SOULS OF THE STARS—UNIVERSAL HELIOLATRY

In order to show that the Ancients have never “mistaken stars for Gods,” or Angels and the sun for the highest Gods and God, but have worshipped only the Spirit of all, and have reverenced the minor Gods supposed to reside in the sun and planets—the difference between these two worships has to be pointed out. Saturn, “the Father of Gods” must not be confused with his namesake—the planet of the same name with its eight moons and three rings. The two—though in one sense identical, as are, for instance, physical man and his soul—must be separated in the question of worship. This has to be done the more carefully in the case of the seven planets and their Spirits, as the whole formation of the universe is attributed to them in the Secret Teachings. The same difference has to be shown again between the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra-Sikhandin, “the bright-crested,” and the Rishis —the mortal Sages who appeared on earth during the Satya-Yuga. If all of these have been so far closely united in the visions of the seers of every age—the Bible seers included—there must have been a reason for it. Nor need one go back so far as into the periods of “superstition” and “unscientific fancies” to find great men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the eminent astronomer, in common with many other great men who believed that the heavenly bodies ruled favourably or adversely the fates of men and nations—fully credited besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies, even our own earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.
Le Couturier’s opinion is worthy of notice in this relation:

We are too inclined to criticize unsparingly everything concerning astrology and its ideas; nevertheless our criticism, to be one, ought at least to know, lest it should be proved aimless, what those ideas in truth are. And when among the men we thus criticize, we find such names as those of Regiomontanus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, etc., there is reason why we should be careful. Kepler was an astrologer by profession, and became an astronomer in consequence. He was earning his livelihood by genethliac figures, which, indicating the state of the heavens at the moment of the birth of individuals, were a means to which everyone resorted for

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horoscopes. That great man was a believer in the principles of astrology, without accepting all its foolish results.*

But astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a sinful science, and together with Occultism is tabooed by the Churches. It is very doubtful, however, whether mystic “star-worship” can be so easily laughed down as people imagine—at any rate by Christians. The hosts of Angels, Cherubs and Planetary Archangels are identical with the minor Gods of the Pagans. As to their “great Gods,” if Mars has been shown—on the admission of even the enemies of the Pagan astrologers—to have been regarded by the latter simply as the personified strength of the one highest impersonal Deity, Mercury being personified as its omniscience, Jupiter as its omnipotency, and so on, then the “superstition” of the Pagan has indeed become the “religion” of the masses of the civilized nations. For with the latter, Jehovah is the synthesis of the seven Elôhîm, the eternal centre of all those attributes and forces, the Alei of the Aleim, and the Adonai of the Adonim. And if with them Mars is now called St. Michael, the “strength of God,” Mercury Gabriel, the “omniscience and fortitude of the Lord,” and Raphael “the blessing or healing power of God,” this is simply a change of names, the characters behind the masks remaining the same.
[Nor are the pagans to be so despised for having adopted the names and numbers of their planets for the days of their week and their appellation (the Arabs calling their week tsaba to this day)—since it is hardly 200 years ago, that the Ausburgian Jesuits clamoured to be permitted to do the same.†
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* Musée des Sciences, p. 230.
† This pious and curious attempt was denounced some years since by Camille Flammarion, the French Astronomer. He shows two Ausburgian Jesuits, Schiller and Bayer, who felt quite anxious to change the names of the whole Sabaean host of the starry heavens, and worship them again under Christian names! Having anathematized the idolatrous sun worshippers for over fifteen centuries, the church now seriously proposed to continue heliolatry—to the letter, this time—as their idea was to substitute for pagan myths biblical and (in their ideas) real personages. They would have called the Sun, “Christ”; the Moon, “Virgin Mary”; Saturn “Adam”; Jupiter, “Moses”; Mars; “Joshua”; Venus, “John the Baptist”;
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Only as it was dangerous for their church, owing to reasons given in Appendix A of this chapter, to call them by the names of their “seven spirits,” they proposed the plan as given in the [last ¶ of this WMS. excerpt]. Yet they believe in these “seven spirits” all the same and notwithstanding they are identical Gods worshipped by the Sabaeans. They regard them as the Powers and representatives of God, his attributes, created by him for the purpose of manifesting himself through them. It thus follows that no astrologer or occultist should be tabooed by His Holiness or any of the faithful Sons of Rome, since it is admitted by every Roman Catholic that the seven spirits of the Presence are represented by an equal number of planets, the living Entities called Arch-angels having a right to being designated as “Star-Spirits” (Esprits-Etoiles), Anges des Planetes and Anges des Astres. (Des Esprits, p. 335, et seq., Vol. III.) The less so since Pope Pius the Vth (a saint) wrote in a Bull addressed to Spain when the star Worship was granted to it, the following: “One could never exalt too much the SEVEN RECTORS of the worlds, figured, (represented) by the SEVEN PLANETS . . . It is consoling for this century (XVIth) to see by the grace of god, the worship (cults) of the SEVEN FLAMING (ardentes) lights and their SEVEN STARS (astres) regaining all its lustre in the Christian Republic!”
The above is the textual translation from de Mirville’s Pneumatologie des Esprits (Vol. II, pp. 357-358) and therefore — no calumny.
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and Mercury, “Elias”. And very proper substitutes too, showing the great familiarity of the Catholic church with ancient Pagan and Kabalistic learning and its readiness perhaps, to at last confess the source whence came their own myths. For is not King Messiah the Sun, the Demiurge of the Sun-worshippers under various names? Is he not the Egyptian Osiris and the grecian Apollo? And what more appropriate name than Virgin Mary for the pagan Diana Astarte, “The Queen of Heaven”, against which Jeremiah exhausted a whole vocabulary of imprecations? Such an adoption would have been historically as well as religiously correct. “Two large plates were prepared”, says Flammarion (in one of the number of La Nature), and represented the Heavens with Popes, saints, martyrs and personages of the Old and New Testament completing this Christian Sabaeanism; the disciples of Loyola used every exertion to make this plan succeed.
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In that same century—namely in 1561—a special and privileged temple for the worship of the “Star-spirits,” the church of St. Mary of the Angels, was built at Rome. Paul IV had commissioned Michael Angelo to draw the plan in 1558, after a terrible epidemic of POSSESSION, that had spread all over the “Holy City,” and three years after, the Romans had their Birs Nimrud of the seven planets, whose Regents are known as the “seven eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth” (Zechar., IV, 10). They are most decidedly—the seven branches of the candlestick, the seven lamps of the sanctuary that St. Denys the Areopagite represents as placed in the hall of Supersubstantial Trinity—collocatos vestibulo supersubstantialis Trinitatis. (De divinis Nom., Ch. V).
And, as all the mysteries, from Trinity to upholstery, that exist in the Kingdom of heaven must be repeated in the church—“as above, so is it below”—says Hermes—“it is to these spirits that Rome dedicates her finest basilicas, and that the sovereign pontiffs honour by officiating in their temples certain days, surrounded with the seven candlesticks and the seven acolytes that we find again in all the pagan cults”—explains de Mirville. (Des Esprits V. II, 328.)]*
The Dalai-lama’s mitre has seven ridges in honour of the seven chief Dhyâni-Buddhas. In the funeral ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made to exclaim:

Salutation to you, O Princes, who stand in the presence of Osiris. . . . Send me the grace to have my sins destroyed, as you have done for the seven spirits who follow the Lord!†

