The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1Theosophy / New ThoughtMystical / EsotericEnglishShareThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 681893 edition - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 available1893 editionLanguageEnglishEspañol‹The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 1The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 2The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 3The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 4The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 5The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 6The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 7The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 8The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 9The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 10The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 11The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 12The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 13The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 14The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 15The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 16The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 17The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 18The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 19The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 20The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 21The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 22The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 23The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 24The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 25The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 26The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 27The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 28The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 29The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 30The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 31The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 32The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 33The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 34The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 35The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 36The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 37The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 38The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 39The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 40The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 41The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 42The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 43The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 44The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 45The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 46The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 47The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 48The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 49The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 50The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 51The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 52The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 53The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 54The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 55The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 56The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 57The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 58The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 59The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 60The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 61The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 62The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 63The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 64The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 65The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 66The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 67The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 68The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 69The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 70The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 71The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 72›Presence.The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 68ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has now for the most part become—that Shekinah‐Shakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no geometrical figure and are the symbol of Matter. Out of this Duad, when united in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible “God.”(1067) Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas. 2The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three‐fold form of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says the Esoteric Catechism: 3Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit [a molecule], and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man. 4God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body [Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] in man. 5In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. Once again: 6The Monads [Jîvas] are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in which the Chohans [Dhyânîs, Gods] clothe themselves when a form is needed. 7This relates to cosmic and sub‐planetary Monads, not to the super‐cosmic Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete Matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties. 8It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but he defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, since he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very intuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho‐physicist ever came nearer than has he to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed from its several standpoints, i.e., as the Universal and the Individualized Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after differentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the Laya‐state, or what Science calls the “zero‐point,” and beyond. 9These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their “protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, or molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology(1068)—out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to Planetary Spirits (Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D’Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense. 10We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes’ latest discovery of what he has named Protyle. In the Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ, by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring cautiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says: 11Into the details of the evolution of the solar system itself, it is not necessary for me to enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various elements start into existence from these three principles into which Mûlaprakriti [the Pythagorean Triangle] is differentiated, by examining the lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so‐called elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way in which these so‐called elements spring from Vishvânara,(1069) the most objective of these three principles, which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in that lecture. Except in a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishvânara, and is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators to the real occult theory on the subject.(1070) 12These words will be reëchoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Mr. Crookes has already been quoted in Section XI. A second lecture has been delivered by him, as remarkable as the first, on the “Genesis of the Elements,”(1071) and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in Chemistry,(1072) to the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the Monads and Atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental Metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with “Gods and intelligent conscious Monads.” But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day when Materialism regarded its sub‐elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of Elements. The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of Elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of Chemistry asks once more: 13What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their signification?... These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us—mocking, mystifying, and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.(1073) 14Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these “possibilities” in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired into Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined direction—hence were distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of exact Modern Science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple Elements. For Mr. Crookes tells his audience: 15If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are not simple and primordial, that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a desultory and mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters—or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter—I do but give formal utterance to an idea which has been, so to speak, for some time “in the air” of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit, declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of our text‐books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to pass.... Philosophers in the present as in the past—men who certainly have not worked in the laboratory—have reached the same view from another side. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer records his conviction that “the chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical atoms by processes of evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.”... And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton (Paradise Lost, Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam instinct with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created 16... “One first matter, all Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance.” 17Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized “in the air of Science,” and would not have descended into the thick atmosphere of Materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Mr. Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple constituents, and thus publicly forced it on scientific notice. Says Plutarch: 18An idea is a Being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation.(1074) 19The revolution produced in old Chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the volume of “New Chemistry.” Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For Protyle once accepted and recognized—as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific necessities—Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reäppear in its reïncarnation as—“New Alchemy,” or “Meta‐chemistry.” The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Âryan works on Occultism, and even the Vedas and Purânas. For what are the manifested “Mother,” the “Father‐Son‐Husband” (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahmâ, as Creators), and the “Son”—the three “First‐born”—but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is called Nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the “First‐born” Triad give all the characteristics of these three “gases.” Priestley, the “discoverer” of Oxygen, or of that which was known in the highest antiquity! 20Yet all the ancient, mediæval, and modern Poets and Philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindû books as to the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Universal Mind—Descartes’ “Plenum” of Matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz’s “ethereal fluid”; and Kant’s “primitive fluid” dissolved into its elements; Kepler’s solar vortex and systemic vortices; in short, through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European Mystics—all this is found in the Hindû Hymns, or Mantras, to the “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” in their Fulness, for they are inseparable. In Esoteric Teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the Universe and its mysteries, as also the most seemingly materialistic speculations, are found reconciled, because these Sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to Matter. As declared by an American Theosophist: 21The Monads [of Leibnitz] may from one point of view be called force, from another matter. To Occult Science, force and matter are only two sides of the same substance.(1075) 22Let the reader remember these “Monads” of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the Universe, every Monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit Shlokas translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind, 23Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom. 24When, therefore, Mr. Crookes declares that: 25If we can show how the so‐called chemical elements might have been generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap in our knowledge of the universe, 26the answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is contained in the Esoteric meaning of every Hindû cosmogony in the Purânas; the practical demonstration thereof—is in the hands of those who will not be recognized in this century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite material for the filling of those “gaps,” are, so far, at the mercy of Modern Materialism. It is only by working in the direction taken by Mr. William Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto Occult, truths. 27Meanwhile, any one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of primordial Matter—which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself on a general view into a septenary gradation of Substance—can do no better than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes’ lecture, Genesis of the Elements, and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place he says: 28Our notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the molecule has been regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms, and no account has been taken of the architectural design on which these atoms have been joined. We may consider that the structure of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto been supposed. Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in chemical reactions and ultimate atoms as first created, come smaller molecules or aggregates of physical atoms; these sub‐ molecules differ one from the other, according to the position they occupy in the yttrium edifice. 29Perhaps this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to be represented by a five‐shilling piece. By chemical fractionation I have divided it into five separate shillings, and find that these shillings are not counterparts, but like the carbon atoms in the benzol ring, have the impress of their position, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stamped on them.... If I throw my shillings into the melting‐ pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and they all turn out to be silver.