The secret doctrine

From the first invention of the hieroglyphics it was not the vulgar, but the distinguished and select men who became initiated in the secrecy of the temples into the science of every kind of Astrology—even into its most abject kind: that Astrology which later on found itself prostituted in the public thoroughfares.

There was a vast difference between the Sacred Science taught by Petosiris Necepso—the first Astrologers mentioned in the Egyptian manuscripts, believed to have lived during the reign of Ramses II. (Sesostris) [ Sesostris, or Pharaoh Ramses II., whose mummy was unswathed in 1886 by Maspero of the Bulak Museum, and recognised as that of the greatest king of Egypt, whose grandson, Ramses III., was the last king of an ancient kingdom.] —and the miserable charlatanry of the quacks called Chaldæans, who degraded the Divine Knowledge under the last Emperors of Rome. Indeed, one may fairly describe the two as the “high ceremonial Astrology” and “astrological Astrolatry.” The first depended on the knowledge by the Initiates of those (to us) immaterial Forces or Spiritual Entities that effect matter and guide it. Called by the ancient Philosophers the Archontes and the Cosmocratores, they were the types or paradigms on the higher planes of the lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution, whom we call Elementals and Nature-Spirits, to whom the Sabæans bowed and whom they worshipped, without suspecting the essential difference. Hence (Page 338) the latter kind when not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic. It was the favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology, entirely ignorant of the apotelesmatic principles of the primitive Science, the doctrines of which were imparted only at initiation. Thus, while the real Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the very summit of spiritual knowledge, the hoi polloi among the Sabæans crouched, steeped in superstition—ten millenniums back, as they do now—in the cold and lethal shadow of the valleys of matter. Sidereal influence is dual. There is the physical and physiological influence, that of exotericism; and the high spiritual, intellectual, and moral influence, imparted by the knowledge of the former, called Astrology, so far back as the eighteenth century, “The very foolish mother of a very wise daughter”—Astronomy. On the other hand, Arago, a luminary of the nineteenth century, supports the reality of the sidereal influence of the Sun, Moon and Planets. He asks:

Where do we find lunar influences refuted by arguments that science would dare to avow?

But even Bailly, having, as he thought, put down Astrology as publicly practised, dares not to do the same with the real Astrology. He says:

Judiciary Astrology was at its origin the result of a profound system, the work of an enlightened nation that would wander too far into the mysteries of God and Nature.

A Scientist of a more recent date, a member of the Institute of France, and a professor of history, Ph. Lebas, discovers (unconsciously to himself) the very root of Astrology in his able article on the subject in the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de France. He well understands, he tells his readers, that the adhesion to that Science of such a number of highly intellectual men should be in itself a sufficient motive for believing that all Astrology is not folly:

While proclaiming in politics the sovereignty of the people and of public opinion can we admit, as heretofore, that mankind allowed itself to be radically deceived in this only: that an absolute and gross absurdity reigned in the minds of whole nations for so many centuries without being based on anything save—on one hand human imbecility, and on the other charlatanry? How for fifty centuries and more can most men have been either dupes or knaves? . . . . Even though we may find it impossible to decide between and separate the realities of Astrology from the elements of invention and empty dreaming in it, . . . let us, nevertheless, repeat with Bossuet and all modern philosophers, that “nothing that has been dominant could be absolutely false.” Is it not true, at all events, that there is a physical reaction on one another among the planets.

The celestial bodies are the cause of all that happens in this sublunary world, they act indirectly on human actions; but not all the effects produced by them are unavoidable. [ Summa. Quest. xv. Art, v., upon Astrologers, and Vol. III. pp.2-29.]

The Occultists and Theosophists are, the first to confess that there is white and black Astrology. Nevertheless, Astrology has to be studied in both aspects by those who wish to become proficient in it; and the good or bad results obtained do not depend upon the principles, which are the same in both kinds, but in the Astrologer himself. Thus Pythagoras, who established the whole Copernican system by the Book of Hermes, 2,000 years before Galileo’s predecessor was born, found and studied in them the whole Science of divine Theogony, of the communication with, and the evocation of, the world’s Rectors—the Princes of the “Principalities” of St. Paul—the nativity of each Planet and of the Universes itself, the formulæ of incantations and the consecretation of each portion of the human body to the respective Zodiacal sign corresponding to it. All this cannot be regarded as childish and absurd—still less “devilish”—save by those who are, and wish to remain, tyros in the Philosophy of the Occult Sciences. No true thinker—no one who recognises the presence of a common bond between man and visible, as well as invisible, Nature—would see in the old relics of Archaic Wisdom—such as the Petemenoph Papyrus, for instance—“childish nonsense and absurdity,” as many Academicians (Page 340) and Scientists have done. But upon finding in such ancient documents the application of the Hermetic rules and laws, such as

