The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

The Kaldhi, having made long observations on the planets and knowing better
than anyone else the meaning of their motions and their influences, predict to
people their futurity. They regard their doctrine of the five great orbs—which
they call interpreters, and we, planets—as the most important. And though
they allege that it is the sun that furnishes them with most of the predictions
for great forthcoming events, yet they worship more particularly Saturn. Such
predictions made to a number of kings, especially to Alexander, Antigonus,
Seleucus, Nicanor, etc., . . . have been so marvellously realised that people
were struck with admiration. [Op Cit., I .ii.]
It follows from the above that the declaration made by Qû-tâmy, the Chaldean Adept—to the
effect that all that he means to impart in his work to the profane had been told by Saturn to
the moon, by the latter to her idol, and by that idol, or teraphim, to himself, the scribe—no
more implied idolatry than did the practice of the same method by King (Page 240) David.
One fails to perceive in it, therefore, either an apocrypha or a “fairy-tale.” The above-named
Chaldaean Initiate lived at a period far anterior to that ascribed to Moses, in whose day the
Sacred Science of the sanctuary was still in a flourishing condition. It began to decline only
when such scoffers as Lucian had been admitted, and the pearls of the Occult Science had
been too often thrown to the hungry dogs of criticism and ignorance.
SECTION XXVII
Egyptian Magic
(Page 241) FEW of our students of Occultism have had the opportunity of examining Egyptian
papyri—those living, or rather re-arisen witnesses that Magic, good and bad, was practised
many thousands of years back into the night of time. The use of the papyrus prevailed up to
the eighth century of our era, when it was given up, and its fabrication fell into disuse. The
most curious of the exhumed documents were immediately purchased and taken away from
the country. Yet there are a number of beautifully-preserved papyri at Bulak, Cairo, though
the greater number have never been yet properly read. [ “The characters employed on those
parchments,” writes De Mirville, “ are sometimes hieroglyphics, placed perpendicularly, a
kind of lineary tachygraphy (abridged characters), where the image is often reduced to a
single stroke; at other times placed in horizontal lines; then the hieratic or sacred writing,
going from right to left as in all Semitic languages; lastly, the characters of the country, used
for official documents, mostly contracts, etc., but which since the Ptolemies has been also
adopted for the monuments.” [v.81. 80. A copy of the Harris papyrus, translated by Chabas-
Papyrus Magique - may be studied at the British Museum.]
Others—those that have been carried away and may be found in the museums and public
libraries of Europe—have fared no better. In the days of the Vicomte de Rougé, some
twenty-five years ago, only a few of them “were two-thirds deciphered;” and among those
some most interesting legends, inserted parenthetically and for purposes of explaining royal
expenses, are in the Register of the Sacred Accounts.
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