Book excerpt: Genesis is a purely symbolical and kabbalistic volume. It can neither be understood nor appreciated, if judged on the mistranslations and misinterpretations of its Christian remodellers. The Elohistic portion of Genesis is charged with the great zoological blunder of placing the evolution of the birds before the reptiles. Man was the first living being to appear on earth, all the animal world coming after him. By correlating colour, sound, form, number, and substance, the trained will of the Initiate rules and uses the denizens of the elemental world. The first wave of Humanity was fashioned not from earth, but from invisible Essence. So Man was born according to the image and likeness of his progenitors, resembling but not of the same Essence with Gods — a shadow of them, so to speak. And that is why in India Gods are said to have no shadows. The objective phenomenal world is ever impermanent because the matter of which the objects are composed continually returns to its primordial condition, where it remains invisible to mortal eyes.