Section XXXVII. The Souls of the Stars—Universal Heliolatry.

In order to show that the Ancients have never “mistaken stars for Gods,” or Angels and the sun for the highest Gods and God, but have worshipped only the Spirit of all, and have reverenced the minor Gods supposed to reside in the sun and planets—the difference between these two worships has to be pointed out. Saturn, “the Father of Gods” must not be confused with his namesake—the planet of the same name with its eight moons and three rings. The two—though in one sense identical, as are, for instance, physical man and his soul—must be separated in the question of worship. This has to be done the more carefully in the case of the seven planets and their Spirits, as the whole formation of the universe is attributed to them in the Secret Teachings. The same difference has to be shown again between the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra Shikhandina, “the bright-crested,” and the Rishis—the mortal Sages who appeared on earth during the Satya Yuga. If all of these have been so far closely united in the visions of the seers of every age—the bible seers included—there must have been a reason for it. Nor need one go back so far as into the periods of “superstition” and “unscientific fancies” to find great men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the eminent astronomer, in common with many other great men who believed that the heavenly bodies ruled favourably or adversely the fates of men and nations—fully credited besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies, even our own earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.

Le Couturier's opinion is worthy of notice in this relation:

[pg 333]

But astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a sinful science, and together with Occultism is tabooed by the Churches. It is very doubtful, however, whether mystic “star worship” can be so easily laughed down as people imagine—at any rate by Christians. The hosts of Angels, Cherubs and Planetary Archangels are identical with the minor Gods of the Pagans. As to their “great Gods,” if Mars has been shown—on the admission of even the enemies of the Pagan astrologers—to have been regarded by the latter simply as the personified strength of the one highest impersonal Deity, Mercury being 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. For with the latter, Jehovah is the synthesis of the seven Elohim, the eternal centre of all those attributes and forces, the Alei of the Aleim, and the Adonai of the Adonim. And if with them Mars is now called St. Michael, the “strength of God,” Mercury Gabriel, the “omniscience and fortitude of the Lord,” and Raphael “the blessing or healing power of God,” this is simply a change of names, the characters behind the masks remaining the same.

The Dalai-lama's mitre has seven ridges in honour of the seven chief Dhyâni Buddhas. In the funeral ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made to exclaim:

Brahmâ's head is ornamented with seven rays, and he is followed by the seven Rishis, in the seven Svargas. China has her seven Pagodas; [pg 334] the Greeks had their seven Cyclopes, seven Demiurgi, and the Mystery Gods, the seven Kabiri, whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn, and with the Jews, Jehovah. Now the latter Deity has become chief of all, the highest and the one God, and his old place is taken by Mikael (Michael). He is the “Chief of the Host” (tsaba); the “Archistrategus of the Lord's army”; the “Conqueror of the Devil”—Victor diaboli—and the “Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia,” he who slew the “Great Dragon.” Unfortunately astrology and symbology, having no inducement to veil old things with new masks, have preserved the real name of Mikael—“that was Jehovah”—Mikael being the Angel of the face of the Lord,613 “the guardian of the planets,” and the living image of God. He represents the Deity in his visits to earth, for as it is well expressed in Hebrew, he is one מיכאל, who is as God, or who is like unto God. It is he who cast out the serpent.614

Mikael, being the regent of the planet Saturn, is—Saturn.615 His mystery-name is Sabbathiel, because he presides over the Jewish Sabbath, as also over the astrological Saturday. Once identified, the reputation of the Christian conqueror of the devil is in still greater danger from further identifications. Biblical angels are called Malachim, the messengers between God (or rather the gods) and men. In Hebrew מכאל Malach, is also “a King,” and Malech or Melech was likewise Moloch, or again Saturn, the Seb of Egypt, to whom Dies Saturni, or the Sabbath, was dedicated. The Sabæans separated and distinguished the planet Saturn from its God far more than the Roman Catholics do their angels from their stars; and the Kabalists make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the seventh work of magic.

