17. Astrology-a

STELLA OS INFLEXUS Of ALL THE ARTS which have originated in ancient magian wisdom astrology is now the most misunderstood. No one believes any longer in the universal harmonies of Nature and in the necessary interconnection of all effects with all causes. Moreover, true astrology, that which derives from the unique and universal dogma of the Kabalah, became profaned among the Greeks and Romans of the decline. The doctrine of the seven spheres and the three mobiles, drawn primitively from the sephirotic decade; the character of the planets governed by angels, whose names have been changed into those of Pagan divinities; the influence of the spheres on one another; the destiny attached to numbers; the scale of proportion between the celestial hierarchies corresponding to the human hierarchies - all this has been materialized and degraded into superstition by genethliacal soothsayers and erectors of horoscopes during the decline and the Middle Ages. The restoration of astrology to its primitive purity would be, in a sense, the creation of an entirely new science; our present concern is only to indicate its first principles, with their more immediate and approximate consequences. We have said that the Astral Light receives and preserves the impressions of all visible things; it follows herefrom that the daily position of the heaven is reflected in this light, which, being the chief agent of life, operates the conception, gestation and birth of children by a sequence of apparatuses designed naturally to this end. Now, if this light be so prodigal of images as to impart the visible imprints of a maternal fantasy or appetite to the fruit of pregnancy, still more will it transmit to the plastic and indeterminate temperament of a newly-born child the atmospheric impressions and diverse influences which, in the entire planetary system, are consequent at a given moment upon such or such particular aspect of the stars. Nothing is indifferent in Nature: a stone more or a stone less upon a road may break or modify profoundly the destinies of the greatest men or even the largest empires; still more must the position of this or that star in the sky have an influence on the child who is born, and who enters by the very fact of his birth into the universal harmony of the sidereal world. The stars are bound to one another by the attractions which hold them in equilibrium and cause them to move with uniformity through space. From all spheres unto all spheres there stretch these indestructible networks of light, and there is no point upon any planet to which one of them is not attached. The true adept in astrology must give heed therefore to the precise time and place of the birth which is in question; then, after an exact calculation of the astral influences, it remains for him to compute the chances of estate, that is to say, the advantages or hindrances which the child must one day meet with by reason of position, relatives, inherited tendencies and hence natural proclivities, in the fulfilment of his destinies. Finally, he will have also to take into consideration human liberty and its initiative, should the child eventually come to be a true man and to isolate himself by strength of will from fatal influences and from the chain of destiny. It will be seen that we do not allow too much to astrology, but so much as we leave it is indubitable: it is the scientific and magical calculus of probabilities. Astrology is as ancient as astronomy, and indeed it is more ancient; all seers of lucid antiquity have accorded it their fullest confidence; and it is not for us to condemn and reject lightly anything which comes before us encompassed and supported by such imposing authorities. Long and patient observations, conclusive comparisons, frequently repeated experiments, must have led the old sages to their decisions, and to refute them the same labour must be undertaken from an opposite standpoint.