The consecration of one’s hair to the celestial Nile; of the left temple to the living Spirit in the sun, and the right one to the spirit of Ammon,

he will endeavour to study and comprehend better the “laws of correspondences.” Nor will he disbelieve in the antiquity of Astrology on the plea that some Orientalists have thought fit to declare that the Zodiac was not very ancient, being only the invention of the Greeks of the Macedonian period. For this statement, besides having been shown to be entirely erroneous by a number of other reasons, may be entirely disproved by facts relating to the latest discoveries in Egypt, and by the more accurate readings of hieroglyphics and inscriptions of the earliest dynasties. The published polemics on the contents of the so-called “Magic” Papyri of the Anastasi collection indicate the antiquity of the Zodiac. As the Lettres à Lettrone say: The papyri discourse at length upon the four bases or

Foundations of the world, the identity of which it is impossible, according to Champollion, to mistake, as one is forced to recognise in them the Pillars of the World of St. Paul. It is they who are invoked with the gods of all the celestial zones, quite analogous, once more, to the Spiritualia nequitiaœ in cœlestibus of the same apostle. [“ The principalities and powers [ born ] in heavenly places.” (Ephes., iii. 10). The verse. “For though there be that are called Gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there be Gods many and lords many” (I. Corinth. viii. 5), shows at any rate, the recognition by Paul of a plurality of “Gods” whom he calls “dæmons” (“spirits”—never devils). Principalities, Thrones, Dominions. Rectors, etc., are all Jewish and Christian names for the Gods of the ancients—the Archangels and Angels of the former being in every case the Devas and the Dhyân Chohans of the more ancient religions.]

That invocation was made in the proper terms . . . . of the formula, reproduced far too faithfully by Jamblichus for it to be possible to refuse him any longer the merit of having transmitted to posterity the ancient and primitive spirit of the Egyptian Astrologers. [ Answer by Reuvens to Letronne with regard to his mistake notion about the Zodiac of Dendera.]

As Letronne had tried to prove that all the genuine Egyptian Zodiacs had been manufactured during the Roman period, the Sensaos mummy is brought forward to show that:

All the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were chiefly astronomical. Royal tombs and funereal rituals are so many tables of constellations and of their influences for all the hours of every month.

Thus the genethliac tables themselves prove that they are far older than the period assigned to their origin; all the Zodiacs of the sarcophagi of later epochs being simple reminiscences of the Zodiacs belonging to the mythological [ archaic ] period.

Materialistic and pantheistic prophesying by the objective planet itself, independently of its Rector [ the Mlac of the Jews, the ministers of the Eternal commissioned by him to announce his will to mortals ]; the ascension or conjunction of the planet at the moment of the birth of an individual deciding his fortune and the moment and mode of his death. [ St. Ausgustine (De Gen., I.iii.) and Delrio (Disquisit., Vol. IV., chap iii.) are quoted by De Mirville, to show that “the more astrologers speak the truth and the better they prophesy it, the more one has to feel diffident, seeing that their agreement with the devil becomes thereby the more apparent.” The famous statement made by Juvenal (Satires, vi.) to the effect that “not one single astrologer could be found who did not pay dearly for the help he received from his genius”—no more proves the latter to be a devil than the death of Socrates proves his daimon to have been a native from the nether world—if such there be. Such argument only demonstrates human stupidity and wickedness, once reason is made subservient to prejudice and fanaticism of every sort. “Most of the great writers of antiquity, Cicero and Tacitus among them, believed in Astrology and the realization of its prophecies: and “the penalty of death decreed nearly everywhere against those mathematicians [astrologers] who happened to predict falsely diminished neither their number nor their tranquility of mind.”]

