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What Astrology
is (…)
(p. 7)
PREFATORY ESSAY
THE little work, whose original title-page I reproduce
exactly as printed in the middle of the seventeenth century, fairly deserves a
place in hermeneutic, and therefore hermetic, literature. As is usual in
writings of its epoch, its style is diffuse and verbose, even to wearisomeness; but these defects are superficial merely, and
the reader will be well repaid by its perusal. Probably, the author set out with
the intention of constructing a larger and fuller treatise than that which he
actually accomplished, for his programme certainly
includes a description and definition of the province of each of the seven
astral Rulers in turn; but the only one actually treated of is Saturn, the first
and outermost of the series. Doubtless he would have us apply to all the other
six the method of exposition adopted in his concluding chapter, and would insist
on the “theologization” of all the endowments and
faculties pertaining to the influence alike of Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury,
Luna, and Sol. If I rightly apprehend his meaning – which, it must be confessed,
is here and there somewhat obscure, and throughout, perhaps purposely, rather
hinted than expressed – the drift of his argument
(p.
8)
is that Man, as the Microcosm or inner world, perfectly and exactly,
represents the Macrocosm or outer world, whose making is, ostensibly, described
in the first chapter of Genesis, and
includes in himself the counterparts of all the various elements, entities, and
series, whether objects or periods, therein set forth. So that light and
darkness, evening and morning, heaven, earth, and the firmament, sea and land,
herbs and plants, sun, moon, and stars, with all their potencies and virtues,
moving life of the deep, of the air, and of the earth, together with the six
days of labour and the Sabbath ending the series, have
all their correspondence and similitude in the universe of the microcosm, or
Man. And from this premise he argues that as the works and effects of the six
days of creation were hallowed and sanctified by being, as it were, taken up
into the Sabbath day and blessed therein, so man ought to hallow and sanctify
the labors and effects of the various planes of his sixfold chaotic, elemental, astrological, vegetable, animal,
and human nature, by taking all these up into the seventh and internal divine
plane, and there converting and transmuting them into spiritual graces. For it
is plain to see that our author, in common with other hermetic and
interpretative writers of the mystic school, distributes the microcosm and
macrocosm alike into seven progressive and mutually interdependent states or
stages.
Of these the outermost is, in both cases, chaotic and indiscriminate – void and
formless – the mere darkened sense body, expressing the boundary or limit of the
earthy nature, and hence under the dominion of Saturn, the Angel of the
outermost circuit, whose distinguishing appanage
is the girdle or zone emblematic of binding – Saturn’s belt.
Next in order comes the vital force, resident in the
(p.
9)
nervous fluid of the organism, and, as a firmament, dividing the more physical carcase from the higher elements of the individuality, the
waters above from the waters beneath. This wonderful quickening principle our
author would doubtless place under the patronage of Jupiter, lord of the Middle
Air, the firmamental deity of older times, whose peculiar province was expressed
by the control of the electric force.
Third in order we find the emergence of the land from the sea, with its grasses,
herbs, and trees, the first manifestation of actual organic existence, sexual,
semiconscious, responsive, capable of birth, generation, and decay. These
organic productions are the similitude’s of earthly
cognisance
and perception, arising in the elemental man, the plane of immediate contact
with mere sensory environment, blind to the inner light, speechless and deaf
(p.
10)
so far as spiritual
environment is concerned, and open only to the grosser phases of external
relations with the outer world. With this earthy and rudimentary consciousness
of the merely corporeal, Mars, as the representative of physical energy and
blind indiscriminating force, is aptly associated. The relations of this god
with agriculture are well known, and he is, moreover, connected, as the armour-clad deity, with the subterranean products of the
planet. Among the Olympians, Mars is remarkable for absence of perspicacity,
judgment, and subtlety. His prerogatives are those which pertain to mere
impulsive fury and joy in conflict, undirected by the wisdom of Minerva or the
faithfulness of Hercules. This plane of the microcosm belongs to the vegetative
soul, the germinal consciousness, dominant chiefly in the brute and the savage,
and demonstrating itself by impetuous purposeless energy. With the manifestation
of this plane or stage in the evolution of the organised being is initiated the famous Struggle for
Existence, which plays so large a part in the Darwinian theory, and the history
of which is one long and continuous record of strife, destruction, and triumph,
the great War of the globe, which since the beginning has raged in all
departments of vital activity, and whose death-laden battlefields are
represented in the fossil deposits of ancient rocks and
seabeds. In the microcosm, this third principle it is that most shrinks
from physical death, and that furnishes the visible element of the doleful and
dreadful shades described by Homer as appeased only by blood, and constituting
in medieval and later times the medium by which haunting spirits manage to
manifest as “ghosts,” to the terror of both men and animals who chance to come
in their way.
(p.
11)
Fourth in the series is the stage of astrological influence, the plane of the
astral man, open to and controlled by the starry or magnetic operations of
Nature, the
passional, mundane, unstable consciousness over which
Venus naturally presides. Man controlled by this phase of his complex
personality becomes the toy of fate and of circumstance, the elemental powers
have complete sway over him, they rule and afflict him in such wise that the
mere incidents of existence constitute his entire life, without reference to or
ultimation in any higher or more subtle plane. It is
from the perils and suffering consequent on this condition that the author of
Astrology Theologized seeks to teach a method of deliverance.
Passing inward and upward to the stage next in order, we find ourselves in the
presence of the Mercurial kingdom, the winged and the fluidic nature, of which
one part is subtle and aspiring as the bird, and the
other occult and profound as the fish of the deep. This is the plane of
knowledges, chiefly instinctive and sagacious, in opposition to those which are
intellectual and spiritual. Mercury enacts the part of the mediator between the
higher human soul above and the astrological and vegetative natures below the
plane he occupies. In this fifth province of the microcosm consciousness attains
to its first responsible degree, and appears as the animated and seeing
principle. No longer blind, mute, and deaf, the interior percipience of man is
now opened, he appropriates, compares, constructs, reasons. Memory and device
manifest and express themselves, the man becomes
capable of notice and intelligent operation. Under the direction of Mercury he
explores the abyss and mounts the skies; purpose, wonder, and invention mark his
progress from the merely organic to the animate, from
(p.
12)
the rudimentary and
embryonic being to the potentially human.
