Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00701)

Dear Steven”

Also see the passages I italicized herein


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ON THE NEW YEAR'S MORROW





by H. P. Blavatsky







The veil which covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand
of Mercy.
 
--Bulwer-Lytton


A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

This seems easy enough to say, and everyone expects some such
greeting. Yet, whether the wish, though it may proceed from a
sincere heart, is likely to be realized even in the case of the
few--is more difficult to decide.

According to our theosophical tenets, every man or woman is
endowed, more or less, with a magnetic potentiality, which when
helped by a sincere, and especially by an intense and indomitable
will--is the most effective of magic levers placed by Nature in
human hands--for woe as for weal.

Let us then, Theosophists, use that will to send a sincere
greeting and a wish of good luck for the New Year to every living
creature under the sun--enemies and relentless traducers
included. Let us try and feel especially kindly and forgiving to
our foes and persecutors, honest or dishonest, lest some of us
should send unconsciously an "evil eye" greeting instead of a
blessing. Such an effect is but too easily produced even without
the help of the occult combination of the two numbers, the 8 and
the 9, of the late departed, and of the newly-born year. But with
these two numbers staring us in the face, an evil wish, just now,
would be simply disastrous!

"Hulloo!" we hear some casual readers exclaiming. "Here's a new
superstition of the theosophic cranks: let us hear it. . . ."

You shall, dearly beloved critics, though it is not a new but a
very old superstition. It is one shared, once upon a time, and
firmly believed in, by all the Caesars and World-potentates.
These dreaded the number 8, because it postulates the equality of
all men. Out of eternal unity and the mysterious number seven,
out of Heaven and the seven planets and the sphere of the fixed
stars, in the philosophy of arithmetic, was born the ogdoad. It
was the first cube of the even numbers, and hence held sacred. In
Eastern philosophy number eight symbolises equality of units,
order and symmetry in heaven, transformed into inequality and
confusion on earth, by selfishness, the great rebel against
Nature's decrees.

"The figure 8 or --- indicates the perpetual and regular motion
of the Universe," says Ragon. But if perfect as a cosmic number
it is likewise the symbol of the lower Self, the animal nature of
man. Thus, we augur ill for the unselfish portion of humanity
from the present combination of the year-numbers. For the central
figures 89 in the year 1890, are but a repetition of the two
figures in the tail-end of 1889.

And nine [ 9 ] was a digit terribly dreaded by the ancients. With
them it was a symbol of great changes, cosmic and social, and of
versatility, in general; the sad emblem of the fragility of human
things.

Figure 9 represents the earth under the influence of an evil
principle; the Kabalists holding, moreover, that it also
symbolises the act of reproduction and generation. That is to say
that the year 1890 is preparing to reproduce all the evils of its
parent 1889, and to generate plenty of its own. Three times three
is the great symbol of corporisation, or the materialisation of
spirit according to Pythagoras--hence of gross matter. Every
material extension, every circular line was represented by number
9, for the ancient philosophers had observed that, which the
philosophicules of our age either fail to see, or else attribute
to it no importance whatever. Nevertheless, the natural depravity
of this digit and number is awful. Being sacred to the spheres it
stands as the sign of circumference, since its value in degrees
is equal to 9--i.e., to 3+6+0.

Hence it is also the symbol of the human head--especially of the
modern average head, ever ready to be parading as 9 when it is
hardly a 3. Moreover, this blessed 9 is possessed of the curious
power of reproducing itself in its entirety in every
multiplication and whether wanted or not; that is to say, when
multiplied by itself or any other number this cheeky and
pernicious figure will always result in a sum of 9--a vicious
trick of material nature, also, which reproduces itself on the
slightest provocation. Therefore it becomes comprehensible why
the ancients made of 9 the symbol of Matter, and we, the modern
Occultists, make of it that of the materialism of our age--the
fatal nineteenth century, now happily on its decline.

