Page 48 (part 5)

A "Day" of Brahma equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also a "Night" of Brahma, or the duration of Pralaya, after which a new S UN rises trium- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Every scholar is aware, of course, that the Chaldeans claimed the same figures (432) or (432,000) for their divine dynasties as the Hindus do for their Mahayuga, namely, 4,320,000. Therefore has Dr. Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support Kepler and Wilford in their charge that the Hindus had borrowed them from the Christians, and the Chaldeans from the Jews, who, as claimed, expected their Messiah in the lunar year of the world 4,320!!! As these figures, according to ancient writers, were based by Berosus on the 120 Saroses -- each of the divisions meaning six neroses of 600 years each, making a sum total of 432,000 years -- they do not thus appear peremptory. But the pious professor of Munich undertook to explain them in the correct way. He claims to have solved the riddle by showing that "the saros being composed according to Pliny of 222 synodial months, to wit, 18 years 6/10," the calculator naturally fell back into the figures "given by Suidas," who affirmed that the 120 saroses made 2,222 sacerdotal and cyclic years, which equalled 1,656 solar years." ( Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ , Vol. II. , p. 417.) Suidas said nothing of the kind, and, if he had, he would prove little, if anything, by it. The neroses and saroses were the same thorn in the side of uninitiated ancient writers, as the apocalyptic 666 of the "great Beast" is in that of the modern, and they have found their unlucky Newtons as the latter figures have. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 656 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. phantly over a new manvantara , for the septenary chain it illuminates. The teaching had penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian era (see Isis Unveiled II. 132), and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon it their small cycle, though it received full expression only through the Christian chronologers of the Bible, who adopted it, as also the 25th of December, the day on which all the solar gods were said to have been incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was made to be born "the lunar year of the world 4,320?" The "Son of Righteousness and Salvation " had once more arisen and had dispelled pralayic darkness of chaos and non - being on the plane of our objective little globe and chain. Once the subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make the supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the Zodiacal exigencies and old traditions, though they had to be somewhat remodelled for the occasion. Thus what Kepler said, as a great astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognised the grand and universal importance of all such planetary conjunctions, "each of which" -- as he has well said -- "is a climacteric year of Humanity."* The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and importance on account of its certain great results -- in India and China as much as it has in Europe for the respective mystics of all those countries. And it is certainly no better now than a mere assumption to maintain that nature had only Christ in view, when building her (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark with the asterisk ( a ) the figure of Taurus , with no better or more valid proof of it being prophetic of the Verbum or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means "the ONE" and the FIRST, and that Christ was also the alpha or the ONE, then this "proof" may be shown strangely invalidated in more than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all events; further, all the Sun-gods had been mystically connected with that constellation (Taurus) -- Osiris, for instance -- and were all called by their respective votaries "the First." Then the compilers of the mystical epithets given to the Christian Saviour, were all more or less acquainted with [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The reader has to bear in mind that the phrase "climacteric year" has more than the usual significance, when used by Occultists and Mystics. It is not only a critical period, during which some great change is periodically expected, whether in human or cosmic constitution, but it likewise pertains to spiritual universal changes. The Europeans called every 63rd year "the grand climacteric," and perhaps justly supposed those years to be the years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9. But seven is the real scale of nature, in Occultism, and 7 has to be multiplied in quite a different way and method, unknown as yet to European nations. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 657 THE DRAGON AND THE BULL. the significance of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose that they should have arranged their claims so as to answer the mystic signs, than that the latter should have shone as a prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of the numberless generations that had gone before, and those to be born hereafter. "It is not simple chance," we are told, "that has placed in certain spheres, on a throne, the head of that bull ( Taurus ), trying to push away with the ansated cross on its horns, a Dragon; the more so, since this constellation of Taurus was called ' the great city of God and the mother of revelations ,' and also ' the interpreter of the divine voice ,' the Apis pacis of Hermoutis, in Egypt, which (as the patristic fathers would assure the world) preferred oracles that related to the birth of the Saviour" ( Pneumatologie , iv., 71). To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly , the ansated Egyptian cross, or tau , the Jaina cross, or Swastica, and the Christian cross have all the same meaning. Secondly , no peoples or nations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon that is given to it now. The serpent was the symbol of W ISDOM; and the Bull ( Taurus ) the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation.