Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and destroys it, psychically as well as physically.
And if, astronomically, she is one of the seven planets of the ancient world, in theogony she is one of the regents thereof; with Christians now as much as with Pagans, the former referring to her under the name of one of their archangels, and the latter under that of one of their gods.
Therefore the meaning of the "fairy tale" translated by Chwolson from an old Chaldean MSS.
translated into Arabic, about Qu-tamy being instructed by the idol of the moon, is easily understood ( vide Book III.) Seldenus tells us the secret as well as Maimonides ( More Nevochim , Book III., ch.
xxx).
The worshippers of the Teraphim (the Jewish Oracles) "carved images and claimed that the light of the principal stars (planets) permeating these through and through, the angelic V IRTUES (or the regents of the stars and planets) conversed with them, teaching them many most useful things and arts." And Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were built and composed after the position of certain planets, those which the Greeks called [[ stoicheia ]], and according to figures that were located in the sky and called [[ alexeteroi ]], or the tutelary gods .
Those who traced out the [[ stoicheia ]] were called [[ stoicheiomatichoi ]], or the diviners by the [[ stoicheia ]] .
( De Diis Syriis , Teraph , II.
Synt.
p.
31) vide infra , the Teraphim.
It is such sentences, however, in the "Nabathean agriculture," that [[Vol.
1, Page]] 395 SOLAR-LUNAR WORSHIP IN THE CHURCH.
have frightened the men of science and made them proclaim the work "either an apocrypha or a fairy tale, unworthy of the notice of an Academician." At the same time, as shown, zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants tore it metaphorically to pieces; the former because "it described the worship of demons," the latter because it is "ungodly." They are all wrong, once more.
It is not a fairy tale; and as far as regards pious Churchmen, the same worship may be shown in the Scriptures, however disfigured by translation.
Solar and Lunar worship, as well as that of the Stars and Elements, are traced, and figure in the Christian theology; defended by Papists, they are stoutly denied by the Protestants only at their own risk and peril.
Two instances may be given.
Ammianus Marcellinus teaches that ancient divinations were always accomplished with the help of the Spirits of the Elements, " Spiritus elementorum , and in Greek [[ pneumata ton stoicheion ]]" (1.
I., 21).
But it is found now that the planets, the Elements, and the Zodiac, were figured not only in Heliopolis by the twelve stones called "mysteries of the elements," elementorum arcana , but also in Solomon's temple, and, as pointed out by various writers, in several old Italian churches and even at Notre Dame de Paris where they can be seen to this day.
No symbol -- the sun included -- was more complex in its manifold meanings than the lunar symbol.
The sex was, of course, dual.
With some it was male, e.g ., the Hindu "King Soma," and the Chaldean Sin; with other nations it was female, the beauteous goddesses Diana-Luna, I'lythia, Lucina.
In Tauris, human victims were sacrificed to Artemis, a form of the lunar goddess; the Cretans called her Dictynna, and the Medes and Persians Anaitis, as shown by an inscription of Koloe: '[[ Artemidi ' Anaeiti ]].
But, we are now concerned chiefly with the most chaste and pure of the virgin goddesses, Luna-Artemis, to whom Pamphos was the first to give the surname of [[ Kalliste ]], and of whom Hippolitus wrote: [[ Kallista polu parthenon ]].
(See Pausanias viii., 35, 8.) This Artemis-Lochia, the goddess that presided at conception and child-birth (Iliad, Pausanias, etc., etc.), is, in her functions and as the triple Hecate, the Orphic deity, the predecessor of the God of the Rabbins and pre-Christian Kabalists, and his lunar type.
The goddess [[ Trimorphos ]] was the personified symbol of the various and successive aspects represented by the moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was already that of the Stoics (Cornut.
De Nat , D.
34, 1), while the Orpheans explained the epithet ([[ Trimorphos ]]) by the three kingdoms of nature over which she reigned.
jealous, blood-thirsty, revengeful and exacting, Hecate-Luna is a worthy counterpart of the "Jealous God" of the Hebrew prophets.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 396 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The whole riddle of the solar and lunar worship, as now traced in the churches, hangs indeed on this world-old mystery of lunar phenomena.
The correlative forces in the "Queen of Night," that lie latent for modern science, but are fully active to the knowledge of Eastern adepts, explain well the thousand and one images under which the moon was represented by the ancients.
It also shows how much more profoundly learned in the Selenic mysteries were the ancients than are now our modern astronomers.
The whole Pantheon of the lunar gods and goddesses, Nephtys or Neith, Proserpina, Melytta, Cybele, Isis, Astarte, Venus, and Hecate, on the one hand, and Apollo, Dionysius, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Atys, Thammuz, etc., etc., on the other, all show on the face of their names and titles -- those of "Sons" and "Husbands" of their mothers -- their identity with the Christian Trinity.
In every religious system the gods were made to merge their functions as Father, Son, and Husband, into one, and the goddesses were identified as "Wife, Mother, and Sister" of the male God; the former synthesizing the human attributes as the "Sun, the giver of Life," the latter merging all the other titles in the grand synthesis known as Maia, Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage systematically maps the same underlying lunar principle across multiple religious systems—Chaldean, Hindu, Greek, Christian—showing how the same structure is reflected at different cultural and theological levels, with the Pantheon of lunar gods showing 'their identity with the Christian Trinity.'
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The passage describes the light of principal stars permeating carved images through which angelic virtues converse, the Teraphim built according to planetary positions, and 'correlative forces' in the Moon that are active—all expressing hidden affinities binding celestial and terrestrial realms.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The passage is centrally organized around the dual masculine-feminine principle: the lunar symbol's dual sex, the merging of 'Father, Son, and Husband' with 'Wife, Mother, and Sister,' and the final synthesis of male attributes as 'Sun, the giver of Life' and female as 'Maia, Maya, Maria' as a structural feature of the divine across all religions.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage presents itself as revealing the 'secret' meaning behind what others dismiss as 'fairy tales' or 'apocrypha,' showing how Seldenus and Maimonides 'tell the secret' of the Teraphim, and how the same worship is 'disfigured by translation' in the Scriptures.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The passage describes 'angelic VIRTUES' conversing through carved images, 'Spirits of the Elements' used in divination, and 'correlative forces in the Queen of Night' that are 'latent for modern science, but fully active to the knowledge of Eastern adepts,' all pointing to a non-physical dimension populated by forces and beings.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The passage explicitly states 'The sex was, of course, dual' and describes how the same lunar principle appears as male (Soma, Sin) or female (Diana, Ilythia, Lucina) depending on the culture, presenting the two as poles of the same underlying reality.
The doctrine that the one Godhead or first principle subsists as three co-equal aspects or persons rather than a bare unity — the Christian Father/Son/Holy Ghost invoked in the recurring liturgical formula 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' but structurally the same pattern as the Egyptian Amen/Ptah/Osiris, the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Siva, and the Kabbalistic Chochmah/Binah/Kether triads that esoteric writers explicitly map onto it as instances of one universal law. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about internal plurality) and divine_simplicity (God as having no parts or divisions at all) in asserting a definite three-aspected differentiation within a single divine essence.
The passage's culminating argument is that the entire Pantheon of lunar gods and goddesses 'show on the face of their names and titles their identity with the Christian Trinity,' and that in every religious system the triadic merging of Father/Son/Husband and Wife/Mother/Sister expresses one universal law.