Divine Heliolatry Is Neither Astrological Astrolatry Nor Idolatry

The Ancients have neither mistaken stars for gods or angels, nor the sun for the highest gods and God, but have worshipped only the Spirit of all — though they reverenced minor gods who are identical with the hosts of Angels, Cherubs, and Planetary Archangels. Saturn, the Father of Gods, must not be confused with his namesake — the planet with its rings, moons, and moonlets. The two, though in one sense identical, are equivalent to physical man and his soul. Nevertheless, astrology is proclaimed as a sinful science and, together with Occultism, tabooed by the Churches. If Mars is the personified strength of the One highest impersonal Deity, Mercury personified as its omniscience, Jupiter as its omnipotency, and so on, then the superstition of the Pagan has indeed become the religion of the masses of the “civilized nations.” Mikael is the regent of planet Saturn. He is also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of Venus. The Sabæans separated and distinguished planet Saturn from its God far more than the Roman Catholics do their angels from their stars. The dogmas and rituals of the Romish Church seem like pages torn out from the history of Occultism, plagiarised, and then distorted. A very thin line separates the Kabbalistic and Chaldæan Theogonies from the Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy. The history of the Jesuits is intimately bound up with that of Occultism. It is that Protean and all-pervading organisation which has kept back the great truths of Occultism, making its name synonymous with charlatanism, fraud, and demon worship. To this purpose was the Inquisition organised. The history of Jesuitism is the history of assassinations and poisonings, underhand dark plottings against Kings, Princes, Churches, States, and solitary individuals who consciously or unconsciously cross their path. Many a maniac in a madhouse owes the calamities which drove him there to their contriving. Divine Astrology is for the Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry, for the profane. Astrolatry, or the adoration of the heavenly host, is the natural result of only half-revealed Astrology, whose Adepts carefully concealed from the uninitiated masses its Occult principles and the Wisdom imparted to them by the Regents of the Planets. Sidereal influence is dual: there is a physical and a physiological influence, that of exotericism; and the high spiritual, intellectual, and moral influence, imparted by the knowledge of the Planetary Gods. The Celestial Bodies are the cause of all that happens in our sublunary world; they do influence human actions; but not all the effects produced by them are unavoidable. All great astrologers admitted that man could react against the influence of the stars. The origin of Astrology is lost in hoary antiquity, contrary to the plea of some Orientalists who declare that the Zodiac was the invention of the Greeks of the Macedonian period. Primitive Astrology was as far above modern Astrology, as the Planets and Zodiacal signs are above the lamp-posts. All the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were chiefly astronomical. The Heavenly Bodies are closely related, during each Manvantara, with the mankind of that special cycle. 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. 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 that had her wisdom from the same source as Babylon, had degenerated from her former grandeur, and her glory had begun to fade out. Chaldæan Astrology was believed in by most of the great men in history. Judiciary Astrology is used today by the Kabbalists. Eliphas Levi, the French Magus, teaches its rudiments in his “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.” But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology is lost to Europe. Hence, our century of materialism shrugs it shoulders and sees in Astrology — a pretender.

