the astral
plane.

Though we cannot claim them as belonging exactly to any of our
classes, this is perhaps the best place in which to mention those
wonderful and important Beings, the four Devarajahs. In this name the
word Deva must not, however, be taken in the sense in which we have
been using it, for it is not over the Deva kingdom but over the four
"elements" of earth, water, air, and fire, with their indwelling
nature-spirits and essences, that these four Kings rule. What the
evolution has been through which they rose to their present height of
power and wisdom we cannot tell, save only that it has certainly not
passed through anything corresponding to our own humanity. They are
often spoken of as the Regents of the Earth, or Angels of the four
cardinal points, and the Hindu books call them the Chatur Maharajahs,
giving their names as Dhritarashtra, Virudhaka, Virupaksha,
and Vaishravana. In the same books their hosts are called
Gandharvas, Kumbhandas, Nagas, and Yakshas respectively, the points of
the compass appropriated to each being in corresponding order east,
south, west, and north, and their symbolical colours white, blue, red,
and gold. They are mentioned in _The Secret Doctrine_ as "winged
globes and fiery wheels"; and in the Christian bible Ezekiel makes a
very remarkable attempt at a description of them in which very similar
words are used. References to them are to be found in the symbology of
every religion, and they have always been held in the highest
reverence as the protectors of mankind. It is they who are the agents
of man's Karma during his life on earth, and they thus play an
extremely important part in human destiny. The LIPIKA the great karmic
deities of the Kosmos, weigh the deeds of each personality when the
final separation of its principles takes place in Kamaloka and give as
it were the mould of an etheric double exactly suitable to its Karma
for the man's next birth; but it is the Devarajahs who, having command
of the "elements" of which that etheric double must be composed,
arrange their proportion so as to fulfil accurately the intention of
the LIPIKA. It is they also who constantly watch all through life to
counterbalance the changes perpetually being introduced into man's
condition by his own free will and that of those around him, so that
no injustice may be done, and Karma may be accurately worked out, if
not in one way then in another. A learned dissertation upon these
marvello