Theos-Talk Archives (December 2005 Message tt00378)

December 31, 2005

Dear Friends:

The following may prove of interest to you - as a response to a comment made
below:

Best wishes to all of you for 2006

Dallas

----------------------------------------

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 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 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)

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. 


 
=============================================


-----Original Message-----
From: arhat_buddhism
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 8:41 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Kindly:

The six are: senses.
The nine are: worlds.

> __________________________
> 
> King of Night number is 6 or 9, 9 or six.
> What is the Six?
> What is the Nine?
> 
> --- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, samblo@c... wrote:
> >