Theos-Talk Archives (February 2006 Message tt00629)

Blavatsky's comments on the appearances of avatars and cycles from the
"Collected Writings" follows.  After reading this article, I was appalled
that the Besant-Ledbeater team had attempted to claim a messianic return in
view of the cycles associated with events of this nature.  Blavatsky states
the case well in the article.  I had found significant associations of the
numbers "432" in the ancient pyramid center at Teotihuacan and questioned
their repetitive use before reading the article.  After reading this
article, I made initial forays into the fundamental counts of the Vedic
calendar as it relates to appearances of avataras but didn't come up with
much in terms of the numbers.  Tremendous controversy about some dates
exists among Vedic scholars, however, Blavatsky and T. Subba Row provided
some great insights in commentaries on the Vedantas.  Best regards,  Krsanna
Duran

	CYCLES AND AVATARAS
	(H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, Volume 14)

	We have already drawn attention to the facts that the record of the
life of a World-Savior is emblematical, and must be read by its mystic
meaning, and that the figures 432 have a cosmic evolutionary significance.
We find these two facts throwing light on the origin of the exoteric
Christian religion, and clearing away much of the obscurity surrounding its
beginnings. For is it not clear that the names and characters in the
Synoptical Gospels and in that of St. John are not historical? Is it not
evident that the compilers of the life of Christ, desirous to show that the
birth of their Master was a cosmic, astronomical, and divinely-pre-ordained
event, attempted to coordinate the same with the end of the secret cycle,
4,320? When facts are collated this answers to them as little as does the
other cycle of "thirty-three solar years, seven months, and seven days,"
which has also been brought forward as supporting the same claim, the
soli-lunar cycle in which the Sun gains on the Moon one solar year. The
combination of the three figures, 4, 3, 2, with ciphers according to the
cycle and Manvantara concerned, was, and is, pre-eminently Hindu. It will
remain a secret even though several of its significant features are
revealed. It relates, for instance, to the Pralaya of the races in their
periodical dissolution, before which event a special Avatâra has always to
descend and incarnate on earth. These figures were adopted by all the older
nations, such as those of Egypt and Chaldaea, and before them were current
among the Atlanteans. Evidently some of the more learned among the early
Church Fathers who had dabbled, whilst Pagans, in temple secrets, knew them
to relate to the Avatâric or Messianic Mystery, and tried to apply this
cycle to the birth of their Messiah; they failed because the figures relate
to the respective ends of the Root-Races and not to any individual. In their
badly-directed efforts, moreover, an error of five years occurred. Is it
possible, if their claims as to the importance and universality of the event
were correct, that such a vital mistake should have been allowed to creep
into a chronological computation pre-ordained and traced in the heavens by
the finger of God? Again, what were the Pagan and even Jewish Initiates
doing, if this claim as to Jesus be correct? Could they, the custodians of
the key to the secret



	354                              BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS


	cycles and Avatâras, the heirs of all the Âryan, Egyptian, and
Chaldaean wisdom, have failed to recognize their great "God-Incarnate," one
with Jehovah,* their Savior of the latter days, him whom all the nations of
Asia still expect as their Kalki-Avatâra, Maitreya-Buddha, Saoshyant,
Messiah, etc.?
	 The simple secret is this: There are cycles within greater cycles,
which are all contained in the one Kalpa of 4,320,000 years. It is at the
end of this cycle that the Kalki-Avatâra is expected-the Avatâra whose name
and characteristics are secret, who will come forth from Sambhala, the "City
of Gods," which is in the West for some nations, in the East for others, in
the North or South for yet others. And this is the reason why, from the
Indian Rishi to Virgil, and from Zoroaster down to the latest Sibyl, all
have, since the beginning of the Fifth Race, prophesied, sung, and promised
the cyclic return of the Virgin-Virgo, the constellation-and the birth of a
divine child who should bring back to our earth the Golden Age. 
	No one, however fanatical, would have sufficient hardihood to
maintain that the Christian era has ever been a return to the Golden
Age-Virgo having actually entered into Libra since then. Let us trace as
briefly as possible the Christian traditions to their true origin.
	First of all, they discover in a few lines from Virgil a direct
prophecy of the birth of Christ. Yet it is impossible to detect in this
prophecy any feature of the present age. It is in the famous fourth Eclogue
in which, half a century before our era, Pollio is made to ask the Muses of
Sicily to sing to him about greater events.
	----------
	* In the 1,326 places in the New Testament where the word "God" is
mentioned nothing signifies that in God are included more beings than God.
On the contrary in 17 places God is called the only God. The places where
the Father is so called amount to 320. In 105 places God is addressed with
high-sounding titles. In 90 places all prayers and thanks are addressed to
the Father; 300 times in the New Testament is the Son declared to be
inferior to the Father; 85 times is Jesus called the "Son of Man"; 70 times
is he called a man. In not one single place in the Bible is it said that God
holds within him three different Beings or Persons, and yet is one Being or
Person.-Dr. Karl von Bergen's Lectures in Sweden.
	----------



	CARL FREDRIC VON BERGEN
	1838-1897



	CYCLES AND AVATÂRAS                                    355


	The last era of Cumaean song is now arrived and the grand series of
ages [that series which recurs again and again in the course of our mundane
revolution] begins afresh. Now the Virgin Astraea returns, and the reign of
Saturn recommences. Now a new progeny descends from the celestial realms. Do
thou, chaste Lucina, smile propitious to the infant Boy who will bring to a
close the present Age of Iron,* and introduce throughout the whole world the
Age of Gold. . . . He shall share the life of Gods and shall see heroes
mingled in society with Gods, himself to be seen by them and all the
peaceful world. . . . Then shall the herds no longer dread the huge lion,
the serpent also shall die, and the poison's deceptive plant shall perish.
Come then, dear child of the Gods, great descendant of Jupiter! . . . The
time is near. See, the world is shaken with its globe saluting thee: the
earth, the regions of the sea, and the heavens sublime.?

