| 654 | 654 |
618 ←
Again, number seven is closely connected with the Occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, “the six present, the 619 ←seventh hidden.” In India they are connected with their nursling, the war God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave this name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, astronomically. As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumâra, a “virgin youth” again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Shiva—the Holy Spirit—hence called Agni-bhû. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of the Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that the six visible, or the seven actual
| 655 | 655 |
sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when intended to commemorate one particular event, Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, an Ascetic, with six heads—one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindû Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is well known. A six-rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, a six and occasionally seven-pointed crown, is on his brow; the peacock’s tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which he is also called Dvâdasha-kara, the “twelve-handed,” and Dvâdashâksha, “twelve-eyed.” It is as Shakti-dhara, however, the “spear-holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka-jit, that he is shown to be most famous.
As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by one hundred “years of the gods” (divine years), or one hundred “mortal years,” we can see the tremendous difficulty the non-initiated have in arriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John’s Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic cycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre-historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found any but a few approximate truths.
Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it has been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in their chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism—which we have already exposed—of the Hindû figures 432. These they give in thousands and millions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to 4,320 lunar years,* “before the birth of Christ,” as “foreordained” in the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved “by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem.” But Suidas had no other warrant for this assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. 620 ←He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477 days, as he thinks, or again rendered in
* Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Introduction; quoted by De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iv. 50.
| 656 | 656 |
years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original—thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation.* True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldæans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.† The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of mortals, which is only one day of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2 of these months constitute a Rûdû, 3 Rûdûs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a year of mortals, which is only a day of the Gods. It is from such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!
This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of the present century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindû chronology, brought from India by certain unscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory on the subject. Because the Hindûs had made of half a revolution of the moon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days, of which Quintus Curtius speaks,‡ is found mentioned in Hindû literature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day! The Chinese, also, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, and hence their year into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent them having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a period of 60 days—the Southern Indian Rûdû—to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus§ calls “thirty days an Egyptian year,” or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch‖ both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the lunar month
* See Suidas, sub voc. Ἥλιος.
† Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii. 56.
‡ “Menses in quinos dies descripserunt dies” (lviii. 9).
§ Lib. i. c. 26.
‖ Hist. Nat., vii. 48, and Life of Numa, 16.
| 657 | 657 |
consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions? This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the Ayanam and the Rûdû of the Hindûs. The year of 2 months’ duration, and the period of 60 days also, 621 ←was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traité de l’Astronomie Indienne et Orientale. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other;* the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-tche, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbé Chappe.† But is all this any reason for claiming that when the Hindû Purânas say a solar year, they mean one solar day!
It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root nature-number, so to say, in the manifested world, or at any rate in our present terrestrial life-cycle, and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the Ancients so many of the mysteries of Nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old Astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand—to prophesy, it is called—the influence which they would have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and Planets being the never-erring time-measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus respectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or “spheres of action.”‡
This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention called to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are explained in the Commentaries in the following words:
* Mém. Acad. Ins., xvi. c. 48; iii. 183.
† Voyage en Sibérie, iii. 19.
‡ The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma are (1) the Super-spiritual or Noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the Psychic; (4) the Astro-ethereal; (5) the Sub-astral; (6) the Vital; and (7) the purely Physical Spheres.
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The Circle is not the “One” but the “All.”
In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,* it [the Circle] becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in it.
In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three “Worlds”], the One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and the Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton].
In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt 622 ←obtain Seven, the sacred number of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt have Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming.†
When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World—the two-fold, three-fold, six- and seven-fold, and especially the nine-fold division—the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to Heaven and Earth, Gods and Men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For:
There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perceptions of the mind. The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds, and probably of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy.‡
So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the septenary periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law.
The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks [or seven days].§
* Adbhutam, see Atharva Veda, x. 105.
† In Hindûism, as understood by the Orientalists from the Atharva Veda, the three Rajamsi refer to the three “strides” of Vishnu; his ascending higher step being taken in the highest world (A. V., vii. 99, 1; cf. i. 155, 5). It is the Divo Rajah, or the “sky,” as they think it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The sentence, pâreshu gûhyeshu vrateshu (cf., i. 155, 3, and ix. 75, 2, or again, x. 114), in Atharva Veda, has yet to be explained.
‡ Medical Review, July, 1844.