Brahmâ’s head is ornamented with seven rays, and he is followed by the seven Rishis, in the seven Svargas. China has her seven Pagodas; the Greeks had their seven Cyclopes, seven Demiourgi, and the Mystery Gods, the seven Kabiri, whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn, and with the Jews, Jehovah. Now the latter Deity has become chief of all, the highest and the one
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* [The bracketed section above is from WMS. 173-179. – Compiler.]
† Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See Les Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 7th year, 1861.
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God, and his old place is taken by Mikael (Michael). He is the “Chief of the Host” (tsaba); the “Archistrategus of the Lord’s army”; the “Conqueror of the Devil”—Victor diaboli—and the “Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia,” he who slew the “Great Dragon.” Unfortunately astrology and symbology, having no inducement to veil old things with new masks, have preserved the real name of Mikael—“that was Jehovah”—Mikael being the Angel of the face of the Lord,* “the guardian of the planets,” and the living image of God. He represents the Deity in his visits to earth, for as it is well expressed in Hebrew, he is one -!,*/, who is as God, or who is like unto God. It is he who cast out the serpent.†
[“Mikael”—exclaims de Mirville in a fit of pious rapture, “Mi—ka—el . . . is the most brilliant star of all the Angelic order . . the guardian and defender of the CHRIST—SUN, so near his Master that several heretics, Calvin among others, have completely confused him with him” (that Master or Christ).‡ At the same time, reviling the God of the Nabatheans, Saturn, he calls him Le Dieu Mauvais, the “bad,” the wicked god, or Satan. . . . (WMS. 179)]
Mikael, being the regent of the planet Saturn, is—Saturn.§ His mystery-name is Sabbathiel, because he presides over the Jewish Sabbath, as also over the astrological Saturday. Once identified, the reputation of the Christian conqueror of the devil is in still greater danger from further identifications. Biblical angels are called Malakhim, the messengers between God (or rather the gods) and men. In Hebrew, +-/, Malach, is also “a King,” and Malech or Melech was likewise Moloch, or again Saturn, the Geb of Egypt, to whom Dies Saturni, or the Sabbath, was dedicated. The Sabaeans separated and distinguished the planet Saturn from its God far more than the
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* Isaiah lxiii, 9.
† Chap. xii of Revelation: “There was war in heaven, Mikael and his angels fought against the Dragon,” etc. (7) and the great dragon was cast out (9).
‡ See Pneumatologie des Esprits, Vol. II, p. 353.
§ He is also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of Venus.
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Roman Catholics do their angels from their stars; and the Kabalists make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the seventh work of magic.

In theological symbolism . . . Jupiter [the Sun] is the risen and glorious Savior, and Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of Moses,*

says Éliphas Lévi, who ought to know. Jehovah and the Savior, Saturn and Jupiter, being thus one, and Mikael being called the living image of God, it does seem dangerous for the Church to call Saturn, Satan—le dieu mauvais. However, Rome is strong in casuistry and will get out of this as she got out of every other identification, with glory to herself and to her own full satisfaction. Nevertheless all her dogmas and rituals seem like so many pages torn out from the history of Occultism, and then distorted.
[. . . And if, we are told, that “star” or angel-worship in Rome happened in days of old, in the XVIth century, and was abolished by the church—we say not at all and have the means of proving what we assert. We point to the year 1862, hardly twenty years ago. Most energetic efforts were made in those days by the whole Roman Catholic world, as at Rome, for the restoration of “Star and Angel worship”. The numerous and imposing associations formed in Italy, Bavaria and throughout all Germany for the re-establishment in Roman Catholic Europe of religious services in honour of our (Kabeirian and Kabalistic) seven spirit-planets— are well known to all, and need no corroboration. (WMS. 183)] . . The extremely thin partition that separates the Kabalistic and Chaldaean Theogony from the Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy is now confessed by at least one Roman Catholic writer. One can hardly believe one’s eyes in finding the following (the passages italicized by us should be carefully noticed):

