“All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to
be tenacious of the opinions they profess,” said Jordan, justly adding to
this—“and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others,
not by their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget,
their opinions.”
This is doubly true in regard to scientific opinions upon hypotheses
offered for consideration—the prejudice and preconceptions of
“authorities,” so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital
importance for history. There are several such predetermined opinions held
by our learned Orientalists, and few are more unjust or illogical than the
general error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the
hobby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have
accepted Professor Weber’s opinion that the peoples of India had no idea
or knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it
is from the Greeks that the ancient Hindûs imported it into their country.
We are further told, by several other “authorities,” that no Eastern
nation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their
neighbours with their invention. And _this_, in the face of the _Book of
Job_, which is declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the
Hebrew canon, and certainly prior to Moses; a book which speaks of the
_making_ of “Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades [Osh, Kesil, and Kimah] and the
chambers of the South”(1109); of Scorpio and the Mazaruth—the _twelve
signs_(1110); words which, if they mean anything, imply knowledge of the
Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabian tribes. The _Book of Job_ is alleged
to have preceded Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years—the two
Greek poets having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the
Christian era (!!). Though, by the bye, one who prefers to believe
Plato—who shows Homer flourishing far earlier—could point to a number of
Zodiacal signs mentioned in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, in the Orphic
poems, and elsewhere. But since the cock‐and‐bull hypothesis of some
modern critics that, so far from Orpheus, not even Homer or Hesiod has
ever existed, it would seem time lost to mention these archaic authors at
all. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless, indeed, his volume of
lamentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks, to which we may add
those of Linus, should now also be declared to be the patriotic forgery of
the Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job, how
could the civilized and philosophical Hindûs have remained ignorant of it?
Risking the arrows of modern criticism—rather blunted by misuse—the reader
may make himself acquainted with Bailly’s learned opinion upon the
subject. Inferred speculations may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical
calculations stand on more secure grounds. Taking as a starting point
several astronomical references in _Job_, Bailly devised a very ingenious
means of proving that the earliest founders of the Science of the Zodiac
belonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he seems
willing to see some of the Biblical patriarchs in Thoth, Seth, and in the
Chinese Fohi, does not interfere with the validity of his proof as to the
antiquity of the Zodiac.(1111) Even accepting, for argument’s sake, his
cautious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the Zodiacal Science, this
date proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who
invented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not exist as a
nation thirty‐seven centuries B.C.—at any rate not as a _historical_ race
admitted by the critics. Bailly then calculated the period at which the
constellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job the
“sweet influences of the Pleiades,”(1112) in Hebrew Kimah; that of Orion,
Kesil; and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth
constellation; and found that in presence of the eternal conformity of
these divisions of the Zodiac, and of the names of the Planets applied in
the same order everywhere and always, and in presence of the impossibility
of attributing it all to chance and “coincidence”—“which never creates
such similarities”—a very great antiquity indeed must be allowed for the
Zodiac.(1113)
Again, if the _Bible_ is supposed to be an authority on any matter—and
there are some who still regard it as such, whether from Christian or
Kabalistical considerations—then the Zodiac is clearly mentioned in _II
Kings_, xxiii. 5. Before the “book of the law” was “found” by Hilkiah, the
high priest, the signs of the Zodiac were known and worshipped. These were
held in the same adoration as the Sun and Moon, since the
priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense ...
unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to
all the host of heaven,
or to the “twelve signs or constellations,” as the marginal note in the
English _Bible_ explains, had followed the injunction for centuries. They
were stopped in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 B.C.
The _Old Testament_ is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and
the whole scheme is built upon it—heroes, personages, and events. Thus in
the dream of Joseph, who saw eleven “Stars” bowing to the twelfth, which
was _his_ “Star,” the Zodiac is referred to. The Roman Catholics have
discovered in it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth
Star, they say, and the others the eleven apostles; the absence of the
twelfth being also regarded as a prophetic allusion to the treachery of
Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob, again, are a reference to the same, as is
justly pointed out by Villapandus.(1114) Sir James Malcolm, in his
_History of Persia_,(1115) shows the _Dabistan_ echoing all such
traditions about the Zodiac. He traces the invention of it to the palmy
days of the Golden Age of Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions
maintains that the Genii of the Planets are represented under the same
shapes and figures they had assumed when _they showed themselves to
several holy prophets_, and thus led to the establishment of the rites
based on the Zodiac.
Pythagoras, and after him Philo Judæus, held the number 12 as very sacred.
This duodenary number is _perfect_. It is that of the signs of the
Zodiac, which the sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour
that number that Moses divided his nation into twelve tribes,
established the twelve cakes of the shew‐bread, and placed twelve
precious stones upon the breast‐plate of the pontiffs.(1116)
According to Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and
cataclysm by the Zodiac; and the times fixed by him for the conflagration
of the World—Pralaya—and for a deluge, are found to answer to the times
given in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. Such a catastrophe comes at every
renewal of the cycle of the Sidereal Year of 25,868 years. The names of
the Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the names of the
signs of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians are far earlier than the Chaldæans.