If this antediluvian wisdom of the ages fails to penetrate the
"circumference" of the cephaloid "spheres" of our modern
Scientists and Mathematicians--then we do not know what will do
so. The occult future of 1890 is concealed in the exoteric past
of 1889 and its preceding patronymical eight years.

________________


Unhappily--or shall we say, happily--man in this dark cycle is
denied, as a collective whole, the faculty of foresight. Whether
we take into our mystic consideration the average business man,
the profligate, the materialist, or the bigot, it is always the
same.

Compelled to confine his attention to the day's concern, the
business man but imitates the provident ant by laying by a
provision against the winter of old age; while the elect of
fortune and Karmic illusions tries his best to emulate the
grasshopper in his perpetual buzz and summer-song. The selfish
care of the one and the utter recklessness of the other make both
disregard and often remain entirely ignorant of any serious duty
towards Human kind. As to the latter two, namely the materialist
and the bigot, their duty to their neighbours and charity to all
begin and end at home. Most men love but those who share their
respective ways of thinking, and care nothing for the future of
the races or the world; nor will they give a thought, if they can
help it, to post-mortem life.

Owing to their respective psychical temperaments each man expects
death will usher him either through golden porches into a
conventional heaven, or through sulphurous caverns into an
asbestos hell, or else to the verge of an abyss of non-existence.
And lo, how all of them--save the materialist--do fear death to
be sure! May not this fear lie at the bottom of the aversion of
certain people to Theosophy and Metaphysics? But no man in this
century--itself whirling madly towards its gaping tomb--has the
time or desire to give more than a casual thought either to the
grim visitor who will not miss one of us, or to Futurity.

They are, perhaps, right as to the latter. The future lies in the
present and both include the Past.

With a rare occult insight Rohel made quite an esoterically true
remark, in saying that "the future does not come from before to
meet us, but comes streaming up from behind over our heads." For
the Occultist and average Theosophist the Future and the Past are
both included in each moment of their lives, hence in the eternal
PRESENT.

The Past is a torrent madly rushing by, that we face incessantly,
without one second of interval; every wave of it, and every drop
in it, being an event, whether great or small. Yet, no sooner
have we faced it, and whether it brings joy or sorrow, whether it
elevates us or knocks us off our feet, than it is carried away
and disappears behind us, to be lost sooner or later in the great
Sea of Oblivion. It depends on us to make every such event
non-existent to ourselves by obliterating it from our memory; or
else to create of our past sorrows Promethean Vultures--those
"dark-winged birds, the embodied memories of the Past," which, in
Sala's graphic fancy wheel and shriek over the “Lethean lake."

In the first case, we are real philosophers; in the second--but
timid and even cowardly soldiers of the army called mankind, and
commanded in the great battle of Life by "King Karma." Happy
those of its warriors by whom Death is regarded as a tender and
merciful mother. She rocks her sick children into sweet sleep on
her cold, soft bosom but to awake them a moment after, healed of
all ailing, happy, and with a tenfold reward for every bitter
sigh or tear. Post-mortem oblivion of every evil--to the
smallest--is the most blissful characteristic of the "paradise"
we believe in.

Yes: oblivion of pain and sorrow and the vivid recollection only,
nay once more the living over of every happy moment of our
terrestrial drama; and, if no such moment ever occurred in one's
sad life, then, the glorious realization of every legitimate,
well-earned, yet unsatisfied desire we ever had, as true as life
itself and intensified seventy-seven times sevenfold. . . .
__________

