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SECTION XXXVII.
The Souls of the Stars—Universal Heliolatry.
In order to show that the Ancients have never “mistaken stars for Gods,” or Angels and the sun for the highest Gods and God, but have worshipped only the Spirit of all, and have reverenced the minor Gods supposed to reside in the sun and planets—the difference between these two worships has to be pointed out. Saturn, “the Father of Gods” must not be confused with his namesake—the planet of the same name with its eight moons and three rings. The two—though in one sense identical, as are, for instance, physical man and his soul—must be separated in the question of worship. This has to be done the more carefully in the case of the seven planets and their Spirits, as the whole formation of the universe is attributed to them in the Secret Teachings. The same difference has to be shown again between the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra Shikhandina, “the bright-crested,” and the Rishis—the mortal Sages who appeared on earth during the Satya Yuga. If all of these have been so far closely united in the visions of the seers of every age—the bible seers included—there must have been a reason for it. Nor need one go back so far as into the periods of “superstition” and “unscientific fancies” to find great men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the eminent astronomer, in common with many other great men who believed that the heavenly bodies ruled favourably or adversely the fates of men and nations—fully credited besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies, even our own earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.
Le Couturier’s opinion is worthy of notice in this relation:
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We are too inclined to criticize unsparingly everything concerning astrology and its ideas; nevertheless our criticism, to be one, ought at least to know, lest it should be proved aimless, what those ideas in truth are. And when among the men we thus criticize, we find such names as those of Regiomontanus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, etc., there is reason why we should be careful. Kepler was an astrologer by profession, and became an astronomer in consequence. He was earning his livelihood by genethliac figures, which, indicating his state of the heavens at the moment of the birth of individuals, were a means to which everyone resorted for horoscopes. That great man was a believer in the principles of astrology, without accepting all its foolish results. *
But astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a sinful science, and together with Occultism is tabooed by the Churches. It is very doubtful, however, whether mystic “star-worship” can be so easily laughed down as people imagine—at any rate by Christians. The hosts of Angels, Cherubs and Planetary Archangels are identical with the minor Gods of the Pagans. As to their “great Gods,” if Mars has been shown—on the admission of even the enemies of the Pagan astrologers—to have been regarded by the latter simply as the personified strength of the one highest impersonal Deity, Mercury being personified as its omniscience, Jupiter as its omnipotency, and so on, then the “superstition” of the Pagan has indeed become the “religion” of the masses of the civilized nations. For with the latter, Jehovah is the synthesis of the seven Elohim, the eternal centre of all those attributes and forces, the Alei of the Aleim, and the Adonai of the Adonim. And if with them Mars is now called St. Michael, the “strength of God,” Mercury Gabriel, the “omniscience and fortitude of the Lord,” and Raphael “the blessing or healing power of God,” this is simply a change of names, the characters behind the masks remaining the same.
The Dalai-lama’s mitre has seven ridges in honour of the seven chief Dhyâni Buddhas. In the funeral ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made to exclaim:
Salutation to you, O Princes, who stand in the presence of Osiris. . . . Send me the grace to have my sins destroyed, as you have done for the seven spirits who follow the Lord! †
Brahmâ’s head is ornamented with seven rays, and he is followed by the seven Rishis, in the seven Svargas. China has her seven Pagodas;
* Musée des Sciences, p. 230.
† Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See Les Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 7th year, 1861.
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the Greeks had their seven Cyclopes, seven Demiurgi, and the Mystery Gods, the seven Kabiri, whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn, and with the Jews, Jehovah. Now the latter Deity has become chief of all by Mikael (Michael). He is the “Chief of the Host” (tsaba); the “Archistrategus of the Lord’s army”; the “Conqueror of the Devil”—Victor diaboli—and the “Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia, “ he who slew the “Great Dragon.” Unfortunately astrology and symbology, having no inducement to veil old things with new masks, have preserved the real name of Mikael—“that was Jehovah”—Mikael being the Angel of the face of the Lord, * “the guardian of the planets,” and the living image of God. He represents the Deity in his visits to earth, for as it is well expressed in Hebrew, he is one מיבאל, who is as God, or who is like unto God. It is he who cast out the serpent. †
Mikael, being the regent of the planet Saturn, is—Saturn. ‡ His mystery-name is Sabbathiel, because he presides over the Jewish Sabbath, as also over the astrological Saturday. Once identified, the reputation of the Christian conqueror of the devil is in still greater danger from further identifications. Biblical angels are called Malachim, the messengers between God (or rather the gods) and men. In Hebrew מבאל Malach, is also “a King,” and Malech or Melech was likewise Moloch, or again Saturn, the Seb of Egypt, to whom Dies Saturni, or the Sabbath, was dedicated. The Sabæans separated and distinguished the planet Saturn from its God far more than the Roman Catholics do their angels from their stars; and the Kabalists make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the seventh work of magic.
