Blavatsky H.P. - Star-Angel Worship in the Roman Catholic Church: Difference between revisions

Thus affairs went on from 1527 till 1561; the Rector trying to satisfy the orders of his ''seven'' “guides,”—the church fearing to adopt even the Chaldean substitutes for the “mystery-names” as they had been so “desecrated by magical practices.” We are not told, however, why the mystery-names, far less known than their substitutes have ever been, should not have been given out if the blessed “Thrones” enjoyed the smallest confidence. But, it must have been “small” indeed, since one finds {{Page aside|26}}the “Seven Archangels” demanding their restitution for 34 years, and refusing positively to be called by any other name, and the church still deaf to their desires. The Occultists do not conceal the reason why they have ceased to use them: they are dangerously magical. But why should the Church fear them? Have not the Apostles, and Peter pre-eminently, been told “whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven” [Matt., xviii, 18], and were they not given power over every demon known and unknown? Nevertheless, some of the mystery-names may be still found along with their substitutes in old Roman missals printed in 1563. There is one in the Barberini library with the whole mass-service in it, and the forbidden truly Sabian names of the seven “great gods” flashing out ominously hither and thither.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Reference is made here to the Missale Romanum, bearing the imprint of: Venetiis apud Iunctas, MDLXIII. It is now deposited in the Vatican Library, and is catalogued under Stamp. Barb. B. IX. 34. The names of the Archangels, as appearing on page 320 of this richly illuminated Latin document, are: Saalthiel, orator; Eudiel, remunerator; Raphael, medicus; Michael, victoriosus; Gabriel, nuntius; Barachiel, adiutor; Uriel, fortis. The text of this document contains masses in honour of the various Archangels. —Compiler.]}}</ref>

The “gods” lost patience once more. Acting in a truly Jehovistic spirit with their “stiff-necked” worshippers, they sent a plague. A terrible epidemic of obsession and possession broke out in 1553, “when almost all Rome found itself possessed by the devil,” says de Mirville (without explaining whether the clergy were included). Then only Duca’s wish was realized. His seven Inspirers were invoked in their own names, and “the epidemic ceased as by enchantment, the blessed ones,” adds the chronicler, “proving by the divine powers they possessed, once more, that they had nothing in common with the demons of the same name,”—i.e., the Chaldean gods.<ref>But they had proved their power earlier by sending the war, the destruction of the church, and finally the epidemic; and this does not look very angelic—to an Occultist.</ref>

“Then Michelangelo was summoned in all haste by Paul IV<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Paul IV (Giovanni Pietro Caraffa), b. near Benevento, June 28, 1476; d. Aug. 18, 1559. Elected Pope May 23, 1555, to succeed Marcellus II.—Compiler.]}}</ref> to the Vatican.” His magnificent plan was accepted and the building of the former church began. Its construction lasted over three years. In the archives of this now celebrated edifice, one can read that: “the narrative of the miracles that occurred during that period could not be undertaken, as it was one incessant miracle of three years’ duration.” In the presence of all his cardinals, Pope Paul IV ordered that the seven names, as originally written on the picture, should be restored, and inscribed around the large copy of it that surmounts to this day the high altar.

Duca was the first person buried in the church for the erection of which he had fought the best part of his life and finally procured for his heavenly patrons. On his tomb the summary of the revelations obtained by him, as also the catalogue of the prayers and invocations, of the penances and fasts used as means of getting the “blessed” revelations and more frequent visits from the “Seven”—are engraved. In the vestry a sight of the documents attesting to, and enumerating some of the phenomena of “the incessant miracle of three years’ duration” may be obtained for a small fee. The record of the “miracles” bears the imprimatur of a Pope and several Cardinals, but it still lacks that of the Society for Psychical Research. The “Seven Angels” must be needing the latter badly, as without it their triumph will never be complete. Let us hope that the learned Spookical Researchers will send their “smart boy” to Rome at an early day, and that the “blessed ones” may find at Cambridge—a Duca.

