Blavatsky's French New Year Message 1890

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.

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* From Janua—“door” or any kind of entrance; the door that opens up the year.
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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).

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* [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.]
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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.

Blavatsky's New Year Message for 1888

Back in the day, Blavatsky could write a mean New Year's message. Some are quite epic in scope. Why not begin the New Year in style with all the proper esoteric gravitas from one of the eminent occult philosopher's of recent times?

People usually wish that their friends shall have a happy new year, and sometimes "prosperous" is added to "happy." lt is not likely that much happiness or prosperity can come to those who are living for the truth under such a dark number as 1888; but still the year is heralded by the glorious star Venus-Lucifer, shining so resplendently that it has been mistaken for that still rarer visitor, the star of Bethlehem. This too, is at hand; and surely something of the Christos spirit must be born upon earth under such conditions. Even if happiness and prosperity are absent, it is possible to find something greater than either in this coming year. Venus-Lucifer is the sponsor of our magazine, and as we chose to come to light under its auspices so do we desire to touch on its nobility. This is possible for us all personally, and instead of wishing our readers a happy or prosperous New Year, we feel more in the vein to pray them to make it one worthy of its brilliant herald. This can be effected by those who are courageous and resolute.   

Thoreau pointed out that there are artists in life, persons who can change the colour of a day and make it beautiful to those with whom they come in contact. We claim that there are adepts, masters in life who make it divine, as in all other arts. Is it not the greatest art of all, this which affects the very atmosphere in which we live? That it is the most important is seen at once, when we remember that every person who draws the breath of life affects the mental and moral atmosphere of the world, and helps to colour the day for those about him. Those who do not help to elevate the thoughts and lives of others must of necessity either paralyse them by indifference, or actively drag them down. When this point is reached, then the art of life is converted into the science of death; we see the black magician at work. And no one can be quite inactive.

Although many bad books and pictures are produced, still not everyone who is incapable of writing or painting well insists on doing so badly. Imagine the result if they were to! Yet so it is in life. Everyone lives, and thinks, and speaks. If all our readers who have any sympathy with LUCIFER endeavoured to learn the art of making life not only beautiful but divine, and vowed no longer to be hampered by disbelief in the possibility of this miracle, but to commence the Herculean task at once, then 1888, however unlucky a year, would have been fitly ushered in by the gleaming star. 

Neither happiness nor prosperity are always the best of bedfellows for such undeveloped mortals as most of us are; they seldom bring with them peace, which is the only permanent joy. The idea of peace is usually connected with the close of life and a religious state of mind. That kind of peace will however generally be found to contain the element of expectation. The pleasures of this world have been surrendered, and the soul waits contentedly in expectation of the pleasures of the next. The peace of the philosophic mind is very different from this and can be attained to early in life when pleasure has scarcely been tasted, as well as when it has been fully drunk of.

The American Transcendentalists discovered that life could be made a sublime thing without any assistance from circumstances or outside sources of pleasure and prosperity. Of course this had been discovered many times before, and Emerson only took up again the cry raised by Epictetus. But every man has to discover this fact freshly for himself, and when once he realised it he knows that he would be a wretch if he did not endeavour to make the possibility a reality in his own life. The stoic became sublime because he recognised his own absolute responsibility and did not try to evade it; the Transcendentalist was even more, because he had faith in the unknown and untried possibilities which lay within himself. The occultist fully recognises the responsibility and claims his title by having both tried and acquired knowledge of his own possibilities.

The Theosophist who is at all in earnest, sees his responsibility and endeavours to find knowledge, living, in the meantime, up to the highest standard of which he is aware. To all such, Lucifer gives greeting! Man's life is in his own hands, his fate is ordered by himself. Why then should not 1888 be a year of greater spiritual development than any we have lived through? It depends on ourselves to make it so. This is an actual fact, not a religious sentiment. In a garden of sunflowers every flower turns towards the light. Why not so with us?

And let no one imagine that it is a mere fancy, the attaching of importance to the birth of the year. The earth passes through its definite phases and man with it; and as a day can be coloured so can a year. The astral life of the earth is young and strong between Christmas and Easter. Those who form their wishes now will have added strength to fulfill them consistently.