(1076) 30This will be the case with all the Atoms and molecules when they have separated from their compound forms and bodies—when Pralaya sets in. Reverse the case, and imagine the dawn of a new Manvantara. The pure “silver” of the absorbed material will once more separate into SUBSTANCE, which will generate “Divine Essences” whose “Principles”(1077) are the Primary Elements, the Sub‐elements, the Physical Energies, and subjective and objective Matter; or, as these are epitomized—GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS. If leaving for one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the question—dropping out of the present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent Beings and Entities believed in by the Kabalists and Christians—we turn to the theory of atomic evolution, the Occult Teachings are still found corroborated by exact Science and its confessions, so far, at least, as regards the supposed “simple” Elements, now suddenly degraded into poor and distant relatives, not even second cousins to the latter. For we are told by Mr. Crookes that: 31Hitherto, it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a metal, determined by different observers, setting out from different compounds, was always found to be constant ... then such metal must rightly take rank among the simple or elementary bodies. We learn ... that this is no longer the case. Again, we have here wheels within wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a compound. ... We have shown that yttrium is a complex of five or more new constituents. And who shall venture to gainsay that each of these constituents, if attacked in some different manner, and if the result were submitted to a test more delicate and searching than the radiant‐matter test, might not be still further divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we advance it recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. Are we in our quest for truth to be thus deluded and baulked? The very idea of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less and less distinct.(1078) 32This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of Science, is unfathomable unless we accept the doctrine of Hermes. Could he [Darwin] remove his quest from the visible universe into the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.(1079) 33Our prophecy begins to assert itself. 34But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science only throw a bridge half‐way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. We have shown our theories with regard to the evolution of Atoms—their last formation into compound chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the Earth’s atmosphere and not elsewhere—as strangely agreeing with the evolution of Atoms shown on Mr. Crookes’ plates. Several times already it has been stated in this volume that Mârttânda, the Sun, had evolved and aggregated, together with his seven smaller Brothers, from his Mother Aditi’s bosom, that bosom being Prima Mater‐ia—the lecturer’s primordial Protyle. Esoteric Doctrines teach the existence of 35An antecedent form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity.(1080) 36And behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of his postulates! We have shown the “Mother,” fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and radiant, and this same Scientist claims as his second postulate—a scientific necessity, it would seem— 37An internal action, akin to cooling, operating slowly in the protyle. 38Occult Science teaches that the “Mother” lies stretched in Infinity, during Pralaya, as the great Deep, the “dry Waters of Space,” according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and becomes wet only after the separation and the moving over its face of Nârâyana, the 39Spirit which is invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and generation.(1081) 40And now Science tells us that “the first‐born element ... most nearly allied to protyle” would be “hydrogen ... which for some time would be the only existing form of matter” in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: Just so; but we would call Hydrogen (and Oxygen), which—in the pre‐geological and even pre‐genetic ages—instils the fire of life into the “Mother” by incubation, the spirit, the noumenon, of that which becomes in its grossest form Oxygen and Hydrogen and Nitrogen on Earth—Nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth‐born cement for uniting other gases and fluids, and serving as a sponge to carry in itself the Breath of Life, pure air.(1082) Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane—something else, and so on in infinitum. The eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for quoting him at such length; but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the Royal Society who approaches so near the precincts of the Sacred Adytum of Occult Mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden boundaries. 41But it is time to leave Modern Physical Science and turn to the psychological and metaphysical side of the question. We would only remark that to the “two very reasonable postulates” required by the eminent lecturer, “to get a glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden” behind “the door of the Unknown,” a third should be added(1083)—lest no battering at it should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz stood on a firm groundwork of fact and truth in his speculations. The admirable and thoughtful synopsis of these speculations—as given by John Theodore Mertz in his “Leibnitz”—shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of Esoteric Theogony in his Monadologie. And yet this philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations above the first planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His theory soars to no loftier heights than those of the manifested life, self‐consciousness and intelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier post‐genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post‐planetary. 42But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men of Science; and, like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties of external things, which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion, rather than accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become anti‐Cartesian in this generation; nor will they admit that: 43This property of inertia is not a purely geometrical property; that it points to the existence of something in external bodies which is not extension merely. 44This is Leibnitz’s idea as analyzed by Mertz, who adds that he called this “something” Force, and maintained that external things were endowed with Force, and that in order to be the bearers of this Force they must have a Substance, for they are not lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and bearers of Form—a purely Esoteric claim, since Force was with Leibnitz an active principle—the division between Mind and Matter disappearing by this conclusion. 45The mathematical and dynamical enquiries of Leibnitz would not have led to the same result in the mind of a purely scientific enquirer. But Leibnitz was not a scientific man in the modern sense of the word. Had he been so, he might have worked out the conception of energy, defined mathematically the ideas of force and mechanical work, and arrived at the conclusion that even for purely scientific purposes it is desirable to look upon force, not as a primary quantity, but as a quantity derived from some other value. 46Leibnitz was a philosopher; and as such he had certain primary principles, which biassed him in favour of certain conclusions, and his discovery that external things were substances endowed with force was at once used for the purpose of applying these principles. One of these principles was the law of continuity, the conviction that all the world was connected, that there were no gaps and chasms which could not be bridged over. The contrast of extended thinking substances was unbearable to him. The definition of the extended substances had already become untenable: it was natural that a similar enquiry was made into the definition of mind, the thinking substance. 47The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of Science, not Descartes, not even Kant, has ever reached. With him there existed ever an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness of apperception, “into the light of perfect consciousness.” Many remain in a confused or obscure state, in the state of “perceptions”; but they are there. Descartes denied soul to the animal. Leibnitz, as do the Occultists, endowed “the whole creation with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite gradations.” And this, as Mertz justly observes: 48At once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the contrast of animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more—it reäcted on the conception of matter, of the extended substance. For it became evident that external or material things presented the property of extension to our senses only, not to our thinking faculties. The mathematician, in order to calculate geometrical figures, had been obliged to divide them into an infinite number of infinitely small parts, and the physicist saw no limit to the divisibility of matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things seemed to fill space was a property which they acquired only through the coarseness of our senses.... Leibnitz followed these arguments to some extent, but he could not rest content in assuming that matter was composed of a finite number of very small parts. His mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument in infinitum. And what became of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained only their property of resistance; they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical points.... But if their extension in space was nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming that inner existence, such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical but a metaphysical dimension, ... having reduced the geometrical extension of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the direction of their metaphysical dimension. 49After having lost sight of them in the world of space, the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as a mathematical point.... As a cone stands on its point, or a perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have only a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of thought.(1084) 50This is the spirit, the very root of Occult doctrine and thought. The “Spirit‐Matter” and “Matter‐Spirit” extend infinitely in depth, and like the “essence of things” of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external world, is at the lowest extreme of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter. 51The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz(1085) and that of Occult Philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadologie before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz’ and Spinoza’s systems reconciled, the essence and spirit of Esoteric Philosophy would be made to appear. From the shock of the two—as opposed to the Cartesian system—emerge the truths of the Archaic Doctrine. Both oppose the Metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of two Substances—Extension and Thought—radically differing from each other and mutually irreducible, is too arbitrary and too un‐philosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian Substances two attributes of one universal Unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognized but one universal indivisible Substance, an absolute ALL, like Parabrahman. Leibnitz, on the contrary, perceived the existence of a plurality of Substances. There was but One for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, and in, the One. Hence, though both admitted but One Real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi‐divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an objective Pantheist, yet both were great Philosophers in their intuitive perceptions. 52Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the other—and foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality—there would remain as sum total a true spirit of Esoteric Philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute Divine Essence, which is no “being” but the root of all Being. Draw a deep line in your thought between that ever‐incognizable Essence, and the as invisible, yet comprehensible Presence, Mûlaprakriti or Shekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum, and from which evolve the numberless Hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of conscious as of semi‐conscious, “apperceptive” and “perceptive” Beings, whose Essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements, and whose Bodies (when needed) are the Atoms—and our Doctrine is there. For, says Leibnitz: 53The primitive element of every material body being force, which has none of the characteristics of [objective] matter—it can be conceived but can never be the object of any imaginative representation. 54That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in everybody and object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical Atoms, “mathematical points,” or real souls—as explained by Henri Lachelier (Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie), his French biographer. 55That which exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose essence is force.(1086) 56Thus, reality in the manifested world is composed of a unity of units, so to say, immaterial—from our standpoint—and infinite. These Leibnitz calls Monads, Eastern Philosophy Jîvas, while Occultism, with the Kabalists and all the Christians, gives them a variety of names. With us, as with Leibnitz, they are “the expression of the universe,”(1087) and every physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical Point. His distinction between “perception” and “apperception” is the philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric Teachings. His “reduced universes,” of which “there are as many as there are Monads”—is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with its divisions and sub‐divisions. 57As to the relation his Monads bear to our Dhyân Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas, and Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion of a learned and thoughtful Theosophist, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper, “On the Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the Relationship between Them and Human Beings,” read by him before the Âryan Theosophical Society of New York, Mr. Bjerregaard thus distinctly formulates his opinion: 58To Spinoza, substance is dead and inactive, but to Leibnitz’s penetrating powers of mind everything is living activity and active energy. In holding this view, he comes infinitely nearer the Orient than any other thinker of his day, or after him. His discovery that an active energy forms the essence of substance is a principle that places him in direct relationship to the Seers of the East.