But to become truly human, another, and sixth, mutation is necessary; the
philosophic nature must be developed, and this is effected
in the labour of the Lunar stage. Our author,
following hermetic usage, places under the dominion of the Moon, the province of
the intellect or brain, the distinctively human property of the microcosm, not
yet made divine by the sanctification of the heart. All writers of the mystic
school subordinate Intellect to Conscience, that is, the attribute and
expression of scientific ratiocination and thought to the attribute and
expression of moral and spiritual rectitude. Mind, even in its loftiest modes
and reaches, ranks lower as a factor of Manhood than the charities and
sympathies of the Heart. It is Justice, in its various expressions as the
Virtues, that constitutes the best ascendancy of human
nature. But this ascendancy belongs only in its fullness to man Regenerate, that
is, to those who have sanctified the human by the Divine. The work of the sixth
day shows us the completion of the animal nature by the human, that is by the
development of the animal in its supremest mode, – the intellectual animal. For it is noticeable that holy Writ places
the formation of man side by side with that of the beast in the same category
and at the same stage of creation. Had the first chapter of Genesis been penned by an uninspired
hand, the distinction between man and beast would assuredly have been marked by
a division of plane, and we should have found the appearance of the human race
relegated to a separate and successive day, and placed in a wholly different
series from that of other creatures. The line taken in this respect by the
writer of Genesis must be
(p.
13)
viewed as an evidence of
profound occult knowledge. It is in degree and not in kind that the intellectual
animal, man, differs from the non-intellectual, the brute. The work of the sixth day, then, shews us the consummation of
conscious life in its highest aspect, the evolution of that double or reflective
consciousness which is the distinctive appanage
of mankind. Lunar knowledge differs from Mercurial knowledge not in range
but in intensity. Mercurial knowledges are objective,
wayward, speculative, Lunar knowledges are subjective, concentrative,
scientific. The intelligence which operates on the Mercurial plane is that of
the child or the uneducated man, the intelligence of the Lunar
plane is that of the scientist or the philosopher. Mercurial activity flies
hither and thither, distributing itself freely and restlessly throughout a vast
environment; Lunar activity is
polarised, and exact, weighted with logic, mathematical rather than
intuitive. The horse, the elephant and the dog are types of this solid tenacious
and discriminative quality in opposition to the furtive and wayward motions of
the fish or the bird. Will and reason manifest strongly upon the sixth plane,
and uniting with the memory and device of the fifth, result in the formulation
of system, Analysis and Synthesis. From the lowermost to the uppermost planes of
existence, a steady advance in the elaboration of the consciousness characterises each step. The vegetative life with its
rudimentary consciousness merges into the simple consciousness of the moving and
flying creature, and this again into the more complex consciousness of the
“cattle and the beast of the field,” to find its culmination in the double
consciousness of Adam and Eve. Perceptions and knowledges are now evolved in the
microcosm which exceed in importance
(p.
14)
and subtlety all that
have yet been educed. These are symbolised by the
“cattle and moving creatures of the earth,” over all of which, as well as over
the “fish of the sea and the fowl of the air,” man, the human Intellect, is
given dominion.
But as yet none of the six series has received sanctification. This final gift
is bestowed on the Microcosm by the Sun as the Ruler of the seventh day.
Representing the Divine Spirit of the man, and thereby implying perfect peace
and rest, the Sabbath is characterised not by Labour but by Blessing. All the works of the previous six
days, all the series of the hexade whereby the lower
planes of man’s nature are successively built up, receive
(p.
15)
their crown and
benediction in the operation of the Sabbath. Thus is the Soul of the
astrological man “theologized,” divinized and affirmed in the Likeness of God.
The religious nature is added to the intellectual, the faculties of the man of
science and the philosopher are completed by those of the saint.
Hence the rest of the seventh day, for whereas
the achievements of the intellectual man are laborious, those of the spiritual
man are inspirational. Impulse, instinct, induction, inspiration, such
are the four stages of evolutionary ascent from the organic to the spiritual
degree. The natural man strives and wrestles in order to achieve; the regenerate
man “rests in the Lord.” The knowledges of the brain are wrung from Nature by
hard toil; the knowledges of the heart flow by illumination from God. Hence the
sixth day is one of labour, the seventh of repose.
Observe, too, that while the operations of the first five days, which stand for
comparatively low and inconspicuous developments of the microcosm are placed
under the dominion of those Rulers, whose spheres are signified by the five
“wandering fires,” Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, the two higher and
pre-eminently human planes undeveloped in any subordinate creature, to wit, the
Intellectual Soul and the Spirit are denoted by the two greater luminaries, the
Moon and the Sun. Greater, that is, of course, inasmuch as the Earth is
concerned, for in this panoramic allegory the Earth is the representative of the
Microcosm itself, and the recipient of all these divers influences. So much,
then, as to the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun appear to surpass the stars in
glory and magnitude, so much do the two planes or spheres of potency they typify
in the microcosm surpass the rest in worth and importance. And so much as the
(p.
16)
Sun surpasses the Moon in dignity and luster, so much does the spiritual
principle of man surpass in power and splendour his
intellectual principle.
And in this place I wish to call attention to the fact that the earth itself,
which in the allegory of Genesis
represents the Ego or Individuality of the Microcosm, occupies a place between
the Martian and the Venerian days. On the Martian day
we behold the emergence of the land from the sea, and its investment, so to
speak, with place, character and personality. Similarly the Earth, as a planet,
occupies a position between Mars and Venus; that is between the third and fourth
stage or “day.” And this order is beautifully explicit and
interpretative. For we have seen that Saturn signifies the outer physical
framework, Jupiter the electric or vital principle, and Mars the organic brute
energy thereby developed, none of which are capable of constituting
individuality, seeing that these three principles all inhere in the merely
organic and vegetative. But immediately after the manifestation of these simple
and rudimentary states arises the dawn of consciousness, like
(p.
17)
the dry land emerging
from the waters in a barren and virgin state, yet bearing within itself the
potencies of independent Life. The birth of this independent Life immediately
follows, and the place of the Ego in the order of development is, therefore,
between the apparition of the organic and that of the animal principles or
states. Consciousness, in its first concentrated degree, resides between the
astral envelope (Martian stage), and the astral soul (Venerian
stage). Prior to this station, consciousness, though, from the beginning,
implicitly and potentially present, is diffuse and latent; now it becomes
explicit and demonstrable. The first three stages belong merely to the physical,
vital and kinetic; but, after the manifestation of this elementary triad, the
diffuse potencies of consciousness gather themselves up into a state of focus or
polarity, and the Individuality appears as Earth or Ego. This is the earliest
possible place or epoch of its appearance, and from this stage, upward and
onward, it continually advances and culminates in degrees of development until
it attains on the seventh day complete and divine consciousness.