One of the most characteristic features of our Holy Scriptures is the calculated discretion used in the enunciation of the mysteries less directly useful to salvation. . . . Thus, beyond those “myriads of myriads” of
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* Dogme et Rituel, ii, 116.
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angelic creatures just noticed* and all these prudently elementary divisions, there are certainly many others, whose very names have not yet reached us.† “For,” excellently says St. John Chrysostom, “there are doubtless, (sine dubio,) many other Virtues [celestial beings] whose denominations we are yet far from knowing. . . . The nine orders are not by any means the only populations in heaven, where, on the contrary, are to be found numberless tribes of inhabitants infinitely varied, and of which it would be impossible to give the slightest idea through human tongue. . . . Paul, who had learned their names, reveals to us their existence.” (De Incomprehensibili Natura Dei, Bk. IV.) . . . .
It would thus amount to a gross mistake to see merely errors in the Angelology of the Kabalists and Gnostics, so severely treated by the Apostle of the Gentiles, for his imposing censure reached only their exaggerations and vicious interpretations, and still more, the application of those noble titles to the miserable personalities of demoniacal usurpers.‡ Often nothing so resemble each other as the language of the judges and that of the convicts [of saints and Occultists]. One has to penetrate deeply into this dual study [of creed and profession] and what is still better, to trust blindly to the authority of the tribunal [the Church of Rome, of course] to enable oneself to seize precisely the point of the error. The Gnosis condemned by St. Paul remains, nevertheless, for him as for Plato the supreme knowledge of all truths, and of the Being par excellence, <cwo_greec> (Republ. Bk. VI). The Ideas, types, <cwo_greec> of the Greek philosopher, the Intelligences of Pythagoras, the aeons or emanations, the occasion of so much reproach to the first heretics, the Logos or Word, Chief of these Intelligences, the Demiourgos, the architect of the world under his father’s direction [of the Pagans], the unknown God, the En-soph, or the It of the Infinite [of the Kabalists], the angelical periods,§ the seven spirits, the Depths of Ahriman, the World’s Rectors, the Archontes of the air, the God of this world, the pleroma of the intelligences, down to Metatron the angel of the Jews, all this is found word for word, as so many truths, in the works of our greatest doctors, and in St. Paul.||
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* If enumerated, they will be found to be the Hindu “divisions” and choirs of Devas, and the Dhyâni-Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.
† But this fact has not prevented the Roman Church from adopting them all the same, accepting them from ignorant, though perchance sincere Church Fathers, who had borrowed them from Kabalists— Jews and Pagans.
‡ To call “usurpers” those who preceded the Christian Beings for whose benefit these same titles were borrowed, is carrying paradoxical anachronism a little too far!
§ Or the divine ages, the “days and years of Brahmâ.”
|| De Mirville, ii. 325, 326. So we say too. And this shows that it is to
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If an Occultist, eager to charge the Church with a numberless series of plagiarisms were to write the above, could he have written more strongly? And have we, or have we not, the right, after such a complete confession, to reverse the tables and to say of Roman Catholics and others what is said of the Gnostics and Occultists. “They used our expressions and rejected our doctrines.” For it is not the “promoters of the false Gnosis”—who had all those expressions from their archaic ancestors—who helped themselves to Christian expressions, but verily the Christian Fathers and Theologians, who helped themselves to our nest, and have tried ever since to soil it.
[All this is of a piece with the regular tactics of the Jesuits, who are, in fact, the Roman Catholic church, and not the Pope and Cardinals as is commonly supposed. We say the Jesuits are the Roman church in the sense that a parasite twining itself round a tree and living a vampire life upon it may be said to be the tree itself. This militant or Military Ecclesiasticism fastened itself upon Popery, because in its Subtle wisdom, it perceived in it the likeliest tool to enable it to carry out its vast designs of Universal dominion, in which its predecessors, the Knights Templars, so signally failed. Avoiding their mistakes, they have had a great, though not unalloyed success.* The attempt that is detailed above of substituting the material worship of the starry and Planetary Host is a more subtle device to bring the popular mind back to that state of ignorance and abject dependence upon priestly craft and domination which prevailed when the true Kabeiric and spiritual worship was perverted, corrupted and made gross, sensual and materialistic, in place of the Ancient Wisdom.
