This is Blavatsky's second article on the New Year for 1890, written for a French Theosophical magazine. It continues the same themes of comparing pagan customs with Christian ones. She might have consulted La messe et ses mystères comparés aux mystères anciens, Jean Marie Ragon, E. Dentu, 1882 -464 pages, the end section which is an astrological comparison of ancient pagan feasts compared to modern Christian traditions.
THOUGHTS ON THE NEW YEAR AND
THE FALSE NOSES
[La Revue Théosophique. Paris, Vol. II, No. 11, January 21,
1890, pp. 193-98] [Translation of the foregoing original French text. Collected Writings, Vol. 12, pp. 99-102]
Hail, 1890!
“Annum novum faustum felicemque tibi!”
Such was the sacramental phrase on the lips of all Gentiles, great or
lowly, rich or poor, during the day of the first of January, centuries
before the Christian era; and we hear it even today, especially in
Paris. This mutual greeting was exchanged on that day throughout the
length and breadth of the Roman Empire. It awoke the echoes in the palaces of Caesars,
made cheerful the poor hovel of the slave, and soared to the clouds in
the spacious open galleries of the Colosseum, at the Capitol and the
Forum, everywhere under the blue sky of Rome. On that day, everybody
assumed, in honor of the double-faced Janus, a more or less prominent
false nose of goodness, frank cordiality and sincerity.
“May the New Year bring you happiness and prosperity!” —we say to
everyone of our readers. “Let it be light to you,” we say to our enemies
and traducers. Brothers—we say to Theosophists in every part of the
world—Brothers, let us discard, at least for today, all our respective
false noses, in order to wish each other health and success, and,
especially, a little more cordial mutual understanding than in the year
1889, now happily defunct.
However, whether we repeat the old Latin formula one way or another,
in French or in English, it will never be but a variation of the ancient
pagan phrase. For the New Year, as well as every other festival, is but
a legacy to the Christian people from the worshippers of the Olympian
gods. Let us, by all means, exchange wishes and gifts (étrennes), but
let us not be ungrateful, Theosophists! Let us not forget that these
customs come to us from paganism; and that felicitations and gifts also
came to us from the same source.
As a matter of fact, gifts (étrennes) are but the strenae, the
presents exchanged by the Latins on the first of January,* the day that
opened the New Year. As everybody does or does not know—which is all the
same to me—this day was consecrated to Janus, who gave his name to the
month of Januarius or January, and even to the Saint of that name, the
patron of Naples and of its lazzarone [beggars]. But, after all, this
amiable Saint is but one of the false noses of the god Bifrons. The old
pagan was called in his early youth Diaus, after his Vedic name, the
beautiful god of the day and of light. Having immigrated to Thessaly, and thence to Italy, where he established himself in the little
hamlet of Janiculum, on the Tiber, latinizing his name and becoming
Dianus, god of light (whence Diana). His false noses were many, and
history has lost count of them. However, since those days he has let
himself be converted. Thus it is that for more than eighteen centuries,
having replaced his latest and more modest false nose with a more
respectable, if not more impenetrable, mask—he is called Saint Peter.––––––––––
* From Janua—“door” or any kind of entrance; the door that opens up the year.
–––––––––
Let the reader kindly abstain from protesting, and particularly from
slinging offensive epithets at us, which would not harm us, but might
well lower him in our estimation. I am but the humble interpreter of the
more or less veiled truths and symbols, well known to all who have
studied their Virgil and their Horace, as well as their Ovid. Neither a
false nose nor a mask could prevent an old pagan from recognizing his
double-faced Janus in the Apostle who denied his Master. The two are
identical, and everybody has the right to take what is his own, wherever
he finds it. Saint Peter is the coeli Janitor merely because Janus was
that too. The old doorkeeper of heaven, who pulled the door-cord at the
palace of the Sun, at every dawn and every New Year, and closed it again
when ushering them out, is but too easily recognizable in his new role. It is written in the stars which rule the destiny of gods as well as
mortals, that Janus—who held the key to heaven in one hand and a halberd
in the other, just as St. Peter, having suceeded him, does—would
relinquish his role of janitor to the Sun to him who would become the
guardian of the portals to Paradise, the abode of Christ-Sun. The new
coeli Janitor has become the successor to all the functions and
privileges of the ancient one, and we see no harm in that. Solomon has
said: “There is nothing new under the sun”; and he was right. It would
be silly to invent new functions and new gods—which we fashion in our
image—when our forefathers on the other side of the flood went to all
the trouble of doing so for us. That is why everything has been allowed
to remain as in the past, and why nothing has been changed in this
world—except the names.