Christians--the Continental especially--celebrate their New Year
days with special pomp. That day is the Devachan of children and
servants, and every one is supposed to be happy, from Kings and
Queens down to the porters and kitchen-malkins. The festival is,
of course, purely pagan, as with very few exceptions are all our
holy days. The dear old pagan customs have not died out, not even
in Protestant England, though here the New Year is no longer a
sacred day--more's the pity. The presents, which used to be
called in old Rome strenœ (now, the French étrennes), are still
mutually exchanged. People greet each other with the words: Annum
novum faustum felicemque tibi, as of yore; the magistrates, it is
true, sacrifice no longer a white swan to Jupiter, nor priests a
white steer to Janus. But magistrates, priests and all devour
still in commemoration of swan and steer, big fat oxen and
turkeys at their Christmas and New Year's dinners. The gilt
dates, the dried and gilt plums and figs have now passed from the
hands of the tribunes on their way to the Capitol unto the
Christmas trees for children. Yet, if the modern Caligula
receives no longer piles of copper coins with the head of Janus
on one side of them, it is because his own effigy replaces that
of the god on every coin, and that coppers are no longer touched
by royal hands. Nor has the custom of presenting one's Sovereigns
with strenœ been abolished in England so very long. D'Israeli
tells us in his Curiosities of Literature of 3,000 gowns found in
Queen Bess's wardrobe after her death, the fruits of her New
Year's tax on her faithful subjects, from Dukes down to dustmen.
As the success of any affair on that day was considered a good
omen for the whole year in ancient Rome, so the belief exists to
this day in many a Christian country, in Russia pre-eminently so.
Is it because instead of the New Year, the mistletoe and the
holly are now used on Christmas day, that the symbol has become
Christian? The cutting of the mistletoe off the sacred oak on New
Year's day is a relic of the old Druids of pagan Britain.
Christian Britain is as pagan in her ways as she ever was.

But there are more reasons than one why England is bound to
include the New Year as a sacred day among Christian festivals.
The 1st of January being the 8th day after Christmas, is,
according to both profane and ecclesiastical histories, the
festival of Christ's circumcision, as six days later is the
Epiphany. And it is as undeniable and as world-known a fact as
any, that long before the advent of the three Zoroastrian Magi,
of Christ's circumcision, or his birth either, the 1st of January
was the first day of the civil year of the Romans, and celebrated
2,000 years ago as it is now.

It is hard to see the reason, since Christendom has helped itself
to the Jewish Scriptures, and along with them their curious
chronology, why it should have found it unfit to adopt also the
Jewish Rosh-Hashonah (the head of the year), instead of the pagan
New Year. Once that the 1st Chapter of Genesis is left headed in
every country with the words, "Before Christ, 4004," consistency
alone should have suggested the propriety of giving preference to
the Talmudic calendar over the pagan Roman. Everything seemed to
invite the Church to do so.

On the undeniable authority of revelation Rabbinical tradition
assures us that it was on the 1st day of the month of Tisri, that
the Lord God of Israel created the world--just 5,848 years ago.
Then there's that other historical fact, namely that our father
Adam was like wise created on the first anniversary of that same
day of Tisri--a year after. All this is very important,
pre-eminently suggestive, and underlines most emphatically our
proverbial western ingratitude. Moreover, if we are permitted to
say so, it is dangerous. For that identical first day of Tisri is
also called "Yom Haddin," the Day of Judgment. The Jewish El
Shaddai, the Almighty, is more active than the "Father" of the
Christians. The latter will judge us only after the destruction
of the Universe, on the Great Day when the Goats and the Sheep
will stand, each on their allotted side, awaiting eternal bliss
or damnation. But El Shaddai, we are informed by the Rabbins,
sits in judgment on every anniversary of the world's
creation--i.e. on every New Year's Day. Surrounded by His
archangels, the God of Mercy has the astro-sidereal minute books
opened, and the name of every man, woman and child is read to Him
aloud from these Records, wherein the minutest thoughts and deeds
of every human (or is it only Jewish?) being are entered. If the
good deeds outnumber the wicked actions, the mortal whose name is
read lives through that year. The Lord plagues for him some
Christian Pharaoh or two, and hands him over to him to shear. But
if the bad deeds outweigh the good--then woe to the culprit; he
is forthwith condemned to suffer the penalty of death during that
year, and is sent to Sheol.