Divine Astrology is for Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry for the masses. The Occultist’s reverence for Planetary Spirits is not worship as the word is commonly under-stood. For the Theosophists, planetary “angels” occupy no higher place than that which Virgil assigns them. Each and all are occult potencies having sway over certain attributes of nature. Worship of Planetary Spirits is idolatrous Astrolatry. The Church is not against magic proper, but only against those magicians who fail to conform to her methods and rules of evocation. Worship of the “Seven Spirits” by the Church has been legal in all the ages. No truth, upon any subject whatever, has been ever made complete by the Church. Otherwise, where would be the mystery so absolutely necessary to the authority of her incomprehensible dogmas? The Seven Sabian Gods, and the Seven Seats and Virtues of the Kabbalists have become with the Catholics their “Seven Eyes of the Lord,” and the “Seven Thrones,” instead of Seven Seats. The “miracles” performed in the bosom of Mother Church, from the apostolic down to the ecclesiastical miracles at Lourdes, are pernicious in their result upon the human mind. While the Church feared to adopt even the Chaldean substitutes for the “mystery-names,” as they had been so “desecrated by magical practices,” it embraced other “mystery-names,” far less known than their substitutes have ever been. A terrible epidemic of obsession and possession broke out in 1553, when almost all Rome found itself possessed by the devil. The worship of “mystery names” under various substitutes continues to this day. The Jesuits rejoiced the most at the resurrection of the old worship, in view of the prodigious help they received from it. Church services in honour of the seven “Spirit-Stars” have never been abrogated since. Bolstered by the courage of true believers, the Christian defenders of the Seven Star-Angels deny nothing and keep silent whenever accused of rendering divine honours to Chaldean and other gods. Every planet is septenary, like man. The visible planet is the physical body of the sidereal being, the Atma or Spirit of which is the Angel, or Rishi, or Dhyani-Chohan, or Deva, etc. This is the tenet of the Secret Doctrine — minus its idolatrous element. As taught in the Church and her rituals, however, and especially, as practised, Angel-Worship is Astrolatry pure and simple. The Great Pyramid was erected as an observatory of Occult Astrognosy, at time when Draconis, the then Polar Star, was at its lower culmination and the Pleiades were on the same meridian above. Retrograding minds, while unable to follow their forefather’s grand ideas, were yet anxious to prove that they knew as much and far more. Having reviled Astrolatry, and trampled under their feet the sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis, they then instituted a Pastoral Religion in which, instead of the sacred Bull, they worshipped a Lamb. They allowed all the heathen names of Stars named by their idolatrous forefathers to remain status quo, and, at the same time, perverted their meanings in the most cunning way. Plagiarising, Christianising, and degrading Pagan Astronomy — wild beasts in scarlet clothing. Respect the Spirits but keep them at arm’s length.

Overview of the doctrine of septenary chains of worlds in the Solar Kosmos. A Master of Wisdom explains the struggle of Monadic Consciousness passing through seven man-bearing planets. At the dawn of a new Solar Manvantara progressed entities from the previous manvantara are born in the First Race of the First Round ahead of the Elementals, and remain as latent (inactive) spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of the new manvantara until the stage of human evolution is reached. They will have then to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. The passage of human races in-between planets being critical, requires the presence of a Dhyani-Chohan. Gautama is the fifth leader and spiritual teacher in this round on this planet, and the fourth who became Buddha. The one who will appear at the close of the Seventh Root-Race, before the occupation of the next higher planet by humanity, will again be a Dhyani-Chohan. At the beginning of each round, it is the duty of the First Race to choose fit recipients among its sons as vessels to contain the whole stock of knowledge to be divided among future races and generations until the close of that round. Every round on the descending arc is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the previous round, a grosser and more material copy, supervised and guided by special “Builders” and “Watchers.” Rounds and their role in the serial evolution of nascent material nature is explained cosmologically and anthropologically. Earth, as we know her now, had no existence before the Fourth Round. In the First Round our planet was fiery, cool, and radiant, like its ethereal men and animals; luminous, more dense and heavy during the Second; watery, during the Third. But the Elements have been since reversed: none were then as they are today. In the course of the rounds, Earth is being progressively spiritualised. She will reach her true ultimate form, corresponding inversely to that of man, after the Seventh Round at the close of the manvantara. There is a predestined moment