Mr. Proctor shows, in his _Myths and Marvels of Astronomy_, that the
ancient Astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate Astronomy
2,400 years B.C.; the Hindûs date their Kali Yuga from a great periodical
conjunction of the Planets thirty‐one centuries B.C.; but, withal, it was
the Greeks, belonging to the expedition of Alexander the Great, who were
the instructors of the Âryan Hindûs in Astronomy!
Whether the origin of the Zodiac is Âryan or Egyptian, it is still of an
immense antiquity. Simplicius, in the sixth century A.D., writes that he
had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and
records for a period of 630,000 years. This statement appears to frighten
Mr. Gerald Massey, who remarks on it that:
If we read this number of years by the month which Euxodus said
the Egyptians termed a year, _i.e._, a course of time, that would
still yield the length of two cycles of precession [51,736
years].(1117)
Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the
Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great.(1118) Martianus
Capella corroborates this by telling posterity that the Egyptians had
secretly studied Astronomy for over 40,000 years, before they imparted
their knowledge to the world.(1119)
Several valuable quotations are made in _Natural Genesis_ with the view of
supporting the author’s theories, but they justify the teaching of the
Secret Doctrine far more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted from his _Life
of Sulla_, saying:
One day when the sky was serene and clear, there was heard in it
the sound of a trumpet, so loud, shrill, and mournful, that it
affrighted and astonished the world. The Tuscan sages said that it
portended a new race of men, and a renovation of the world; for
they affirmed that there were eight several kinds of men, all
being different in life and manners; and that Heaven had allotted
each its time, which was limited by the circuit of the great year
[25,868 years].(1120)
This reminds one strongly of our Seven Races of men, and of the eighth—the
“animal man”—descended from the later Third Race; as also of the
successive submersions and destruction of the continents which finally
disposed of almost all that Race. Says Iamblichus:
The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven‐and‐
twenty myriads of years [270,000 years], as Hipparchus says they
have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the
Seven Rulers of the World.(1121)
This is as nearly as possible the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine.
For 1,000,000 years are allowed for our present Root‐Race (the Fifth), and
about 850,000 years have passed since the submersion of the last large
island—part of the continent of Atlantis—the Ruta of the Fourth Race, the
Atlanteans; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was
destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the Glacial Period or
thereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of the
Divine Kings, belong to the traditions of every great people of antiquity.
Wherever twelve are mentioned, they are invariably the twelve signs of the
Zodiac.
So patent is this fact, that the Roman Catholic writers—especially among
the French Ultramontanes—have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish
Patriarchs with the Signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of
prophetico‐mystic way, which sounds to pious and ignorant ears like a
portentous token, a tacit divine recognition of the “chosen people of
God,” whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of
creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance, curiously enough,
these writers, De Mirville among others, recognize all the characteristics
of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, in the words addressed by the dying
Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of each
Tribe.(1122) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes are said
to have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the Signs,
repeated in the twelve stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the twelve
wings of the two Cherubs. Leaving to the said Mystics the proof of
exactitude in the alleged correspondence, we quote it as follows: Man, or
Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as “unstable as
water” (the Vulgate has it, “_rushing_ like water”); Gemini, in that of
Simeon and Levi, because of their strong fraternal association; Leo, in
that of Judah, “the strong Lion” of his tribe, “the lion’s whelp”; Pisces,
in Zabulon, who “shall dwell at the haven of the sea”; Taurus, in
Issachar, because he is “a strong ass couching down,” etc., and therefore
associated with the stables; (Virgo‐) Scorpio, in Dan, who is described as
“a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth,” etc.; Capricornus in
Naphtali, who is “a hind (a deer) let loose”; Cancer, in Benjamin, for he
is “ravenous”; Libra, the Balance, in Asher, whose “bread shall be fat”;
Sagittarius in Joseph, because “his bow abode in strength.” To make up for
the twelfth Sign, Virgo, made independent of Scorpio, we have Dinah, the
only daughter of Jacob. Tradition shows the _alleged_ tribes carrying the
twelve signs on their banners. But indeed the _Bible_, in addition to the
above, is filled with theo‐cosmological and astronomical symbols and
personifications.
It remains to wonder, and to query—if the actual, living Patriarchs’
destiny was so indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac—how it is that, after
the loss of the ten tribes, the ten signs also out of the twelve have not
miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great
concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac
itself.
The reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed as to the Zodiac by
several of the highest authorities in Science.
Newton believed that the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far
back as the expedition of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at
6,500 years B.C., just 2,496 years before the creation of the world,
according to the _Bible_ chronology.
Creuzer thought that it was very easy to show that most of the Theogonies
were intimately connected with religious calendars, and were related to
the Zodiac as to their prime origin; if not to the Zodiac known to us now,
then to something very analogous with it. He felt certain that the Zodiac
and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, under
one form or another, and that it had existed in the old form for ages,
before it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb, owing
to some singular coördination of events.(1123)
Whether the “genii of the planets,” our Dhyân Chohans of supra‐mundane
spheres, showed themselves to “holy prophets,” or not, as claimed in the
_Dabistan_, it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in
the same way in days of old in Chaldæa, when astrological Magic and
Theophania went hand in hand.
Xenophon, no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus ... that at the
moment of his death he thanked the Gods and heroes, for having so
often instructed him themselves about the signs in heaven—ἐν
οὐρανίοις σημείοις.(1124)
Unless the Science of the Zodiac is admitted to be of the highest
antiquity and universality, how can we account for its Signs being traced
in the oldest Theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt struck with
amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday),
Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others, being related to the
days of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in
Northern Europe.
