Chapter ix

. p. 11.

573 Pliny: _Hist. Nat._, xxx. 1; _Ib._, xvi. 14; xxv. 9, etc.

574 Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.

575 Cæsar, iii. 14.

576 Pliny, xxx. _Isis Unveiled_, i. 18.

577 “The care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honour, and their maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that they were expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality and religion,” says a modern writer. “If kings or princes desired the advice or the blessings of the holy men, they were either obliged to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men no secret power of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had fathomed nature to its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them open books, and the result was that science that is now termed, so superciliously, _magic_.”

578 _Op. cit._, p. 9.

579 _Op. cit._, p. 11.

580 _Hermes_, iv. 6.

581 From _Saraph_ שרף “fiery, burning,” plural (see _Isaiah_, vi. 2‐6). They are regarded as the personal attendants of the Almighty, “his messengers,” angels or metatrons. In _Revelation_ they are the “seven burning lamps” in attendance before the throne.

582 Venus with the Chaldæans and Egyptians was the wife of _Proteus_, and is regarded as the mother of the Kabiri, the sons of Phta or Emepth—the divine light or the Sun. The angels answer to the stars in the following order: The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn; Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael, Zachariel, and Orifiel; this is in religion and Christian Kabalism; astrologically and esoterically the places of the “regents” stand otherwise, as also in the Jewish, or rather the real Chaldæan _Kabalah_.

583 _Loc. cit._, xiv. 12.

584 This is one more proof that the Ancients knew of seven planets besides the Sun; for otherwise which is the eighth in such a case? The seventh, with two others, as stated, were “mystery” planets, whether Uranus or any other.

585 II. _Sam._, vi. 20‐22.

586 _Judges_, xxi. 21, _et seq._

587 I. _Kings_, xviii. 26.

588 This dance—the Râsa Mandala, enacted by the Gopîs or shepherdesses of Krishna, the Sun‐God, is enacted to this day in Râjputâna in India, and is undeniably the same theo‐astronomical and symbolical dance of the planets and the Zodiacal signs, that was danced thousands of years before our era.

589 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 45.

590 II. _Epistle_, i. 19. The English text says: “Until the day‐star arise in your heart,” a trifling alteration which does not really matter—as _Lucifer_ is the day as well as the “morning” star—and it is less shocking to pious ears. There are a number of such alterations in the Protestant bibles.

591 Again the English translation changes the word “Sun” into “day‐ spring.” The Roman Catholics are decidedly braver and more sincere than the Protestant theologians. De Mirville: iv. 34, 38.

592 Thus said the Egyptians and the Sabæans in days of old, the symbol of whose manifested gods, Osiris and Bel, was the sun. But they had a higher deity.

593 Exiled from the Protestant bible but left in the _Apocrypha_ which, according to Article VI. of the Church of England, “she doth read for example of life and instruction of manners” (?), but not to establish any doctrine.

594 _Cornelius a Lapide_, v. 248.

595 _Ecclesiastes_, xliii. The above quotations are taken from De Mirville’s chapter “On Christian and Jewish Solar Theology,” iv. 35‐38.

596 Nevertheless the Church has preserved in her most sacred rites the “star‐rites” of the Pagan Initiates. In the pre‐Christian Mithraic Mysteries, the candidate who overcame successfully the “twelve Tortures” which preceded the final Initiation, received a small round cake or wafer of unleavened bread, symbolising in one of its meanings, the solar disc, and known as the manna (heavenly bread).... A lamb, or a bull even, was killed, and with the blood the candidate had to be sprinkled, as in the case of the Emperor Julian’s initiation. The seven rules or mysteries that are represented in the _Revelation_ as the seven seals which are opened in order were then delivered to the newly born.

597 Truly says S. T. Coleridge: “Instinctively the reason has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of various sciences.... There is no doubt but that astrology of some sort or other will be the last achievement of astronomy; there must be chemical relations between the planets ... the difference of their magnitude compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise.” Between planets and our earth with its mankind, we may add.

598 “Christ then,” the author says (p. 40), “is represented by the trunk of the candlestick.”

599 De Mirville, iv. 41, 42.

600 De Mirville, iv. 42.

601 Notwithstanding the above, written in the earliest Christian period by the renegade Neo‐Platonist, the Church persists to this day in her wilful error. Helpless against Galileo, she now tries to throw a doubt even on the heliocentric system!

602 _Stromateis_, V., vi.

603 The English bible has: “In them (the Heavens) hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,” which is incorrect and has no sense in view of the verse that follows, for there _are_ things “hid from the heat thereof” if the latter word is to be applied to the sun.

604 When the hierophant took his last degree, he emerged from the sacred recess called _Manneras_ and was given the golden _Tau_, the Egyptian Cross, which was subsequently placed on his breast, and buried with him.

605 The three secret names are “Sana, Sanat Sujâta, and Kapila;” while the four exoteric Gods are called, Sanat Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka and Sanâtana.

606 Another Kumâra, the “God of War” is called in the Hindu system the “eternal celibate”—“the virgin warrior.” He is the Âryan St. Michael.

607 We give the original: “Coelestia corpora moveri a spirituali creatura, a _nemine_ Sanctorum vel philosophorum, negatum, legisse me memini. (_Opusc._ X. art. iii.).... Mihi autam videtur, quod _Demonstrative_ probari posset, quod ab aliquo intellectu corpora coelestia moveantur, vel a Deo immediate, vel a mediantibus angelis. Sed quod mediantibus angelis ca moveat, congruit rerum ordine, quem Dionysius infallibilem asserit, ut inferiora a Deo per _Media_ secundum cursum communem administrentur” (_Opusc._ II. art. ii.), and if so, and God _never_ meddles with the once for ever established laws of Nature, leaving it to his administrators, why should their being called Gods by the “heathen” be deemed idolatrous?

608 In one of Des Mousseaux’s volumes on Demonology (_Œuvres des Demons_) if we do not mistake the statement of the Abbé Huc is found, and the author testifies to having heard the following story repeatedly from the Abbé himself. In a lamasery of Tibet, the missionary found the following:

It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a moonlit landscape, but the moon is not at all motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the Abbé, one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite, is repeated in her facsimile, in the movement and progress of the moon in the sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds, peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a most perfect and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received the adoration of so many people in the days of old.” We know from the most reliable sources and numerous eye‐ witnesses, that such “machines”—not canvas paintings—do exist in certain temples of Tibet; as also the “sidereal wheels” representing the planets, and kept for the same purposes—astrological and magical. Huc’s statement was translated in _Isis Unveiled_ from Des Mousseaux’s volume.

609 Cedrenus, p. 338. Whether produced by _clockwork_ or _magic_ power, such machines—whole celestial spheres with planets rotating—were found in the Sanctuaries, and some exist to this day in Japan, in a secret subterranean temple of the old Mikados, as well as in two other places.

610 Champollion’s _Égypte Moderne_, p. 42.

611 _Musée des Sciences_, p. 230.

612 Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See _Les Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, 7th year, 1861.

613 _Isaiah_, lxiii. 9.

614