Occult Astrology Predates Modern Astronomy

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 actual beginnings of astrology are unknown and unknowable. The science emerges already highly refined from the utter obscurity of the pre-historic world. The ends of astrology are also unknown. There is already evidence that the perfection of this science will elevate man to an intellectual and social condition far beyond the limitations of our present consciousness. -from "Astrology's Place in the Modern World" In this concise book, one of the preeminent metaphysicists of the 20th century gives us an extraordinarily informative and entertaining survey of the astrological disciplines and beliefs of the ancient Chinese, Tibetans, HIndus, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, and Arabians. Then, his discussions of astrology as science, religion, and philosophy bring this paranormal system into the contemporary world, and he explains how, in his estimation, that the heavenly bodies, acting as the "foci of intellectual energy," dramatically sway the course of civilization itself. A classic of supernatural spirituality is a must-read for those fascinated by the influence of paranormal belief in the 20th century. American mystic MANLY PALMER HALL (1901-1990) founded the Philosophical Research Society in 1934. He is also the author of The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, The Ways of the Lonely Ones, and The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

Kama-Deva is the first conscious all-embracing desire for universal good, love, and for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of infinite tender compassion and mercy that arose in the consciousness of the Creative Force, that came into life and being by a single ray of Light and Truth. That pure desire, of whom Love is born, is the progenitor of affection. Pythagoras’ Primeval Monad which, having flashed out like lightning from the Central Point and thrilled through the Germ retires into Darkness is the Rootless Root of all things. The Pythagorean system is based entirely upon sacred numbers, harmony, and correspondences or affinities. Space is filled with atoms actuated by ceaseless rotationary motion. Aggregated atoms, through mutual collisions, produce lateral movements of affinity. Sounds and colours are spiritual numerals. The cause of the splendour and variety of colours lies deep in the affinities of nature, for there is a singular and mysterious alliance between colour and sound. The Creative Force produces colours, sounds, and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration, which compound and dissociate atoms and molecules. There is mutual sympathy between terrestrial and celestial things. Terrestrial natures receive the plenitude of the celestial; and celestial, of supercelestial essences, while every order of things proceeds gradually in a majestic descent from the highest to the lowest. True magic is firmly based on the mysterious affinities between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediæval Hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. Magnetism is attraction to the virtue of the substance, rather than blind attraction between two masses. Eastern Occultists bring down the properties of matter to attraction and repulsion; modern Scientists, to gravitation and phylogenetic relations. Affection is one of the most powerful attractions between two loving spirits — the embodied and the disembodied one — further enhanced by the harmony between the two and the magnetic purity of those left on earth. The attraction of the “shells” of the departed to places and persons is brought forth by the law of magneto-vital affinities. But the ascent of the higher Ego to the bliss of pure subjectivity will be impeded if its alter ego is weighted down with base feelings. The reincarnating Ego is drawn by magnetic attraction to the atmosphere of the parent or parents, whose vibrational frequency is most sympathetic to its own, and with whom its karmic affinities are strongest. The virtues of the Macrocosm are represented in the Microcosm or Man. The magnetic power of Man can thus draw those celestial virtues which correspond to his own. It is the science of Astrology that determines the nature of effects, by a knowledge of the law of magnetic affinities and attractions of the planetary bodies. But it is the Karma of the individual himself, which places him in that particular magnetic relation. The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their divergences in various nationalities, races, and sub-races, by observing the auric shades and gradations of colour of the inner man. He can thus unerringly pronounce to which of several distinct human families, and to what particular group or sub-group that man belongs. The secret of healing lies in the knowledge of the affinities between kindred atoms. Find that metal, wood, stone, or plant that has the most correspondential affinity with the body of the sufferer, and that particular agent will lead invariably to his cure. Strong will creates and sympathy attracts even adepts. In Europe, more than anywhere else, there is a Universal Brotherhood, an alliance of affinities, of strong magnetic yet dissimilar forces and polarities, centred around one dominant idea. The cause of spiritual failure lies in the egotism of the age, whether conscious or unconscious. And even western philanthropy, so often pervaded by selfish motives and worldly affinities, is unable to warm humanity with its beneficent rays. Blessed are the pure-hearted who have only intuition, for intuition is better than intellect.

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.

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.

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.

The antiquity and universality of the Zodiac can be traced back to the earliest Theogonies. It was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not yet exist as a nation thirty-seven centuries B.C. The dodecahedron is a perfect number and one among many signs of the Zodiac that the Sun visits in twelve months. It was in honour of that sign that Moses divided his nation into twelve symbolical tribes. Berosus predicted future events by the Zodiac; and the time fixed by him for the conflagration of the world, and another for a deluge, comes at every renewal of the cycle of the sidereal year of 25,868 years. The Hindus date their Kali-Yuga from the great periodical conjunction of the planets at 3,100 before the birth of Christ. Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,683 years before Alexander the Great. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of Cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of tropical or sidereal year. Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year (25,868 mortal years), the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at its outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man may regain the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge, from which he set out on his cycle of terrestrial incarnations. The connection of the twelve Jewish patriarchs with the Zodiac is 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. Even the banners of these tribes are claimed to have exhibited the same symbols as those of the zodiacal signs. In the universe of differentiated matter everything is mathematically co-ordinated and mutually related in its units. Replace God with of Karma, and he will become an Eastern axiom. Why see in the Pisces a direct reference to Jesus, one of several world-reformers, when that constellation shines as a symbol of all past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? The Jews had evidently and undeniably borrowed their chronology from the Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 432,000 years of the Chaldean divine Dynasties they made 4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they transformed them as quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. The Zodiac existed hundreds of million of years before the Christian era. Each planetary conjunction is a climacteric year of humanity. All Sun-gods had been mystically connected with the constellation of Taurus, which was called “the great city of God and mother of revelations” and “the interpreter of the divine voice.” The ansated Egyptian cross or Tau, the Jaina cross or Svastika, and the Christian cross have all the same meaning. 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 Taurus, sacred in every Cosmogony, the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. It was from the Hindu systems of astronomy that the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has erected their scientific fame. For patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced wisdom. Time itself was their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during these intervals because they had seen them; and the duration of the Hindu people on earth is the cause of the fidelity of its records and the accuracy of its calculations. The descent and re-ascent of the human soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it feels more natural to believe in the 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. In esoteric philosophy Patriarchs are the progenitors of the human race, the “Mind-born Sons” of Brahmā. They are the nursery and fountainhead of human beings. This is the occult meaning of the Biblical Patriarchs, of their genealogy, and of their descendants dividing among themselves the earth. First 7 are mentioned, then 10, 21, and so on. The Jewish Patriarchs were pastors, not priests.

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.