in the geological life of our globe, as in past and future chronicles of races and nations, when effects will once again reconcile with causes, and the original balance restored. Genesis’ six days of creation meant six periods of evolution plus a seventh, that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and correspond to our Seven Rounds and Races. Man was on earth in this round from the very beginning, having passed through all the kingdoms of nature in the previous three rounds. His inner constitution reflects the evolution of the first Three Root-Races. His Fifth Principle, Manas, was quickened at the close of the Third Race. That of the animals, remains inactive, paralysed. Though the human embryo has no more of the ape in it than of any other mammal, it contains in itself the totality of all kingdoms of nature. Intellect and materiality always precede intelligence and spirituality. Physical intelligence is but the mask of spiritual intelligence. There is a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous. Mind moves matter. Without mind, the Divine Monad has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive and harbour it. The evolution of the human body is governed by terrestrial forces; that of the thinking man, by spiritual forces. Every form on earth, every atom in Space, strives to follow the model placed for it in the Ideal Man. Molecularly constituted matter is not man’s grossest aspect. The vulgar and vile middle principle is the most offensive and sole stumbling block to progress. The Angels doomed to embodied existence are still in chains of flesh, under the darkness of ignorance. They remain unrecognised and unthanked in the injustice of the human heart until the “Great Day” that will come after the Seventh Round in post-manvantaric Nirvana. Then, the Dhyani-Buddhas and the Planetary Spirits, who laboured for long kalpas without condition or any hope for reward, will have their rest. “The chief object of our struggles and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on this earth. Those who will be successful have nothing to fear during the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds,” says a Master of Wisdom. Round 1 builds sthula-sharira. Round 2 forms linga-sharira. Round 3 breathes prana. Round 4 arouses kama. Round 5 uplifts manas. Round 6 activates buddhi. Round 7 merges the human monad into Atman, the Divine Monad. Appendix A. Esoterically, Manu Vaivasvata, the Progenitor of our Fifth Race, is one of forty-nine that emanated from the Root-Manu. Exoterically, he figures as seventh because this round, though the fourth, is in the preseptenary Manvantara, and the round itself is in its seventh stage of materiality or physicality. Manu Vaivasvata, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Manu of the fourth Human Wave while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who preside over the Seven Races of our planet. Appendix B. Duration of each Planetary Round in this Minor Manvantara. Duration of humanity in this Round, on each Planet. Duration of human life-waves in this Round, on Planet Earth. Appendix C. Genesis’ three Adams untangled: Adam 1 is Kadmon or the “Heavenly Man” made “in the image and likeness of god,” i.e., Second Logos. Adam 2 was neither in the image nor in the likeness of god before he “ate the forbidden fruit,” i.e., the mindless, hence sinless, First Root-Race. Adam 3 is the Third Root-Race that separated, whose eyes opened outwardly and acquired knowledge of good and evil. The Jewish Kabbalists dwarfed the duration of each terrestrial round by six zeros. Allusions to the septenary constitution of earth and man, and to the Seven Rounds and Races, abound in the New as in the Old Testament. The Seven Sabbaths are seven pralayas, between seven manvantaras, or what we call rounds. More allusions about meat offerings to the Lord, the woman in purple and scarlet, the mystery of the woman and the beast, and other instances of farcical worship unpicked.

The four ages of the Kali age. The decline of all things, and deterioration of mankind. Redeeming properties of the Kali age. Devotion to Vishnu sufficient to salvation in that age for all castes and persons. Three different kinds of dissolution of our world. Duration of a Pararddha. The clepsydra, or vessel for measuring time. The dissolution that occurs at the end of a day of Brahma. Continuation of the account of the first kind of dissolution. Of the second kind, or elemental dissolution; Of all being resolved into primary spirit. The third kind of dissolution, or final liberation from existence. Evils of worldly life. Sufferings in infancy, manhood, old age. Pains of hell. Imperfect felicity of heaven. Exemption from birth desirable by the wise. The nature of spirit or god. Meaning of the terms Bhagavat and Vasudeva. When the child is about to be born. When old age arrives. The agonies of death. The tortures in hell. There is no end of pain even in heaven. Only knowledge and works can make man a god. Means of attaining liberation. Anecdotes of Khandikya and Keshidhwaja. The former instructs the latter how to atone for permitting the death of a cow. Keshidhwaja offers him a requital, and he desires to be instructed in spiritual knowledge. With Appendix on the Sacred Astronomical Cycles by Rao Bahadur P. Srinivas Row.