Every student of Occultism knows that the heavenly bodies are closely related during each Manvantara with the mankind of that special cycle; and there are some who believe that each great character born during that period has—as every other mortal has, only in a far stronger degree—his destiny outlined within his proper constellation or star, traced as a self-prophecy, an anticipated autobiography, by the indwelling Spirit of that particular star. The human Monad in its first beginning is that Spirit, or the Soul of that star (Planet) itself. As our Sun radiates its light and beams on every body in space within the boundaries of its system, so the Regent of every Planet-star, the Parent-monad, shoots out from itself the Monad of every “pilgrim” Soul born under its house within its own group. The Regents are esoterically seven, whether in the Sephiroth, the “Angels of the Presence,” the Rishis, or the Amshaspends. “The One is no number” is said in all the esoteric works.
(Page 342) From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers) the noble primitive science passed to the Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians) and the Hakamin (or scientists, the Magicians of the lower class), and from these to the Jews during their captivity. The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for centuries, and when rediscovered by Hilkiah had lost their true sense for the people of Israel. Primitive Occult Astrology was on the decline when Daniel, the last of the Jewish Initiates of the old school, became the chief of the Magi and Astrologers of Chaldæa. In those days even Egypt, who had her wisdom from the same source as Babyon, had degenerated from her former grandeur, and her glory had begun to fade out. Still, the science of old habit left her eternal imprint on the world, and the seven great Primitive Gods reigned for ever in the Astrology and the division of time of every nation upon the face of the earth. The names of the days of our (Christian) week are those of the Gods of the Chaldæans, who translated them from those of the Âryans; the uniformity of these antediluvian names in every nation, from the Goths back to the Indians, would remain inexplicable, as Sir W. Jones thought, had not the riddle been explained to us by the invitation made by the Chaldæan oracles, recorded by Porphyry and quoted by Eusebius:

To carry those names first to the Egyptian and Phœnician colonies, then to the Greeks, with the express recommendation that each God should be invoked only on that day that had been called by his name. . . . .

Thus Apollo says in those oracles: “I must be invoked on the day of the sun; Mercury after his directions, then Chronos [Saturn], then Venus, and do not fail to call seven times each of those gods.” [Preparatio Evangelica. I. xiv.]

This is slightly erroneous. Greece did not get her astrological instruction from Egypt or from Chaldæa, but direct from Orpheus, as Lucian tells us. [ Ast., iv. 60] It was Orpheus, as he says, who imparted the Indian Sciences to nearly all the great monarchs of antiquity; and it was they, the ancient kings favoured by the Planetary Gods, who recorded the principles of Astrology—as did Ptolemus, for instance. Thus Lucian writes:

The Bœotian Tiresias acquired the greatest reputation in the art of predicting futurity . . . . In those days divination was not as slightly treated as it is now; and nothing was ever undertaken without previous consultation with diviners, whose oracles were all directed by astrology . . . . At Delphos the virgin commissioned to announce futurity was the symbol of the Heavenly Virgin, . . . . and Our Lady.

Its Prominent Disciples - (Page 343) On the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Pharaoh, Neith, mother of Ra, the heifer that brings forth the Sun, her body spangled with stars, and wearing the solar and lunar discs, is equally referred to as the “Heavenly Virgin” and “Our Lady of the Starry Vault.”
Modern judiciary Astrology in its present form began only during the time of Diodorus, as he apprises the world. [Hist., I. ii.] But Chaldæan Astrology was believed in by most of the great men in History, such as Cæsar, Pliny, Cicero—whose best friends, Nigidius Figulus and Lucius Tarrutius, were themselves Astrologers, the former being famous as a prophet. Marcus Antonius never travelled without an Astrologer recommended to him by Cleopatra. Augustus, when ascending the throne, had his horoscope drawn by Theagenes. Tiberius discovered pretenders to his throne by means of Astrology and divination. Vitellius dared not exile the Chaldæans, as they had announced the day of their banishment as that of his death. Vespasian consulted them daily; Domitian would not move without being advised by the prophets; Adrian was a learned Astrologer himself; and all of them, ending with Julian (called the Apostate because he would not become one), believed in, and addressed their prayers to, the Planetary “Gods.” The Emperor Adrian, moreover, “predicted from the January calends up to December 31^st, every event that happened to him daily.” Under the wisest emperors Rome had a School of Astrology, wherein were secretly taught the occult influences of the Sun, Moon, and Saturn. [ All these particulars may be found more fully and far more completely in Champollion Figeac’s Ėgypte.] Jndiciary Astrology is used to this day by the Kabalists; and Éliphas Lévi, the modern French Magus, teaches its rudiments in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic. But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology, with the teraphim and the urim and thummim of Magic, is lost to Europe. Hence our century of Materialism shrugs it shoulders and sees in Astrology—a pretender.
Not all scientists scoff at it, however, and one may rejoice in reading in the Musée des Sciences [ Op. cit., p.230.] the suggestive and fair remarks made by Le Couturier, a man of science of no mean reputation. He thinks it curious (Page 344) to notice that while the bold speculations of Democritus are found vindicated by Dalton,

The reveries of the alchemists are also on their way to a certain rehabilitation. They receive renewed life from the minute investigations of their successors, the chemists; a very remarkable thing indeed is to see how much modern discoveries have served to vindicate, of late, the theories of the Middle Ages from the charge of absurdity laid at their door. Thus, if, as demonstrated by Col. Sabine, the direction of a piece of steel, hung a few feet above the soil, may be influenced by the position of the moon, whose body is at a distance of 240,000 miles from our planet, who then could accuse of extravagance the belief of the ancient astrologers [ or the modern, either] in the influence of the stars on human destiny.[ Op. cit., p.230.]