§ H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his Approaching End of the Age, p. 258.
| 659 | 659 |
Dr. Laycock, writing on the “Periodicity of Vital Phenomena,”* records a “most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects.”†
623 ← To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he defends biblical chronology:
And man’s life . . . is a week, a week of decades. “The days of our years are three-score years and ten.” Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks.‡
Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned founder of “The East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions,” the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in
* Lancet, 1842, 1843.
† Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds: “The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind. from the larva or ovum of a minute insect up to man, at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence. . . . Upon the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this, that, in animals, changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks”—or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that: “Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day. . . . fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment . . . [either cure or death taking place]. If the fourth [paroxysm] be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and . . . the change for the better . . . will be seen on the fourteenth day . . . namely, about three or four o’clock a.m., when the system is most languid.” (Approaching End of the Age, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted). This is pure “soothsaying” by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldæan Astrolatry and Astrology. Thus Materialistic Science—in its medicine, the most materialistic of all—applies our Occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in Nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in Nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling both evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and ornithology, as in the kingdom of the animal mammalia and man—why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient Adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that “in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower.” (Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Jan. 1843; ibid., loc. cit.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the Planet and Races? Dr. Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven. He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that: “The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours, and that single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrata.” (Ibid., p. 267.) If Science does this, why should she scorn the Occult information, that—to use Dr. Laycock’s language—one Week of the Manvantaric (Lunar) Fortnight, of fourteen Days (or seven Manus), that Fortnight of twelve Hours in a Day representing seven Periods or seven Races—is now passed? This language of Science fits our Doctrine admirably. Mankind has lived over “a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours,” since three and a half Races are now gone for ever, the Fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.
‡ Op. cit., p. 269.
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the Occult chronology of the Bible; just as, while rejecting the theories, hypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the Physical, or in all the minor details of material Nature.
There is most assuredly an Occult “chronological system in Hebrew scripture,” the Kabalah being its warrant; moreover there is in it “a system of 624 ←weeks,” based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.* And there are in it cycles of the “week of days,” of the “week of months,” of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, and more, of the “week of years of years.”† But all this can be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the chronology in every scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days and the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first “week of creation” shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ’s “seven creations.” The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical chronology is, as he says, “regulated by the law of weeks,” and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days may be, and if, finally, “the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales,” then this system is shown to be identical with all the Pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years, in lunar months, elapsed between the “Creation” and the “Nativity,” is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindû Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are preëminently Chaldæan and Indo-Âryan, play such a part in the New Testament? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.
Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts—the Vishnu Purâna and the Bible—and he will find that the “seven creations” of Brahmâ are at the foundation of the “week of creation” in Genesis.
* See for the length of such cycles or Yugas in Vriddha Garga and other ancient astronomical sections (Jyotisha). They vary from the cycle of five years—which Colebrooke calls “the cycle of the Vedas,” specified in the institutes of Parâshara, “and the basis of calculation for larger cycles” (Miscell. Essays, i. 106 and 108)—up to the Mahâ Yuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
† The Hebrew word for “week” is seven; and any length of time divided by seven would have been a “week” with them—even 49,000,000 years, as it is seven times seven millions. But their calculation is throughout septiform.
| 661 | 661 |
The two allegories are different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation-stone. The Bible can be understood only by the light of the Kabalah. Take the Zohar, the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus, of the seven Manvantaras, issue from Brahmâ’s head; they are his “Mind-born Sons,” and it is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from the Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking of the “Skull” (Head) 625 ←of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One* (in Sanskrit Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha, or “Greater Holy Assembly,” says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden fountain issuing from the concealed brain.
And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it [which is the manifest Quaternary, the Tetragrammaton] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth forth into thirty and two paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or again 432].
And again:
Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of the skull [i.e., six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is male-female]; . . . and through them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things, of mankind and the races].†
“We six are lights which shine forth from a seventh (light),” saith Rabbi Abba; “thou art the seventh light”—the synthesis of us all—he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven “companions,” whom he calls the “eyes of Tetragrammaton.”‡
Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed four forms, in order to create four kinds of supernal creatures, i.e., made himself four-fold, or the manifest Quaternary;§ after that, he is re-born in the seven Rishis, his Mânasaputras, “Mind-born Sons,” who became later, nine,
* Brahmâ creates in the first Kalpa, or on the first Day, various “sacrificial animals” (Pashavah), or the celestial bodies and the Zodiacal signs, and “plants,” which he uses in sacrifices at the opening of Tretâ Yuga. The Esoteric meaning shows him proceeding cyclically and creating astral Prototypes on the descending spiritual arc and then on the ascending physical arc. The latter is the subdivision of a two-fold creation, sub-divided again into seven descending and seven ascending degrees of Spirit falling, and of Matter ascending; the inverse of what takes place—as in a mirror which reflects the right on the left side—in this Manvantara of ours. It is the same Esoterically in the Elohistic Genesis (chap. i), and in the Jehovistic copy, as in Hindû cosmogony.