Try, if you can, with the present system of autochthonous
civilizations, so much in fashion in our day, to explain how
nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace in common,
could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial
phantasmagoria, a veritable _imbroglio_ of sidereal denominations,
without sequence or object, having no figurative relation with the
constellations they represent, and still less, apparently, with
the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to signify,
—had there not been a _general_ intention and a _universal_ cause and
belief, at the root of all this!(1125) Most truly has Dupuis asserted the
same:
Il est impossible de découvrir le moindre trait de ressemblance
entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes y ont
_arbitrairement_ tracées; et de l’autre côté, _le hasard est
impossible_.(1126)
Most certainly chance is “_impossible_.” There is no “chance” in Nature,
wherein everything is mathematically coördinate, and inter‐related in its
units. Says Coleridge:
Chance is but the pseudonym of God [or Nature], for those
particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with
His sign manual.
Replace the word “God” by Karma, and it will become an Eastern axiom.
Therefore, the sidereal “prophecies” of the Zodiac, as they are called by
Christian Mystics, never point to any one particular event, however solemn
and sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to ever‐
recurrent, periodical laws in Nature, understood only by the Initiates of
the Sidereal Gods themselves.
No Occultist, no Astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with
Christian Mystics, or even with Kepler’s mystical Astronomy, his great
science and erudition notwithstanding; and this because, if his premisses
are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one‐sided and biassed by
Christian preconceptions. Where Kepler finds a prophecy directly pointing
to the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law, decreed for
the actual Manvantara. Why see in Pisces a direct reference to Christ—one
of the several world‐reformers, a Saviour for his direct followers, but
only a great and glorious Initiate for all the rest—when that
constellation shines as a symbol of all the past, present, and future
Spiritual Saviours, who dispense light and dispel mental darkness?
Christian symbologists have tried to prove that this sign belonged to
Ephraim, Joseph’s son, the _elect_ of Jacob, and that therefore, it was at
the moment of the Sun’s entering into the sign of Pisces, the Fish, that
the “Elect Messiah,” the Ἰχθὺς of the first Christians, had to be born.
But if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah, was he really born at that
“moment,” or was his birth‐hour thus fixed by the adaptation of
Theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with
sidereal facts and popular belief? Everyone is aware that the real time
and year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the
Jews—whose forefathers made the word Dag signify both “Fish” and “Messiah”
during the forced development of their rabbinical language—who are the
first to deny this Christian claim. And what of the further facts that
Brâhmans connect their “Messiah,” the eternal Avatâra Vishnu, with a Fish
and the Deluge, and that the Babylonians also made a Fish and a Messiah of
their Dag‐On, the Man‐Fish and Prophet?
There are learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that:
When the Pharisees sought a “sign from heaven,” Jesus said, “there
shall no sign be given .... but the sign of the prophet Jonas.”
(_Mat._, xvi. 4.).... The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or
Fish‐Man of Nineveh.... Assuredly there was no other sign than
that of the Sun reborn in Pisces. The voice of the Secret Wisdom
says those who are looking for signs can have no other than that
of the returning Fish‐Man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas—who could not
be made flesh.
It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the
moment of the “incarnation,” all the planets were in conjunction in the
sign Pisces, called by the Jewish Kabbalists the “constellation of the
Messiah.” Kepler averred:
It is in this constellation that the star of the Magi is to be
found.
This statement, quoted from Dr. Sepp(1127) by De Mirville, emboldened the
latter to remark that:
All the Jewish traditions, while announcing that star that many
nations have seen [!],(1128) further added that it would absorb
the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of various
nations on this globe.(1129) “In virtue of those natural
prophecies,” says Dr. Sepp, “it was written in the stars of the
firmament that the Messiah would be born in the lunar year of the
world 4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of the
planets would be celebrating its jubilee.”(1130)
There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for
claiming restoration from the Hindûs for an alleged robbery from the Jews
of their “Gods,” patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who recognized
Noah in Prithî and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in
Îshvara. After being residents for so many years in India, some
Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Brâhmans
alone who had these figures, or who had divided their Great Age into four
minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the _Asiatic Researches_ indulged in
the most extravagant speculations. S. A. Mackey, the Norwich “philosopher,
astronomer, and shoemaker,” argues very pertinently:
Christian theologians think it their duty to write against the
long periods of Hindû chronology, and in them it may be
pardonable: but when a man of learning crucifies the names and the
numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists them into a form,
which means something quite foreign to the intention of the
ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with the _birth_
of some _maggot_ preëxisting in his own brain with so much
exactness that he _pretends_ to be amazed at the discovery, I
cannot think him quite so pardonable.(1131)
This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the
words may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. Colonel Wilford
was the first to crown his unlucky speculations on Hindû chronology and
the _Purânas_ by connecting the 4,320,000 years with biblical chronology,
by simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years—the supposed lunar year of
the Nativity—and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this
gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property,
as well as Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Âryans of having helped
themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas the reverse was the case. The
Jews, moreover, need not be accused of directly despoiling the Hindûs, of
whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and
undeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with the Chaldean Gods.