Lucifer, January, 1888
H. P. Blavatsky

Blavatsky's Epic New Year Message for 1889

Back in the day, Blavatsky could write a mean New Year's message. Some are quite epic in scope. Why not begin the New Year in style with all the proper esoteric gravitas from one of the eminent occult philosopher's of recent times?

 

Blavatsky Collected Writings volume 10  277-285

THE YEAR IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE YEAR!

DECEMBER, 1888, AND JANUARY, 1889

[Lucifer, Vol. III, No. 17,January, 1889, pp. 353-359]

LUCIFER sends the best compliments of the season to his friends and subscribers, and wishes them a happy New Year and many returns of the same. In the January issue of 1888, Lucifer said: “. . . . let no one imagine that it is a mere fancy, the attaching of importance to the birth of the year. The earth passes through its definite phases and man with it; and as a day can be coloured so can a year. The astral life of the earth is young and strong between Christmas and Easter. Those who form their wishes now will have added strength to fulfil them consistently.” He now repeats what was said and adds: Let no one mistake the importance and potency of numbers—as symbols. Everything in the Universe was framed according to the eternal proportions and combinations of numbers. “God geometrizes,” and numbers and numerals are the fundamental basis of all systems of mysticism, philosophy, and religion. The respective festivals of the year and their dates were all fixed according to the Sun—the “father of all calendars” and of the Zodiac, or the Sun-god and the twelve great, but still minor gods; and they became subsequently sacred in the cycle of national and tribal religions.

A year ago, it was stated by the editors that 1888 was a dark combination of numbers: it has proved so since. Earthquakes and terrible volcanic eruptions, tidal waves and landslips, cyclones and fires, railway and maritime disasters followed each other in quick succession. Even in point of weather the whole of the past year was an insane year, an unhealthy and uncanny year, which shifted its seasons, played ducks and drakes with the calendar and laughed at the wiseacres who preside over the meteorological stations of the globe. Almost every nation was visited by some dire calamity. Page 277

Prominent among other countries was Germany. It was in 1888 that the Empire reached, virtually, the 18th year of its unification. It was during the fatal combination of the four numbers 8 that it lost two of its Emperors, and planted the seeds of many dire Karmic results.

What has the year 1889 in store for nations, men and theosophy, and what for Lucifer? But it may be wiser to forbear looking into Futurity; still better to pray to the now ruling Hosts of Numbers on high, asking them to be lenient to us, poor terrene ciphers. Which shall we choose? With the Jews and the Christian Kabalists, the number of their deity—the God of Abraham and Jacob—is 10, the number of perfection, the ONE in space, or the Sun, astronomically, and the ten Sephiroth, Kabalistically. But the Gods are many; and every December, according to the Japanese, is the month of the arrival, or descent of the Gods; therefore there must be a considerable number of deities lurking around us mortals in astral space. The 3rd of January, a day which was, before the time of Clovis, consecrated to the worship of Isis—the goddess-patroness of Paris who has now changed her name and become Ste.-Geneviève, “she who generates life”—was also set apart as the day on which the deities of Olympus visited their worshippers. The third day of every month was sacred to Pallas Athene, the goddess of Wisdom; and January the 4th is the day of Mercury (Hermes, Budha), who is credited with adding brains to the heads of those who are civil to him. December and January are the two months most connected with gods and numbers. Which shall we choose?—we ask again. “This is the question.”

We are in the Winter Solstice, the period at which the Sun entering the sign of Capricornus has already, since December 21st, ceased to advance in the Southern Hemisphere, and, cancer or crablike, begins to move back. It is at this particular time that, every year, he is born, and December 25th was the day of the birth of the Sun for those who inhabited the Northern Hemisphere.Page 278

It is also on December the 25th, Christmas, the day with the Christians on which the “Saviour of the World” was born, that were born, ages before him, the Persian Mithra, the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Bacchus, the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis. And, while at Memphis the people were shown the image of the god Day, taken out of his cradle, the Romans marked December 25th in their calendar as the day natalis solis invicti.