(1088) 59And the lecturer proceeds to show that to Leibnitz Atoms and Elements are Centres of Force, or rather “spiritual beings whose very nature it is to act,” for the 60Elementary particles are vital forces, not acting mechanically, but from an internal principle. They are incorporeal spiritual units [“substantial,” however, but not “immaterial” in our sense] inaccessible to all change from without ... [and] indestructible by any external force. Leibnitz’ monads differ from atoms in the following particulars, which are very important for us to remember, otherwise we shall not be able to see the difference between Elementals and mere matter. Atoms are not distinguished from each other, they are qualitatively alike; but one monad differs from every other monad qualitatively; and every one is a peculiar world to itself. Not so with the atoms; they are absolutely alike quantitatively and qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own.(1089) Again, the atoms [molecules, rather] of materialistic philosophy can be considered as extended and divisible, while the monads are mere “metaphysical points” and indivisible. Finally, and this is a point where these monads of Leibnitz closely resemble the Elementals of mystic philosophy, these monads are representative beings. Every monad reflects every other. Every monad is a living mirror of the Universe within its own sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends the power possessed by these monads, and upon it depends the work they can do for us; in mirroring the world, the monads are not mere passive reflective agents, but spontaneously self active; they produce the images spontaneously, as the soul does a dream. In every monad, therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. 61Every monad—or Elemental—is a looking‐glass that can speak. 62It is at this point that Leibnitz’s philosophy breaks down. There is no provision made, nor any distinction established, between the “Elemental” Monad and that of a high Planetary Spirit, or even the Human Monad or Soul. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt whether 63God has ever made anything but monads or substances without extension.(1090) 64He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,(1091) because, as he repeatedly states: 65Bodies with all their qualities are only phenomenal, like the rainbow. Corpora omnia cum omnibus qualitatibus suis non sunt aliud quam phenomena bene fundata, ut Iris.(1092) 66But soon after he finds a provision for this in a substantial correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the Monads—vinculum substantiale. Esoteric Philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism—though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mâyâ, Temporary Illusion—draws a practical distinction between Collective Illusion, Mahâmâyâ, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this Illusion lasts. The Adept, therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he has to draw together for this object a great number of them, as each Monad represents only a portion of the Kingdom it belongs to. 67It is not in the object, but in the modification of the cognition of the object that the monads are limited. They all tend (confusedly) to the infinite, to the whole, but they are limited and distinguished by the degrees of distinctness in their perception.(1093) 68All the portions of the universe are distinctly represented in the monads, but some are reflected in one monad, some in another. 69A number of Monads could represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two million inhabitants of Paris. 70But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add? 71They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz—roughly viewed, and leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for the present—may be separated into three distinct Hosts,(1094) which, counted from the highest planes, are, firstly, “Gods,” or conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent Architects, who work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the Elementals, or “Monads,” who form collectively and unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly, the “Atoms,” or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their “perceptive” Monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed. There are shoals of such informed Atoms which, in their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of Monads, or Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces—Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,(1095) except under certain laws, when they assume a form—not necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them—the apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless (Arûpa) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of Monads—each the mirror of its own Universe—and thus individualize for the time being an independent Mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar Atoms. 72For Atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the “principles,” corporeal, psychic and spiritual, of the “Gods”—themselves the Radiations of Primordial Nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the subjective—as influences, and the objective—as mystic forms, which, under Karmic law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is Matter on the seventh plane; Matter is Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are—Mâyâ. 73Atoms are called Vibrations in Occultism; also Sound—collectively. This does not interfere with Mr. Tyndall’s scientific discovery. He traced, on the lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the atmospheric Vibrations—and this constitutes the objective part of the process in Nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion and transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations in the tympanum and their transmission of these to the otoliths, etc., till the vibration of the auditory nerve commences—and a new phenomenon now takes place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of sound. Does he perceive or see it? No; for his specialty is to discover the behaviour of Matter. But why should not a Psychic see it, a spiritual Seer, whose inner Eye is opened, one who can see through the veil of Matter? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by Atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomenon called the correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such “Force,” there stands the conscious guiding Noumenon thereof—Angel or God, Spirit or Demon, ruling powers, yet the same. 74As described by Seers—those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow them clairvoyantly in their evolution—they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal physical eye can follow, and, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular. Standing on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spatial infinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes like the Northern Lights in the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean. 75However imperfect and incomplete this explanation on “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” it is hoped that some students and Theosophists, at least, will feel that there may indeed be a close relation between Materialistic Science and Occultism, which is the complement and missing soul of the former. 76Section XV. Cyclic Evolution and Karma. 77It is the spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal Man that forms the fundamental tenet of the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a process, the student has to believe (a) in the One Universal Life, independent of Matter (or what Science regards as Matter); and (b) in the individual Intelligences that animate the various manifestations of this Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in Vital Force; others Scientists do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Stirling’s work As regards Protoplasm has made no small havoc of this dogmatic negation. Professor Beale’s decision also is in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W. Richardson’s lectures on Nervous Ether have been sufficiently quoted. Thus, opinions are divided. 78The One Life is closely related to the One Law which governs the World of Being—KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally “action,” or rather an “effect‐producing cause.” Esoterically, it is quite a different thing in its far‐reaching moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, characteristics, and awful importance of this eternal immutable Law, that no theological definition of a Personal Deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with the Theists—the Protestant Christians, at any rate—rejoices in a personal male gender, while with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency. “Divine Providence tempers His blessings to secure their better effects,” Wogan tells us. Indeed “He” tempers them, which Karma—a sexless principle—does not. 79Throughout the first two Parts, it has been shown that, at the first flutter of renascent life, Svabhâvat, “the Mutable Radiance of the Immutable Darkness unconscious in Eternity,” passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state into one of intense activity; that it differentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation. This work is KARMA. 80The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity. 81The one Cosmic Atom becomes seven Atoms on the plane of Matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same Atom becomes seven Rays on the plane of Spirit; and the seven creative Forces of Nature, radiating from the Root‐Essence ... follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet in close embrace. What unites them? Karma. 82The Atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and “man‐bearing” globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms, of which we know only four. For as says the Book of the Aphorisms of Tson‐ ka‐pa: 83The blessed workers have received the Thyan‐kam, in the eternity. 84Thyan‐kam is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of Cosmic Energy in the right direction. 85The true Buddhist, recognizing no “personal God,” nor any “Father” and “Creator of Heaven and Earth,” still believes in an Absolute Consciousness, Adi‐Buddhi; and the Buddhist Philosopher knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the Dhyân Chohans. But though he admits of “Spiritual Lives,” yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, according to his Philosophy, are “the Mâyâ of the Day,” the Illusion of a “Day of Brahmâ,” a short Manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The Yin‐Sin is not for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such enquiry. If the Dhyân Chohans and all the Invisible Beings—the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor centres of Energy—are the direct reflex of the One Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of “self‐ produced beings, the creatures of Karma.” Thus regarding a personal God “as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men,”(1096) they teach that only “two things are [objectively] eternal, namely Âkâsha and Nirvâna”; and that these are one in reality, and but a Mâyâ when divided. 86Everything has come out of Âkâsha [or Svabhâvat on our earth] in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence passes away. No thing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation and cannot conceive of a creator.(1097) 87If a Vedântic Brahman of the Advaita Sect, were asked whether he believed in the existence of God, he would probably answer, as Jacolliot was answered—“I am myself ‘God’;” while a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply, “There is no God; no Creation.” Yet the root Philosophy of both Advaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every creature on Earth, however small and humble, “is an immortal portion of the immortal Matter”—Matter having with them quite another significance from that which it has with either Christian or Materialist—and that every creature is subject to Karma. 88The answer of the Brâhman would have suggested itself to every ancient Philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for Esoteric Philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be; his origin, life‐cycle—interminable in its duration of successive incarnations or rebirths—and his final absorption into the Source from which he started. 89But it is not Physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the Past, or of the Future; since no Philosopher can tell us even what man is, as known to both Physiology and Psychology. In doubt whether man was a God or a beast, Science has now connected him with the latter and derives him from an animal. Certainly the task of analyzing and classifying the human being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, which Occultists, of all men, regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its ground and the wonderful work it has done, the progress achieved in Physiology, and even—to a degree—in Biology. But man’s inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained Materialism; for not even the higher psychological Philosophy of the West is able, in its present incompleteness and tendency towards a decided Agnosticism, to do justice to the inner man; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and to those states of consciousness, across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying “So far, and no farther shalt thou go.” 90No Occultist would deny that man—together with the elephant and the microbe, the crocodile and the lizard, the blade of grass and the crystal—is, in his physical formation, the simple product of the evolutionary forces of Nature through a numberless series of transformations; but he puts the case differently. 91It is not against zoölogical and anthropological discoveries, based on the fossils of man and animal, that every Mystic and believer in a Divine Soul inwardly revolts, but only against the uncalled‐for conclusions built on preconceived theories and made to fit in with certain prejudices. The premisses of Scientists may or may not be always true; and as some of these theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must ever be one‐sided with materialistic Evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength of such very ephemeral authority, that most of the men of Science frequently receive honours where they deserve them the least.(1098) 92To make the working of Karma—in the periodical renovations of the Universe—more evident and intelligible to the student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of man, he has now to examine with us the Esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas and Kalpas by the Hindûs, and so very graphically, κύκλοι, cycles, rings or circles, by the Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any direct connection with, human life? Even exoteric Philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves, periodically and intelligently, in Space and Eternity. There are “Cycles of Matter,”(1099) and there are “Cycles of Spiritual Evolution,” and racial, national, and individual Cycles. May not Esoteric speculation allow us a still deeper insight into their workings? 