The last era of Cumæan song is now arrived and the grand series of ages [ that series which recurs again and again in the course of our mundane revolution ] begins afresh. Now the Virgin Astæa returns, and the reign of Saturn recommences

It is in these few lines, called the “Sibylline prophecy about the coming of Christ,” that his followers now see a direct foretelling of the event. Now who will presume to maintain that either at the birth of Jesus or since the establishment of the so-called Christian religion, any portion of the above-quoted sentences can be shown as prophetic? Has the “last age”—the Age of Iron, or Kali Yuga—closed since then? Quite the reverse, since it is shown to be in full sway just now, not only, because the Hindus use the name, but by universal personal experience. Where is that “new race that has descended from the celestial realms”? Was it the race that emerged from Paganism into Christianity? Or is it our present race, with nations ever red-hot for fight, jealous and envious, ready to pounce upon each other, showing mutual hatred that would put to blush cats and dogs, ever lying and deceiving one another? Is it this age of ours that is the promised “Golden Age”—in which neither the venom of the serpent nor of any plant is any longer lethal, and in which we are all secure under the mild sway of God-chosen sovereigns? The wildest fancy of an opium-eater could hardly suggest a more inappropriate description, if it is to be applied to our age or to any age since the year one of our era. What of the mutual slaughter of sects, of Christians by Pagans, and of Pagans and Heretics by Christians; the horrors of the Middle Ages and of the Inquisition; Napoleon, and since his day, an “armed peace” at best—at the worst, torrents of blood, shed for supremacy over acres of land, and a handful of heathen : millions of soldiers under arms, ready for battle; a diplomatic body playing at Cains and Judases; and instead of the “mild sway of a divine sovereign” the universal, though unrecognised, sway of Cæsarism, of “might” in lieu of “right,” and the breeding therefrom of anarchists, socialists, pétroleuses, and destroyers of every description?

The fields are yellow with soft ears of corn;

but so they were before our era:

The blushing grapes shall hang from the rude brambles, and dewy honey shall [ or may ] distil from the rugged oak;

but they have not thus done, so far. We must look for another interpretation. What is it? The Sibylline Prophetess spoke, as thousands of other Prophets and Seers have spoken, though even the few such records that have survived are rejected by Christian and infidel, and their interpretations are only allowed and accepted among the Initiated. The Sibyl alluded to cycles in general and to the great cycle especially. Let us remember how the Purânas corroborate the above, among others the Vishnu Purâna:

When the practices taught by the Vedas, and the Institutes of Law shall have nearly ceased, and the close of the Kali Yuga [ the “Iron Age” of Virgil ] shall be nigh, an aspect of that divine Being who exists of his own spiritual nature in the character of Brahmâ and even is the beginning of the end [ Alpha and Omega ], . . . shall descend upon earth: he will be born in the family of Vishnuyashas, an eminent Brâhman of Shamballah . . . . endowed with the eight superhuman powers. By his irresistible might he will destroy . . . all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. He will then reëstablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the [ Kali ] Age shall be awakened and shall be as pellucid as crystal. [ At the close of our Race, people, it is said, through suffering and discontent will become more spiritual. Clairvoyance will become a general faculty. We shall be approaching the spiritual state of the Third and Second Races.] The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human beings [ the Shistha, the survivors of the future cataclysm ], and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita [ or Satya ] Yuga [the age of purity, or the “Golden Age”] For it is said: “When the sun and moon and Tishya [asterisms] and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion the Krita Age [the Golden] shall return. [Vishnu Purâna. IV., 228. Wilson’s translation.]

The astronomical cycles of the Hindus—those taught publicly—have been sufficiently well understood, but the esoteric meaning thereof, in its application to transcendental subjects connected with them has ever remained a dead-letter. The number of cycles was enormous; it ranged from the Mahâ Yuga cycle of 4,320,000 years down to the small septenary and quinquennial cycles, the latter being composed of the five years called respectively the Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idvatsara, Anuvatsara, and Vatsara, each having secret attributes or qualities attached to them.
Secret Cycles - (Page 349) Vriddhagarga gives these in a treatise, now the property of a Trans-Himâlayan Matham (or temple); and describes the relation between this quinquennial and the Brihaspati cycle, based on the conjunction of the Sun and Moon every sixtieth year: a cycle as mysterious—for national events in general and those of the Âryan Hindu nation especially—as it is important.