says Éliphas Lévi, who ought to know. Jehovah and the Saviour, Saturn and Jupiter, being thus one, and Mikael being called the living image of God, it does seem dangerous for the Church to call Saturn, Satan—le dieu mauvais. However, Rome is strong in casuistry and will get out of this as she got out of every other identification, with glory to herself and to her own full satisfaction. Nevertheless all her [pg 335] dogmas and rituals seem like so many pages torn out from the history of Occultism, and then distorted. The extremely thin partition that separates the Kabalistic and Chaldæan Theogony from the Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy is now confessed by at least one Roman Catholic writer. One can hardly believe one's eyes in finding the following (the passages italicized by us should be carefully noticed):

If an Occultist, eager to charge the Church with a numberless series of plagiarisms were to write the above, could he have written more strongly? And have we, or have we not, the right, after such a complete confession, to reverse the tables and to say of Roman Catholics and others what is said of the Gnostics and Occultists. “They used our expressions and rejected our doctrines.” For it is not the “promoters of the false Gnosis”—who had all those expressions from their archaic ancestors—who helped themselves to Christian expressions, but verily the Christian Fathers and Theologians, who helped themselves to our nest, and have tried ever since to soil it.

The words above quoted will explain much to those who are searching for truth and for truth only. They will show the origin of certain rites in the Church inexplicable hitherto to the simple-minded, and will give the reason why such words as “Our Lord the Sun” were used in prayer by Christians up to the fifth and even sixth century of our era, and embodied in the Liturgy, until altered into “Our Lord, the God.” Let us remember that the early Christians painted Christ on the walls of their subterranean necropolis, as a shepherd in the guise of, and invested with all the attributes of Apollo, driving away the wolf, Fenris, who seeks to devour the Sun and his Satellites.

Section XXXVIII. Astrology and Astrolatry.

The books of Hermes Trismegistus contain the exoteric meaning, still veiled for all but the Occultist, of the Astrology and Astrolatry of the Khaldi. The two subjects are closely connected. Astrolatry, or the adoration of the heavenly host, is the natural result of only half-revealed Astrology, whose Adepts carefully concealed from the non-initiated masses its Occult principles and the wisdom imparted to them by the Regents of the Planets—the “Angels.” Hence, divine Astrology for the Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry for the profane. St. Justin asserts it:

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

There was a vast difference between the Sacred Science taught by Petosiris and Necepso—the first Astrologers mentioned in the Egyptian manuscripts, believed to have lived during the reign of Ramses II. (Sesostris)622—and the miserable charlatanry of the quacks called Chaldæans, who degraded the Divine Knowledge under the last Emperors of Rome. Indeed, one may fairly describe the two as the “high ceremonial Astrology” and “astrological Astrolatry.” The first depended on the knowledge by the Initiates of those (to us) immaterial Forces or Spiritual Entities that affect matter and guide it. Called by the ancient Philosophers the Archontes and the Cosmocratores, they were the types or paradigms on the higher planes of the lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution, whom we call Elementals and Nature-Spirits, to whom the Sabæans bowed and whom they worshipped, without suspecting the essential difference. Hence [pg 338] the latter kind when not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic. It was the favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology, entirely ignorant of the apotelesmatic principles of the primitive Science, the doctrines of which were imparted only at Initiation. Thus, while the real Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the very summit of spiritual knowledge, the hoi polloi among the Sabæans crouched, steeped in superstition—ten millenniums back, as they do now—in the cold and lethal shadow of the valleys of matter. Sidereal influence is dual. There is the physical and physiological influence, that of exotericism; and the high spiritual, intellectual, and moral influence, imparted by the knowledge of the planetary Gods. Bailly, speaking with only an imperfect knowledge of the former, called Astrology, so far back as the eighteenth century, “The very foolish mother of a very wise daughter”—Astronomy. On the other hand, Arago, a luminary of the nineteenth century, supports the reality of the sidereal influence of the Sun, Moon and Planets. He asks:

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

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

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

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

Thomas Aquinas had corroborated Lebas in anticipation; he says:

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

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

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

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

Primitive Astrology was as far above modern judiciary Astrology, so-called, as the guides (the Planets and Zodiacal signs) are above the lamp-posts. Berosus shows the sidereal sovereignty of Bel and Mylitta (Sun and Moon), and only “the twelve lords of the Zodiacal Gods,” the “thirty-six Gods Counsellors” and the “twenty-four Stars, judges of this world,” which support and guide the Universe (our solar system), watch over mortals and reveal to mankind its fate and their own decrees. Judiciary Astrology as it is now known, is correctly denominated by the Latin Church the