93This idea is beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work. 94The possibility of rising to a comprehension of a system of coördination so far outreaching in time and space all range of human observations, is a circumstance which signalizes the power of man to transcend the limitations of changing and inconsistent matter, and assert his superiority over all insentient and perishable forms of being. There is a method in the succession of events, and in the relation of coëxistent things, which the mind of man seizes hold of; and by means of this as a clue, he runs back or forward over æons of material history of which human experience can never testify. Events germinate and unfold. They have a past which is connected with their present, and we feel a well‐justified confidence that a future is appointed which will be similarly connected with the present and the past. This continuity and unity of history repeat themselves before our eyes in all conceivable stages of progress. The phenomena furnish us the grounds for the generalization of two laws which are truly principles of scientific divination, by which alone the human mind penetrates the sealed records of the past and the unopened pages of the future. The first of these is the law of evolution, or, to phrase it for our purpose, the law of correlated successiveness or organized history in the individual, illustrated in the changing phases of every single maturing system of results.... These thoughts summon into our immediate presence the measureless past and the measureless future of material history. 95They seem almost to open vistas through infinity, and to endow the human intellect with an existence and a vision exempt from the limitations of time and space and finite causation, and lift it up towards a sublime apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence whose dwelling place is eternity.(1100) 96According to the teachings, Mâyâ—the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events and actions on this Earth—changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief features of one’s life are always in accordance with the “Constellation” under which one is born, or, we should say, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the Deity that presides over it, whether we call it a Dhyân Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with the Greek and Latin Churches. In ancient Symbolism it was always the Sun—though the Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant—that was supposed to send forth the chief Saviours and Avatâras. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatâras, and so many other incarnations of the highest Seven. The closer the approach to one’s Prototype, in “Heaven,” the better for the mortal whose Personality was chosen, by his own personal Deity (the Seventh Principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity with that “Self‐God,” one of the lower Rays breaks, and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the Ray that supersedes the first, until, from Ray to Ray, the Inner Man is drawn into the one and highest Beam of the Parent‐Sun. Thus, “the events of humanity do run coördinately with the number forms,” since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same source—the Central Sun and its shadow, the visible. 97For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the solar course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals. And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations, shown by several authors. 98Yes; “our destiny is written in the stars”! Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection Man and his celestial Prototype, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reïncarnations—which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, but man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is decreed to him—either in the snowy white robes of the martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny, which, from birth to death, every man weaves thread by thread round himself, as a spider his web; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible Prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations of the fight. 99When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self‐made Destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is—KARMA. 100A Materialist, treating of the periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in a single sentence: 101The whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present. 102The writer was Büchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an axiom of the Occultists. It is quite true also, as Burmeister remarks, that: 103The historical investigation of the development of the earth has proved that now and then rest upon the same base; that the past has been developed in the same manner as the present rolls on; and that the forces which were in action ever remained the same.(1101) 104The Forces—their Noumena rather—are the same, of course; therefore, the phenomenal Forces must be the same also. But how can any one feel so sure that the attributes of Matter have not altered under the hand of Protean Evolution? How can any Materialist assert with such confidence, as is done by Rossmassler, that: 105This eternal conformity in the essence of phenomena renders it certain that fire and water possessed at all times the same powers and ever will possess them. 106Who are they “that darken counsel with words without knowledge,” and where were the Huxleys and Büchners when the foundations of the Earth were laid by the Great Law? This same homogeneity of Matter and immutability of natural laws, which are so much insisted upon by Materialism, are a fundamental principle of the Occult Philosophy; but this unity rests upon the inseparability of Spirit from Matter, and, if the two were once divorced, the whole Kosmos would fall back into Chaos and Non‐being. Therefore, it is absolutely false, and but an additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert, as men of Science do, that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions of the past have been produced by ordinary and known physical Forces. For these Forces were but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical. But spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the purely physical, the former are denied by, and therefore, because left unexamined, have to remain unknown to Science.(1102) Says Hegel: 107The history of the World begins with its general aim, the realization of the Idea of Spirit—only in an implicit form (an sich), that is, as Nature; a hidden, most profoundly hidden unconscious instinct, and the whole process of History ... is directed to rendering this unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of merely natural existence, natural will—that which has been called the subjective side—physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and subjective conception—spontaneously present themselves at the very commencement. This vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities constitute the instruments and means of the World‐ Spirit for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness and realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding itself—coming to itself—and contemplating itself in concrete actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are at the same time the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing—which they realize unconsciously—might be made a matter of question; rather has been questioned ... on this point I announced my view at the very outset, and asserted our hypothesis ... and our belief that Reason governs the World and has consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently universal and substantial existence—all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and the means for its development.(1103) 108No Metaphysician or Theosophist could demur to these truths, which are all embodied in Esoteric Teachings. There is a predestination in the geological life of our globe, as in the history, past and future, of races and nations. This is closely connected with what we call Karma, and what Western Pantheists called Nemesis and Cycles. The law of evolution is now carrying us along the ascending arc of our cycle, when the effects will be once more re‐merged into, and re‐become the now neutralized causes, and all things affected by the former will have regained their original harmony. This will be the cycle of our special Round, a moment in the duration of the Great Cycle, or Mahâyuga. 109The fine philosophical remarks of Hegel are found to have their application in the teachings of Occult Science, which shows Nature ever acting with a given purpose, whose results are always dual. This was stated in our first Occult volumes, in the following words: 110As our Planet revolves once every year around the Sun, and at the same time turns once in every twenty‐four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced within the Great Saros. The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in the world of intellect—the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding in cycles, like the physical one. Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reässerts itself and mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had before descended.(1104) 111But these cycles—wheels within wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously symbolized by the various Manus and Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in the West(1105)—do not affect all mankind at one and the same time. Hence, as we see, the difficulty of comprehending, and of discriminating between them, with regard to their physical and spiritual effects, without having thoroughly mastered their relations with, and action upon, the respective positions of nations and races, in their destiny and evolution. This system cannot be comprehended if the spiritual action of these periods—preördained, so to say, by Karmic law—is separated from their physical course. The calculations of the best Astrologers would fail, or at any rate remain imperfect, unless this dual action is thoroughly taken into consideration and mastered upon these lines. And this mastery can be achieved only through INITIATION. 112The Grand Cycle includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of primordial man of ethereal form. It runs through the inner Cycles of man’s progressive evolution from the ethereal down to the semi‐ethereal and purely physical; down to the redemption of man from his “coat of skin” and matter, after which it continues running its course downward and then upward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the Manvantaric Serpent “swallows its tail” and seven Minor Cycles are passed. These are the great Racial Cycles which affect equally all the nations and tribes included in that special Race; but there are minor and national, as well as tribal, Cycles within these, which run their course independently of each other. They are called in Eastern Esotericism the Karmic Cycles. In the West—since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and been developed by the Dark Powers, supposed to be at constant war with and in opposition to the little tribal Jehovah—the full and awful significance of the Greek Nemesis, or Karma, has been entirely forgotten. Otherwise Christians would have better realized the profound truth that Nemesis is without attributes; that while the dreaded Goddess is absolute and immutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves—nations and individuals—who propel it to action and give the impulse to its direction. Karma‐Nemesis is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a Fury or a rewarding Angel. Yea— 113Wise are they who worship Nemesis(1106) 114—as the Chorus tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the Goddess may be propitiated by any sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the path it has once taken. “The triform Fates and ever mindful Furies” are her attributes only on Earth, and begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma‐Nemesis is the synonym of Providence, minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a Philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma‐Nemesis, he will nevertheless teach that it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil‐doer—aye, even to his seventh rebirth—so long, indeed, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of Harmony has not been finally reädjusted. For the only decree of Karma—an eternal and immutable decree—is absolute Harmony in the world of Matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves, according as we work with, through and along with Nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or—breaking them. 115Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of these ways—which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism, and a third, simple Chance, with neither Gods nor Devils to guide them—would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all of them to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours would no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, two‐thirds of the world’s evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma‐Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the “ways of Providence.” We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then we complain because these windings are so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. 116If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, the “laws of life,” one must be prepared to fall into the chaos oneself has produced. For, according to the same writer: 117The only conclusion one can come to is that these laws of life are their own avengers; and consequently that every avenging angel is only a typified representation of their reäction. 118Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the artificers of our destinies, but rather those Angels, the guardians of Harmony. Karma‐Nemesis is no more than the spiritual dynamical effect of causes produced, and forces awakened into activity, by our own actions. It is a law of Occult dynamics that “a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence.” 119This condition of things will last till man’s spiritual intuitions are fully opened, and this will not be until we fairly cast off our thick coats of Matter; until we begin acting from within, instead of ever following impulses from without, impulses produced by our physical senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliatives for the evils of life are union and harmony—a Brotherhood in actu, and Altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but many bad effects. And if a Brotherhood, or even a number of Brotherhoods, may not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each other’s throats, still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into the mysteries of being, will always prevent some persons, who are trying to comprehend that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional causes of mischief in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives the conviction that if 120... virtue in distress, and vice in triumph Make atheists of mankind,(1107) 121it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own saviour and his own destroyer. He need not accuse Heaven and the Gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat this fragment of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to forbear accusing That which 122Just, though mysterious, leads us on unerring Through ways unmark’d from guilt to punishment; 123and such are now the ways on which the great European nations move onward. Every nation and tribe of the Western Âryans, like their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, has had its Golden and its Iron Age, its period of comparative irresponsibility, or its Satya Age of purity, and now, several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, an age black with horrors. 