In theological symbolism . . . Jupiter [the Sun] is the risen and glorious Saviour, and Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of Moses, §
says Éliphas Lévi, who ought to know. Jehovah and the Saviour, Saturn and Jupiter, being thus one, and Mikael being called the living image of God, it does seem dangerous for the Church to call Saturn, Satan—le dieu mauvais. However, Rome is strong in casuistry and will get out of this as she got out of every other identification, with glory to herself and to her own full satisfaction. Nevertheless all her
* Isaiah, lxiii. 9.
† Chap xii of Revelation: “There was war in heaven, Mikael and his angels fought against the Dragon,” etc., (7) and the great dragon was cast out (9).
‡ He is also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of Venus.
§ Dogme et Rituel, ii. 116.
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dogmas and rituals seem like so many pages torn out from the history of Occultism, and then distorted. The extremely thin partition that separates the Kabalistic and Chaldæan Theogony from the Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy is now confessed by at least one Roman Catholic writer. One can hardly believe one’s eyes in finding the following (the passages italicized by us should be carefully noticed):
One of the most characteristic features of our Holy Scriptures is the calculated discretion used in the enunciation of the mysteries less directly useful to salvation. . . . Thus, beyond those “myriads of myriads” of angelic creatures just noticed * and all these prudently elementary divisions, there are certainly many others, whose very names have not yet reached us. † “For,” excellently says St. John Chrysostom, “there are doubtless, (sine dubio,) many other Virtues [celestial beings] whose denominations we are yet far from knowing. . . . The nine orders are not by any means the only populations in heaven, where, on the contrary, are to be found numberless tribes of inhabitants infinitely varied, and of which it would be impossible to give the slightest idea through human tongue. . . . Paul, who had learned their names, reveals to us their existence.” ( De Incomprehensibili Natura Dei, Bk. IV.) . . .
It would thus amount to a gross mistake to see merely errors in the Angelology of the Kabalists and Gnostics, so severely treated by the Apostle of the Gentiles, for his imposing censure reached only their exaggerations and vicious interpretations, and still more, the application of those noble titles to the miserable personalities of demoniacal usurpers. ‡ Often nothing so resemble each other as the language of the judges and that of the convicts [of saints and Occultists]. One has to penetrate deeply into this dual study [of creed and profession] and what is still better, to trust blindly to the authority of the tribunal [the Church of Rome, of course] to enable oneself to seize precisely the point of the error. The Gnosis condemned by St. Paul remains, nevertheless, for him as for Plato the supreme knowledge of the truths, and of the Being par excellence, ό όντως ών (Republ. Bk. VI). The Ideas, types, άρχἁι of the Greek philosopher, the Intelligences of Pythagoras, the aeons or emanations, the occasion of so much reproach to the first heretics, the Logos or Word, Chief of these Intelligences, the Demiurgos, the architect of the world under his father’s direction [of the Pagans], the unknown God, the En-soph, or the It of the Infinite [of the Kabalists], the angelical periods, § the seven spirits, the Depths of Ahriman, the World’s Rectors, the Archontes of the air, the God of this world, the pleroma of the
* If enumerated, they will be found to be the Hindu “divisions” and choirs of Devas, and the Dhyân Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.
† But this fact has not prevented the Roman Church from adopting them all the same, accepting them from ignorant, though perchance sincere Church Fathers, who had borrowed them from Kabalists—Jews and Pagans.
‡ To call “usurpers” those who preceded the Christian Beings for whose benefit these same titles were borrowed, is carrying paradoxical anachronism a little too far!
§ Or the divine ages, the “days and years of Brahmâ.”
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intelligences, down to Metatron the angel of the Jews, all this is found word for word, as so many truths, in the works of our greatest doctors, and in St. Paul. *
If an Occultist, eager to charge the Church with a numberless series of plagiarisms were to write the above, could he have written more strongly? And have we, or have we not, the right, after such a complete confession, to reverse the tables and to say of Roman Catholics and others what is said of the Gnostics and Occultists. “They used our expressions and rejected our doctrines.” For it is not the “promoters of the false Gnosis”—who had all those expressions from their archaic ancestors—who helped themselves to Christian expressions, but verily the Christian Fathers and Theologians, who helped themselves to our nest, and have tried ever since to soil it.
The words above quoted will explain much to those who are searching for truth and for truth only. They will show the origin of certain rites in the Church inexplicable hitherto to the simple-minded, and will give
the reasons why such words as “Our Lord the Sun” were used in prayer by Christians up to the fifth and even sixth century of our era and embodied in the Liturgy, until altered into “Our Lord, the God.” Let us remember that the early Christians painted Christ on the walls of their subterranean necropolis, as a shepherd in the guise of and invested with all the attributes of Apollo, driving away the wolf. Fenris, who seeks to devour the Sun and his Satellites.
* De Mirville, ii. 325, 326. So we say too. And this shows that it is to the Kabalists and Magicians that the Church is indebted for her dogmas and names. Paul never condemned real Gnosis, but the false one, now accepted by the Church.