Page 48 (part 4)

But, if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah -- was he really born at that "moment," or was he made to be so born by the adaptation of theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal facts and popular belief? Everyone knows that the real time and year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the Jews, whose forefathers have made the word Dag signify both "fish" and "Messiah," who, during the forced development of their rabbinical language, are the first to deny this Christian claim. And what of the further facts that Brahmins also connect their "Messiah," the eternal Avatar Vishnu, with a fish and the Deluge, and that the Babylonians made of their Dag - On , equally a fish and a Messiah, the Man-Fish and Prophet? There are those learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that "when the Pharisees sought a ' sign from heaven ' Jesus said, ' there shall no sign be given but the sign of Jonas ' (Mat. xvi. 4). . . . . The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or fishman of Nineveh. . . . . Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the Sun reborn in Pisces. The [[Vol. 1, Page]] 654 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. voice of the Secret Wisdom says those who are looking for signs can have no other than that of the returning fish-man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas -- who could not be made flesh." It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the moment of the "incarnation," all the planets were in conjunction in the sign of Pisces , called by the Jews (the Kabalists) the "constellation of the Messiah." "It is in this constellation," he averred, "that was placed the star of the Magi. " This statement, quoted by Dr. Sepp ( Vie de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ , Vol. I. p. 9), emboldened him to remark that "all the Jewish traditions while announcing that star , that many nations have seen,"(!)* added that "it would absorb the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of various nations on this globe."** "In virtue of those natural prophecies," explains Dr. Sepp, "it was written in the stars of the firmament that the Messiah would be born in the lunar year of the world 4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of the planets would be feasting its jubilee." There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for claiming from the Hindus restoration of an alleged robbery from the Jews of their "gods," patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who had recognized Noah in Prithee and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in Iswara. Yet, after being residents for so many years in India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Hindus alone who had these figures, or who had divided their great age into four minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant speculations. "Christian theologians think it their duty to write against the long periods of Hindu chronology," argues very pertinently S. A. Mackey, the Norwich "philosopher, astronomer, and shoemaker." "But when a man of learning crucifies the names and numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists them into a form which means something quite foreign to the intention of the ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with the birth of some maggot pre-existing in his own brain with so much exactness that he pretends to be amazed at the discovery, I cannot think him quite so pardonable" ( Key of Urania ) . This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Whether many nations have seen that identical star, or not, we all know that the sepulchres of "the three Magi," who rejoice in the quite Teutonic names of Kaspar and Melchior, Balthazar being the only exception, and the two having little of the Chaldean ring in them -- are shown by the priests in the famous cathedral of Cologne, where the Magian bodies are not only supposed, but firmly believed to have been buried. ** This tradition about the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of nations, is based on the occult cosmogonical teaching that besides our own septenary chain of world-planets, there are many more in the solar system. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 655 CHALDEO-JUDEAN GODS. words may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. The former was the first to crown his unlucky speculations in Hindu chronology and the Puranas by connecting the 4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years (the supposed lunar year of the Nativity), and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, as well as a Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Aryans of having helped themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas it was the reverse. The Jews, moreover, need not be accused of despoiling the Hindus, of whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and undeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 432,000 years of the Chaldean divine Dynasties* they made 4,320 lunar years from the world's creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they transformed them as quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon (common once to all) of universal, into national, tribal gods and Heroes. It was their property in its new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it upon any other nation -- least of all upon Europeans. Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we may make a few remarks that may be found to the point. These figures of 4,320 lunar years of the world (in the Bible the solar years are used) are not fanciful, as such, even if their application is quite erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive esoteric, and later on Brahminical doctrine concerning the Yugas.