124On the other hand, it is true that the exoteric Cycles of every nation have been rightly derived from, and shown to depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are inseparably blended with the destinies of nations and men. But, in the purely physical sense, Europe knows of no Cycles other than the astronomical, and it makes its computations accordingly. Nor will it hear of any other than imaginary circles or circuits in the starry heavens that gird them, 125With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb. 126But with the Pagans—of whom Coleridge rightly says, “Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the Deity,” that “Deity” manifesting coördinately with, and only through, Karma, and being that Karma‐Nemesis itself—the Cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of certain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and prophecies, based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold shell of Astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit—Astrology. And, as the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth besides potatoes and the periodical diseases of that useful vegetable—a statement which, not being amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while none the less accepted—these events have to submit to predetermination, by simple astronomical computations. Believers in Astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich‐like, to their own fate.(1108) 127This because their little historical period, so called, allows them no margin for comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their spiritual vision is still unopened, and the atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their sight and chains it within the limits of physical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements and note the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical advents of those wanderers and “flaming messengers,” and prophesy, in consequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers, the apparition of certain stars, comets, etc. Are they, then, soothsayers after all? No; they are learned Astronomers. 128Why, then, should Occultists and Astrologers, as learned as these Astronomers, be disbelieved when they prophesy the return of some cyclic event on the same mathematical principles? Why should the claim that they know this return be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, having recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and day, throughout a period embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the conjunction of the same constellations must necessarily produce, if not quite the same, at any rate similar, effects. Are the prophecies to be derided, because of the claim made for hundreds of thousands of years of observation, and for millions of years for the human Races? In its turn, Modern Science is laughed at by those who hold to Biblical chronology, for its far more modest geological and anthropological figures. Thus Karma adjusts even human laughter, at the mutual expense of sects, learned societies, and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of such future events, at any rate, all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, no psychic phenomenon is involved. It is neither prevision, nor prophecy; any more than is the signalling of a comet or star, several years before its appearance. It is simply knowledge, and mathematically correct computations, which enable the Wise Men of the East to foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; that France is nearing such a point of her Cycle; 129and that Europe in general is threatened with, or rather is on the eve of, a cataclysm, to which her own Cycle of racial Karma has led her. Our view of the reliability of the information depends, of course, on our acceptation or rejection of the claim for a tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that they have preserved records of racial development and of events of universal import ever since the beginning of the Fourth Race—their knowledge of events preceding that epoch being traditional. Moreover, those who believe in Seership and in Occult Powers will have no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of the information given, even if it be traditional, once the tradition is checked and corrected by clairvoyance and Esoteric Knowledge. But in the present case no such metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, for proof is given—on what, to every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence—the records preserved through the Zodiac for incalculable ages. 130It is now amply proved that even horoscopes and judiciary Astrology are not quite based on fiction, and that Stars and Constellations, consequently, have an occult and mysterious influence on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the latter, why not with nations, races, and mankind as a whole? This, again, is a claim made on the authority of the Zodiacal records. We shall then enquire how far the Zodiac was known to the Ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the Moderns. 131Section XVI. The Zodiac and its Antiquity. 132“All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profess,” said Jordan, justly adding to this—“and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions.” 133This is doubly true in regard to scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for consideration—the prejudice and preconceptions of “authorities,” so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for history. There are several such predetermined opinions held by our learned Orientalists, and few are more unjust or illogical than the general error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber’s opinion that the peoples of India had no idea or knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient Hindûs imported it into their country. We are further told, by several other “authorities,” that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their neighbours with their invention. And this, in the face of the Book of Job, which is declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the Hebrew canon, and certainly prior to Moses; a book which speaks of the making of “Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades [Osh, Kesil, and Kimah] and the chambers of the South”(1109); of Scorpio and the Mazaruth—the twelve signs(1110); words which, if they mean anything, imply knowledge of the Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabian tribes. The Book of Job is alleged to have preceded Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years—the two Greek poets having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the Christian era (!!). 134Though, by the bye, one who prefers to believe Plato—who shows Homer flourishing far earlier—could point to a number of Zodiacal signs mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey, in the Orphic poems, and elsewhere. But since the cock‐and‐bull hypothesis of some modern critics that, so far from Orpheus, not even Homer or Hesiod has ever existed, it would seem time lost to mention these archaic authors at all. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless, indeed, his volume of lamentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks, to which we may add those of Linus, should now also be declared to be the patriotic forgery of the Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job, how could the civilized and philosophical Hindûs have remained ignorant of it? 135Risking the arrows of modern criticism—rather blunted by misuse—the reader may make himself acquainted with Bailly’s learned opinion upon the subject. Inferred speculations may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical calculations stand on more secure grounds. Taking as a starting point several astronomical references in Job, Bailly devised a very ingenious means of proving that the earliest founders of the Science of the Zodiac belonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he seems willing to see some of the Biblical patriarchs in Thoth, Seth, and in the Chinese Fohi, does not interfere with the validity of his proof as to the antiquity of the Zodiac.(1111) Even accepting, for argument’s sake, his cautious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the Zodiacal Science, this date proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not exist as a nation thirty‐seven centuries B.C.—at any rate not as a historical race admitted by the critics. Bailly then calculated the period at which the constellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job the “sweet influences of the Pleiades,”(1112) in Hebrew Kimah; that of Orion, Kesil; and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth constellation; 136and found that in presence of the eternal conformity of these divisions of the Zodiac, and of the names of the Planets applied in the same order everywhere and always, and in presence of the impossibility of attributing it all to chance and “coincidence”—“which never creates such similarities”—a very great antiquity indeed must be allowed for the Zodiac.(1113) 137Again, if the Bible is supposed to be an authority on any matter—and there are some who still regard it as such, whether from Christian or Kabalistical considerations—then the Zodiac is clearly mentioned in II Kings, xxiii. 5. Before the “book of the law” was “found” by Hilkiah, the high priest, the signs of the Zodiac were known and worshipped. These were held in the same adoration as the Sun and Moon, since the 138priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense ... unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven, 139or to the “twelve signs or constellations,” as the marginal note in the English Bible explains, had followed the injunction for centuries. They were stopped in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 B.C. 140The Old Testament is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and the whole scheme is built upon it—heroes, personages, and events. Thus in the dream of Joseph, who saw eleven “Stars” bowing to the twelfth, which was his “Star,” the Zodiac is referred to. The Roman Catholics have discovered in it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth Star, they say, and the others the eleven apostles; the absence of the twelfth being also regarded as a prophetic allusion to the treachery of Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob, again, are a reference to the same, as is justly pointed out by Villapandus.(1114) Sir James Malcolm, in his History of Persia,(1115) shows the Dabistan echoing all such traditions about the Zodiac. He traces the invention of it to the palmy days of the Golden Age of Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions maintains that the Genii of the Planets are represented under the same shapes and figures they had assumed when they showed themselves to several holy prophets, and thus led to the establishment of the rites based on the Zodiac. 141Pythagoras, and after him Philo Judæus, held the number 12 as very sacred. 142This duodenary number is perfect. It is that of the signs of the Zodiac, which the sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour that number that Moses divided his nation into twelve tribes, established the twelve cakes of the shew‐bread, and placed twelve precious stones upon the breast‐plate of the pontiffs.(1116) 143According to Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and cataclysm by the Zodiac; and the times fixed by him for the conflagration of the World—Pralaya—and for a deluge, are found to answer to the times given in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. Such a catastrophe comes at every renewal of the cycle of the Sidereal Year of 25,868 years. The names of the Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the names of the signs of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians are far earlier than the Chaldæans. Mr. Proctor shows, in his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, that the ancient Astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate Astronomy 2,400 years B.C.; the Hindûs date their Kali Yuga from a great periodical conjunction of the Planets thirty‐one centuries B.C.; but, withal, it was the Greeks, belonging to the expedition of Alexander the Great, who were the instructors of the Âryan Hindûs in Astronomy! 144Whether the origin of the Zodiac is Âryan or Egyptian, it is still of an immense antiquity. Simplicius, in the sixth century A.D., writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and records for a period of 630,000 years. This statement appears to frighten Mr. Gerald Massey, who remarks on it that: 145If we read this number of years by the month which Euxodus said the Egyptians termed a year, i.e., a course of time, that would still yield the length of two cycles of precession [51,736 years].(1117) 146Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great.(1118) Martianus Capella corroborates this by telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied Astronomy for over 40,000 years, before they imparted their knowledge to the world.(1119) 147Several valuable quotations are made in Natural Genesis with the view of supporting the author’s theories, but they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted from his Life of Sulla, saying: 148One day when the sky was serene and clear, there was heard in it the sound of a trumpet, so loud, shrill, and mournful, that it affrighted and astonished the world. The Tuscan sages said that it portended a new race of men, and a renovation of the world; for they affirmed that there were eight several kinds of men, all being different in life and manners; and that Heaven had allotted each its time, which was limited by the circuit of the great year [25,868 years].(1120) 149This reminds one strongly of our Seven Races of men, and of the eighth—the “animal man”—descended from the later Third Race; as also of the successive submersions and destruction of the continents which finally disposed of almost all that Race. Says Iamblichus: 150The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven‐and‐ twenty myriads of years [270,000 years], as Hipparchus says they have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the Seven Rulers of the World.(1121) 151This is as nearly as possible the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine. For 1,000,000 years are allowed for our present Root‐Race (the Fifth), and about 850,000 years have passed since the submersion of the last large island—part of the continent of Atlantis—the Ruta of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the Glacial Period or thereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of the Divine Kings, belong to the traditions of every great people of antiquity. Wherever twelve are mentioned, they are invariably the twelve signs of the Zodiac. 