In all the religious ceremonies the name of Janus was always invoked
first, for it was only through his immediate intercession that the
prayers of the pagan devotees could reach the ear of the immortal gods.
Thus it is even today. Anyone who would presume to communicate with one
of the personages of the Trinity over the head of St. Peter would
certainly be caught. His prayer would suffer the fate of a petition one
sought to leave at the office of the janitor, after having had an
argument with him and having called him “old door-keeper”; it would
never reach the higher levels.
The fact is, the Great Army of the “Pipelets” and the “Anastasies”*
should recognize Janus Bifrons as their patron, the god in whose image
it was created. It is only then that it would have a legal right to its
gifts, the first of the year, while its great patron would receive his
mite from the beginning to the end of the year. Everything is relative
in this world of illusion; nevertheless there should exist a difference
of degree between a celestial and a terrestrial janitor. As for the
gifts, they have existed in all ages both for lowly and great men alike.
Caligula, emperor as he was, did not disdain remaining throughout New
Year's day in the vestibule of his palace, in order to receive the
strenae of his trembling subjects; sometimes, their own heads, for a
change. The Virgin-Queen, “Queen Bess” of England, when she died, left
three thousand court dresses, which represented her most recent gifts.
Both great and lowly behave similarly even now, in the year of our Lord
1890, on this crazy ball we call Terra—the “footstool” of God.
Did not this same God of Abraham and of Jacob allow himself to be
moved to pity by promises and presents, just like the gods of other
nations? This God and these gods, did they not receive, just like
mortals, gifts for services rendered or about to be rendered? Did not
Jacob himself bargain with his God, promising him as gifts “the tithe of all that thou [God]
wilt give me”? And he added, this good patriarch, at Luz near “Bethel”:
“. . . . If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go,
and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on . . . . then shall
the Lord be my God.” Saying this he did not forget to make an offering
(étrenner) to the stone “Bethel” which he had raised, by pouring some
oil on its top, in a simple but beautiful phallic ceremony (Genesis
xxviii, 18, 20-22).
––––––––––
* [Monsieur and Madame Pipelet are characters in Eugène Sue’s work,
Mystères de Paris (1842), who typify the curious habits and
peculiarities of the French portier, or Janitor. “Anastasie” is the first name of Madame Pipelet.]
––––––––––
This touching ceremony came to the Israelites direct from India, where
the stone of Śiva, the lingam, is today the object of the same exoteric
rite with oil and flowers, every time his worshippers celebrate the
festival of the god of Destruction (of brute matter) and of the Yogis.
All has remained as of yore. In Christian countries, especially in
France, the New Year makes its triumphal entrance just as it did two
thousand years ago, when the Pagans celebrated it with indigestion
caused by the figs and gilded prunes they ate. The latter fruit have
migrated since to the Christmas tree, which does not alter the fact that
they came to us from the temples of Janus. It is true that the priests
no longer sacrifice a young white bull upon his altar; that is replaced
by a lamb of the same color, but whole hecatombs of quadrupeds and fowl
are slaughtered annually in his honor on that day. Certainly more
innocent blood is spilled today to satisfy the voracious appetite of one
Paris street alone, on New Year’s day, then was necessary to feed a
whole Roman city in the time of the Caesars.
The gentle Julian, the
pagan who rediscovered his well-beloved gods in Lutetia—after the gods
of Gaul had been disguised by order of Caesar, with the false noses of
Roman divinities—spent his leisure hours taming doves in honor of Venus.