SECTION XL
Secret Cycles
(Page 350) THE former five-year cycle comprehends sixty solar-sidereal months or 1800 days, sixty-one solar months (or 1830); sixty-two lunar months (or 1860 lunations), and sixty-seven lunar-asterismal months (or 1809 such days).
In his Kâla Sankalita, Col. Warren very properly regards these years as cycles; this they are, for each year has its own special importance as having some bearing upon and connection with specified events in individual horoscopes. He writes that in the cycle of sixty there.

Are contained five cycles of twelve years, each supposed equal to one year of the planet (Brihaspati, or Jupiter) . . . I mention this cycle because I found it mentioned in some books, but I know of no nation or tribe that reckons time after that account. [ Op. cit., p.212.]

The ignorance is very natural, since Col. Warren could know nothing of the secret cycles and their meanings. He adds:

The names of the five cycles of Yugas are: . . . . (1) Samvatsara, (2) Parivatsara, (3) Idvatsara, (4) Anuvatsara, (5) Udravatsara.

The learned Colonel might, however, have assured himself that there were “other nations” which had the same secret cycle, if he had but remembered that the Romans also had their lustrum of five years (from the Hindus undeniably) which represented the same period if multiplied by 12. [ At any rate, the temple secret meaning was the same.] Near Benares there are still the relics of all these cycle-records, and of astronomical instruments cut out of solid rock, the everlasting records of Archaic Initiation, called by Sir W. Jones (as suggested by the prudent Brâhmans who surrounded him) old “back records” or reckonings.
The Naros - (Page 351) But in Stonehenge they exist to this day. Higgins says that Waltire found the barrows of tumuli surrounding this giant-temple represented accurately the situation and magnitude of the fixed stars, forming a complete orrery or planisphere. As Colebrook found out, it is the cycle of the Vedas, recorded in the Jyotisha, one of the Vedàngas, a treatise on Astronomy, which is the basis of calculation for all other cycles, larger or smaller; [ Aiat. Res., vol. viii, p.470. et seq ] and the Vedas were written in characters, archaic though they be, long after those natural observations, made by the aid of their gigantic mathematical and astronomical instruments, had been recorded by the men of the Third Race, who had received their instruction from the Dhyân Chohans. Maurice speaks truly when he observes that all such

Circular stone monuments were intended as durable symbols of astronomical cycles by a race who, not having, or for political reasons, forbidding the use of letters, had no other permanent method of instructing their disciples or handing down their knowledge to posterity.

If the Post-Vaidika works alone, the Upanishads, the Brâhmanas, etc., down to the Purânas, when examined critically carry us back to 20,000 B.C. then the time of the composition of the Vedas themselves cannot be less than 30,000 B.C., in round numbers, a date which we may take at present as the age of that Book of books. [Loc. cit.,iv.127 ]

And what are his proofs?

Cycles and the evidence yielded by the asterisms. Here are a few extracts from his rather lengthy treatise, selected to give an idea of his demonstrations and bearing directly on the quinquennial cycle spoken of just now. Those who feel interested in the demonstrations and are advanced mathematicians can turn to the article itself, “The Antiquity of the Vedas,” [Theosophist, vol. iii., p.22.] and judge for themselves.

position of the four principal points on the ecliptic was then as follows:

The vernal equinox in the beginning of Mrigashîrsha.

The summer solstice in 10 of Purva Phâlgunî.

The autumnal equinox in the middle of Jyeshtha.

The vernal equinoctial point, we have seen, coincided with the beginning of Krittikâ in 1421 B.C.; and from the beginning of Krittikâ to that of Mrigashîrsha, was, consequence, 1421+26 2/3x72= 1421+1920= 3341 B.C., supposing the rate of precession to be 50,, a year. When we take the rate to be 3◦20" in 247 years, the time comes up to 1516+1960.7=3476.7 B.C.

When the winter solstice by its retrograde motion coincided after that with the beginning of Pûrva Bhâdrapadâ, then the commencement of the quinquennial age was changed from the 15^th to the 1^st of Phâlguna (February-March). This change took place 240 years after the date of the above observation, that is, in 3101 B.C. This date is most important, as from it an era was reckoned in after times. The commencement of the Kali or Kali Yuga (derived from “kal,” “to reckon”), though said by European scholars to be an imaginary date, becomes thus an astronomical fact.