Materialism is moral and spiritual blindness. Shall we let the blind lead the blind? Before Alchemy existed as a Science, its quintessence alone acted in Nature’s correlations. The virtuous man can produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by invoking Kriyashakti, his own inherent power of creative thought, and become a co-worker with Nature in her higher departments. Like the lightning conductor that directs the electric fluid, the force of Kriyashakti conducts the quintessence of life and gives it direction; led haphazardly, it can kill; directed by the potency of human will and magnetic force, it can create according to a predetermined plan. Poor alchemy! Star of the morning, daughter of the dawn, how fallen from thine high estate! That which once was, still is and forever shall be, even to the end of time. Words change and their meaning becomes quickly disfigured. But eternal ideas remain, and shall not pass away. The ass’ skin is congenial to the tastes of today’s philosophicules and materialistic alchemists, who sacrifice the living soul for the dead form, than revering Princess-Nature in all her nakedness. With so many would-be alchemists around, even Hermes himself would lose his way. Only High Initiates are able to unravel the jargon of Hermetic philosophers and divulge their secrets pertaining to all seven realms of nature. To the practical alchemist, whose object is the production of wealth by the special rules of his art, studying their metaphysical basis was a secondary consideration; while the Sage, who had ascended to the plane of metaphysical contemplation, would reject the material objectives of these studies as unworthy of any further consideration. The origin of alchemy is lost in the remotest antiquity of the Far East. The Chaldeans were only the heirs, first to antediluvian and later to the alchemy of the Egyptians. The Wisdom of the East no longer exists in the West; it died with the three Magi. Hermes never was the name of a man, but a generic title, just as the term Neo-Platonist was used in former times, and Theosophist is being used in the present. Even in the time of Plato, Hermes was already identified with the Thoth of the Egyptians. Thoth-Hermes is simply the personification of the Voice of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, the Voice of the Great Hierophants. Alchemy is as old as tradition itself. The Golden Fleece was a treatise written on animal skin, explaining how gold could be made by alchemical means. There still remain underground a large number of such alchemical works, written on papyrus and buried with mummies, ten millennia old. The whole secret lies in the ability to recognise in such works what appears to be only a fairy tale, as in the golden fleece and the “romances” of the earlier Pharaohs. Explicit instructions do not come from the sanctuaries of Egypt. Most are fractionally correct interpretations of the allegorical stories of the alchemical green, blue, and yellow dragons, and the rose tigers of the Chinese. Alchemy was imported to Europe from China, transformed into Hermetic writings which were then fabricated by the old Greeks and the Arabs, and refabricated in the Middle Ages — now jumbled up and distorted beyond recognition. The two objects of the Chinese system and the Hermetic Sciences, in making gold and prolonging life, are identical. But the Eastern Adept-Initiates, despising gold and having a profound indifference for life, care very little about such selfish pursuits which, in most cases, are acts black art. The third object of alchemy, i.e., transmutation, has been wholly neglected by Christian adepts who, being satisfied with their belief in the immortality of the soul, they never properly understood the meaning of this object. The transmutation of the real alchemist is the occult process by which his debased nature and brute energy are conquered; and thus, ennobled by his highest intellectual faculties, his soul is infused into the spiritual dynamics of the Divine Will. Woe to those who seek to obtain magical powers for selfish ends and money-making under the cloak of alchemy. Alchemy is a noble philosophy, purely metaphysical. The transmutation of base metals into gold was merely an allegory for freeing man of his ancestral evils and infirmities, by redeeming the flesh below and regenerating the soul above. It is incorrect to think that there exists any special “powder of projection,” or “philosopher’s stone,” or “elixir of life.” The latter lurks in every flower, in every stone and mineral throughout the globe: it is the ultimate essence of everything on its way to higher and higher evolution. And as there is no good or evil, so there is neither “elixir of life” nor “elixir of death,” nor poison as such, but all this is contained in one and the same Universal Essence, this or the other effect, or result, depending on the degree of its differentiations and various correlations. The light side of that Essence produces life, health, bliss, divine peace, and so forth; the dark side brings death, disease, sorrow, and strife. This is demonstrated by knowing the nature of the most deadly poisons; of some of them, even a large quantity will produce no ill effect, whereas a grain of the same poison will kill with the rapidity of lightning; yet, exactly the same grain, when altered by a certain combination, will heal. Seek not the secrets of nature in nature. Know your self, first and foremost. The treasure of treasures lies in the innermost chamber of your heart, where the sunlight of truth shines with unfading glory. How can those who are fools in nature, hope to profit from alchemical works — the timeless testimonies to creative powers of Nature? Let the seeker of Truth be wary of things that are readily understood, especially mystical names and secret operations, for Truth lies hid in obscurity. Pearls of Truth cannot be given to the profane; less so today than when the Apostles were advised not to cast pearls before swine. The chemist imitates nature, the alchemist surpasses nature herself. Chemistry decomposes and recombines material substances, it purifies simple substances of foreign elements, but leaves the primitive elements unchanged. Alchemy changes the character of things, and raises them up into higher states of existence. As all the powers of the universe are potentially contained in us, our body and its organs are the representatives of the powers of nature and a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky. The physician who knows nothing of alchemy can only be a servant of nature, but the alchemist is her lord.

