The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

influences of the Sun, Moon, and Saturn. [ All these particulars may be found more fully and
far more completely in Champollion Figeac’s Ėgypte.] Jndiciary 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 Magic. 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 it shoulders and sees in Astrology—a pretender.
Not all scientists scoff at it, however, and one may rejoice in reading in the Musée des
Sciences [ Op. cit., p.230.] the suggestive and fair remarks made by Le Couturier, a man of
science of no mean reputation. He thinks it curious (Page 344) to notice that while the bold
speculations of Democritus are found vindicated by Dalton,
The reveries of the alchemists are also on their way to a certain rehabilitation.
They receive renewed life from the minute investigations of their successors,
the chemists; a very remarkable thing indeed is to see how much modern
discoveries have served to vindicate, of late, the theories of the Middle Ages
from the charge of absurdity laid at their door. Thus, if, as demonstrated by
Col. Sabine, the direction of a piece of steel, hung a few feet above the soil,
may be influenced by the position of the moon, whose body is at a distance of
240,000 miles from our planet, who then could accuse of extravagance the
belief of the ancient astrologers [ or the modern, either] in the influence of the
stars on human destiny.[ Op. cit., p.230.]
SECTION XXXIX
Cycles of Avatâras
(Page 345) We have already drawn attention to the facts that the record of the life of a World-
Savior is emblematical, and must be read by its mystic meaning, and that the figures 432
have a cosmic evolutionary significance. We find these two facts throwing light on the origin
of the exoteric Christian religion, and clearing away much of the obscurity surrounding its
beginnings. For is it not clear that the names and characters in the Synoptical Gospels and in
that of St. John are not historical Is it not evident that the compilers of the life of Christ,
desirous to show that the birth of their Master was a cosmic, astronomical, and divinelypreördained
event, attempted to coördinate the same with the end of the secret cycle, 4,320
When facts are collated this answers to them as little as does the other cycle of “thirty-three
solar years, seven months, and seven days,” which has also been brought forward as
supporting the same claim, the soli-lunar cycle in which the Sun gains on the Moon one solar
year. The combination of the three figures, 4, 3, 2, with cyphers according to the cycle and
Manvantara concerned, was, and is, preëminently Hindu. It will remain a secret even though
several of its significant features are revealed. It relates, for instance, to the Pralaya of the
races in their periodical dissolution, before which events a special Avatâra has always to
descend and incarnate on earth. These figures were adopted by all the older nations, such
as those of Egypt and Chaldæa, and before them were current among the Atlanteans.
Evidently some of the more learned among the early Church Fathers who had dabbled,
whilst Pagans, in temple secrets, knew them to relate to the Avatâric or Messianic Mystery,
and tried to apply this cycle to the birth of their Messiah; they failed because the figures
relate to the respective ends of the Root-Races and not to any individual. In their badly-
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