Legend
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after the event. In most cases the power of these directions must be too feeble, and their significance too obscure to make them worth calculation.*
On the important point of the measure of time for events, (Mr. Pearce departs from the method of Placidus (prescribed; also by Zadkiel, in the “Grammar”), and takes every degree of “are” to signify a year of time, without converting the; whole into right ascension, by addition of that of the sun at birth. This, again, is a matter which only experience can determine, and the experience of Mr. Pearce has been very extensive. But there are few objections to the science so difficult to answer as that experience should have left any doubt or discrepancy among authorities upon such a point. The most probable explanation of the uncertainty is the interference of subordinate astrological influences, such as lunations, transits, and secondary directions, in hastening or retarding the effects of the primary directions.
But with respect to the time of events, we encounter a question more profoundly perplexing to our ignorance, though it is not one that the practical astrologer, who relics on experience, is bound to answer. We speak of the “effects” of directions, as if there were a real coincidence in time between the formation of an aspect, zodiacal or mundane, and the corresponding event in life. Yet a few months, weeks, days, or hours suffice for the motion to the aspect that is said to “cause” an event which may be distant fifty years or more. Evidently, if astrology is the truth the writer believes it to be, it is a truth that can only be fully comprehended when the most mystic correspondences of time and nature are revealed to the enlightened reason. Yet the evidence of “transits” makes it certain that there is a temporal coincidence also. What can be more astonishing and inexplicable, in our present state of knowledge, than that the transit of Saturn, for example, over the zodiacal degree, or over an aspect to the degree in which the moon happened to be, say thirty years, some months, days, and hours ago, should injuriously, perhaps fatally, affect the health or family of a person then born? Yet this was what was predicted, and unhappily verified, in the case of the Princess Alice of Hesse.†
The appearance of this work is contemporaneous with the formation of an Astrological Society, and both are significant of the spirit of inquiry which creates a demand for such assistance. That Astrology, even now, is a science of such imperfect application to individual and public uses need not discourage students who will bring to it modern habits of precise and systematic investigation. Whether the inductive method will ever alone suffice to apply practically and with anything approaching to uniform success a system of such extreme complexity, may well be doubted. Yet accurate observation, and generalisations based upon sufficient evidence, should place its fundamental principles beyond the reach of controversy. There should be a division of labour among astrologers, as among the devotees of every other science. Statistics should be collected, and comparative analysis should be resorted to for the purposes of scientific induction. The public would greatly assist by keeping accurate records of times of birth, and making them available to students. If every parent who reads these lines would notify to the Secretary of the Astrological Society the exact time of a child’s birth as it occurs, and the fact of its death, should this ensue, sufficient data for one most important judgment—the probability of life beyond infancy—might soon be collected. Those who wish to know “the truth about Astrology” should render to investigators the important assistance which it is thus in their power to give. In the meanwhile, if they would sec its present evidences, its authorities and processes, as set forth by a thoroughly competent, experienced, and educated adept, they cannot do better than read the work of which a very inadequate notice has been here attempted.
Temple.
* The writer has before him his own nativity, calculated by a moat accomplished artist, and containing 237 primary directions, of which 109 are of past (if any observable) operation. Some of the more powerful are fairly coincident with their appropriate events, but, as to most, the effects would not be traceable (supposing them to have existed) unless, perhaps, in connection with transits of the same time and nature.
† A recent transit of Saturn over the place of the moon agreeing with a primary direction in the writer’s nativity was coincident with a rather serious illness of a near female relative; an astrologer having warned him, a year before, that this would be a time of danger to such relatives. An inspection of the lady’s horoscope showed that the moon was similarly situated at her birth.
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The Countess Blavatsky
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Editor's notes