Astrology it is a science far more difficult to master than the highest mathematics. Every great astrologer admits man’s free will, though not absolute, and therefore man’s liberty to react against the occult influence of the heavenly bodies upon his destiny. The two prerequisites for proficiency in astrology are the apperception by intuition of the ramifications of Universal Sympathy, and a pure life — physically, morally, and spiritually. Like alchemy, modern astrology is no longer the pure and divine science of the schools of Thoth-Hermes, of the first Egyptian Dynasties. The Kabbalistic Gematria is arithmetical, not geometrical. It is one of the methods for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words, and sentences. It consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense they bear as numbers, in outward shape as well as in their individual sense. Mathematics is the only exact and infallible science, for it proceeds from universals to particulars. Astrology is a mathematical science, which reveals to us what particular causes will produce what particular combination of effects, and gives us the means of knowing how to guide our future births. As the clock merely indicates, it does not influence the time, so the astrologer cannot shape destiny. While the science of astrology determines the nature of effects, by a knowledge of the law of magnetic affinities and attractions of the planetary bodies, it is the Karma of the individual himself, which places him in a particular magnetic relation. The Great Pyramid of Egypt was an Observatory of Occult Astrognosy. It must have been built at a time when Draconis, the then Polar Star, was at its lower culmination and the Pleiades, Alcyone especially, were on the same meridian above.

Astrology existed before astronomy, and Astronomus was the title of the highest hierophant in Egypt. Among the stars and constellations, the planets alone had a right to the title of Theoi (Gods), i.e., to run or to circulate. The angels worshipped in the Church of Rome are none else than their “Seven Planets,” the Dhyani-Chohans of Buddhistic Esoteric Philosophy, or the Kumaras, the mind-born sons of Brahmā. There are seven Kumaras, four exoteric and three secret. They are all “Virgin Gods,” who remain eternally pure and innocent, and decline to create progeny. In their primitive aspect, these Aryan seven mind-born sons are not the regents of the planets, but dwell far beyond the planetary region. Archangel Michael is called “the invincible virgin combatant” as he “refused to create,” which would connect him with both Sanat Sujata and the Kumara who is the God of War called in the Hindu system the “eternal celibate” and “the virgin warrior.” He is the Aryan St. Michael. The whole sidereal court of the Babylonian heaven was represented in the temples by globes made of sapphires, supporting golden images of their respective gods. An immense machine, fabricated for King Chosroes in Persia, represented the night sky with the planets and all their revolutions, and with angels presiding over them. All the discoveries of modern astronomy, like all the secrets that can be revealed to it in future ages, were contained in the secret observatories and Initiation Halls of the temples of old India and Egypt. Uranus is a modern name. The ancients had a planet, “a mystery planet,” that they never named and that only the highest Astronomus, the Hierophant, could “confabulate with.” But this seventh planet was not the sun but the hidden Divine Hierophant, who was said to have a crown, and to embrace within its wheel “seventy-seven smaller wheels.” The rapid growth of human intellect has paralysed spiritual perceptions. It is at the expense of wisdom that intellect generally thrives, and mankind is quite unprepared in its present condition to comprehend the awful drama of human disobedience to the laws of Nature and the subsequent “Fall,” as a result. Occultism has a strange theory of its own with regard to Neptune. We lift our diminished heads and look heavenward: worlds, suns, and stars, the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind the poet of an infinite, shoreless ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless squadrons of ships, millions upon millions of cruisers, large and small, crossing each other, whirling and gyrating in every direction. But there are no proofs of the existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, of either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves that has to be analysed, and inferences be drawn therefrom.

The companion globes of our Earth are not separate bodies, they interblend with each other. Though united by growth (co-adunition), they are not of the same dense substance (consubstantiality) as our Earth. They represent different states of consciousness. Life evolves along seven planetary bodies in seven rounds, from unconsciousness to full consciousness. Each body is the focus and locus of ascending states of monadic consciousness, from inorganic to organic. Neither Mars nor Mercury belong to the Earth-chain of globes. They are, along with the other planets, septenary units in the great host of “chains.” In our sevenfold constitution the body represents the Earth in her septenary chain, but we cannot see objectively any other of our principles, let alone the principles of other planetary bodies, unless they are on the same plane of development as our Earth is now. It is neither necessary nor allowed for us to know the relation between Mars, Mercury, and the Earth, nor to know whether Mars and Mercury are in any particular state.