmonious by showing a unique design: that of Komainu. The only difference that will remain between the two goalkeepers? His mouth of him! In fact, the goalkeeper on the left has his mouth closed while his partner on the right keeps his mouth open. Difference that is actually explained in the function given to the guardians, since the first statue would close its mouth to emit the sound "um" (which in Sanskrit designates death) while the second would keep it open to pronounce the sound "a " (referring to the first breath of life). Together, they would thus form the sound "aum" which is also found in monastic chants during the reading of the sutras, and which would allow them to protect the place. Towards increasingly original designs? Since the Edo period (1603-1868), some Shinto shrines have also adopted Komainu. This is particularly the case at Inari shrines, where foxes have completely replaced lion-dogs. Equipped with a ball and a sutra respectively to symbolize the world and education like their Shishi ancestors, Inari's guardians take the form of the deity they protect. A clever way to pay homage to the harvest deity, which also allows them to stand out from the statues in Buddhist temples. In fact, most of the Shinto shrines equipped with guardians have been original! And from tigers to horses to wild boars, you can find plenty of unusual statues at the torii entrance. Like Tokyo's Hie-jinja Shrine (Nagatachō), for example, which chose an unusual animal as its guardian: the monkey! In total there are seven races and we are about to finish the fifth race. Admitted the sevenfold nature of man, each of its principals is related to a plane, a planet and a race. Human races are born from one another, they grow, develop, age and die. The subraces follow the same rule. Each Mother-Race, with its corresponding sub-races and innumerable subdivisions into families and tribes, is entirely different from the Race that precedes it and from the one that follows it. Each of the seven Races, as well as the smallest division of them, is divided into four ages: golden, silver, bronze and iron. Of the seven Races, five have already appeared and have almost completed their terrestrial chain; and two others have yet to appear in this Round. Our fifth Mother-Race has already existed as a sui generis Race and completely independent of its parent-stem, for a million years; from which it may be inferred that each of its four preceding sub-races has lived about 210,000 years; thus, each race-family has an average existence of about 30,000 years; and so too the European race-family is still quite thousands of years old, even though the nations, or innumerable thorns in it, vary with each successive "season" of three or four thousand years. (Sec. Doct., II, 453, 454). The fifth Race (the Aryan) is the one that currently follows its course on our globe, coexisting with a large part of the fourth Race (constituted by the Tatars, Chinese and Mongols), and with some remnants of the third (aboriginals of Australia). and Hottentots). -The course of the human Races corresponds to the great periods of involution or descent, of equilibrium and of evolution or ascent. (See: Planetary chain). In the period of involution, or descent, the first three Races were developed; in that of equilibrium the fourth Race developed, and the period of evolution or ascent corresponds to the fifth, sixth and seventh Races. (Sec. Doct., passim). First Race.- It appeared under the protection of the Sun (or rather Uranus, which mystically represents it). Because consciousness resides in the âtmic plane, these forms were called the Race of the Gods, children of Yoga, (because the Pitris emanated their shadows (chhâyâs) while they were delivered to meditation), and born of themselves, because they were not born. procreated human parents. They are enormous, filamentous, protean, and ethereal forms, sexless bhûtas, exuding from the ethereal bodies of their progenitors. These beings could stand still, walk, run, fly; yet they were but a chhâyâ, a callous shadow, endowed only with rudimentary hearing and a vague awareness of fire. This Race reproduced by excision or budding; the individual grew, increased in size, and then divided into two equal halves, at first, and in its later stages into unequal portions, from which smaller beings emanated, which in turn grew and gave rise to new offspring. In this first Race there was no first definite sub-race, although we can indicate seven stages of development or evolutionary changes. None of these beings could die, "neither fire nor water could destroy them." Fire was his element. -This Race resided on the first mainland that appeared on the globe, the peak of Mount Meru, the extreme of the North Pole, the beginning of the imperishable Sacred Land, the land of the devas, also called Zvetadvîpa, the White Island or Earth. central, whose climate was like that of a delicious spring. This land is to be successively the cradle of every human Race under the Empire of Dhruva, the Lord of the Pole Star, to whatever point it may turn after his birth. Second Race.- He was born under the influence of the planet Jupiter (Brihaspati). The spirits of Nature or inferior devas conglomerated around the chhâyâs (shadows) films of denser matter, forming a kind of dense external envelope, and the exterior (the chhâyâ) of the first Race became the interior (the double ethereal) of the second. These filamentary forms, brightly colored (golden yellow, orange, etc.), heterogeneous in appearance, diverse in shape, resembled vegetables or animals, and often had semi-human outlines. They floated in space, they climbed, they slid from here to there, and they called to each other with flute sounds. The consciousness of the Monad in this Race responds weakly to the buddhic consciousness. It acquires a new sense, that of touch, thus responding to the impressions of air and fire. This Race offered two main types of reproduction: by expansion and budding (sexual generation), and by means of sweat with signs of sexuality, for which reason its individuals were given the name of latent androgynous. This Race came to reside in the second Continent, called Hyperborean or Plakcha, which occupied present-day northern Asia, together with Greenland and the Kamschatka peninsula. There are a number of Mesopotamian royal stories, legends, prayers and inscriptions in which Enki plays an important role. He is famous for works related to Ninhursag (Ninmah), such as Enki and Ninhursag, and Enki and Ninmah, both related to the creation of the world and humanity.