Sad derision of human destiny. So many Saviours of the world born unto it, so much and so often propitiated, and yet the world is as miserable—nay, far more wretched now than ever before—as though none of these had ever been born!

January—the Januarius dedicated to Janus the God of Time, the ever revolving cycle, the double-faced God—has one face turned to the East, the other to the West; the Past and the Future! Shall we propitiate and pray to him? Why not? His statue had 12 altars at its feet, symbolising the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the twelve great gods, the twelve months of the solar year and—the twelve Apostles of the Sun-Christ. Dominus was the title given to the Sun by the ancients; whence dies domini, dies solis, the “Sun-days.” Puer nobis nascitur dominus dominorum, sing the Roman Catholics on Christmas day. The statue of Janus-January carried engraved on his right hand the number 300, and on his left, 65, the number of the days in the Solar year; in one hand a sceptre, in the other a key, whence his name Janitor, the door-keeper of the Heavens, who opened the gates of the year at its beginning. Old Roman coins represent Janus bifrons on one side, and a ship on the other.

Have we not the right to see in him the prototype of Peter, the fisherman of the celestial ship, the Janitor of Paradise, to the gates of which he alone holds the keys? Janus presided over the four seasons. Peter presides over the four Evangelists. In Occultism the potency and significance of Numbers and Numerals lie in their right application and permutation. If we have to propitiate any mysterious number at all, we have most decidedly to address Janus-Peter, in his relation to the ONE—the Sun. Now what would be the best thing for Lucifer and his staff to ask from the latter for 1889? Our joint wishes are many, for our course as that of true love, does not run altogether smooth. Page 279

Thus addressing the bright luminary in perpetual abscondito beyond the eternal fogs of the great city, we might ask him for a little more light and warmth in the coming year than he gave us in the year 1888. We might entreat him at the same time to pour a little light into the no less befogged heads of those who insist on boycotting Lucifer under the extraordinary notion that he and Satan are one. Shine more on us, O, Helios, Son of Hyperion! Those on whom thou beamest thy greatest radiance must be, as in the legend of Apollo, good and kind men. Alas, for us. The British Isle will never be transformed, in this our cycle, into the isle of Aea, the habitat of Helios, as of the children of that God and the Oceanide Perseis. Is this the occult reason why our hearts become, with every year, colder and more indifferent to the woes of mankind, and that the very souls of the multitudes seem turning into icicles? We ask thee to shed thy radiance on these poor shivering souls.

Such is Lucifer’s, our Light-bearer’s fervently expressed desire. What may be that of the Theosophical Society in general, and its working members in particular? We would suggest a supplication. Let us ask, Brethren, the Lord on High, the One and the SOLE (or Sol), that he should save us from the impudent distortion of our theosophical teachings. That he should deliver us in 1889 from his pretended priests, the “Solar Adepts” as they dub themselves, and their sun-struck followers, as he delivered us once before; for verily “man is born unto trouble,” and our patience is well-nigh exhausted!

But, “wrath killeth the foolish man”; and as we know that “envy slayeth the silly one,” for years no attention was paid to our ever increasing parodists. They plagiarized from our books, set up sham schools of magic waylaid seekers after truth by deceiving them with holy names, misused and desecrated the sacred science by using it to get money by various means, such as selling as “magic mirrors” for £15, articles made by common cabinet makers for £1 at most. Page 280

With them, as with all  charlatans, fortune-tellers, and self-styled “Adepts,” the sacred science of Theosophia had become when kabalistically read—Dollar-Sophia. To crown all, they ended by offering, in a most generous manner, to furnish all those “awakened” who were “disappointed in Theosophical Mahatmas” with the genuine article in the matter of adeptship. Unfortunately the said article was traced in its turn to a poor, irresponsible medium, and something worse; and so that branch of the brood finally disappeared. It vanished one fine morning into thin air leaving its disconsolate disciples thoroughly “awakened” this time, and fully alive to the sad fact, that if they had acquired less than no occult wisdom, their pockets, on the other hand, had been considerably relieved of their weight in pounds and shillings. After their Exodus came a short lull. But now the same is repeated elsewhere.

(I cut this part. See original.  For whatever reason, for better and for worse, Blavatsky was influential, and it took about five minutes for imitators to emerge. She attests here to the extent of Theosophical influence in her own time.)