This would imply that the Jews regard the gift of life as
something very precious indeed. Christians are as fond of their
lives as Jews, and both are generally scared out of their wits at
the approach of Death. Why it should be so has never been made
clear. Indeed, this seems but a poor compliment to pay the
Creator, as suggesting the idea that none of the Christians care
particularly to meet the Unspeakable Glory of the "Father' face
to face. Dear, loving children!
A pious Roman Catholic assured us one day that it was not so, and
attributed the scare to reverential awe. Moreover, he tried to
persuade his listeners that the Holy Inquisition burnt her
"heretics" out of pure Christian kindness. They were put out of
the way of terrestrial mischief in this way, he said, for Mother
Church knew well that Father God would take better care of the
roasted victims than any mortal authority could, while they were
raw and living. This may be a mistaken view of the situation,
nevertheless, it was meant in all Christian charity.

We have heard a less charitable version of the real reason for
burning heretics and all whom the Church was determined to get
rid of; and by comparison this reason colours the Calvinistic
doctrine of predestination to eternal bliss or damnation with
quite a roseate hue. It is said to be stated in the secret
records of the Vatican archives, that burning to the last atom of
flesh, after breaking all the bones into small fragments, was
done with a predetermined object. It was that of preventing the
"enemy of the Church," from taking his part and share even in the
last act of the drama of the world--as theologically
conceived--namely in "the Resurrection of the Dead," or of all
flesh, on the great Judgment Day. As cremation is to this hour
opposed by the Church on the same principle--to wit, that a
cremated "Sleeper" will upon awakening at the blast of the
angel's trumpet, find it impossible to gather up in time his
scattered limbs--the reason given for the auto da fé seems
reasonable enough and quite likely. The sea will give up the dead
which are in it, and death and hell will deliver up their dead
(Vide "Revelation" xx. 13); but terrestrial fire is not to be
credited with a like generosity, nor supposed to share in the
asbestosian characteristics of the orthodox hellfire. Once the
body is cremated it is as good as annihilated with regard to the
last rising of the dead. If the occult reason of the
inquisitorial autos da fé rests on fact--and personally we do not
entertain the slightest doubt of it, considering the authority it
was received from--then the Holy Inquisition and Popes would have
very little to say against the Protestant doctrine of
Predestination. The latter, as warranted in Revelation, allows
some chance, at least, to the "Damned" whom hell delivers at the
last hour, and who may thus yet be pardoned. While if things took
place in nature as the theology of Rome decreed that they should,
the poor "Heretics" would find themselves worse off than any of
the "damned." Natural query: which of the two, the God of the
Calvinists or the Jesuit of God, he who first invented burning,
beats the other in refined and diabolical cruelty? Shall the
question remain in 1890, sub judice, as it did in 1790?
__________

But the Inquisition, with its stake and rack and diabolical
tortures, is happily abolished now, even in Spain. Otherwise
these lines would never have been written; nor would our Society
have such zealous and good theosophists in the land of Torquemada
and the ancient paradise of man-roasting festivals, as it has
now. Happy NEW YEAR to them, too, as to all the Brethren
scattered all over the wide globe. Only we, theosophists, so
kindly nicknamed the "sevening lunatics," would prefer another
day for our New Year. Like the apostate Emperor, many of us have
still a strong lingering love for the poetical, bright gods of
Olympus and would willingly repudiate the double-faced
Thessalonian. The first of Januarius was ever more sacred to
Janus than Juno; and janua, meaning "the gate that openeth the
year," holds as good for any day in January. January 3, for
instance, was consecrated to Minerva-Athene the goddess of wisdom
and to Isis, "she who generates life," the ancient lady patroness
of the good city of Lutetia. Since then, mother Isis has fallen a
victim to the faith of Rome and civilization. and Lutetia along
with her. Both were converted in the Julian calendar (the
heirloom of pagan Julius Cæsar used by Christendom till the
XIIIth century). Isis was baptized Geneviéve, became a beatified
saint and martyr, and Lutetia was called Paris for a change,
preserving the same old patroness but with the addition of a
false nose. 3 <http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT3>
Life itself is a gloomy masquerade wherein the ghastly danse
Macabre is every instant performed; why should not calendars and
even religion in such case be allowed to partake in the travesty?

