HPB-IU v.1 ch.1: Difference between revisions

{{Style P-No indent|change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.^{[#fn97 97]} As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought about. This year was called the {{Style S-Italic|Heliacal}} by the Greeks; but no one outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge,—the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we learn at least from the {{Style S-Italic|Astronomical Fragments}} of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near the truth.^{[#fn98 98]} According to the claims of the Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus,^{[#fn99 99]} “the city of Babylon, owes its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; {{Style S-Italic|they were the giants}} and they built the tower which is noticed in history.”^{[#fn100 100]} These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God,” every instruction pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the {{Style S-Italic|great}} years. When we remember, moreover, that Plato in the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus}} cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the {{Style S-Italic|Heliakos}} was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.}}

[#fn97anc 97]. Before scientists reject such a theory—traditional as it is—it would be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly change the torrid zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the {{Style S-Italic|heliocentric system came to us from upper India;}} and that the germs of all great astronomical truths were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.

[#fn98anc 98]. Censorinus: “De Natal Die.” Seneca: “Nat. Quæst.,” iii., 29.

[#fn99anc 99]. Euseb.: “Præp. Evan.” Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.

[#fn100anc 100]. This is in flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us that the deluge was sent for the special destruction of these {{Style S-Italic|giants}}. The Babylon priests had {{Style S-Italic|no}} object to invent lies.

32 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas, running as follows:

which make one divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make 306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi (or the time when day and night border on each other, morning and evening twilight), equal to a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years;^{[#fn101 101]} fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which must be added a sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half of the time allotted to the world.

These ciphers are not fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical calculations, as has been demonstrated by S. Davis.^{[#fn102 102]} Many a scientist, Higgins among others, notwithstanding their researches, has been utterly perplexed as to which of these was the {{Style S-Italic|secret}} cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian priests, who made the cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest mystery.^{[#fn103 103]} Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the calculations of the ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of humanity as to the physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close correspondence drawn by the ancients between the cycles of nature and of mankind, if we keep in mind their belief in the constant and all-potent influences of the planets upon the fortunes of humanity. Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian system, of 432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in trying to decipher it was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery of the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was repeated in symbolic figures only in the Chaldean {{Style S-Italic|Book of Numbers,}} the original of which, if now ex-

[#fn101anc 101]. Coleman, who makes this calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the proofreader; the length of the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just sixty million years too much.

[#fn102anc 102]. S. Davis: “Essay in the Asiatic Researches;” and Higgins’s “Anacalypsis;” also see Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” Preface, p. xiii.

[#fn103anc 103]. Bunsen: “Egypte,” vol. i.

33 THE PERIOD OF THE GREAT NEROS.

tant, is certainly not to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of Hermes,^{[#fn104 104]} the number of which is at present undetermined.

[#fn104anc 104]. The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage” . . . with whom “none of the later native historians can be compared . . . .” (See “Egypte,” i, p. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However, none of the archeologists doubt for a moment the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations, and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they {{Style S-Italic|must have}} extended over 10,000 years” (p. 14). “We learn, however,” he adds, “from one of their own old chronological works . . . that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of {{Style S-Italic|myriads}} of years.” (“Egypte,” i, p. 15).

34 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand years in all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six thousand years would end, and the world would be destroyed {{Style S-Italic|by fire;}} when he arrived at the southern point, it would be destroyed by water. And thus, it would be destroyed at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten neroses.”^{[#fn105 105]}

[#fn105anc 105]. Higgins: “Anacalypsis.”

35 TYPES AND THEIR PROTOTYPES.

Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in an historical retrospect.

“{{Style S-Italic|As above, so it is below. That which has been, will return again. As in heaven, so on earth.”}}

The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built a statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions Pythagoras. The former had a ready guide in the treatises of Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend against the universally established Ptolemaic system. But neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of the planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by the sages of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated science. “The numerals of Pythagoras,” says Porphyry, “were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of {{Style S-Italic|all}} things.”^{[#fn106 106]}

[#fn106anc 106]. “De Vite Pythag.”

36 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

logical and the Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the moral of this book.”^{[#fn107 107]}

[#fn107anc 107]. “The Rosicrucians,” etc., by Hargrave Jennings.

37 MAN’S YEARNING FOR IMMORTALITY.

melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain.” Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine has been forced to acknowledge that there is {{Style S-Italic|no authentic}} source whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man {{Style S-Italic|has been}} allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances, apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?

{{Style P-Quote|“Terra legit {{Style S-Italic|carnem}} tumulum circumvolet {{Style S-Italic|umbra}},

Orcus habet {{Style S-Italic|manes, spiritus}} astra petit,” }}

says Ovid, speaking of the threefold constituents of souls.

38 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

tuary; that the difference in creeds and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain around the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of the thread. That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the old religious systems, the chain of mystery may be disentangled.

{{Style P-Quote|“If ancestry can be in aught believed,