Therefore, let us, in our turn, recite a heartfelt conjuration (the ancient name for prayer), and invoke the help of the powers that be, to deliver us from the painful necessity of exposing those sorry “make-believes” in Lucifer once again. Let us ring the theosophical Angelus thrice for the convocation of our theosophical friends and readers. If we would draw on us the attention of Sol on High, we must repeat that which the ancients did and which was the origin of the R.C. Angelus. Page 283

The first stroke of the bell announced the coming of Day; the appearance of Gabriel, the morning messenger, with the early Christians, of Lucifer, the morning star, with their predecessors. The second bell, at noon, saluted the glory and exalted position of the Sun, King of Heavens; and the third bell announced the approach of Night, the Mother of Day, the Virgin, Isis-Mary, or the Moon. Having accomplished the prescribed duty, we pour our complaint and say:—

Turn thy flaming eye, O SOL, thou, golden-haired God, on certain trans-atlantic mediums, who play at being thine Hierophants! Behold, they whose brain is not fit to drink of the cup of wisdom, but who, mounting the quack’s platform, and offering for sale bottled-up wisdom, and the homunculi of Paracelsus, assure those of the gaping mouths that it is the true Elixir of Amrita, the water of immortal life! Oh, bright Lord, is not thine eye upon those barefaced robbers and iconoclasts of the systems of the land whence thou risest? Hear their proud boasting: “We teach men the science to make man”(!). The lucrative trade of vendors of Japanese amulets and Taro cards, with indecent double bottoms, having been cut off in its full blossom in Europe, the Eastern Wisdom of the Ages is now abandoned. According to their declarations, China, Japan, old India and even the Swedenborgian “land of the Lost Word” have suddenly become barren; they yield no more their crop of true adepts; it is America, they say, the land of the Almighty Dollar, which has suddenly opened her bowels and given birth to full-blown Hierophants, who now beckon to the “Awakened.” Mirabile dictu! But if so, why should thy self-styled priests, O great SUN, still offer as a bait a mysterious Dwija, a “twice born,” who can only be the product of the land of Manu? And why should those pretended and bumptious servants of thine, oh Sûrya-Vikarttana, whose rich crop of national adepts, if “home-made,” must rejoice as a natural rule in purely Anglo-Saxon and Celto-German names, still change their Irish patronymics for those of a country which, they say, is effete and sterile, and whose nations are “dying out”? Page 284

Has another Hindu name and names been discovered in the Great Hub, as a peg and pegs whereon to hang the modest pretensions of the Solar Magi? Yea, they belie truth, O Lord, and they bend their tongues like quill pens for lies. But—“the false prophets shall become wind, for the word is not in them.”

TO DARE, TO WILL, TO ACHIEVE AND KEEP SILENT is the motto of the true Occultist, from the first adept of our fifth Race down to the last Rosecroix. True Occultism, i.e., genuine Raj-Yoga powers, are not pompously boasted of, and advertised in “Dailies” and monthlies, like Beecham’s pills or Pears’ soap. “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes; for the wise man feareth and keeps silent but the fool layeth open his folly.”

Let us close by expressing a hope that our Theosophist brothers and sisters in America will pause and think before they risk going into a “Solar” fire. Above all, let them bear in mind that true occult knowledge can never be bought. He who has anything to teach, unless like Peter to Simon he says to him who offers him money for his knowledge—“Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of (our inner) God may be purchased with money”—is either a black magician or an IMPOSTOR. Such is the first lesson taught by Lucifer to his readers in 1889.

Blavatsky's Epic New Year Message for 1890

Back in the day, Blavatsky could write a mean New Year's message. Some are quite epic in scope. Why not begin the New Year in style with all the proper esoteric gravitas from one of the eminent occult philosopher's of recent times?

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. (1)

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.”

Notes

(1) In ancient Greek religion, the 4th day of every lunar month was considered sacred to the god Hermes, often regarded as his birthday. This tradition stems from the Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes (lines 19–20): "on the fourth day of the month; for on that day queenly Maia bare him." 

 

She's probably referencing 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.