They turned the 432,000 years of the Chaldean Divine Dynasties(1132) into
4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to
the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they quietly and modestly transformed
them into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of such
refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon—once common to all—of universal
into national and tribal Gods and Heroes. It was Jewish property in its
new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it
upon any other nation—least of all upon the European.
Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is
necessary, we may yet make a few remarks that may be found to the point.
The 4,320 _lunar_ years of the world—in the _Bible_ the _solar_ years are
used—are not fanciful, as such, even if their application is quite
erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive Esoteric,
and later of the Brâhmanical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A Day of
Brahmâ equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also does a Night of Brahmâ, or the
duration of Pralaya, after which a _new_ “sun” rises triumphantly over a
_new_ Manvantara, for the Septenary Chain it illuminates. The teaching had
penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian
era,(1133) and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon
it their small Cycle, though it received full expression only through the
Christian chronologers of the _Bible_, who adopted it, as also the 25th of
December, the day on which all the _solar_ Gods were said to have been
incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was _made_ to be born in
“the _lunar_ year of the world 4,320”? The “Sun of Righteousness and
Salvation” had once more arisen and had dispelled the pralayic darkness of
Chaos and Nonbeing on the plane of our objective little Globe and Chain.
Once the subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make
the supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the
Zodiacal exigencies and the old traditions, though they had to be somewhat
remodelled for the occasion.
Thus what Kepler said, as a great Astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He
recognized the grand and universal importance of all such planetary
conjunctions, “each of which”—as he has well said—“is a _climacteric_ year
of Humanity.”(1134) The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has
its significance and importance on account of its certain great results,
in India and China as much as it has in Europe, for the respective Mystics
of these countries. And it is certainly now no better than a mere
assumption to maintain that Nature had only Christ in view, in building
her (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless constellations. If it is
claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the archaic architects of
the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark the figure of Taurus with the
asterisk _a_, with no better or more valid proof of it being _prophetic_
of the Verbum or Christ than that the _aleph_ of Taurus means the “one”
and the “first,” and that Christ was also the _alpha_ or the “one,” then
this “proof” may be shown to be strangely invalidated in more than one
way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all
events; further, all the Sun‐Gods—Osiris, for instance—had been mystically
connected with the constellation Taurus and were all called by their
respective votaries the “First.” Further, the compilers of the mystical
epithets given to the Christian Saviour were all more or less acquainted
with the significance of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose
that they should have arranged their claims so as to match the mystic
signs, than that the latter should have shone as a prophecy for one
portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of the
numberless generations that had gone before, and of those that were to be
born hereafter.
We are told:
It is not simple chance that, in certain spheres, has placed on a
throne the head of this bull [Taurus] trying to push back a Dragon
with the ansated _cross_; we should know that this constellation
of Taurus was called “_the great city of God_ and _the mother of
revelations_,” and also “_the interpreter of the divine voice_,”
the Apis Pacis of Hermontis, in Egypt, which [as the patristic
fathers would assure the world] is said to have proffered oracles
that related to the birth of the Saviour.(1135)
To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the
ansated Egyptian cross, or Tau, the Jaina cross, or Svastika, and the
Christian cross, have all the same meaning. Secondly, no peoples or
nations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon that is
given to it now. The Serpent was the symbol of WISDOM; and the Bull,
Taurus, the symbol of physical or terrestrial _generation_. Thus the Bull,
pushing off the Dragon, or spiritual Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or
Cross—which is esoterically “the foundation and framework of all
construction”—would have an entirely phallic, physiological meaning, had
it not had yet another significance unknown to our Biblical scholars and
symbologists. At any rate, it has no special reference to the Verbum of
St. John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The Taurus—which, by the
way, is no lamb, but a bull—was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindûs
as with the Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So
much, every schoolboy knows.
It may perhaps help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists if we refer
them to what was said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality
of periodical births and re‐births of World‐Saviours—Solar Gods—in _Isis
Unveiled,_(1136) with regard to certain passages in _Revelation_.
In 1853, the savant known as Erard‐Mollien read before the Institute of
France a paper tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the
signs of which were found the root and philosophy of all the most
important religious festivals of that country; the lecturer tried to
demonstrate that the origin of these religious ceremonies goes back into
the night of time to at least 3,000 B.C. The Zodiac of the Hindûs, he
thought, was long anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from
it much in some particulars. In it one sees the Dragon on a Tree, at the
foot of which the Virgin, Kanyâ‐Durgâ, one of the most ancient Goddesses,
is placed on a Lion dragging after it the solar car. He said:
This is the reason why this Virgin Durgâ is not the simple
_memento_ of an astronomical fact, but verily the most ancient
divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is evidently the same whose
return was announced in all the Sibylline books—the source of the
inspiration of Virgil—an epoch of universal renovation.... And
why, since the months are still named after this Indian solar
Zodiac, by the Malayalim‐speaking people [of southern India],
should that people have abandoned it to take that of the Greeks?
