Page 48 (part 3)

Leaving the proof of exactitude in the alleged correspondence to the said mystics, it is as follows: Man, or the Aquarius , is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as "unstable as water" (the Vulgate has it, to be " rushing like water,"; Gemini , in the strong fraternal association of Simeon and Levi; Leo , in that of Judah, "the strong Lion" of his tribe, "the lion's whelp"; the Pisces , in Zabulon, who "shall dwell at the haven of the sea"; Taurus , in Issachar, because he is "a strong ass couching down," etc., and therefore associated with the stables; Virgo- Scorpio , in Dan, who is described as "a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth," etc.; Capricornus in Naphtali, who is "a hind (a deer) let loose"; Cancer , in Benjamin, for he is " ravenous "; Libra , the "Balance," in Asher, whose "bread shall be fat"; Saggitarius in Joseph, because "his bow abode in strength." To make up for the twelfth sign, Virgo , made independent of Scorpio , is Dina, the only daughter of Jacob. (See Genesis xlix. ) Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the 12 signs on their banners. But the Bible is, besides these, full of theo-cosmological and astronomical symbols and personifications. It remains to wonder, and query -- if the actual, living Patriarch's destiny was so indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac -- how it is that after the loss of the ten tribes, ten signs out of the twelve have not also miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac itself. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 652 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Now the reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed on the subject by several of the highest authorities in Science. Newton believed the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far back as the expedition of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at 6,500 years B.C ., just 2,496 years before the creation of the World according to the Bible chronology. Creuzer believes it very easy to show that most of the theogonies are intimately connected with religious calendars, and point to the Zodiac as their prime origin -- if not identical with the Zodiac known to us now, then something very analogous to it. He feels certain that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, under one form or the other, and that it had existed in the old form for ages before; owing to some singular co-ordination of events, it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb. ( Creuzer , Book III ., page 930.) Whether "the genii of the planets" (our Dhyan Chohans of supra-mundane spheres) showed themselves to "holy prophets" or not, as claimed in the Dabistan , it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the same way in days of old, when astrological magic and theophania went hand in hand in Chaldea. For Xenophon, no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus, that at the moment of his death that king was giving ardent thanks to gods and heroes, for having so often instructed him themselves about the signs in heaven, [[ ev ouraniois semeiois ]] ( Cyropedie , "Ant. du Zodiaque.") Unless the science of the zodiac is supposed to be of the highest antiquity and universality, how account for its signs being traced in the oldest theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt struck with amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others being related to the days of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in Northern Europe. "Try, if you can, with the present system of autochthonous civilizations, so much in fashion in our day, to explain how nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace in common, could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial phantasmagoria, a veritable imbroglio of sidereal denominations, without sequence or object, having no figurative relation with the constellations they represent, and still less, apparently , with the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to signify," had there not been a general intention and a universal cause and belief, at the root of all this? ( Pneumatologie , Vol. IV ., p. 61.) Most truly has Dupuis asserted the same: "Il est impossible de decouvrir le moindre trait de ressemblance entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes y ont arbitrairement tracees, et de l'autre cote; le hazard est impossible ," he says. ( Origine des Cultes , "Zodiaque.") [[Vol. 1, Page]] 653 THE SIGN OF JONAS. Most certainly chance is " impossible. " There is no "chance" in Nature, wherein everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its units. "Chance," says Coleridge, "is but the pseudonym of God (or Nature), for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with His sign manual." Replace the word "God" by that of Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom. Therefore, the sidereal "prophecies" of the zodiac, as they are called by Christian mystics, never point to any one particular event, however solemn and sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to ever-recurrent, periodical laws in nature, understood but by the Initiates of the sidereal gods themselves. No occultist, no astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with Christian mystics, or even with Kepler's mystical astronomy, his great science and erudition notwithstanding; simply because, if his premises are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one-sided and biassed by Christian preconceptions. Where the latter finds a prophecy directly pointing at the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law decreed for the actual manvantara. Why see in the Pisces a direct reference to Christ -- one of the several world-reformers, a Saviour but for his direct followers, but only a great and glorious Initiate for all the rest -- when that constellation shines as a symbol of all the past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? Christian symbologists have tried to prove that it was that of Ephraim (Joseph's son), the elect of Jacob, that therefore, it was at the moment of the Sun entering into the sign of the Fish ( Pisces ) that "the Elect Messiah, the [[ Ichthus ]] of the first Christians, had to be born.