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the Kabalists and Magicians that the Church is indebted for her dogmas and names. Paul never condemned real Gnôsis, but the false one, now accepted by the Church.
* A proof of this has just come, as we were writing this statement. In the Daily News of March 29th, 1886, we find that “The General of the Jesuits has published the statistics of the Order, showing that it counts 2,500 missionaries, and that it can boast of having had 248 saints, 1,500 martyrs, 13 popes, 60 cardinals, 4,000 archbishops and bishops and 6,000 authors.” Evidently the Jesuits like to boast of these results.
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We need make no excuse to our readers for bringing in what may appear, at first sight, an apparent digression from the Secret Doctrine, which is now, to some extent being declared coram populo. The history of the Jesuits is intimately bound up with that of Occultism. It is that Protean and all pervading organisation which has, for its own purposes kept back the great truths of Occultism, making its name synonymous with charlatanism, fraud and demon worship. To this purpose was the Inquisition organised. Every imaginable device has been unscrupulously put in operation to keep the more secret laws of Nature entirely to themselves and the rest of the world in servile submission and fear. To use this knowledge and great power for such a purpose is necessarily a perversion of the laws of Nature and becomes what is known as BLACK MAGIC. When once the human mind has descended to this desecration of holy things and mental degradation, there is no crime too great or too black for it to commit. It can then contemplate the greatest human misery, individual or natural, caused by its machinations, with the utmost sang-froid and complacency, as they would upon a stepping stone to their advancement. The history of Jesuitism is the history of assassinations and poisonings, underhand dark plottings against Kings, Princes, Churches, States and solitary individuals who consciously or unconsciously cross their path. Many a maniac in a madhouse owes the calamities which drove him there to their contriving. Their horrifying Principles are described at length in Chap. VIII, Vol. II, of Isis Unveiled. With the Jesuits, Murder, Adultery, Perjury—are condoned. To gain his aim, a Jesuit may become an idolator, has a right to kill the husband of the wife, by him seduced, and a son to kill his father (see p. 363, Isis, Vol. II.) or even whom he (the Jesuit) regards as his calumniator.
We pretend not to give proofs of this as being inconsistant with the plan of this work. The reader who would want fresh instances is asked to turn to the “Appendix” of this INTRODUCTION and read On Jesuits and their Policy.* Besides
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* [Untraced under this title. Possibly re-titled Theosophy or Jesuitism?; see B.C.W. IX.]
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which, this military and despotic Ecclesiasticism has brought the art of secret crime to such perfection, that it is next to impossible to give the proofs necessary to satisfy the rigorous demands of either Legal or Mathematical Logic. It is a vulgar error to suppose that “murder will out” always. The average and ignorant criminal is, as a rule, found out and brought to justice. The more knowing instigators, and therefore the more guilty, mostly escape. If our readers will look into the history of the Jesuits as connected with that of Europe for the last 300 years and more, with an impartial mind, they will everywhere find the evidence leading up to the inference of what we assert. There is abundance to satisfy the Court of Equity residing in a well balanced and pure human mind.
It is to the Jesuits, unmistakably, that the millions of pagan-populations, the modern gentiles, owe the volumes of the Marquis de Mirville, who, under the inspiration of his superiors, makes short work of the Wisdom of the Ancients. But, we have said enough and shown sufficiently for our purposes that we, Occultists, could be hardly blamed for claiming our own property and showing our rights to it. (WMS. 187-91)]
The words above quoted will explain much to those who are searching for truth and for truth only. They will show the origin of certain rites in the Church inexplicable hitherto to the simple-minded, and will give the reason why such words as “Our Lord the Sun” were used in prayer by Christians up to the fifth and even sixth century of our era, and embodied in the Liturgy, until altered into “Our Lord, the God.” Let us remember that the early Christians painted Christ on the walls of their subterranean necropolises, as a shepherd in the guise of, and invested with all the attributes of Apollo, driving away the wolf, Fenris, who seeks to devour the Sun and his Satellites.