Everything proves, on the contrary, that these zodiacal figures
were transmitted to the Greeks by the Chaldeans, who got them from
the Brâhmans.(1137)
But all this is very poor testimony. Let us, however, remember also that
which was said and accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who remarks
that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1,447 B.C., it follows that the
first degree of Libra could not have coincided with the vernal equinox
later than 15,194 years B.C.; if we add to this, he argues, the 1,790
years that have passed since the birth of Christ, it appears that 16,984
years must have elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.(1138)
Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his _Uranographie Chinoise_, assigns to the
Chinese Astronomical Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years.(1139)
Nevertheless, as opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little
avail, it may be more useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly,
the famous French Astronomer of the last century, Member of the Academy,
etc., asserts that the Hindû systems of Astronomy are by far the oldest,
and that from them the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews
derived their knowledge. In support of these views he says:
The astronomers who preceded the epoch 1491 are, first, the
Alexandrian Greeks; Hipparchus, who flourished 125 years before
our era, and Ptolemy, 260 years after Hipparchus. Following these
were the Arabs, who revived the study of astronomy in the ninth
century. These were succeeded by the Persians and the Tartars, to
whom we owe the tables of Nassireddin in 1269, and those of Ulug‐
beg in 1437. Such is the succession of events in Asia as known
prior to the Indian epoch 1491. What, then, is an epoch? It is the
observation of the longitude of a star at a given moment, the
place in the sky where it was seen, and which serves as a point of
reference, a starting‐point from which to calculate both the past
and future positions of the star from its observed motion. But an
epoch is useless unless the motion of the star has been
determined. A people, new to science and obliged to borrow a
foreign astronomy, finds no difficulty in fixing an epoch, since
the only observation needed is one which can be made at any
moment. But what it needs above all, what it is obliged to borrow,
are those elements which depend on accurate determination, and
which require continuous observation; above all, those motions
which depend on time, and which can only be accurately determined
by centuries of observation. These motions, then, must be borrowed
from a nation which has made such observations, and has behind it
the labours of centuries. We conclude, therefore, that a new
people will not borrow the epochs of an ancient one, without also
borrowing from them the “average motions.” Starting from this
principle we shall find that the Hindû epochs 1491 and 3102 could
not have been derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug‐beg.
There remains the supposition that the Hindûs, comparing their
observations in 1491 with those previously made by Ulug‐beg and
Ptolemy, used the intervals between these observations to
determine the average motions. The date of Ulug‐beg is too recent
for such a determination; while those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus
were barely remote enough. But if the Hindû motions had been
determined from these comparisons, the epochs would be connected
together. Starting from the epochs of Ulug‐beg and Ptolemy we
should arrive at all those of the Hindûs. Hence foreign epochs
were either unknown or useless to the Hindûs.(1140)
We may add to this another important consideration. When a nation
is obliged to borrow from its neighbours the methods or the
average motions of its astronomical tables, it has even greater
need to borrow, besides these, the knowledge of the inequalities
of the motions of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the apogee,
of the nodes, and of the inclination of the ecliptic; in short,
all those elements the determination of which requires the art of
observing, some instrumental appliances, and great industry. All
these astronomical elements, differing more or less with the
Greeks of Alexandria, the Arabs, the Persians and the Tartars,
exhibit no resemblance whatever with those of the Hindûs. The
latter, therefore, borrowed nothing from their neighbours.
If the Hindûs did not borrow their epoch, they must have possessed
a real one of their own, based on their own observations; and this
must be either the epoch of the year 1491 after, or that of the
year 3102 before our era, the latter preceding by 4,592 years the
epoch 1491. We have to choose between these two epochs and to
decide which of them is based on observation. But before stating
the arguments which can and must decide the question, we may be
permitted to make a few remarks to those who may be inclined to
believe that it is modern observations and calculations which have
enabled the Hindûs to determine the past positions of the heavenly
bodies. It is far from easy to determine the celestial movements
with sufficient accuracy to ascend the stream of time for 4,592
years, and to describe the phenomena which must have occurred at
that period. We possess to‐day excellent instruments; exact
observations have been made for some two or three centuries, which
already permit us to calculate with considerable accuracy the
average motions of the Planets; we have the observations of the
Chaldeans, of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy, which, owing to their
remoteness from the present time, permit us to fix these motions
with greater certainty. Still we cannot undertake to represent
with invariable accuracy the observations throughout the long
period intervening between the Chaldeans and ourselves; and still
less can we undertake to determine with exactitude events
occurring 4,592 years before our day. Cassini and Maier have each
determined the secular motion of the moon, and they differ by 3m.
43s. This difference would give rise in forty‐six centuries to an
uncertainty of nearly three degrees in the moon’s place. Doubtless
one of these determinations is more accurate than the other; and
it is for observations of very great antiquity to decide between
them. But in very remote periods, where observations are lacking,
it follows that we are uncertain as to the phenomena. How, then,
could the Hindûs have calculated back from the year 1491 A.D. to
the year 3102 before our era, if they were only recent students of
Astronomy?
The Orientals have never been what we are. However high an opinion
of their knowledge we may form from the examination of their
Astronomy, we cannot suppose them ever to have possessed that
great array of instruments which distinguishes our modern
observatories, and which is the product of simultaneous progress
in various arts, nor could they have possessed that genius for
discovery, which has hitherto seemed to belong exclusively to
Europe, and which, supplying the place of time, causes the rapid
progress of science and of human intelligence. If the Asiatics
have been powerful, learned and wise, it is power and time which
have produced their merit and success of all kinds. Power has
founded or destroyed their empires; now it has erected edifices
imposing by their bulk, now it has reduced them to venerable
ruins; and while these vicissitudes alternated with each other,
patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced
wisdom. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has
erected their scientific fame.