	It is in these few lines, called the "Sibylline prophecy about the
coming of Christ," that his followers now see a direct foretelling of the
event. Now who will presume to maintain that either at the birth of Jesus or
since the establishment of the so-called Christian religion, any portion of
the above-quoted sentences can be shown as prophetic? Has the "last age"-the
Age of Iron, or Kali-Yuga-closed since then? Quite the reverse, since it is
shown to be in full sway just now, not only because the Hindus use the name,
but by universal personal experience. Where is that "new race that has
descended from the celestial realms"? Or is it our present race, with
nations ever red-hot for fight, jealous and envious, ready to pounce upon
each other, showing mutual hatred that would put to blush cats and dogs,
ever lying and deceiving one another? Is it this age of ours that is the
promised "Golden Age"-in which neither the venom of the serpent nor of any
plant is any longer lethal, and in which we are all secure under the mild
sway of God-chosen sovereigns? The wildest fancy of an opium-eater could
hardly suggest a more inappropriate description, if it is to be applied to
our age or to any age since the year one of our era. What of the mutual
slaughter of sects, of Christians by Pagans, and of Pagans and Heretics by
Christians; the horrors of the Middle Ages and
	----------
	* Kali-Yuga, the Black or Iron Age.
	? Virgil, Eclogue, iv.
	----------



	356                              BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS


	of the Inquisition; Napoleon, and since his day, an "armed peace" at
best-at the worst, torrents of blood, shed for supremacy over acres of land,
and a handful of heathen: millions of soldiers under arms, ready for battle;
a diplomatic body playing at Cains and Judases; and instead of the "mild
sway of a divine sovereign " the universal, though unrecognised, sway of
Caesarism, of "might" in lieu of "right," and the breeding therefrom of
anarchists, socialists, pétroleuses, and destroyers of every description? 
	The Sibylline prophecy and Virgil's inspirational poetry remain
unfulfilled in every point, as we see.

	 The fields are yellow with soft ears of corn;

	but so they were before our era:

	 The blushing grapes shall hang from the rude brambles, and dewy
honey shall [or may] distil from the rugged oak;

	but they have not thus done, so far. We must look for another
interpretation. What is it? The Sibylline Prophetess spoke, as thousands of
other Prophets and Seers have spoken, though even the few such records that
have survived are rejected by Christian and infidel, and their
interpretations are only allowed and accepted among the Initiated. The Sibyl
alluded to cycles in general and to the great cycle especially. Let us
remember how the PurâSas corroborate the above, among others the
VishSu-PurâSa.

	 When the practices taught by the Vedas, and the Institutes of Law
shall have nearly ceased, and the close of the Kali-age [-Yuga, the "Iron
Age" of Virgil] shall be nigh, a portion of that divine Being who exists, of
his own spiritual nature, in the character of Brahmâ and who is the
beginning and the end [Alpha and Omega], . . . shall descend upon earth: he
will be born in the family of VishSuya�as,-an eminent Brâhman of ®ambhala. .
. . endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. By his irresistible might
he will destroy . . . all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. He will then
re-establish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at
the end of the [Kali] Age shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as
crystal.* The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time
	----------
	* At the close of our Race, people, it is said, through suffering
and discontent, will become more spiritual. Clairvoyance will become a
general faculty. We shall be approaching the spiritual state of the Third
and Second Races.
	----------



	CYCLES AND AVATÂRAS                                       357


	shall be as the seeds of human beings [the ®istha, the survivors of
the future cataclysm], and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the
laws of the K�ita [or Satya]-Yuga [the age of purity, or the "Golden Age"].
As it is said: "When the sun and moon and Tishya [asterisms] and the planet
Jupiter are in one mansion the K�ita Age [the Golden] shall return. * 
	The astronomical cycles of the Hindus-those taught publicly - have
been sufficiently well understood, but the esoteric meaning thereof, in its
application to transcendental subjects connected with them, has ever
remained a dead-letter. The number of cycles was enormous; it ranged from
the Mahâ-Yuga cycle of 4,320,000 years down to the small septenary and
quinquennial cycles, the latter being composed of the five years called
respectively the Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idvatsara, Anuvatsara, and
Udravatsara, each having secret attributes or qualities attached to them.
V�iddhagarga gives these in a treatise, now the property of a
Trans-Himâlayan Matha (or temple); and describes the relation between this
quinquennial and the Brihaspati cycle, based on the conjunction of the Sun
and Moon every sixtieth year: a cycle as mysterious-for national events in
general and those of the Âryan Hindu nation especially-as it is important.
	----------
	* VishSu PurâSa, IV, ch. xxiv., 228-29. Wilson's translation.
[London: Trubner & Co., 1868.]
	----------




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