† Op. cit., vv. 70, 71, 80; The Kabbalah Unveiled, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, pp. 120, 121.
‡ “The Greater Holy Assembly,” v. 1,160.
§ See Vishnu Purâna, I. v.
| 662 | 662 |
twenty-one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahmâ.*
626 ← There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain—Non-being, i.e., illimitable or absolute “Be-ness.” But when viewed as Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the Triangle in the Square—the sevenfold Cube, not the fourfold, or the plane Square. For it is written in “The Greater Holy Assembly”:
And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod. xvii. 7: “Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One?”†
—where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the Negatively Existent.‡
Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three made four and the Four made three, and is represented on this Earth by his seven “Companions,” or “Eyes”—the “seven eyes of the Lord.” Microprosopus is, at best, only a secondary manifested Deity. For “The Greater Holy Assembly” elsewhere says:
We have learned that there were ten (Rabbis) [Companions] entered into (the Assembly) [the Sod, “mysterious assembly or mystery”] and that seven came forth§ [i.e., ten for the unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].
* It is very surprising to see theologians and Oriental scholars expressing indignation at the “depraved taste” of the Hindû mystics, who, not content with having “invented” the Mind-born Sons of Brahmâ, make the Rishis, Manus, and Prajâpatis of every kind spring from various parts of the body of their primal Progenitor, Brahmâ. (See Wilson’s footnote in his Vishnu Purâna, i. 102.) Because the average public is unacquainted with the Kabalah, the key to, and glossary of, the much veiled Mosaic Books, therefore, the clergy imagines the truth will never out. Let any one turn to the English, Hebrew, or Latin texts of the Kabalah, now so ably translated by several scholars, and he will find that the Tetragrammaton, which is the Hebrew IHVH, is also both the “Sephirothal Tree”—i.e., it contains all the Sephiroth except Kether, the crown—and the united Body of the Heavenly Man (Adam Kadmon) from whose Limbs emanate the Universe and everything in it. Furthermore, he will find that the idea in the Kabalistic Books, the chief of which in the Zohar are the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” and of the “Greater” and the “Lesser Holy Assembly,” is entirely phallic and far more crudely expressed than is the four-fold Brahmâ in any of the Purânas. (See The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, chapter xxii. of “The Lesser Holy Assembly,” concerning the remaining members of Microprosopus.) For, this “Tree of Life” is also the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” whose chief mystery is that of human procreation. It is a mistake to regard the Kabalah as explaining the mysteries of Kosmos or Nature; it explains and unveils only a few allegories in the Bible, and is more esoteric than is the latter.
† Simplified in the English Bible to: “Is the Lord [!!] among us, or not?”
‡ Verse 83; op. cit., p. 121.
§ Translators often render the word “Companion” (Angel, also Adept) by “Rabbi,” just as the Rishis are called Gurus. The Zohar is, if possible, more occult than the Book of Moses; to read the “Book of Concealed Mystery” one requires the keys furnished by the genuine Chaldæan Book of Numbers, which is not extant.
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1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were found none present there save those [seven] (companions). And Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: “These are the seven eyes [or principles] of Tetragrammaton” [—i.e., the four-fold Heavenly Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter and Spirit].*
Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female Chokmah-Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine—the basis and foundation, astrally, of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For Christians and believers, this reference to Zechariah and 627 ←especially to the Epistle of Peter,† ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, “man,” chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a “stone.” Christ is the corner-stone, and Peter refers to all men as “lively” (living) stones. Therefore a “stone with seven eyes” on it can only mean a man whose constitution (i.e., his “principles”) is septenary.
To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor, sine quâ non, in the production of occult astral phenomena.
Thus, if the chemical elements are arranged in groups according to their atomic weights, they will be found to constitute a series of rows of seven; the first, second, etc., members of each row bearing a close analogy in all their properties to the corresponding members of the next row. The following table, copied from Hellenbach’s Magie der Zahlen, and corrected, exhibits this law and fully warrants the conclusion he draws in the following words:
We thus see that chemical variety, so far as we can grasp its inner nature, depends upon numerical relations, and we have further found in this variety a ruling law for which we can assign no cause; we find a law of periodicity governed by the number seven.
