Theos-Talk Archives (December 2011 Message tt00064)

Solstices and Equinoxes

   Today (last night here), Dec. 22 is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, with the Earth's 23 1/2 degree axis tilted farthest from the sun, and just the opposite in the southern hemisphere.  Tradition gives the solstices and equinoxes some indefinite spiritual and mystical significance, and the world is circled with ruins of ancient structures with allignments to the solstices and equinoxes.  Part of the reason was commercial - groups had to keep track of shared dates in order to know when to meet to trade, but the religious significance of these dates isn't just based on some instinctual and primitive sun-worship.  According to Theosophy the universe is manifested and evolved according to mathematical and geometrical rules, and what occurs in the physical world is ultimately a reflection of these principles of manifestation.  The midpoints and apexes of the Soltices and Equinoxes have special mathematical and geometric 
significances, they are special times of correlations and events in the inner worlds from which this world springs from.  Blavatsky writes:
   "....'the events of humanity _do_ run co-ordinately with the number forms,' since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same source - the _central_ and its _shadow,_ the visible SUN.  For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the Solar course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, though they do seem _abstract ideas_ to uninitiated mortals.  And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations, as shown by several authors."  (S.D. I, p. 639, orig. ed.)

                                           - jake j.


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