But what became of the “mystery names” so cautiously used and what of the new ones? First of all came the substitution of the name of Eudiel for one of the Kabalistic names. Just one hundred years later, all the seven names suddenly disappeared, by order of the Cardinal Albizzi. In the old and venerable Church of Santa Maria della Pietà on the Piazza Colonna, the “miraculous” painting of the Seven Archangels may be still seen, but the names have been scratched out and the places repainted. Sic transit gloria mundi. A little while after that the mass and vesper services of the “Seven” were once more eliminated from the missals used, notwithstanding that “they are quite distinct” from those of the “planetary Spirits” who used to help Bishop Adalbert. But as “the robe does not really make the monk,” so the change of names cannot prevent the individuals that had them from being the same as they were before. They are still worshipped and this is all that my article aims to prove.

Will this be denied? In that case I have to remind the readers that so late as in 1825, a Spanish grandee supported by the Archbishop of Palermo made an attempt before Leo XII<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Leo XII (Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola della Genga), b. at the Castello della Genga in the territory of Spoleto, Aug. 22, 1760; d. in Rome, Feb. 10, 1829. Elected Pope Sept., 28, 1823, succeeding Pius VII.—Compiler.]}}</ref> for the simultaneous re-establishment of the service and names. The Pope granted the Church service but refused the permission to use the old names.<ref>This is quoted from the volumes of the Marquis de Mirville, Des Esprits, etc., Vol. II, p. 358. A more rabid papist and ultramontane having never existed, his testimony can hardly be suspected. He seems to glory in this idolatry and is loud in demanding its public and universal restoration.</ref>

“This service, perfected and amplified by order of Paul IV, the minutes of which exist to this day at the Vatican and the Minerva, remained in force during the whole pontificate of Leo X.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici), b. at Florence, Dec. II, 1475; died in Rome, Dec. 1, 1521. Elected Pope March 11, 1513, succeeding Julius II.—Compiler.]}}</ref> The Jesuits were those {{Page aside|29}}who rejoiced the most at the resurrection of the old worship, in view of the prodigious help they received from it, as it ensured the success of their proselytizing efforts in the Philippine Islands. Pope Pius V<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Pius V (Michele Ghisleri), b. at Bosco, near Alexandria, in Lombardy, Jan. 17, 1504; d. May 1, 1572. Elected Pope Jan, 7, 1566, succeeding Pius IV. He was canonized by Clement XI, in 1712.— Compiler.]}}</ref> conceded the same “divine service” to Spain, saying in his Bull, that “one could never exalt too much these seven Rectors of the world, figured by the SEVEN PLANETS, and that. . . . “it looked consoling and augured well for this century, that by the grace of God, the cult of these seven ardent lights, and these seven stars, was regaining all its lustre in the Christian republic”<ref>De Mirville, op. cit., pp. 357-58.</ref>

The same “holy Pope permitted moreover to the nuns of Matritensis to establish the fête of JEHUDIEL the patron of their convent.” Whether another less pagan name has now been substituted for it we are not informed—nor does it in the least matter.

In 1832 the same demand in a petition to spread the worship of the “Seven Spirits of God,” was reiterated, endorsed this time by eighty-seven bishops and thousands of officials with high-sounding names in the Church of Rome. Again, in 1858, Cardinal Patrizi and King Ferdinand II in the name of all the people of Italy reiterated their petition; and again, finally, in 1862. Thus, the Church services in honour of the seven “Spirit-Stars” have never been abrogated since 1825. To this day they are in full vigour in Palermo, in Spain, and even in Rome at “ St. Mary of the Angels “ and the “Gesù”—though entirely suppressed everywhere else; all this “because of Adalbert’s heresy,” de Mirville and the other supporters of Star-Angel worship are pleased to say. In reality there is no reason but the one already disclosed for it. Even the seven substitutes, especially the last four, have been too openly connected with black magic and astrology.

Writers of the de Mirville type are in despair. Not daring to blame the Church, they vent their wrath upon the old Alchemists and Rosicrucians. They clamour for the restitution of a public worship notwithstanding; and the imposing association formed since 1862 in Italy, Bavaria, Spain and elsewhere for the re-establishment of the cult of the Seven Spirits in all its fullness and in all Catholic Europe, gives hope that in a few years more the Seven Rishis of India now happily domiciled in the constellation of the Great Bear will become by the grace and will of some infallible Pontiff of Rome the legal and honoured divine patrons of Christendom.