152So patent is this fact, that the Roman Catholic writers—especially among the French Ultramontanes—have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish Patriarchs with the Signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of prophetico‐mystic way, which sounds to pious and ignorant ears like a portentous token, a tacit divine recognition of the “chosen people of God,” whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance, curiously enough, these writers, De Mirville among others, recognize all the characteristics of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, in the words addressed by the dying Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of each Tribe.(1122) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes are said to have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the Signs, repeated in the twelve stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the twelve wings of the two Cherubs. Leaving to the said Mystics the proof of exactitude in the alleged correspondence, we quote it as follows: Man, or Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as “unstable as water” (the Vulgate has it, “rushing like water”); Gemini, in that of Simeon and Levi, because of their strong fraternal association; Leo, in that of Judah, “the strong Lion” of his tribe, “the lion’s whelp”; Pisces, in Zabulon, who “shall dwell at the haven of the sea”; Taurus, in Issachar, because he is “a strong ass couching down,” etc., and therefore associated with the stables; 153(Virgo‐) Scorpio, in Dan, who is described as “a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth,” etc.; Capricornus in Naphtali, who is “a hind (a deer) let loose”; Cancer, in Benjamin, for he is “ravenous”; Libra, the Balance, in Asher, whose “bread shall be fat”; Sagittarius in Joseph, because “his bow abode in strength.” To make up for the twelfth Sign, Virgo, made independent of Scorpio, we have Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob. Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the twelve signs on their banners. But indeed the Bible, in addition to the above, is filled with theo‐cosmological and astronomical symbols and personifications. 154It remains to wonder, and to query—if the actual, living Patriarchs’ destiny was so indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac—how it is that, after the loss of the ten tribes, the ten signs also out of the twelve have not miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac itself. 155The reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed as to the Zodiac by several of the highest authorities in Science. 156Newton believed that the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far back as the expedition of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at 6,500 years B.C., just 2,496 years before the creation of the world, according to the Bible chronology. 157Creuzer thought that it was very easy to show that most of the Theogonies were intimately connected with religious calendars, and were related to the Zodiac as to their prime origin; if not to the Zodiac known to us now, then to something very analogous with it. He felt certain that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, under one form or another, and that it had existed in the old form for ages, before it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb, owing to some singular coördination of events.(1123) 158Whether the “genii of the planets,” our Dhyân Chohans of supra‐mundane spheres, showed themselves to “holy prophets,” or not, as claimed in the Dabistan, it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the same way in days of old in Chaldæa, when astrological Magic and Theophania went hand in hand. 159Xenophon, no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus ... that at the moment of his death he thanked the Gods and heroes, for having so often instructed him themselves about the signs in heaven—ἐν οὐρανίοις σημείοις.(1124) 160Unless the Science of the Zodiac is admitted to be of the highest antiquity and universality, how can we account for its Signs being traced in the oldest Theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt struck with amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others, being related to the days of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in Northern Europe. 161Try, if you can, with the present system of autochthonous civilizations, so much in fashion in our day, to explain how nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace in common, could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial phantasmagoria, a veritable imbroglio of sidereal denominations, without sequence or object, having no figurative relation with the constellations they represent, and still less, apparently, with the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to signify, 162—had there not been a general intention and a universal cause and belief, at the root of all this!(1125) Most truly has Dupuis asserted the same: 163Il est impossible de découvrir le moindre trait de ressemblance entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes y ont arbitrairement tracées; et de l’autre côté, le hasard est impossible.(1126) 164Most certainly chance is “impossible.” There is no “chance” in Nature, wherein everything is mathematically coördinate, and inter‐related in its units. Says Coleridge: 165Chance is but the pseudonym of God [or Nature], for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with His sign manual. 166Replace the word “God” by Karma, and it will become an Eastern axiom. Therefore, the sidereal “prophecies” of the Zodiac, as they are called by Christian Mystics, never point to any one particular event, however solemn and sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to ever‐ recurrent, periodical laws in Nature, understood only by the Initiates of the Sidereal Gods themselves. 167No Occultist, no Astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with Christian Mystics, or even with Kepler’s mystical Astronomy, his great science and erudition notwithstanding; and this because, if his premisses are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one‐sided and biassed by Christian preconceptions. Where Kepler finds a prophecy directly pointing to the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law, decreed for the actual Manvantara. Why see in Pisces a direct reference to Christ—one of the several world‐reformers, a Saviour for his direct followers, but only a great and glorious Initiate for all the rest—when that constellation shines as a symbol of all the past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours, who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? Christian symbologists have tried to prove that this sign belonged to Ephraim, Joseph’s son, the elect of Jacob, and that therefore, it was at the moment of the Sun’s entering into the sign of Pisces, the Fish, that the “Elect Messiah,” the Ἰχθὺς of the first Christians, had to be born. But if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah, was he really born at that “moment,” or was his birth‐hour thus fixed by the adaptation of Theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal facts and popular belief? Everyone is aware that the real time and year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the Jews—whose forefathers made the word Dag signify both “Fish” and “Messiah” during the forced development of their rabbinical language—who are the first to deny this Christian claim. 168And what of the further facts that Brâhmans connect their “Messiah,” the eternal Avatâra Vishnu, with a Fish and the Deluge, and that the Babylonians also made a Fish and a Messiah of their Dag‐On, the Man‐Fish and Prophet? 169There are learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that: 170When the Pharisees sought a “sign from heaven,” Jesus said, “there shall no sign be given .... but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” (Mat., xvi. 4.).... The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or Fish‐Man of Nineveh.... Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the Sun reborn in Pisces. The voice of the Secret Wisdom says those who are looking for signs can have no other than that of the returning Fish‐Man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas—who could not be made flesh. 171It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the moment of the “incarnation,” all the planets were in conjunction in the sign Pisces, called by the Jewish Kabbalists the “constellation of the Messiah.” Kepler averred: 172It is in this constellation that the star of the Magi is to be found. 173This statement, quoted from Dr. Sepp(1127) by De Mirville, emboldened the latter to remark that: 174All the Jewish traditions, while announcing that star that many nations have seen [!],(1128) further added that it would absorb the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of various nations on this globe.(1129) “In virtue of those natural prophecies,” says Dr. Sepp, “it was written in the stars of the firmament that the Messiah would be born in the lunar year of the world 4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of the planets would be celebrating its jubilee.”(1130) 175There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for claiming restoration from the Hindûs for an alleged robbery from the Jews of their “Gods,” patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who recognized Noah in Prithî and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in Îshvara. After being residents for so many years in India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Brâhmans alone who had these figures, or who had divided their Great Age into four minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant speculations. S. A. Mackey, the Norwich “philosopher, astronomer, and shoemaker,” argues very pertinently: 176Christian theologians think it their duty to write against the long periods of Hindû chronology, and in them it may be pardonable: but when a man of learning crucifies the names and the numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists them into a form, which means something quite foreign to the intention of the ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with the birth of some maggot preëxisting in his own brain with so much exactness that he pretends to be amazed at the discovery, I cannot think him quite so pardonable.(1131) 177This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the words may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. Colonel Wilford was the first to crown his unlucky speculations on Hindû chronology and the Purânas by connecting the 4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, by simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years—the supposed lunar year of the Nativity—and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, as well as Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Âryans of having helped themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas the reverse was the case. The Jews, moreover, need not be accused of directly despoiling the Hindûs, of whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and undeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with the Chaldean Gods. They turned the 432,000 years of the Chaldean Divine Dynasties(1132) into 4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they quietly and modestly transformed them into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon—once common to all—of universal into national and tribal Gods and Heroes. It was Jewish property in its new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it upon any other nation—least of all upon the European. 178Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we may yet make a few remarks that may be found to the point. The 4,320 lunar years of the world—in the Bible the solar years are used—are not fanciful, as such, even if their application is quite erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive Esoteric, and later of the Brâhmanical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A Day of Brahmâ equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also does a Night of Brahmâ, or the duration of Pralaya, after which a new “sun” rises triumphantly over a new Manvantara, for the Septenary Chain it illuminates. The teaching had penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian era,(1133) and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon it their small Cycle, though it received full expression only through the Christian chronologers of the Bible, who adopted it, as also the 25th of December, the day on which all the solar Gods were said to have been incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was made to be born in “the lunar year of the world 4,320”? The “Sun of Righteousness and Salvation” had once more arisen and had dispelled the pralayic darkness of Chaos and Nonbeing on the plane of our objective little Globe and Chain. Once the subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make the supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the Zodiacal exigencies and the old traditions, though they had to be somewhat remodelled for the occasion. 179Thus what Kepler said, as a great Astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognized the grand and universal importance of all such planetary conjunctions, “each of which”—as he has well said—“is a climacteric year of Humanity.”(1134) The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and importance on account of its certain great results, in India and China as much as it has in Europe, for the respective Mystics of these countries. And it is certainly now no better than a mere assumption to maintain that Nature had only Christ in view, in building her (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark the figure of Taurus with the asterisk a, with no better or more valid proof of it being prophetic of the Verbum or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means the “one” and the “first,” and that Christ was also the alpha or the “one,” then this “proof” may be shown to be strangely invalidated in more than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all events; further, all the Sun‐Gods—Osiris, for instance—had been mystically connected with the constellation Taurus and were all called by their respective votaries the “First.” Further, the compilers of the mystical epithets given to the Christian Saviour were all more or less acquainted with the significance of the Zodiacal signs; 180and it is easier to suppose that they should have arranged their claims so as to match the mystic signs, than that the latter should have shone as a prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of the numberless generations that had gone before, and of those that were to be born hereafter. 