* Verses 1152, 1158, 1159; op. cit., p. 254.
† I Peter, ii. 2-5.
| 664 | 664 |
| Row | Group I. |
Group II. |
Group III. |
Group IV. |
Group V. |
Group VI. |
Group VII. |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | ||||||||
| 1 | L 7 | Be 9·3 | B 11 | C 12 | N 14 | O 16 | F 19 | — |
| 2 | Na 23 | Mg 24 | Al 27·3 | Si 28 | P 31 | S 32 | Cl 35·4 | |
| 3 | K 39 | Ca 40 | Se 44 | Ti 48 | V 51 | Cr 52·4 | Mn 54·8 |  Fe 56. Co 58·6 Ni 58. [Cu 63·3] |
| 4 | Cu 63·3 | Zn 65 | Ga 68·2 | Ge 72 | As 75 | Se 78 | Br 79·5 | — |
| 5 | Rb 85·2 | Sr 87·2 | Y 89·5 | Zr 90 | Nb 94 | Mo 96 | — 100 | Ru 103. Rh 104 Pd 100. [Ag 107·6] |
| 6 | Ag 107·6 | Cd 111·6 | In 113·4 | Sn 118 | Sb 122 | Te 125 | I 126·5 | — |
| 7 | Cs 132·5 | Ba 136·8 | La 139 | Ce 140 | Di 144 | — | — | — |
| 8 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 9 | — | — | Er 170 | — | Ta 182 | W 184 | — | Os 196. Ir 196·7 Pt 190·7. [Au 197] |
| 10 | Au 197 | Hg 200 | Tl 204 | Pb 206 | Bi 210 | — | — |
The eighth element in this list is, as it were, the octave of the first, and the ninth of the second, and so on; each element being almost identical in its properties with the corresponding element in each of the septenary rows; a phenomenon which accentuates the septenary law of periodicity. For further details the reader is referred to Hellenbach’s 628 ←work, where it is also shown that this classification is confirmed by the spectroscopic peculiarities of the elements.
It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only one octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of seven octaves represented theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and in ordinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach:
It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into seven columns, and that the successive numbers in each column are closely allied; i.e., that they exhibit a close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures. . . . The fact that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number seven is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause must be discovered.
Verily, then, as Rabbi Abba said:
We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (light); thou [Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (the origin of) us all.
For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh. For all things depend from the seventh.*
* “The Greater Holy Assembly,” vv. 1160, 1161; op. cit., p. 255.
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The ancient and modern Western American Zuñi Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present-day customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their institutions, political, social and religious, were, and still are, shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a group of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh. Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six “Priests of the House” seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the “Priestess Mother.” Compare this with the “seven great officiating priests” spoken of in the Anugîtâ, the name given to the “seven senses,” exoterically, and to the seven human principles, Esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over to Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulûpî, the daughter of the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuñi priests.
These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a certain day they come out—six priests and one priestess—arrayed in their 629 ←priestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes the first sun-light; the yellow corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the Aurora Borealis; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the nether underground region—darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of the upper region—of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The “speckled” corn, each grain containing all the colours, is that of the “Priestess-Mother”—woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.
Apart from these was the Sun—the Great Deity—whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became a Zuñi, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about them than any other man now living.
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Seven is also the great magic number. In the Occult Records the weapon mentioned in the Purânas and the Mahâbhârata—the Âgneyâstra or “fiery weapon” bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara—is said to be constructed of seven elements. This weapon—supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to have been a “rocket” (!)—is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the Hindû Theatre, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues:
These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual—such as those of paralyzing an enemy, or locking his senses fast in sleep, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven.* . . . They are supposed to assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties. . . . The Râmâyana calls them the sons of Krishâshva.†
The Shastra-devatâs, “Gods of the divine weapons,” are no more Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of Krishâshva, “the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”‡ It is the fiery javelin of Brahmâ.
630 ← The seven-fold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles, symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell.
* See pp. 445, 446, supra.
† Op. cit., i. 297, 2nd ed.
‡ It is. But Âgneyâstra are fiery “missile weapons,” not “edged” weapons, as there is some difference between Shastra and Astra in Sanskrit.