The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4 The Synthesis of...

All the Jewish traditions, while announcing that star that many nations have seen [!],1128further added that it would absorb the seventy planets that preside over[pg 718]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 thebirthof somemaggotpreëxisting in his own brain with so much exactness that hepretendsto 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 [pg 719] the 432,000 years of the Chaldean Divine Dynasties1132 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 [pg 720] 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.

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 ansatedcross; we[pg 721]should know that this constellation of Taurus was called“the great city of Godandthe 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 simplemementoof 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....[pg 722]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

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,[pg 723]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[pg 724]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 1491a.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[pg 726]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[pg 727]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[pg 728]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.