Immediately after the polarisation of the Ego, “Karma”
appears, typified by the siderean
influences of the fourth day. Good and evil Karma appear as the two great lights
– sun and moon – the greater to rule the day, that is to preside over and direct
wise and profitable action and conduct; the lesser to rule over the night, that
is to preside over dark and slothful action and conduct. For it is only wise and
good action that counts, hermetically, as action at all; all base and evil
performance is mere loss and stupor insomuch as the soul is concerned. Thus, in
the Gospels, the Lord speaks of the slothful servant as the wicked servant, and
as such condemns him to darkness.
(p.
18)
(In this connection the moon is, of course, presented in the character of
Hekate.) (1) The signification of the stars as
siderean Powers and Influences, the factors of Karma or Fate, has already
been referred to, and will be presently more fully explained. Obviously this
labour of the fourth day has
direct
relation to the Ego, for the moment the Individuality emerges from the deeps of
vital and kinetic energy, as Earth, the hosts of the Heavens appear “to give
light upon it.” Here, again, I must pause to point out the great occult
knowledge discernible in the order announced by the writer of Genesis as that of the cosmogonic evolution. Doubtless a mere poet or natural
philosopher would have associated the apparition of the starry hosts with the labour of the first day when Light was called to illumine
the heavens. But, in that case, the hermetic student would have been greatly
puzzled to account for the appearance of the Karmic influences before that of
the Ego which gives them raison d’être, and to whose existence
and free-will they respond as effect to cause. The occult meaning of the writer
is conveyed in the words, “He set them in the firmament of heaven to give light
upon the earth, for signs and for seasons, for days and years.” Before the
manifestation of the polarised
consciousness, or self-hood, Karma could have no ground of operation, because
merely inorganic entities and plants have no Karma; neither have those
rudimentary elements of the microcosm which correspond to the mineral, electric,
and vegetative states. Animals, however, are certainly amenable to Karmic and
astral influences, though, of course, in a very
(p.
19)
rudimentary degree. But they are distinctly individuals, and as such are capable of
choice, and of a certain low moral percipience. Correspondingly, the astral soul
in man, the creaturely principle resident in the astral envelope, manifest at
the fourth stage of evolution, has a similar low moral percipience, and is
distinctly an individual. This astral and magnetic soul is the volitional and
formative principle of “ghosts,” which usually are composed of two elements
only, astral envelope, – medium of manifestation (already described) – and
astral soul, acting within and on that medium as its controlling consciousness.
Where more than these two elements are present, the “ghost” is something more
than a mere phantom,
it contains the Mercurial soul or fifth principle, and is an earth-bound spirit.
Now all the seven parts or elements of the Microcosm just enumerated, are
capable of distribution, and are in fact distributed by
hermetists
and alchemists into four chief categories or groups; to wit, physical, astral,
psychic and spiritual. The first three are the “men” who are cast “bound” into
the fiery furnace of the world’s ordeal, and who remain “bound” till the
appearance of the “fourth, like the Son of God,” who sets them free and delivers
them. “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire? Lo! I see four men loose,
and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” “Ye shall know the Truth,
and the Truth shall make you free.” And again, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is
there is liberty.” … “Because the creature also itself shall
be delivered from servitude into the liberty of the glory of the children of
God.”
Of these four parts of the microcosm, the dominant character of each group of
two is imparted by the second
(p.
20)
of the group, that is
by the
astral
for the lower duad, and by the spiritual for the upper.
So that the whole of the planes included in the physical and astral natures are
commonly collectively spoken of as “the astral man”; and the psychic or
intellectual and spiritual natures are intended by the term “spiritual man.” For
the whole lower nature of man – physical, vital, impulsive,
affectional, animal – is subject to the stars or astral powers, that is
to mundane and elemental influence expressed in the magnetic affinities,
antipathies and polarities which go to make up the complex machinery of Fate.
But the higher nature of man, dominated and illumined by the Spirit or Sun (the
Lord), is free from the servitude of the creaturely nature, and is superior to
the ruling of the astral influences. Hence our author says that “a wise man,”
that is, he who is instructed and enlightened by his nobler part, “will rule the
stars.”
All the illuminati of ancient and modern times have acknowledged these two
natures or self-hoods in man. Plato emphatically recognises
and describes them, so also do the Neo-Platonists, Paul the Apostle, and, with one consent, the whole
Now the Ego or point of consciousness of the man resides, in the majority of
men, wholly in the lower selfhood; in the minority, in the higher. According to
the station which it occupies is the status of the man himself in the series of
evolution. “The natural man,” who
(p.
21)
stands for the majority, “knoweth
not the things of the Spirit.” This “natural man,” or selfhood, is Agar the
bond-servant; the spiritual selfhood is Sara the “
(p.
22)
itself in his horoscope, on
the palm of his hand, in the formation of his head, in the set of his face,
features, limbs and aspect. Speaking broadly, all these determinations are
included and intended under the physiological term Heredity, and they belong to
the accidents of evolution. But what is heredity, and how can it be
explained in the light of Eternal Justice? The Macrocosm could not stand a
moment were it not founded on a perfect equity and governed by an inalterable
law of compensation and of the conservation of energy. Every effect is equal to
its cause, and one term presupposes the other. And as the Macrocosm is but the
prototype in large of the Microcosm, this also is founded on and governed by
laws in harmony with those which control the solar system whose offspring it is.
So that heredity is no arbitrary or capricious effect appearing without adequate
cause, but is the result and expression of foregone impetus, developing
affinities and sympathies which infallibly compel the entity on which they act
into a certain determinate course and direction, so long as the energy of that
impetus lasts. Expressed in terms of common physics this is the law of
gravitation and of polarisation. But without this
explanation all appears as haphazard and confusion. No
hermetist
denies the doctrine of heredity as held and expounded by ordinary scientific
materialists. But he recognises the sense intended by
its inventors, as comprising only the last term in a complex series of
compelling causes and effects. The immediate cause of a low and afflicted birth
is obviously the condition, physical and mental, of the parents responsible, on
this plane, for the birth. But beyond this preliminary stage in the enquiry the
ordinary scientific materialist does not go. He is unacquainted with the
hermetic theorem
(p.
23)
that all physical effects
and results are ultimates, which must, of
necessity, have their first term in a formative sphere. The corporeal world is
incapable of engendering causes, it can but transmit them; hence the beginning
of things can never be discovered within the limits of material agencies.