The ferocious potentates who came after him, the elder sons of the
Church, tamed only Venuses that made pigeons out of them. Servile
history called the former Apostate, to please the Church, and added to
the names of the others some high-sounding epithets: the “Great,” the
“Saint,” the “Beautiful.” But if Julian became the “Apostate,” it was
perhaps because he had a horror of false noses, while his Christian successors would hardly be presentable in good society without such
an artificial appendage. A false nose, when necessary, becomes a
guardian angel, and upon occasion even a god. This is history. The
metamorphosis of the divinities of barbarous Gaul into the gods of
Olympus and Parnassus did not stop there. In their turn, these Olympians
had to undergo treatment by order of the successors of Janus St.
Peter—namely, a forced baptism. With the help of tinsel and brass, of
paste and cement, we find the beloved gods of Julian appearing, after
their violent death, in the Golden Legend and the calendar of the good
Pope Gregory, under the titles of beatified Saints.
The world is like the sea: it often changes in appearance, but
remains basically the same. The false noses of civilization and of the
bigots, however, have hardly embelished it: on the contrary, with every
New Year it becomes more ugly and more dangerous. We ponder and compare,
but in the sight of a philosopher comparison with its predecessors of
ancient days does not reflect favorably upon the modern New Year’s Day.
The millions stored in the safes and vaults of state banks do not make
either the rich or the poor any happier. Ten bronze coins with the
effigy of Janus, given as a gift, were worth more in those days than ten
gold coins, with the effigy of the Republic or the Queen, are worth
today; the baskets of gilded prunes, a few cents worth, contained less
cause of indigestion than the boxes of candy exchanged on New Year’s Day
today—these candies representing in Paris alone the sum of half a
million francs. Five hundred thousand francs in candies, and the same
number of men and women dying from hunger and privations!
Let us go back
in our minds, my readers, fifteen centuries, and try to make a
comparison between a New Year’s dinner in the years 355 to 360, and a
similar dinner in 1890. Let us seek out the same good and kind Julian,
when he lived in the palace of Thermae, which is known today as the
Hotel de Cluny—or what is left of it. Do you see him, this great
general, at his dinner, surrounded by his soldiers whom he loves better
than anyone else in the world outside of his gods, and who idolize him!
It is the first of January and they are celebrating the day of Janus In two days, the third of
January, they will render a similar homage to Isis, patroness of the
good city of Lutetia Parisiorum. Since those days, the virgin-mother of
ancient Egypt was rebaptized as Geneviève, and this Saint and Martyr (of
Typhon?) has remained the patroness of the good city of Paris—true
symbol of a false nose furnished by Rome for the Christian world.
We see
neither knives nor forks, neither silver nor porcelain of Sèvres, at
that imperial table, not even a napkin; but the meats and other foods
which the guests consume with so much appetite do not have to be
inspected under the microscope of chemists attached to public health
offices. No artificial or poisonous product is to be found in their
bread or wine. Arsenic does not add to their vegetables the false nose
of a deceptive freshness; rust does not hide itself in the corners of
their preserved food containers, and red brick pulverized in a mortar
does not play the role of their pepper. Their sugar (or that which takes
its place) is not extracted from the tar in the wheels of their
chariots of war; in swallowing their liqueurs and cognac, they do not
swallow a solution made from the old boots of a policeman, found in the
basket of a rag picker; they did not devour, with a casual smile on
their lips, a bouillon condensed from the grease of corpses (of men as
well as of animals) and the rags used in all the hospitals of Paris—as a
substitute for butter. For all of this is a product of modern culture,
the fruit of civilization and scientific progress, while Gaul at the
time of Julian was but a barbarous and savage land. But what they ate on
their New Year’s Day could be eaten with safety and with advantage
(except for the doctors) at the dinners on the first of the year 1890.
“They had neither forks nor silver,” they will say; “and they ate with their fingers, those barbarians!” That’s true; they had no use for forks, and probably for handkerchiefs
also; but on the other hand, they did not have to swallow their
ancestors in their kitchen grease, and the bones of their dogs in their
white bread, as we do daily. If given a choice, we would definitely not choose the gala dinner of
the first of the year of grace 1890, at Paris, but the one of a
thousand years ago, at Lutetia. A case of barbarian taste, don’t you
see! A ridiculous and baroque preference, according to the opinion of
the majority, for natural in the fourth century, attracts us infinitely
more than the false noses and the artificiality of everything in the
nineteenth century.
