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."