Therefore, regarding heredity as the ultimation in
physical conditions of causes at work behind and beyond it, the hermetist is irresistibly forced to the conclusion that
although a man may be born deaf, dumb, epileptic, idiotic, or otherwise
afflicted, because his father or mother have been drunken, immoral or
“unfortunate,” these latter causes are immediate only, not mediate, and are
themselves in their turn effects of previous causes not belonging to the
physical sphere, but one next above and behind it, that is to the astral; and
that this also in its turn has been influenced by the spiritual energies of the
Ego whose “nativity” is involved. And he comes to these conclusions because they
are consonant with all that he otherwise knows and has observed of the working
of the universe. Many persons find it difficult to reconcile belief in the
“ruling of the stars” with belief in freewill. It appears at first sight
arbitrary and unjust, that certain lines of life – even vicious and base ones –
should be indicated by the rulers of nativities as the only lines in which the
“native” will prosper; and they ask incredulously whether it can be rationally
supposed that the accident of the day and hour of birth is, by Divine wisdom and
justice, permitted to control and confine the whole career of an intelligent and
responsible being. But the difficulties of astrological science, if viewed in
the light of “Karma” – as Predestination – not only disappear, but give place to
the unfoldment of a most lucid and admirable system of
responsible causation. There is but
(p.
24)
one hypothesis capable of solving the enigma of Fate, and that hypothesis
is common to all the great school of thought – Vedic, Buddhist,
Kabbalistic, Hermetic, Platonic – the hypothesis, to
wit, of multiple existences. Destiny, in the view of these philosophies, is not
arbitrary but acquired. Every man makes his own fate, and nothing is truer than
the saying that “Character is Destiny.” We must think, then, that it is by
their own hands that the lines of some are cast in pleasant places, of
some in vicious, and of some in virtuous conditions. For in what manner
soever a soul conduct itself in one existence, by that conduct, by that
order of thought and habit it builds for itself its destiny in a future
existence. And the soul is enchained by these prenatal, influences, and by them
irresistibly forced into a new nativity at the time of such conjunction of
planets and signs as oblige it into certain courses, or incline it
strongly thereunto. And if these courses be evil, and
the ruling such as to favor only base propensities, the afflicted soul, even
though undoubtedly reaping the just effect of its own demerit, is not left
without a remedy. For it may oppose its will to the stellar ruling, and
heroically adopt a course contrary to the direction of the natal influences.
Thereby it will, indeed, bring itself under a curse and much suffering for such
period as those influences have power, but it will, at the same time, change or
reverse its planetary affinities and give a new “set” to its predestination;
that is to the current of its “Karma.” So that the ruling signs of its next
nativity will be propitious to virtuous endeavour. “From a great heart,” says Emerson, “secret
magnetisms flow incessantly to draw great events.” (1)
(p.
25)
Now our author assures us that the astral heavens have their counterpart in man,
with correspondent influences, energies and aspects. These
microcosmal
heavens may be “ruled” by the Ego, that is by the man himself,
and according to the condition of the subjective planisphere thus evolved will be the horoscope of the next
nativity acquired by such Ego. Thus cause and
[Long footnote of the previous page.
See Footnotes at the end of this
essay.]
(p.
26)
effect respond and exchange
reciprocities, the macrocosmic operating on and compelling the microcosmic, and
this in turn reacting on the macrocosmic.
Hermetic doctrine affirms that all causes originally rise in the spiritual
sphere. In the beginning the material and objective is the ectype of the
essential and subjective. Thus, the first chapter of
Genesis
sets out with the declaration: “In the beginning God created the
[Continuation of the long footnote of p. 24. See Footnotes at the end of
this essay.]
(p.
27)
heaven and the earth.”
Matter is not viewed by writers of the Kabbalistic
school as self-subsistent and eternal in nature. In its
grossest form, Matter is the last term in a descending category, the first term
of which is the Godhead itself. Matter is thus not created, in the vulgar
sense of the word, but evolved; and, in the process of cosmic flux and reflux,
it is destined to be again involved and transmuted into essence. Hence it
follows that the higher principles of the microcosm, itself the offspring and
resumption of the macrocosm, represent and reproduce the higher principles of
its parent, even to the inclusion of Divinity, as the supreme source of the
world and ultimate of Man. Emanating as macrocosm from God, the universe
culminates as microcosm in God. God is the Alpha and Omega of the whole vast
process. Now holy Writ addresses itself, not to the lower, but to the higher
nature of man. The word of God is spoken to the intellectual and spiritual
nature in man as distinguished from the inferior grades of his complex being.
Evidently, then, the subjects of Biblical exposition cannot be the things of
sense and of matter, but the things of the intelligible and formative world. The
Bible is written for the Soul in man, not for his elemental and creaturely
natures which, as we have seen, pertain to his lower perishable states, and are
not included in the Covenant. Wherefore, surely, it is absurd and irrational to
read the “History of Creation,” given in Genesis, as though it treated of the mere outward and objective
universe, which, in comparison with the inner and subjective, is phantasmal and
unreal. Correspondentially, of course, it does so
include the outer and objective, because every plane of Nature reflects and
repeats the plane immediately above it. But of these planes we have seen that
there
(p.
28)
are seven, and each
successive medium, counting from above downward, is grosser and less capable of
exact reflection than the one preceding it, so that when the lowest plane of
matter, as we know it by means of the five bodily senses, is reached, the
similitude of the first and highest plane has become blurred and indistinct. Not
all media are equally reflective. The first plane or medium may be compared to
crystal for translucence, and the last to turbid water. So that we must not look
to the first chapter of Genesis for a
perfect and exact picture of the physical creation, seeing that it deals with
this
(p.
29)
creation only in a sense remote in series from its original and direct point of
application. First, and primarily, the Bible has a spiritual meaning
addressed to the spiritual and intellectual natures in man, the Sol and Luna of
the Microcosm. Secondly, it has a philosophical meaning for the Mercurial
nature; thirdly, an astrological meaning for the astral nature; and, lastly, a
physical meaning for the material nature to which the higher planes are
unattainable. But, it must be borne in mind that the three lower meanings thus
ascribed to it are not the word of God, because, as we have said, this word is
only addressed to the Soul, and not to stocks and stones and elements. In the
third Book of Kings there is a marvelous parable which perfectly sets forth in
order every one of these four meanings, each with its proper character, effect,
and dignity:
“Behold the word of the Lord came unto Elias, and said: – Go forth and stand
upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passeth,
and a great and strong wind before the Lord, overthrowing the mountains and
breaking the rocks in pieces, but the Lord is not in the wind. And after the
wind an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the
earthquake a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire,
and after the fire a still small voice. (Sound of gentle stillness, Heb). And
when Elias heard it, he covered his face with his mantle and stood in the
entering of the cave.”