Every student of Occultism knows that the heavenly bodies are closely related during each Manvantara with the mankind of that special cycle; and there are some who believe that each great character born during that period has—as every other mortal has, only in a far stronger degree—his destiny outlined within his proper constellation or star, traced as a self-prophecy, an anticipated autobiography, by the indwelling Spirit of that particular star. The human Monad in its first beginning is that Spirit, or the Soul of that star (Planet) itself. As our Sun radiates its light and beams on every body in space within the boundaries of its system, so the Regent of every Planet-star, the Parent-monad, shoots out from itself the Monad of every “pilgrim” Soul born under its house within its own group. The Regents are esoterically seven, whether in the Sephiroth, the “Angels of the Presence,” the Rishis, or the Amshaspends. “The One is no number” is said in all the esoteric works.

[pg 342]

From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers) the noble primitive science passed to the Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians) and the Hakamim (or scientists, the Magicians of the lower class), and from these to the Jews during their captivity. The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for centuries, and when re-discovered by Hilkiah had lost their true sense for the people of Israel. Primitive Occult Astrology was on the decline when Daniel, the last of the Jewish Initiates of the old school, became the chief of the Magi and Astrologers of Chaldæa. In those days even Egypt, who had her wisdom from the same source as Babylon, had degenerated from her former grandeur, and her glory had begun to fade out. Still, the science of old had left her eternal imprint on the world, and the seven great Primitive Gods reigned for ever in the Astrology and in the division of time of every nation upon the face of the earth. The names of the days of our (Christian) week are those of the Gods of the Chaldæans, who translated them from those of the Âryans; the uniformity of these antediluvian names in every nation, from the Goths back to the Indians, would remain inexplicable, as Sir W. Jones thought, had not the riddle been explained to us by the invitation made by the Chaldæan oracles, recorded by Porphyry and quoted by Eusebius:

This is slightly erroneous. Greece did not get her astrological instruction from Egypt or from Chaldæa, but direct from Orpheus, as Lucian tells us.629 It was Orpheus, as he says, who imparted the Indian Sciences to nearly all the great monarchs of antiquity; and it was they, the ancient kings favoured by the Planetary Gods, who recorded the principles of Astrology—as did Ptolemus, for instance. Thus Lucian writes:

On the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Pharaoh, Neith, mother of Ra, the heifer that brings forth the Sun, her body spangled with stars, and wearing the solar and lunar discs, is equally referred to as the “Heavenly Virgin” and “Our Lady of the Starry Vault.”

Modern judiciary Astrology in its present form began only during the time of Diodorus, as he apprises the world.630 But Chaldæan Astrology was believed in by most of the great men in History, such as Cæsar, Pliny, Cicero—whose best friends, Nigidius Figulus and Lucius Tarrutius, were themselves Astrologers, the former being famous as a prophet. Marcus Antonius never travelled without an Astrologer recommended to him by Cleopatra. Augustus, when ascending the throne, had his horoscope drawn by Theagenes. Tiberius discovered pretenders to his throne by means of Astrology and divination. Vitellius dared not exile the Chaldæans, as they had announced the day of their banishment as that of his death. Vespasian consulted them daily; Domitian would not move without being advised by the prophets; Adrian was a learned Astrologer himself; and all of them, ending with Julian (called the Apostate because he would not become one), believed in, and addressed their prayers to, the Planetary “Gods.” The Emperor Adrian, moreover, “predicted from the January calends up to December 31st, every event that happened to him daily.” Under the wisest emperors Rome had a School of Astrology, wherein were secretly taught the occult influences of the Sun, Moon, and Saturn.631 Judiciary Astrology is used to this day by the Kabalists; and Éliphas Lévi, the modern French Magus, teaches its rudiments in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology, with the teraphim and the urim and thummim of Magic, is lost to Europe. Hence our century of Materialism shrugs its shoulders and sees in Astrology—a pretender.

Not all scientists scoff at it, however, and one may rejoice in reading in the Musée des Sciences632 the suggestive and fair remarks made by Le Couturier, a man of science of no mean reputation. He thinks it curious [pg 344] to notice that while the bold speculations of Democritus are found vindicated by Dalton,