If the Hindûs possessed in 1491 a knowledge of the heavenly
motions sufficiently accurate to enable them to calculate
backwards for 4592 years, it follows that they could only have
obtained this knowledge from very ancient observations. To grant
them such knowledge, while refusing them the observations from
which it is derived, is to suppose an impossibility; it would be
equivalent to assuming that at the outset of their career they had
already reaped the harvest of time and experience. While on the
other hand, if their epoch of 3102 is assumed to be real, it would
follow that the Hindûs had simply kept pace with successive
centuries down to the year 1491 of our era. Thus, time itself was
their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during
these periods, because they had seen them; and the duration of the
Hindû people on earth is the cause of the fidelity of its records
and the accuracy of its calculations.
It would seem that the problem as to which of the two epochs of
3102 and 1491 is the real one ought to be solved by one
consideration, viz., that the ancients in general, and
particularly the Hindûs, as we may see by the arrangement of their
Tables, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only. Now,
there was no eclipse of the sun at the moment of the epoch 1491;
and no eclipse of the moon either fourteen days before or after
that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is not based on an
observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brâhmans of Tirvaloor
place it at sunrise on February 18th. The sun was then in the
first point of the Zodiac according to its true longitude. The
other Tables show that at the preceding midnight the moon was in
the same place, but according to its average longitude. The
Brâhmans tell us also that this first point, the origin of their
Zodiac, was, in the year 3102, 54 degrees behind the equinox. It
follows that the origin—the first point of their Zodiac—was
therefore in the sixth degree of Aquarius.
There occurred, therefore, about this time and place an average
conjunction; and indeed this conjunction is given in our best
Tables: La Caille’s for the sun and Maier’s for the moon. There
was no eclipse of the sun, the moon being too distant from her
node; but fourteen days later, the moon having approached the
node, must have been eclipsed. Maier’s tables, used without
correction for acceleration, give this eclipse; but they place it
during the day when it could not have been observed in India.
Cassini’s tables give it as occurring at night, which shows that
Maier’s motions are too rapid for distant centuries, when the
acceleration is not allowed for; and which also proves that in
spite of the improvement of our knowledge we can still be
uncertain as to the actual aspect of the heavens in past times.
Therefore we believe that, as between the two Hindû epochs, the
real one is the year 3102, because it was accompanied by an
eclipse which could be observed, and which must have served to
determine it. This is a first proof of the truth of the longitude
assigned by the Hindûs to the sun and the moon at this instant;
and this proof would perhaps be sufficient, were it not that this
ancient determination becomes of the greatest importance for the
verification of the motions of these bodies, and must therefore be
borne out by every possible proof of its authenticity.
We notice, 1st, that the Hindûs seem to have combined two epochs
together into the year 3102. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans reckon
primarily from the first moment of the Kali Yuga; but they have a
second epoch placed 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s. later. The latter is the
true astronomical epoch, while the former seems to be a civil era.
But if this epoch of the Kali Yuga had no reality, and was the
mere result of a calculation, why should it be thus divided? Their
calculated astronomical epoch would have become that of the Kali
Yuga, which would have been placed at the conjunction of the sun
and the moon, as is the case with the epochs of the three other
Tables. They must have had some reason for distinguishing between
the two; and this reason can only be due to the circumstances and
the time of the epoch; which therefore could not be the result of
calculation. This is not all; starting from the solar epoch
determined by the rising of the sun on February 18th, 3102, and
tracing back events 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s., we come to 2h. 27m. 30s.
a.m. of February 16th, which is the instant of the beginning of
Kali Yuga. It is curious that this age has not been made to
commence at one of the four great divisions of the day. It might
be suspected that the epoch should be midnight, and that the 2h.
27m. 30s. are a meridian correction. But whatever may have been
the reason for fixing on this moment, it is plain that were this
epoch the result of calculation, it would have been just as easy
to carry it back to midnight, so as to make the epoch correspond
to one of the chief divisions of the day, instead of placing it at
a moment fixed by the fraction of a day.
2nd. The Hindûs assert that at the first moment of Kali Yuga there
was a conjunction of all the planets; and their Tables show this
conjunction while ours indicate that it might actually have
occurred. Jupiter and Mercury were in exactly the same degree of
the ecliptic; Mars being 8° and Saturn 17° distant from it. It
follows that about this time, or some fifteen days after the
commencement of Kali Yuga, and as the sun advanced in the Zodiac,
the Hindûs saw four planets emerge successively from the Sun’s
rays; first Saturn, then Mars, then Jupiter and Mercury, and these
planets appeared united in a somewhat small space. Although Venus
was not among them, the taste for the marvellous caused it to be
called a general conjunction of all the planets. The testimony of
the Brâhmans here coïncides with that of our Tables; and this
evidence, the result of a tradition, must be founded on actual
observation.
3rd. We may remark that this phenomenon was visible about a
fortnight after the epoch, and exactly at the time when the
eclipse of the moon must have been observed, which served to fix
the epoch. The two observations mutually confirm each other; and
whoever made the one must have made the other also.
