1890! On the New Year's Morrow
[Lucifer, Vol. V, No 29, January, 1890, pp. 357-364] CW 12, 67-78
“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!
“Halloo!” 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. (As shown by Ragon, the Mason-Occultist, the gnostic ogdoad had eight stars representing the 8 Cabiri of Samothrace, the 8 principles of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, the 8 gods of Xenocrates the 8 angles of the cubic stone. [Maçonnerie occulte, p. 435 footnote.]) In the Eastern philosophy number eight symbolizes 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 "oo, infinity [TdH]" 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 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 symbolizes 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. († The reason for this is because according to the Pythagoreans each of
the three elements that constitute our bodies is a ternary: water
containing earth and fire; earth containing aqueous and igneous
particles; and fire being tempered by aqueous globules and terrestrial
corpuscles serving it as food. Hence the name given to matter, the
“nonagous envelope.” )
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 of 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 nonexistent 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 everyone 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 strenae (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 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 onto 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 strenae been abolished in England so very long. Disraeli 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’ 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. It is 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 in 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.
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-Athênê, 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 Caesar used by Christendom till the XIIIth century). Isis was baptized Geneviève, 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. (This festival remains thus unchanged as that of the lady Patroness of Lutetia-Paris, and to this day Isis is offered religious honours in every Parisian and Latin church. ) 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, ( The 4th of January being sacred to Mercury, of whom the Greeks made Hermes, the R. Catholics have included St. Hermes in their Calendar. Just in the same way, the 9th of that month having been always celebrated by the pagans as the day of the “conquering sun” the R. Catholics have transformed the noun into a proper name, making of it St. Nicanor (from the Greek nikao, to conquer), whom they honour on the 10th of January) 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 Caelus 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 Mohammeds, 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. (It is only when the cipher or nought stands by itself and without being preceded by any digit that it becomes the symbol of the infinite Kosmos and of absolute—Deity.)
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 Sûdra 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 doorkeeper 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 the 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.
Meanwhile, let every nation, as every reader, fly for inquiry to their
respective gods if they would learn the secrets of Futurity. Thus the
American, Nicodemus-like, may go to one of his three living and actually
reincarnated Christs, each calling himself Jesus, now flourishing under
the star-spangled Banner of Liberty. The Spiritualist is at liberty to
consult his favorite medium, who may raise Saul or evoke the Spirit of
Deborah for the benefit and information of his client. The
gentleman-sportsman can bend his steps to the mysterious abode of his
rival’s jockey, and the average politician consult the secret police, a
professional chiromancer, or an astrologer, etc., etc. As regards
ourselves we have faith in numbers and only in that face of Janus which
is called the Past. For—doth Janus himself know the future?—or
. . . . “perchance himself he does not know.”
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