“The Lord passeth,” and His coming is foreshadowed and
heralded, indistinctly and confusedly by the formless inarticulate wind, typical
here of the lowest and universal expression of Force in Matter. “But the Lord is
not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake,” the
sundering and solution of the mere external physical or earthly plane by the
volcanic and electric forces of the more interior mental nature, with its
sciences and hermeneutic subtleties. Now the Lord is drawing nearer,
(p.
30)
but even yet He “is not
in the earthquake.” “And after the earthquake a fire,” the
ethereal penetrative and burning energy of the third principle in man, the human
Soul, with its clear luminance of introspection, and its immortal quickening
activity. Now, indeed, the Lord is at hand, but even yet He “is not in
the fire.” “And after the fire, a sound of stillness.”
Yes; for the Spirit, “the Lord,” the Fourth Principle in man is Rest, is
Silence, is the “Divine Dark” of St. Dionysius and the
mystics. The word spoken by God is “a word in the ear”; a secret whispered only
to the Beloved; heard only by the saint in the recess of his inmost heart. “And
when Elias heard It, he covered his face with his
mantle.” For the Lord had come at last, and he knew that he
stood in the Divine Presence. The real and inmost meaning of holy
utterance is not reached until its physical, scientific and intellectual
interpretations have been all exhausted. The wind, indeed, may announce the
coming and bear the echo of the sacred Voice, but without articulate expression;
the earthquake may open the earth and disclose occult significations beneath the
Letter which surprise the mere literalist; the fire may cleave the heaven and
rend the darkness with its brilliant and vivid finger, but the formulate and
perfect Word is inbreathed only by the Spirit. Truth is unutterable save by God
to God. Only the Divine Within can receive and comprehend the Divine Without.
The word of God must be a spiritual word, because God is Spirit. Accordingly, we
find saints and mystics, Catholic and Protestant alike, accepting holy Writ,
both old and new, in a sacramental sense. Rejecting the Letter they lay hold of
the Spirit, and interpret the whole Bible from end to end after a mystical
manner, understanding all its terms as symbols, its concretes
(p.
31)
as abstracts, its
events as processes, its phenomena as noumena. The
hermeneutic science of the saint has threefold characteristics
– form is no more, time is no more, personality is no more. Instead of Time is
Eternity, instead of Form is Essence, instead of Persons are Principles. So long
as the dross of any merely intellectual or physical concept remains unconverted
into the gold of spiritual meaning, so long the supreme interpretation of the
text is unattained.
For the intellectual nature, next highest in order, biblical hermeneutics are of
a philosophical character, which according to the tendencies and tastes of the
interpreter, variously wears a poetic, a Masonic, a mathematical, an alchemic, a
mythologic, a political or an occult aspect. To occupy worthily this
plane of interpretation much learning and research are needed, often of an
extremely abstruse and recondite kind. The philosophical hermeneutics of the
Bible are closely connected with the study of hidden and unexplored powers in
nature, a study which, in former times, was roughly designated “magic,” but on
which a younger generation has bestowed new names.
Large acquaintance with etymology, paleontology, geology and the secrets of
ancient systems of doctrine and belief is necessary to Biblical exegesis
conducted on intellectual lines. Therefore it is, of all modes of exposition,
the most difficult and the most perilous, many rival exegetes claiming to have
discovered its key and clamorously disputing all interpretations other than
their own. Thus, the philosophical method is fruitful of schools and polemists,
few among the latter becoming really eminent in their science, because of the
enormous labour and erudition involved in it, and the
brevity of human life.
Thirdly, we have the astronomical and astrological
(p.
32)
plane, which may briefly
be summed up as the interpretation of Biblical writings on the basis of the
Solar Myth. This is the method by which the intelligence of the astral mind is
best satisfied; it involves no acceptance of doctrine, theological or religious,
and no belief in the soul or in spiritual processes and eternal life. The solar
theory is that, therefore, which is formally accepted by most modern exponents
and reviewers; it is easily understood by men of average scholarship and
perspicacity; it lends itself with readiness to all the dogmas and most of the
language of both Testaments, and, with equal facility, explains the formulas of
the Creed and Church Liturgy.
Last and lowest comes the meaning which the crowd imputes to the Bible, and in
which no real attempt at interpretation is implied. On this plane of acceptance,
the literal sense alone of the words is understood throughout, obvious allegory
is taken for history, poetical hyperbole for prosaic fact, mystic periods for
definite measurements of time, corporeal sacrifice for spiritual at-one-ment, ceremonial for sacrament, and physical acts in time
for interior and perpetual process. This is the plane which produces fanatics,
persecutors and inquisitors, which fills our streets with the cries and tumult
of Salvationists, and our pulpits with noisy “evangelists,” which sends forth
missionaries to “convert” the “heathen” Buddhist, Brahman or Jew, and wastes
tears and lives and treasure untold in frantic and futile
endeavours to “christianise” the world. The formula of this class of
exponents is “justification by faith,”
and, apparently, the more monstrous the blasphemy against Divine goodness, and
the more extravagant the outrage against science involved in any article of
belief, the greater the “justification” attained
(p.
33)
by its acceptance. The
word of God, therefore, originally and primarily addressed to the secret ear of
the soul, becomes, when conducted through all these various and increasingly
grosser media, at length an inarticulate and confused sound, just as an image,
conveyed through various and increasingly turbid strata of fluids, becomes at
last distorted, blurred and untrue to its original. Some similitude in form and
colour of course remains, and from this we may divine
the aspect of the object whose shadow it is, but the features of the shadow may
be indistinct and grotesque, while those of the original are flawless and
resplendent. Such a shadow is popular religion compared with Divine Truth, and
the Letter of holy Writ compared with its spiritual meaning. Do we then argue
that the spiritual meaning is the only meaning intended, and the image afforded
of it by all lower planes wholly false and fanciful? No; for we admit alike the
philosophical, the astronomical and the historical element in the Bible; we
desire only to point out with emphasis the fact that all these, in their degree,
transmit an ever increasingly vague and inaccurate likeness of primal
Revelation, and are, in their order, less and less proximately true and
absolute. No man can be “saved” by the historical, the astronomical or the
philosophical, be his faith never so firm and childlike. He can be “saved” only
by the spiritual, for the spiritual alone is cognate to that in him which can be saved, to wit, his spiritual
part. Revelation is illumination imparted by God to the God-like principle in
man, and its object is the concerns of this principle. Revelation may, indeed,
be couched in solar or astronomical terms, but these are its vehicle only, not
its substance and secret. Or, again, it may be conveyed in terms ostensibly
descriptive of natural phenomena, of
(p.