To be brief, it is January the 4th which ought to be selected by
the Theosophists--the Esotericists especially--as their New Year.
January is under the sign of Capricornus, the mysterious Makara
of the Hindu mystics--the "Kumaras," it being stated, having
incarnated in mankind under the 10th sign of the Zodiac. For ages
the 4th of January has been sacred to Mercury-Budha, 4
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT4> or Thoth-Hermes.
Thus everything combines to make of it a festival to be held by
those who study ancient Wisdom. Whether called Budh or Budhi by
its Aryan name, Mercurios, the son of Cœlus and Hecate truly, or
of the divine (white) and infernal (black) magic by its Hellenic,
or again Hermes or Thoth its Greco-Egyptian name, the day seems
in every way more appropriate for us than January 1, the day of
Janus, the double-faced "god of the time"--servers. Yet it is
well named, and as well chosen to be celebrated by all the
political Opportunists the world over.

Poor old Janus! How his two faces must have looked perplexed at
the last stroke of midnight on December 31! We think we see these
ancient faces. One of them is turned regretfully toward the Past,
in the rapidly gathering mists of which the dead body of 1889 is
disappearing. The mournful eye of the God follows wistfully the
chief events impressed on the departed Annus: the crumbling
Eiffel tower; the collapse of the "monotonous"--as Mark Twain's
"tenth mule"--Parnell-Pigot alliteration; the sundry abdications,
depositions and suicides of royalty; the Hegira of aristocratic
Mahomeds, and such like freaks and fiascos of civilization. This
is the Janus face of the Past.

The other, the face of the Future, is enquiringly turned the
other way, and stares into the very depths of the womb of
Futurity; the hopeless vacancy in the widely open eye bespeaks
the ignorance of the God. No; not the two faces, nor even the
occasional four heads of Janus and their eight eyes can penetrate
the thickness of the veils that enshroud the karmic mysteries
with which the New Year is pregnant from the instant of its
birth. What shalt thou endow the world with, O fatal Year 1890
with thy figures between a unit and a cipher, or symbolically
between living man erect, the embodiment of wicked
mischief-making, and the universe of matter! ( 5
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT5> )

The "influenza" thou hast already in thy pocket, for people see
it peeping out. Of people daily killed in the streets of London
by tumbling over the electric wires of the new "lighting craze,"
we have already a premonition through news from America. Dost
thou see, O Janus, perched like "sister Anne" upon the parapet
dividing the two years, a wee David slaying the giant Goliath,
little Portugal slaying great Britain, or her prestige, at any
rate. on the horizons of the torrid zones of Africa? Or is it a
Hindu Soodra [Shudra] helped by a Buddhist Bonze from the Empire
of the Celestials who make thee frown so? Do they not come to
convert the two-thirds of the Anglican divines to the worship of
the azure coloured Krishna and of the Buddha of the elephant-like
pendant ears, who sits cross-legged and smiles so blandly on a
cabbage-like lotus? For these are the theosophical ideals--nay,
Theosophy itself, the divine Wisdom--as distorted in the grossly
materialistic, all-anthropomorphizing mind of the average British
Philistine.

What unspeakable new horrors shalt thou, O year 1890, unveil
before the eyes of the world? Shall it though ironclad and
laughing at every tragedy of life sneer too, when Janus, surnamed
on account of the key in his right hand, Janitor, the door-keeper
to Heaven--a function with which he was entrusted ages before he
became St. Peter--uses that key? It is only when he has unlocked
one after the other door of every one of the 365 days (true "Blue
Beard's secret chambers") which are to become thy future progeny,
O mysterious stranger, that the nations will be able to decide
whether thou wert a "Happy," or a Nefast Year.

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Hope this is helpful

Dal


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