4th. We may believe also that the Hindûs made at the same time a
determination of the place of the moon’s node; this seems
indicated by their calculation. They give the longitude of this
point of the lunar orbit for the time of their epoch, and to this
they add as a constant 40m., which is the node’s motion in 12d.
14h. It is as if they stated that this determination was made
thirteen days after their epoch, and that to make it correspond to
that epoch, we must add the 40m. through which the node has
retrograded in the interval. This observation is, therefore, of
the same date as that of the lunar eclipse; thus giving three
observations, which are mutually confirmatory.
5th. It appears from the description of the Hindû Zodiac given by
M. C. Gentil, that on it the places of the stars named the Eye of
Taurus and the Wheat‐ear of Virgo, can be determined for the
commencement of the Kali Yuga. Now, comparing these places with
the actual positions, reduced by our precession of the equinoxes
to the moment in question, we see that the point of origin of the
Hindû Zodiac must lie between the fifth and sixth degree of
Aquarius. The Brâhmans, therefore, were right in placing it in the
sixth degree of that sign, the more so since this small difference
may be due to the proper motion of the stars, which is unknown.
Thus it was yet another observation which guided the Hindûs in
this fairly accurate determination of the first point of their
movable Zodiac.
It does not seem possible to doubt the existence in antiquity of
observations of this date. The Persians say that four beautiful
stars were placed as guardians at the four corners of the world.
Now it so happens that at the commencement of Kali Yuga, 3,000 or
3,100 years before our era, the Eye of the Bull and the Heart of
the Scorpion were exactly at the equinoctial points, while the
Heart of the Lion and the Southern Fish were pretty near the
solstitial points. An observation of the rising of the Pleiades in
the evening, seven days before the autumnal equinox, also belongs
to the year 3000 before our era. This and similar observations are
collected in Ptolemy’s calendars, though he does not give their
authors; and these, which are older than those of the Chaldeans,
may well be the work of the Hindûs. They are well acquainted with
the constellation of the Pleiades, and while we call it vulgarly
the “Poussinière,” they name it Pillaloo‐codi—the “Hen and
chickens.” This name has, therefore, passed from people to people,
and comes to us from the most ancient nations of Asia. We see that
the Hindûs must have observed the rising of the Pleiades, and have
made use of it to regulate their years and their months; for this
constellation is also called Krittikâ. Now they have a month of
the same name, and this coïncidence can only be due to the fact
that this month was announced by the rising or setting of the
constellation in question.
But what is even more decisive as showing that the Hindûs observed
the stars, and in the same way that we do, marking their position
by their longitude, is a fact mentioned by Augustinus Riccius
that, according to observations attributed to Hermes, and made
1,985 years before Ptolemy, the brilliant star in the Lyre and
that in the heart of the Hydra were each seven degrees in advance
of their respective positions as determined by Ptolemy. This
determination seems very extraordinary. The stars advance
regularly with respect to the equinox: and Ptolemy ought to have
found the longitudes 28 degrees in excess of what they were 1,985
years before his time. Besides, there is a remarkable peculiarity
about this fact, the same error or difference being found in the
positions of both stars; therefore the error was due to some cause
affecting both stars equally. It was to explain this peculiarity
that the Arab Thebith imagined the stars to have an oscillatory
movement, causing them to advance and recede alternately. This
hypothesis was easily disproved; but the observations attributed
to Hermes remained unexplained. Their explanation, however, is
found in Hindû Astronomy. At the date fixed for these
observations, 1,985 years before Ptolemy, the first point of the
Hindû Zodiac was 35 degrees in advance of the equinox; therefore
the longitudes reckoned for this point are 35 degrees in excess of
those reckoned from the equinox. But after the lapse of 1,985
years the stars would have advanced 28 degrees, and there would
remain a difference of only 7 degrees between the longitudes of
Hermes and those of Ptolemy, and the difference would be the same
for the two stars, since it is due to the difference between the
starting‐points of the Hindû Zodiac and that of Ptolemy, which
reckons from the equinox. This explanation is so simple and
natural that it must be true. We do not know whether Hermes, so
celebrated in antiquity, was a Hindû, but we see that the
observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindû manner,
and we conclude that they were made by the Hindûs, who, therefore,
were able to make all the observations we have enumerated, and
which we find noted in their Tables.
6th. The observation of the year 3102, which seems to have fixed
their epoch, was not a difficult one. We see that the Hindûs,
having once determined the moon’s daily motion of 13° 10´ 35´´,
made use of it to divide the Zodiac into 27 constellations,
related to the period of the moon, which takes about 27 days to
describe it.
It was by this method that they determined the positions of the
stars in this Zodiac; it was thus they found that a certain star
of the Lyre was in 8s 24°, the Heart of the Hydra in 4s 7°,
longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are calculated
on the Hindû Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the Wheat‐ear
of Virgo forms the commencement of their fifteenth constellation,
and the Eye of Taurus the end of the fourth; these stars being the
one in 6s 6° 40´, the other in 1s 23° 20´ of the Hindû Zodiac.