34)
architecture, of national and political vicissitudes. None of these, however, are
really the primal subject matter of holy Writ, for all of them relate to things
belonging to sense and to time, which cannot be brought into effectual affinity
with the soul, whose proper relation is with the noumenal
and eternal. Such things pertain to the province of the sciences – physics,
biology, history, paleontology, and so forth – and can be appropriately and
intelligently dealt with by these only. They are not subjects for revelation;
they in no wise interest the soul, nor can they affect the salvation of man.
Moreover, as all knowledges accessible on planes other than the spiritual must
of necessity be partial and relative only, mere
approximations to facts, and not facsimilia
of facts, there can be no sure and infallible record of them possible to man.
History, for instance, belongs entirely to the past and irrecoverable, and
depends on the observation of and impressions produced by certain events at
periods more or less remote; the recorders of the events in question being
endued with the spirit and views of their time, and judging according to the
light which these afforded. The same events in our age, appealing to minds of
wholly different habits of thought and experience, would present an aspect and
bear an interpretation wholly different. We need but to attend an assize or
police court to learn how variously the same fact or episode presents itself to
various witnesses. And when to the element of uncertainty crested by natural
defects and differences in the faculties of observation and memory possessed by
different individuals is added the impossibility of reviewing events of a long
distant past from the modern standpoint, and the consequent necessity of
accepting the ancient standpoint, or none at all, it becomes obvious that there
is, virtually, no such thing as
(p.
35)
history in the sense usually ascribed to that word, that is, as a record of
actual occurrences as they actually occurred. Even contemporary history is only
approximately true; the history of a generation past lends large ground to
controversy, and that of the long past insensibly slips into legend, and thence
into myth. Mankind has no art by which to photograph events. Character leaves
its mark for a time on the world’s records, and great sayings survive indefinite
periods, but acts and events soon become contestable, and the authorship of our
finest systems of philosophy and of our most precious axioms and rules of
conduct loses itself in the haze of antiquity. The Lord’s Prayer, the
Beatitudes, and the Golden Rule remain facts, but what scholar knows who first
gave them utterance? The Pythagorean, Buddhist, and Chinese philosophies, as
also the Parsee and Jewish religions, are facts, but were there ever such men as
the traditional Pythagoras, Buddha, Kung-foo-tsze, Mithras, Zoroaster or
Moses? No one to-day can with certainty affirm or deny
even so much as their existence, to say nothing of their deeds, their miracles,
their adventures, and the manner of their birth and death. And to speak of later
times, what do we know, undoubtedly and indisputably, of such prominent
personages in English and French chronicles as Roland and Oliver, Bayard, Coeur
de Lion, Fair Rosamond, Joan of Arc, Anna Boleyn, Marie Stuart, and a thousand
other heroes and heroines whose actions and adventures form the theme of so many
speculations and assumptions? They have left on the historic page an impression
of character, but little more. Concerning their real deeds, and the actual part
they played in the events of their time, we can affirm nothing with assurance.
And as the footfall
(p.
36)
of time, and the
gradual decay and destruction of record, literary and geographical, slowly
stamps out the burning embers of the past, darkness, more or less complete,
falls over the remoter ages and blots them from our view. Decade after decade it
becomes increasingly difficult to pluck any certain and solid crumb of fact from
the grip of the biblical exegetes, the etymologists, the biologists, the
paleontologists, and all the scientific kith and kin. Every assertion is contested, every date, circumstance and hero must fight for
place and life. Assuredly there will come a day when the figure of Jesus of
Nazareth which for eighteen centuries has filled the canvas of the world, and
already begins to pale, will become as obscure and faded as is now that of Osiris, of Fo-hi, or of Quetzalcoatle. Not that the gospel can ever die, or that
spiritual processes can become effete; but that the historical framework in
which, for the present age, the saving truth is set, will dissociate itself from
its essentials, fall, and drift away on the waves of Time. Spiritual
hermeneutics will endure because they are independent of Time. Spiritual
processes are actualities, daily and eternally realised
in the experience of the microcosm, “as they were in the beginning, are now, and
ever shall be.” No man can know, philosophically, anything that occurs
externally and objectively to himself; he can know only
that which occurs internally and subjectively. Concerning the first he can have
an opinion only; concerning the second he has experience. Nor, again, can any
man believe any fact on the testimony of another, but only upon his own witness,
for the impression received through the senses of one man, no matter how
profound, is incommunicable to the organism of another, and can produce no
conviction save to the mind of the man receiving the
(p.
37)
sensory impression. To believe implies assurance, and assurance can be imparted
only by experience.
In matters of history and natural phenomena, moreover, none but the ablest
observers and best educated critics can indicate or determine probabilities, and
to be even a sound critic or observer, great natural endowments and acquired
erudition are needed. It is incredible that God should demand of every man
exceptional gifts of intellect and a university education as necessary
conditions for the comprehension and acceptance of His Word. Yet, if that Word
be indeed directly or intimately dependent on processes of natural phenomena or
historical occurrences, it is eminently necessary that every person seeking
salvation should be versed in the sciences concerned with them, because no
assurance of the truth of biblical data can be gained save by competent
examination and test, and if no assurance, then no belief. It will be observed
that contention is not here raised against the accuracy on the physical plane of
either facts or figures contained in sacred writ; it is simply sought to show
that the unlearned cannot possibly have any valid means of judging or affirming
their truth, and that, therefore, belief under such circumstances, is a mere
form of words.
Not long ago, when defending the proposition, “there is no such thing as
history,” – conceived, that is, as a record of consecutive and ascertained facts
– I was met by a clergyman of the Established Church with the contention that broad facts are always ascertainable,
and that, in respect to sacred history, belief in such broad facts only was
necessary to salvation. We need not, for instance, said he, trouble ourselves
over much about the details and dates of the gospel narrative, nor does it
greatly matter whether Christ was born at Bethlehem or
(p.