And why not, since (St.) George is to this day “the patron Saint of not only Holy Russia, Protestant Germany, fairy Venice, but also of merry England, whose soldiers,” —says W. M. Braithwaite,<ref>“St. George for Merry England,” by W. M. Braithwaite. Masonic Monthly, No. 2.</ref>—“would uphold his prestige with their heart’s blood.” And surely our “Seven gods” cannot be worse than was the rascally George of Cappadocia during his lifetime!

We are accused of mistaking stars for angels. The charge is acquiring such a wide notoriety that we are forced to answer it very seriously. It is impossible that we should try to dissimulate it without failing in frankness and courage, since this pretended mistake is repeated incessantly in the Scriptures as in our theology. We shall examine. . . . this opinion hitherto so accredited, today discredited, and which attributes rightly to our SEVEN PRINCIPAL SPIRITS the ruler-ship, not of the seven known planets, with which we are reproached, {{Page aside|31}}but of the seven PRINCIPAL planets<ref>These “principal planets” are the mystery planets of the pagan Initiates, but travestied by dogma and priestcraft.</ref>—which is quite a different thing.<ref>De Mirville, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 359-60.</ref>

And the author hastens to cite the authority of Babinet, the astronomer, who sought to prove in an able article of the Revue des Deux Mondes (May, 1855), that in reality besides the earth we had only SEVEN big planets.

The “seven principal planets” is another confession to the acceptance of a purely occult tenet. Every planet according to the esoteric doctrine is in its composition a Septenary like man, in its principles. That is to say, the visible planet is the physical body of the sidereal being, the Atma or Spirit of which is the Angel, or Rishi, or Dhyan-Chohan, or Deva, or whatever we call it. This belief as the occultists will see (read in Esoteric Buddhism about the constitution of the planets) is thoroughly occult. It is a tenet of the Secret Doctrine—minus its idolatrous element—pure and simple. As taught in the Church and her rituals, however, and especially, as practised, it is ASTROLATRY as pure and as simple.

There is no need to show here the difference between teaching, or theory, and practice in the holy Roman Catholic Church. The words “Jesuit” and “Jesuitism” cover the whole ground. The Spirit of Truth has departed ages ago—if it has ever been near it—from the Church of Rome. At this, the Protestant Church, so full of brotherly spirit and love for her sister Church, will say: Amen. The Dissenter, whose heart is as full of the love of Jesus as of hatred towards Ritualism and its mother Popery, will chuckle.

In the editorial of the Times for November 7, 1866, stands “A Terrible Indictment” against the Protestants, which says:

Under the influence of the Episcopal Bench, all the studies connected with theology have withered, until English Biblical critics are the {{Page aside|32}}scorn of foreign scholars. Whenever we take up the work of a theologian who is likely to be a Dean or a Bishop, we find, not an earnest inquirer setting forth the results of honest research, but merely an advocate, who, we can perceive, has begun his work with the fixed determination of proving black white in favour of his own traditional system.

If the Protestants do not recognise the “Seven Angels,” nor, while refusing them divine worship, do they feel ashamed and afraid of their names, as the Roman Catholics do, on the other hand they are guilty of “Jesuitism” of another kind, just as bad. For, while professing to believe the Scriptures a direct Revelation from God, not one sentence of which should be altered under the penalty of eternal damnation, they yet tremble and cower before the discoveries of science, and try to pander to their great enemy. Geology, Anthropology, Ethnology and Astronomy, are to them what Uriel, Saaltiel, Jehudiel and Barachiel are to the Roman Catholic Church. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other. And since neither one nor the other of the two religions will abstain from anathematizing, slandering and persecuting Magic, Occultism, and even Theosophy, it is but just and proper that in their turn the Students of the Sacred Science of old should retort at last, and keep on telling the truth fearlessly to the faces of both.

<center>MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PREVALEBIT.</center>

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[The subject of the Seven Mystery Names and their correlations was discussed at considerable length by Jakob Bonggren, one of the most serious students in the early days of the Movement. His essay may be found in Lucifer, Vol. IV, July, 1889, pp. 404-407, where it is followed by a comprehensive article from the pen of “Sepharial” (Walter R. Old), on pp. 407-415.—Compiler.]

<center>Photograph take by Enrico Resta in London, January 8,</center>

<center>1889. Originally printed in The Path, New York, Vol. IV,</center>

<center>February, 1890. Reproduced here from the original glass</center>

<center>plate in the Archives of the Theosophical Society in England.</center>