"If the fourth (paroxysm) be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and .
.
.
change for the better .
.
.
will be seen on the fourteenth day , [[footnote continued on following page]] [[Vol.
2, Page]] 623 THE SEPTENATE IN PHYSIOLOGY.
To all of which Mr.
Grattan Guinness, the author of "The Approaching End of the Age," says very pertinently, as he defends Biblical Chronology, "And man's life .
.
.
is a week, a week of decades.
'The days of our years are threescore years and ten.' Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic mature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks " (p.
269).
Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned Founder of "the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions," the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the occult chronology of the Bible.
Just as, while rejecting the theories and hypotheses of modern Science and its generalizations, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the physical, or in all the minor details of material nature.
There is most assuredly an occult "chronological system in Hebrew Scripture" -- the Kabala being its warrant; there is in it "a system of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Continued from previous page]] namely, about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most languid." (See "Approaching End of the Age," by Grattan Guinness, pp.
258 to 269, wherein this is quoted.) This is pure "soothsaying" by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldean astrolatry and astrology.
Thus materialistic Science -- medicine, the most materialistic of all -- applies our occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists.
For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, icthyology and ornithology, as in the Kingdom of the Animal, mammalia and man -- why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development?
And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects?
Indeed, Dr.
Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that "in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower.
" ( Ibid.
Edinb.
Med.
and Surg.
Journal, Jan.
1843.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the planet and races?
Dr.
Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven.
He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that "The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours " ; and that "single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods.
This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrate.
" If Science does this, why should the latter scorn the Occult information, namely, that (speaking Dr.
Laycock's language) " one week of the manvantaric ( lunar ) fortnight, of fourteen days (or seven manus), that fortnight of twelve hours in a day representing seven periods or seven races -- is now passed?" This language of science fits our doctrine admirably.
We (mankind) have lived over " a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours, " since three and a half races are now gone for ever, the fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 624 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
weeks" -- which is based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.* And there are in it cycles of "the week of days," of the " week of months," of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, decamillenniums, and more, or "the week of years of years."** But all this can be found in the archaic doctrine.
And if this common source of the chronology in every Scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible, then the six days, and a Sabbath, the seventh, can hardly disconnect Genesis from the Puranic Cosmogonies.
For the first "Week of Creation" shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahma's "Seven Creations." The able volume from the pen of Mr.
Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected on some 760 pages every proof of that septiform calculation, is good evidence.
For if the Bible chronology is, as he says, "regulated by the law of weeks," and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days; and if, finally, "the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales," then this system is shown to be identical with all the pagan systems.
Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years (in lunar months) elapsed between "Creation" and the Nativity, is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 of the Hindu Yugas.
Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are pre-eminently Chaldean and Indo-Aryan, play such a part in the New Testament?
We shall prove it now still more forcibly.
Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts -- the Vishnu Purana and the Bible -- and he will find that the "seven creations" of Brahma are at the foundation of the "week" of creation in Genesis i .
The two allegories are different, but the systems are all built on the same foundation-stone.
The Bible can be understood only by the light of the Kabala.
Take the Zohar, the "Book of Concealed Mystery," however now disfigured, and compare.
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's central argument is that the same septenary law operates identically at every scale — from disease paroxysms to human life to cosmic evolution — making each level a legible map of the others.
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 argument that one law (septenary periodicity) binds together the lowest animals, man, and the cosmos in a single resonant system is a clear expression of hidden affinity linking all parts of the whole.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage directly discusses Genesis's 'Week of Creation' and Brahma's 'Seven Creations' as cosmogonic narratives sharing the same septenary foundation-stone.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage explicitly names 'evolution and involution (or death)' as processes controlled by the septenary cycle across all kingdoms of nature.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The passage explicitly connects human physiological rhythms (pulse, life periods, races) to cosmic and terrestrial cycles, treating the human as a small-scale image of the cosmic whole.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The passage is fundamentally about the mystical significance of the number seven and its multiples (14, 21, 28, 4320, 4320000) as the underlying structure of divine and natural reality.
The Hermetic doctrine of a measured swing or pendulum motion between poles — action and reaction, flow and outflow, rise and fall — operating in mental, physical, and cosmic-historical registers alike. Distinct from apocatastasis (cosmic-scale eschatological restoration after vast cycles) in naming a constant, ever-present oscillation rather than a singular restorative event.
The entire passage is devoted to the law of septiform periodicity, the 'pulse' of the planet, paroxysms, and cyclic completion in weeks, making rhythmic oscillation the dominant theme.