38)
at
The three facts most essential to the belief of the Christian who deems the
acceptation of the gospels as literal history necessary to salvation, are
precisely those concerning which detail is all important, and the witness
offered the most uncertain and meager; to wit the Incarnation, the Resurrection
and the Ascension. The dogma of the Incarnation is supported by the record of
two only of the four evangelists, and, as an historical fact, depends solely on
the testimony of one witness, and that one Mary herself, for no other could have
related the tale of the Annunciation or certified to the miraculous conception.
As for the dogma of the Ascension, the information supplied in regard to this
event is contained, not in the gospels at all, but in the Acts of the Apostles,
for the only reference made to the Ascension in the gospels consists of a single
sentence in the last verse of St. Luke’s record, a sentence omitted by some
ancient
(p.
39)
authorities, and noted as dubious in the Revised Version of 1880-1. Surely, then,
the Incarnation and Ascension at least cannot be classed in the category of
“broad facts,” and yet, to regard them as unimportant details which might safely
be overlooked, would be fatal to Christian faith and doctrine as understood by
the Established Church. Stripped of these two dogmas – the Incarnation and the
Ascension – there is nothing disputable on scientific grounds in the gospel
history as a record of actual occurrences. It is credible that a man should
possess unusual magnetic and psychic powers, or should swoon on the cross and
recover from a death-like stupor in the course of a few hours when under the
care of friends. But that a man should be born of a virgin, rise from the dead,
and should bodily ascend into the sky are marvels for which overwhelming and
incontrovertible testimony should be forthcoming. Yet these are precisely the
three events for which the evidence is most meager, and on two of which no
stress is laid in either the sermons or epistles of the Apostles. Certainly, the
dogma of the Incarnation is not once alluded to in their teaching, and it does
not appear in any book of the New Testament that the disciples of Jesus or the
founders of the Christian Church were acquainted with it. Whether
a knowledge of the Ascension is implied in the epistles or not, is a more
open question, but at any rate no express reference is made to it as an
historical event.
Yet, if for such reasons, we should reject the spiritual power of the Gospel and
deny its dogmas, or the dogmas of the Catholic Church, in their mystical sense,
we should demonstrate our own ignorance and fatuity. For every such dogma is
certainly and infallibly true, being grounded in the eternal experience of the
human soul, and
(p.
40)
perpetually confirmed thereby.
It is not the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth on
(p.
41)
For how can such events reach or relate themselves to the soul, save by
conversion into spiritual processes? Only as processes can they become cognates
to the soul and make themselves intelligible to and
assimilable
thereby. Throughout the universe the law of assimilation, whether in its
inorganic or organic aspect, uniformly compels all entities and elements, from
crystals to the most complex animate creature, to absorb and digest only that
which is similar to itself in principles and substance. And if by the law of
natural things the spiritual are understood, as all apostles of hermetic
doctrine tell us, then it is obvious, by the light of
analogy as well as by that of reason, that the spiritual part of man can
assimilate only that which is spiritual. Hence the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation, most necessary to right belief, whereby the bread and wine
of the mere outward elements are transmuted into the real and saving body and
blood of the Lord. Can bread profit to salvation, or can physical events redeem
the soul? Nay, but to partake the substance of God’s
secret which is the body of Christ, and to receive infusion of Divine grace into
the soul, which is the blood of Christ, and by the shedding of which man is
regenerate. These processes are essential to redemption from the otherwise
certain and mortal effects of original sin. It is not, therefore, part of the
design of hermetic teaching to destroy belief in the historical aspect of
Christianity any more than to dissuade the faithful from receiving Christ
sacramentally, but to point out that it is not the history that saves,
but the spiritual truth embodied therein, precisely as it is not the bread
administered at the altar that profits to salvation, but the divine body therein
concealed.
Life is not long enough to afford time for studying the
(p.
42)
volumes upon volumes of attack and defense to which the Christian tradition has
given birth. It is more profitable to leave these contentions where they are,
and to enquire, not whether the details of the story itself are accurate, nor
even if the chief facts it relates were really enacted among men on the physical
plane; but rather, what it all signifies when translated into the language of
absolutes. For phenomena cannot be absolutes, and we have
shown that only absolutes can have an intelligible meaning for the soul.
I spoke just now of “original sin.” It will be understood, in the light of what
has already been said concerning Heredity, that, from the point of view I
occupy, original sin should not be taken to imply a burden of corruption
arbitrarily imputed to new-born babes as the consequence merely of transgression
in a remote ancestry, but as that voluntarily acquired and self-imposed “Karma,”
which every soul accretes in the course of its manifold experiences, and loaded
with which it enters upon each nativity. This weight of original sin may be
heavy or light; it may grow or decrease with each successive birth, according to
the evolution of the soul concerned, and the progress it makes towards release
and light. “If,” says Mr. W.S. Lilly, “a man submits to the law of moral
development by choosing to act aright, he will finally be delivered from all
evil. But, if he rebels, and will not submit to the elevating redeeming
influences, he thereby falls under those which degrade, stupefy and
materialise. And as he would cease to be man had he no free-will, and as
moral good implies moral choice, it seems inevitable that he should remain the
slave of the lower life as long as he will not choose to break away from it.”
(Ancient
Religion and Modern Thought).
The
(p.
43)
spirit of this passage is
that of the teaching of Yama – or Death – in the Katha Upanishad: – “They who are ignorant, but fancy
themselves wise, go round and round with erring step as blind led by the blind.
He who believes that this world is, and not the other, is again and again
subject to the sway of Death.”
It is instructive to note that this wonderful text furnishes also, incidentally,
a definition of Maya, or Illusion. It is not Matter that is illusion, as is
commonly supposed by superficial students of Oriental theosophy, but the belief
that Matter is a thing true and self-subsistent without reference to any Beyond
or Within. It is not fatal to deliverance to believe that this world is, but to
believe that it alone is, and no other. This world in itself is certainly not
illusion, for the matter which composes it is the last expression, centrifugally
formulated, of Spirit, and in fact, is Spirit, in a specialised and congelate
condition. But the illusion of it consists in apprehending Matter as eternal and
absolute, and in seeing in it the be-all and end-all of Life and Substance. The
image seen in the pool or the mirror is not illusion, but he would be deluded
who should suppose it to be other than an image. Mr. Lilly, again, in the work
already cited, puts the case very clearly when he says: – “Matter as distinct
from Spirit is an abstraction, and, if taken to be real, an illusion, – as the
old Vedic sages saw – the mocking Maya from which Thought alone can release.”
Here I cannot refrain from alluding to the classic myth of the wandering Io, the
personified Soul, pursued and afflicted by the astral influences under the
masque of Argus, the many eyed giant, and finally delivered from his tyranny by
Hermes or Thought, the Thoth or Thaut of Egyptian arcana.