181It is not simple chance that, in certain spheres, has placed on a throne the head of this bull [Taurus] trying to push back a Dragon with the ansated cross; we should know that this constellation of Taurus was called “the great city of God and the mother of revelations,” and also “the interpreter of the divine voice,” the Apis Pacis of Hermontis, in Egypt, which [as the patristic fathers would assure the world] is said to have proffered oracles that related to the birth of the Saviour.(1135) 182To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the ansated Egyptian cross, or Tau, the Jaina cross, or Svastika, and the Christian cross, have all the same meaning. Secondly, no peoples or nations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon that is given to it now. The Serpent was the symbol of WISDOM; and the Bull, Taurus, the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. Thus the Bull, pushing off the Dragon, or spiritual Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or Cross—which is esoterically “the foundation and framework of all construction”—would have an entirely phallic, physiological meaning, had it not had yet another significance unknown to our Biblical scholars and symbologists. At any rate, it has no special reference to the Verbum of St. John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The Taurus—which, by the way, is no lamb, but a bull—was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindûs as with the Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So much, every schoolboy knows. 183It may perhaps help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists if we refer them to what was said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality of periodical births and re‐births of World‐Saviours—Solar Gods—in Isis Unveiled,(1136) with regard to certain passages in Revelation. 184In 1853, the savant known as Erard‐Mollien read before the Institute of France a paper tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the signs of which were found the root and philosophy of all the most important religious festivals of that country; the lecturer tried to demonstrate that the origin of these religious ceremonies goes back into the night of time to at least 3,000 B.C. The Zodiac of the Hindûs, he thought, was long anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from it much in some particulars. In it one sees the Dragon on a Tree, at the foot of which the Virgin, Kanyâ‐Durgâ, one of the most ancient Goddesses, is placed on a Lion dragging after it the solar car. He said: 185This is the reason why this Virgin Durgâ is not the simple memento of an astronomical fact, but verily the most ancient divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is evidently the same whose return was announced in all the Sibylline books—the source of the inspiration of Virgil—an epoch of universal renovation.... And why, since the months are still named after this Indian solar Zodiac, by the Malayalim‐speaking people [of southern India], should that people have abandoned it to take that of the Greeks? Everything proves, on the contrary, that these zodiacal figures were transmitted to the Greeks by the Chaldeans, who got them from the Brâhmans.(1137) 186But all this is very poor testimony. Let us, however, remember also that which was said and accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who remarks that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1,447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of Libra could not have coincided with the vernal equinox later than 15,194 years B.C.; if we add to this, he argues, the 1,790 years that have passed since the birth of Christ, it appears that 16,984 years must have elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.(1138) 187Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his Uranographie Chinoise, assigns to the Chinese Astronomical Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years.(1139) 188Nevertheless, as opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little avail, it may be more useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly, the famous French Astronomer of the last century, Member of the Academy, etc., asserts that the Hindû systems of Astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from them the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. In support of these views he says: 189The astronomers who preceded the epoch 1491 are, first, the Alexandrian Greeks; Hipparchus, who flourished 125 years before our era, and Ptolemy, 260 years after Hipparchus. Following these were the Arabs, who revived the study of astronomy in the ninth century. These were succeeded by the Persians and the Tartars, to whom we owe the tables of Nassireddin in 1269, and those of Ulug‐ beg in 1437. Such is the succession of events in Asia as known prior to the Indian epoch 1491. What, then, is an epoch? It is the observation of the longitude of a star at a given moment, the place in the sky where it was seen, and which serves as a point of reference, a starting‐point from which to calculate both the past and future positions of the star from its observed motion. But an epoch is useless unless the motion of the star has been determined. A people, new to science and obliged to borrow a foreign astronomy, finds no difficulty in fixing an epoch, since the only observation needed is one which can be made at any moment. But what it needs above all, what it is obliged to borrow, are those elements which depend on accurate determination, and which require continuous observation; above all, those motions which depend on time, and which can only be accurately determined by centuries of observation. These motions, then, must be borrowed from a nation which has made such observations, and has behind it the labours of centuries. 190We conclude, therefore, that a new people will not borrow the epochs of an ancient one, without also borrowing from them the “average motions.” Starting from this principle we shall find that the Hindû epochs 1491 and 3102 could not have been derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug‐beg. 191There remains the supposition that the Hindûs, comparing their observations in 1491 with those previously made by Ulug‐beg and Ptolemy, used the intervals between these observations to determine the average motions. The date of Ulug‐beg is too recent for such a determination; while those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus were barely remote enough. But if the Hindû motions had been determined from these comparisons, the epochs would be connected together. Starting from the epochs of Ulug‐beg and Ptolemy we should arrive at all those of the Hindûs. Hence foreign epochs were either unknown or useless to the Hindûs.(1140) 192We may add to this another important consideration. When a nation is obliged to borrow from its neighbours the methods or the average motions of its astronomical tables, it has even greater need to borrow, besides these, the knowledge of the inequalities of the motions of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the apogee, of the nodes, and of the inclination of the ecliptic; in short, all those elements the determination of which requires the art of observing, some instrumental appliances, and great industry. All these astronomical elements, differing more or less with the Greeks of Alexandria, the Arabs, the Persians and the Tartars, exhibit no resemblance whatever with those of the Hindûs. The latter, therefore, borrowed nothing from their neighbours. 193If the Hindûs did not borrow their epoch, they must have possessed a real one of their own, based on their own observations; and this must be either the epoch of the year 1491 after, or that of the year 3102 before our era, the latter preceding by 4,592 years the epoch 1491. We have to choose between these two epochs and to decide which of them is based on observation. But before stating the arguments which can and must decide the question, we may be permitted to make a few remarks to those who may be inclined to believe that it is modern observations and calculations which have enabled the Hindûs to determine the past positions of the heavenly bodies. It is far from easy to determine the celestial movements with sufficient accuracy to ascend the stream of time for 4,592 years, and to describe the phenomena which must have occurred at that period. We possess to‐day excellent instruments; exact observations have been made for some two or three centuries, which already permit us to calculate with considerable accuracy the average motions of the Planets; we have the observations of the Chaldeans, of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy, which, owing to their remoteness from the present time, permit us to fix these motions with greater certainty. Still we cannot undertake to represent with invariable accuracy the observations throughout the long period intervening between the Chaldeans and ourselves; and still less can we undertake to determine with exactitude events occurring 4,592 years before our day. 194Cassini and Maier have each determined the secular motion of the moon, and they differ by 3m. 43s. This difference would give rise in forty‐six centuries to an uncertainty of nearly three degrees in the moon’s place. Doubtless one of these determinations is more accurate than the other; and it is for observations of very great antiquity to decide between them. But in very remote periods, where observations are lacking, it follows that we are uncertain as to the phenomena. How, then, could the Hindûs have calculated back from the year 1491 A.D. to the year 3102 before our era, if they were only recent students of Astronomy? 195The Orientals have never been what we are. However high an opinion of their knowledge we may form from the examination of their Astronomy, we cannot suppose them ever to have possessed that great array of instruments which distinguishes our modern observatories, and which is the product of simultaneous progress in various arts, nor could they have possessed that genius for discovery, which has hitherto seemed to belong exclusively to Europe, and which, supplying the place of time, causes the rapid progress of science and of human intelligence. If the Asiatics have been powerful, learned and wise, it is power and time which have produced their merit and success of all kinds. Power has founded or destroyed their empires; now it has erected edifices imposing by their bulk, now it has reduced them to venerable ruins; and while these vicissitudes alternated with each other, patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced wisdom. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has erected their scientific fame. 196If the Hindûs possessed in 1491 a knowledge of the heavenly motions sufficiently accurate to enable them to calculate backwards for 4592 years, it follows that they could only have obtained this knowledge from very ancient observations. To grant them such knowledge, while refusing them the observations from which it is derived, is to suppose an impossibility; it would be equivalent to assuming that at the outset of their career they had already reaped the harvest of time and experience. While on the other hand, if their epoch of 3102 is assumed to be real, it would follow that the Hindûs had simply kept pace with successive centuries down to the year 1491 of our era. Thus, time itself was their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during these periods, because they had seen them; and the duration of the Hindû people on earth is the cause of the fidelity of its records and the accuracy of its calculations. 197It would seem that the problem as to which of the two epochs of 3102 and 1491 is the real one ought to be solved by one consideration, viz., that the ancients in general, and particularly the Hindûs, as we may see by the arrangement of their Tables, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only. Now, there was no eclipse of the sun at the moment of the epoch 1491; and no eclipse of the moon either fourteen days before or after that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is not based on an observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brâhmans of Tirvaloor place it at sunrise on February 18th. The sun was then in the first point of the Zodiac according to its true longitude. The other Tables show that at the preceding midnight the moon was in the same place, but according to its average longitude. The Brâhmans tell us also that this first point, the origin of their Zodiac, was, in the year 3102, 54 degrees behind the equinox. It follows that the origin—the first point of their Zodiac—was therefore in the sixth degree of Aquarius. 198There occurred, therefore, about this time and place an average conjunction; and indeed this conjunction is given in our best Tables: La Caille’s for the sun and Maier’s for the moon. There was no eclipse of the sun, the moon being too distant from her node; but fourteen days later, the moon having approached the node, must have been eclipsed. Maier’s tables, used without correction for acceleration, give this eclipse; but they place it during the day when it could not have been observed in India. Cassini’s tables give it as occurring at night, which shows that Maier’s motions are too rapid for distant centuries, when the acceleration is not allowed for; and which also proves that in spite of the improvement of our knowledge we can still be uncertain as to the actual aspect of the heavens in past times. 199Therefore we believe that, as between the two Hindû epochs, the real one is the year 3102, because it was accompanied by an eclipse which could be observed, and which must have served to determine it. This is a first proof of the truth of the longitude assigned by the Hindûs to the sun and the moon at this instant; and this proof would perhaps be sufficient, were it not that this ancient determination becomes of the greatest importance for the verification of the motions of these bodies, and must therefore be borne out by every possible proof of its authenticity. 200We notice, 1st, that the Hindûs seem to have combined two epochs together into the year 3102. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans reckon primarily from the first moment of the Kali Yuga; but they have a second epoch placed 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s. later. The latter is the true astronomical epoch, while the former seems to be a civil era. But if this epoch of the Kali Yuga had no reality, and was the mere result of a calculation, why should it be thus divided? Their calculated astronomical epoch would have become that of the Kali Yuga, which would have been placed at the conjunction of the sun and the moon, as is the case with the epochs of the three other Tables. They must have had some reason for distinguishing between the two; and this reason can only be due to the circumstances and the time of the epoch; which therefore could not be the result of calculation. This is not all; starting from the solar epoch determined by the rising of the sun on February 18th, 3102, and tracing back events 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s., we come to 2h. 27m. 30s. a.m. of February 16th, which is the instant of the beginning of Kali Yuga. It is curious that this age has not been made to commence at one of the four great divisions of the day. It might be suspected that the epoch should be midnight, and that the 2h. 27m. 30s. are a meridian correction. 201But whatever may have been the reason for fixing on this moment, it is plain that were this epoch the result of calculation, it would have been just as easy to carry it back to midnight, so as to make the epoch correspond to one of the chief divisions of the day, instead of placing it at a moment fixed by the fraction of a day. 2022nd. The Hindûs assert that at the first moment of Kali Yuga there was a conjunction of all the planets; and their Tables show this conjunction while ours indicate that it might actually have occurred. Jupiter and Mercury were in exactly the same degree of the ecliptic; Mars being 8° and Saturn 17° distant from it. It follows that about this time, or some fifteen days after the commencement of Kali Yuga, and as the sun advanced in the Zodiac, the Hindûs saw four planets emerge successively from the Sun’s rays; first Saturn, then Mars, then Jupiter and Mercury, and these planets appeared united in a somewhat small space. Although Venus was not among them, the taste for the marvellous caused it to be called a general conjunction of all the planets. The testimony of the Brâhmans here coïncides with that of our Tables; and this evidence, the result of a tradition, must be founded on actual observation. 2033rd. We may remark that this phenomenon was visible about a fortnight after the epoch, and exactly at the time when the eclipse of the moon must have been observed, which served to fix the epoch. The two observations mutually confirm each other; and whoever made the one must have made the other also. 2044th. We may believe also that the Hindûs made at the same time a determination of the place of the moon’s node; this seems indicated by their calculation. They give the longitude of this point of the lunar orbit for the time of their epoch, and to this they add as a constant 40m., which is the node’s motion in 12d. 14h. It is as if they stated that this determination was made thirteen days after their epoch, and that to make it correspond to that epoch, we must add the 40m. through which the node has retrograded in the interval. This observation is, therefore, of the same date as that of the lunar eclipse; thus giving three observations, which are mutually confirmatory. 2055th. It appears from the description of the Hindû Zodiac given by M. C. Gentil, that on it the places of the stars named the Eye of Taurus and the Wheat‐ear of Virgo, can be determined for the commencement of the Kali Yuga. Now, comparing these places with the actual positions, reduced by our precession of the equinoxes to the moment in question, we see that the point of origin of the Hindû Zodiac must lie between the fifth and sixth degree of Aquarius. The Brâhmans, therefore, were right in placing it in the sixth degree of that sign, the more so since this small difference may be due to the proper motion of the stars, which is unknown. Thus it was yet another observation which guided the Hindûs in this fairly accurate determination of the first point of their movable Zodiac. 206It does not seem possible to doubt the existence in antiquity of observations of this date. The Persians say that four beautiful stars were placed as guardians at the four corners of the world. Now it so happens that at the commencement of Kali Yuga, 3,000 or 3,100 years before our era, the Eye of the Bull and the Heart of the Scorpion were exactly at the equinoctial points, while the Heart of the Lion and the Southern Fish were pretty near the solstitial points. An observation of the rising of the Pleiades in the evening, seven days before the autumnal equinox, also belongs to the year 3000 before our era. This and similar observations are collected in Ptolemy’s calendars, though he does not give their authors; and these, which are older than those of the Chaldeans, may well be the work of the Hindûs. They are well acquainted with the constellation of the Pleiades, and while we call it vulgarly the “Poussinière,” they name it Pillaloo‐codi—the “Hen and chickens.” This name has, therefore, passed from people to people, and comes to us from the most ancient nations of Asia. We see that the Hindûs must have observed the rising of the Pleiades, and have made use of it to regulate their years and their months; for this constellation is also called Krittikâ. Now they have a month of the same name, and this coïncidence can only be due to the fact that this month was announced by the rising or setting of the constellation in question. 207But what is even more decisive as showing that the Hindûs observed the stars, and in the same way that we do, marking their position by their longitude, is a fact mentioned by Augustinus Riccius that, according to observations attributed to Hermes, and made 1,985 years before Ptolemy, the brilliant star in the Lyre and that in the heart of the Hydra were each seven degrees in advance of their respective positions as determined by Ptolemy. This determination seems very extraordinary. The stars advance regularly with respect to the equinox: and Ptolemy ought to have found the longitudes 28 degrees in excess of what they were 1,985 years before his time. Besides, there is a remarkable peculiarity about this fact, the same error or difference being found in the positions of both stars; therefore the error was due to some cause affecting both stars equally. It was to explain this peculiarity that the Arab Thebith imagined the stars to have an oscillatory movement, causing them to advance and recede alternately. This hypothesis was easily disproved; but the observations attributed to Hermes remained unexplained. Their explanation, however, is found in Hindû Astronomy. At the date fixed for these observations, 1,985 years before Ptolemy, the first point of the Hindû Zodiac was 35 degrees in advance of the equinox; therefore the longitudes reckoned for this point are 35 degrees in excess of those reckoned from the equinox. 208But after the lapse of 1,985 years the stars would have advanced 28 degrees, and there would remain a difference of only 7 degrees between the longitudes of Hermes and those of Ptolemy, and the difference would be the same for the two stars, since it is due to the difference between the starting‐points of the Hindû Zodiac and that of Ptolemy, which reckons from the equinox. This explanation is so simple and natural that it must be true. We do not know whether Hermes, so celebrated in antiquity, was a Hindû, but we see that the observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindû manner, and we conclude that they were made by the Hindûs, who, therefore, were able to make all the observations we have enumerated, and which we find noted in their Tables. 2096th. The observation of the year 3102, which seems to have fixed their epoch, was not a difficult one. We see that the Hindûs, having once determined the moon’s daily motion of 13° 10 ́ 35 ́ ́, made use of it to divide the Zodiac into 27 constellations, related to the period of the moon, which takes about 27 days to describe it. 210It was by this method that they determined the positions of the stars in this Zodiac; it was thus they found that a certain star of the Lyre was in 8s 24°, the Heart of the Hydra in 4s 7°, longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are calculated on the Hindû Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the Wheat‐ear of Virgo forms the commencement of their fifteenth constellation, and the Eye of Taurus the end of the fourth; these stars being the one in 6s 6° 40 ́, the other in 1s 23° 20 ́ of the Hindû Zodiac. This being so, the eclipse of the moon which occurred fifteen days after the Kali Yuga epoch, took place at a point between the Wheat‐ear of Virgo and the star θ of the same constellation. These stars are very approximately a constellation apart, the one beginning the fifteenth, the other the sixteenth. Thus it would not be difficult to determine the moon’s place by measuring her distance from one of these stars; from this they deduced the position of the sun, which is opposite to the moon, and then, knowing their average motions, they calculated that the moon was at the first point of the Zodiac according to her average longitude at midnight on the 17th‐18th February of the year 3102 before our era, and that the sun occupied the same place six hours later according to his true longitude; an event which fixes the commencement of the Hindû year. 2117th. The Hindûs state that 20,400 years before the age of Kali Yuga, the first point of their Zodiac coincided with the vernal equinox, and that the sun and moon were in conjunction there. This epoch is obviously fictitious;(1141) but we may enquire from what point, from what epoch, the Hindûs set out in establishing it. Taking the Hindû values for the revolution of the sun and moon, viz., 363d. 6h. 12m. 30s., and 27d. 7h. 43m. 13s., we have— 21220,400 revolutions of the sun = 7,451,277d. 2h. 272,724 revolutions of the moon = 7,451,277d. 7h. 213Such is the result obtained by starting from the Kali Yuga epoch; and the assertion of the Hindûs, that there was a conjunction at the time stated, is founded on their Tables; but if, using the same elements, we start from the era of the year 1491, or from another placed in the year 1282, of which we shall speak later, there will always be a difference of almost one or two days. It is both just and natural, in verifying the Hindû calculations, to take those among their elements which give the same result as they had themselves arrived at, and to set out from that one among their epochs which enables us to arrive at the fictitious epoch in question. Hence, since to make this calculation they must have set out from their real epoch, the one which was founded on an observation and not from any of those which were derived by this very calculation from the former, it follows that their real epoch was that of the year 3102 before our era. 2148th. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans give the moon’s motion as 7s 20° 0 ́ 7 ́ ́ on the movable Zodiac, and as 9k 7° 45 ́ 1 ́ ́ as referred to the equinox in a great period of 1,600,984 days, or 4,386 years and 94 days. We believe this motion to have been determined by observation; and we must state at the outset that this period is of an extent which renders it but ill suited to the calculation of the mean motions. 215In their astronomical calculations the Hindûs make use of periods of 248, 3,031, and 12,372 days; but, apart from the fact that these periods, though much too short, do not present the inconvenience of the former, they contain an exact number of revolutions of the moon referred to its apogee. They are in reality mean motions. The great period of 1,600,984 days is not a sum of accumulated revolutions; there is no reason why it should contain 1,600,984 rather than 1,600,985 days. It would seem that observation alone must have fixed the number of days and marked the beginning and end of the period. This period ends on the 21st of May, 1282 of our era, at 5h. 15m. 30s. at Benares. The moon was then in apogee, according to the 216Hindûs, and her longitude was .. 7B 13° 45 ́ 1 ́ ́ Maier gives the longitude as .. 7 13 53 48 And places the apogee at .. .. 7 14 6 54 217The determination of the moon’s place by the Brâhmans thus differs only by nine minutes from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty‐ two minutes, and it is very evident that they could only have obtained this agreement with our best Tables and this exactitude in the celestial positions by observation. If then, observation fixed the end of this period, there is every reason to believe that it determined its commencement. But then this motion, determined directly, and from nature, would of necessity be in close agreement with the true motions of the heavenly bodies. 218And in fact the Hindû motion during this long period of 4,883 years, does not differ by a minute from that of Cassini, and agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples, the Hindûs and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and perhaps as distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely the same results as regards the moon’s motions; and an agreement which would be inconceivable, if it were not based on the observation and mutual imitation of nature. We must remark that the four Tables of the Hindûs are all copies of the same Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese Tables existed in 1687, when they were brought from India by M. de la Loubère. At that time the tables of Cassini and Maier were not in existence, and thus the Hindûs were already in possession of the exact motion contained in these Tables, while we did not yet possess it. It must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindû motion is the point of observation. It is exact throughout this period of 4,383 years, because it was taken from the sky itself; and if observation determined its close, it fixed its commencement also. It is the longest period which has been observed and of which the recollection is preserved in the annals of Astronomy. It has its origin in the epoch of the year 3102 B.C., and it is a demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch.(1142) 219Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific men who have tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Âryans. From John Bentley down to Burgess’ Sûrya‐Siddhânta, not one Astronomer has been fair enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood the Hindû Symbology may be, no Occultist can fail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences; nor will he turn away from their metaphysical and mystical interpretation of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and reäscent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical Soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics and their Remains asserts, the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists 220was to accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic theosophy, the very essence of which was that the innumerable gods of the Hindû mythology were but names for the Energies of the First Triad in its successive Avatârs or manifestations unto man, 221whither can we better turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root, than to the old Indian wisdom? We say again: Archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were to be rendered otherwise than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hindûism. For the former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother—ancient Lemuro‐Atlantean Wisdom. 222Section XVII. Summary of the Position. 223The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as a void, a vacuum in Nature, one ought to find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the “lights” of Science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that “two lights make darkness” found its application it is in this case, where one‐half of the “lights” imposes its forces and “modes of motion” on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same. “Ether, Matter, Energy”—the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of the truly unknown God of Science, called by them PHYSICAL ‹Previous chapterThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 67Next chapterThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 69›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. 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