This being so, the eclipse of the moon which occurred fifteen days
after the Kali Yuga epoch, took place at a point between the
Wheat‐ear of Virgo and the star θ of the same constellation. These
stars are very approximately a constellation apart, the one
beginning the fifteenth, the other the sixteenth. Thus it would
not be difficult to determine the moon’s place by measuring her
distance from one of these stars; from this they deduced the
position of the sun, which is opposite to the moon, and then,
knowing their average motions, they calculated that the moon was
at the first point of the Zodiac according to her average
longitude at midnight on the 17th‐18th February of the year 3102
before our era, and that the sun occupied the same place six hours
later according to his true longitude; an event which fixes the
commencement of the Hindû year.
7th. The Hindûs state that 20,400 years before the age of Kali
Yuga, the first point of their Zodiac coincided with the vernal
equinox, and that the sun and moon were in conjunction there. This
epoch is obviously fictitious;(1141) but we may enquire from what
point, from what epoch, the Hindûs set out in establishing it.
Taking the Hindû values for the revolution of the sun and moon,
viz., 363d. 6h. 12m. 30s., and 27d. 7h. 43m. 13s., we have—
20,400 revolutions of the sun = 7,451,277d. 2h.
272,724 revolutions of the moon = 7,451,277d. 7h.
Such is the result obtained by starting from the Kali Yuga epoch;
and the assertion of the Hindûs, that there was a conjunction at
the time stated, is founded on their Tables; but if, using the
same elements, we start from the era of the year 1491, or from
another placed in the year 1282, of which we shall speak later,
there will always be a difference of almost one or two days. It is
both just and natural, in verifying the Hindû calculations, to
take those among their elements which give the same result as they
had themselves arrived at, and to set out from that one among
their epochs which enables us to arrive at the fictitious epoch in
question. Hence, since to make this calculation they must have set
out from their real epoch, the one which was founded on an
observation and not from any of those which were derived by this
very calculation from the former, it follows that their real epoch
was that of the year 3102 before our era.
8th. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans give the moon’s motion as 7s 20° 0´
7´´ on the movable Zodiac, and as 9k 7° 45´ 1´´ as referred to the
equinox in a great period of 1,600,984 days, or 4,386 years and 94
days. We believe this motion to have been determined by
observation; and we must state at the outset that this period is
of an extent which renders it but ill suited to the calculation of
the mean motions.
In their astronomical calculations the Hindûs make use of periods
of 248, 3,031, and 12,372 days; but, apart from the fact that
these periods, though much too short, do not present the
inconvenience of the former, they contain an exact number of
revolutions of the moon referred to its apogee. They are in
reality mean motions. The great period of 1,600,984 days is not a
sum of accumulated revolutions; there is no reason why it should
contain 1,600,984 rather than 1,600,985 days. It would seem that
observation alone must have fixed the number of days and marked
the beginning and end of the period. This period ends on the 21st
of May, 1282 of our era, at 5h. 15m. 30s. at Benares. The moon was
then in apogee, according to the
Hindûs, and her longitude was .. 7B 13° 45´ 1´´
Maier gives the longitude as .. 7 13 53 48
And places the apogee at .. .. 7 14 6 54
The determination of the moon’s place by the Brâhmans thus differs
only by nine minutes from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty‐
two minutes, and it is very evident that they could only have
obtained this agreement with our best Tables and this exactitude
in the celestial positions by observation. If then, observation
fixed the end of this period, there is every reason to believe
that it determined its commencement. But then this motion,
determined directly, and from nature, would of necessity be in
close agreement with the true motions of the heavenly bodies.
And in fact the Hindû motion during this long period of 4,883
years, does not differ by a minute from that of Cassini, and
agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples, the Hindûs
and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and
perhaps as distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely
the same results as regards the moon’s motions; and an agreement
which would be inconceivable, if it were not based on the
observation and mutual imitation of nature. We must remark that
the four Tables of the Hindûs are all copies of the same
Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese Tables existed in
1687, when they were brought from India by M. de la Loubère. At
that time the tables of Cassini and Maier were not in existence,
and thus the Hindûs were already in possession of the exact motion
contained in these Tables, while we did not yet possess it. It
must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindû
motion is the point of observation. It is exact throughout this
period of 4,383 years, because it was taken from the sky itself;
and if observation determined its close, it fixed its commencement
also. It is the longest period which has been observed and of
which the recollection is preserved in the annals of Astronomy. It
has its origin in the epoch of the year 3102 B.C., and it is a
demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch.(1142)
Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific
men who have tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Âryans. From
John Bentley down to Burgess’ _Sûrya‐Siddhânta_, not one Astronomer has
been fair enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However
distorted and misunderstood the Hindû Symbology may be, no Occultist can
fail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences;
nor will he turn away from their metaphysical and mystical interpretation
of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical
Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The
descent and reäscent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the
Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of
things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical Soul
and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the
former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth
have placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the
author of _The Gnostics and their Remains_ asserts, the aim of all the
Gnostic schools and the later Platonists
was to accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic
theosophy, the very essence of which was that the innumerable gods
of the Hindû mythology were but names for the Energies of the
First Triad in its successive Avatârs or manifestations unto man,
whither can we better turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very
root, than to the old Indian wisdom? We say again: Archaic Occultism would
remain incomprehensible to all, if it were to be rendered otherwise than
through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hindûism. For the
former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one
mother—ancient Lemuro‐Atlantean Wisdom.