(p.
44)
In the foregoing exposition of the hermetic method of treating the first chapter
of Genesis, I have followed
exclusively the order of manifestation or development pertaining to the
Microcosm, as exhibited in the successive unfoldments
of the seven planes which constitute human nature. But, as has already been
indicated, the Microcosm presents the resumption of the stages or principles
first set forth in the Macrocosm in such inverted order that the supreme Source
of the Macrocosm is the Ultimate of the Microcosm, and that the Creation,
flowing forth from God as the World returns to God as Man.
The process of the Macrocosmic development is, therefore, properly, an outgoing
or centrifugal process; that of the Microcosmic an indrawing
or centripetal process. So that seven stages of the regeneration of Man reverse
those of the generation of the World, and the first day in the latter process is
not that of Saturn but of the Sun. It is not my design in this essay to enter
upon the Macrocosmic interpretation of the Creative sequences, because the theme
of our author’s treatise is the Theologization
of Astrology with special and exclusive reference to the Regeneration of Man.
But to avoid confusion in the mind of the hermetic disciple and reader, it is
necessary to lay emphasis on the fact that the subjective evolution of Man is
really an involution, a gradual ascension upwards and inwards God – Who
must, therefore, be thought of as the Central Point of a series of spiral orbits
– a gradual emergence from the merely instinctive and responsive into the
self-conscious and reflective states. Man, then, begins in the outermost or
Saturnian (Satan) circuit; the orbit of the Fallen One, and ends in the
inmost or Solar (Christ) circuit, the orbit of the Ascended One. He is born a
child of wrath, and
(p.
45)
heir of doom; he becomes
by regeneration a child of grace, and heir of eternal life.
All this process is marvelously resumed and exhibited in the successive phases
undergone by the physical human embryon, from its
first unvitalised and diffuse condition, to the state
of perfection of the unborn infant, attained in the seventh month of uterine
existence. I cannot, in this place, enter upon physiological detail, but I beg
the interested reader to refer to Professor Haeckel’s
History of Evolution, and, in particular, to his careful and instructive
series of plates illustrating the various consecutive aspects of the human egg
in its virgin state, and in its passage from the first phase of impregnation to
that of the full maturity of the foetus. So perfect a
picture is hereby presented of the Microcosmic subjective development, that
these plates, transferred to an hermetic treatise,
would aptly represent the various stages in the secret Magnun Opus
of the inward development of man. As is the physical, so is the spiritual; as
the objective, so the subjective, for “the things invisible are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made.” (Rom. i. 20)
There are, then, two great wheels of Evolution and Involution, turning inversely
and by mutual interaction; the outer is that of the Macrocosm, and the inner
that of the Microcosm. Both have sevenfold divisions,
similarly constituted and distinguished upon each wheel. But
is remains to be explained, in order to render the metaphor accurate and
complete, that the spokes or rays which support the circumference of each wheel,
are likewise seven in number, all of them proceeding from one central axle,
itself twofold. These seven rays are the seven Elohim
or Spirits of God, and the system they
(p.
46)
constitute is that of Emanation, as distinguished from Generation on the one hand,
and Regeneration on the other. The Elohim proceed from
the AEnsoph, the Central Pivot, Life and Substance,
upon which the whole wheel depends and turns. The order of the Procession of the
Elohim immanent in the wheel of Evolution is that of the Macrocosm,
counting from within outwards. Its counterpart in the wheel of Involution is
that of the Microcosm, counting from without inwards. In the wheel of the
Macrocosm these seven rays represent the sevenfold Principles which direct and
control the subjective energies of the World, the purely spiritual and divine
Powers outflowing
from Godhead; causes of manifestation, themselves eternally
unmanifest. In the wheel of the Microcosm the seven rays are the seven
Gifts of the Spirit, illuminating the spiritual part of man, each having its
proper attribute and province, and each contributing a special degree of grace.
Thus the development they induce is purely subjective and spiritual. Manifest by
action, it is itself wholly secret and arcane. These seven rays of the
microcosmic wheel are the Elohim of the man and their
central pivot is the AEnsoph or Divine and Radiant Point of his system. So that
each wheel, Macrocosmic and Microcosmic alike, has its double procession of
manifest and unmanifest, generate and emanent order. Of the World and of Man alike, God is the
essential and focal Light.
“Atman,” says the Brihad Upanishad, “is the Lord and King of all; as the
spokes in the nave, so the world and the soul are alike centered in the One.”
“Upon Him all the worlds are founded; none becomes different from Him. Yet as the one sun, eye of the world, is not sullied by the defects
of the world, so the Atman of all beings is not sullied by the evils of
existence.” (Katha
Upanishad).
“That Supreme Spirit Whose work is the universe, always dwelling
(p.
47)
within the heart, is
revealed by the heart. Those who know Him become immortal. Not in the sight
abides His form, none may behold him with the eye. He is all-knowing – yet known
by none; omnipresent, ungenerate,
revealed by meditation; whoso knows Him, the All-Blessed, dwelling in the heart
of all beings, he has everlasting sabbath.” (Svetâsvatara)
And, again, in the Brihad Upanishad: –
“The wise who behold this One as the eternal amidst transient things; as the
Intelligible among those that know, as the single Ruler and Inner Life of all,
as dwelling within themselves, they obtain eternal gladness; they, not others.
“Adore Him, ye Gods, by whom the year with its rolling days is directed, the
Light of lights, the Immortal Life. He is the Ruler and Sustainer of all, the
Bridge, the Upholder of the revolving worlds.”
“From the unreal, lead me to the Real; from darkness to Light, from death to
Immortality.”
This it is to theologize one’s astrology, and to consummate and
sanctify the labours of the creative week by immersion
in the Rest of the Sabbath.
ANNA KINGSFORD.
FOOTNOTES
(18:1) See my explanation of the two-fold signification
and character of the moon in my introductory essay to The Virgin of the World. –
A.K.
(24:1) The reason why the
doctrine of Metempsychosis is not put forward as na
article of faith in the Christian dispensation appears to me to be because there is no more death or birth for the man who
is united with God in Christ. The Christian religion was addressed to this end,
and he who enters the Kingdom of heaven is saved for ever from that of earth.
But very few realise this blessed state, therefore
says the Lord, – “Few there be that find it.” Not, assuredly, that
all the majority are lost, but that they return to the necessary
conditions again and again until they find it. When once the life of
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What Astrology
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