Confession and Property in Common

Editor’s Note: This text forms the first subsection of Section V of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” occupying pp. 135–159 of the original manuscript pagination (pp. 73–85 in the 2014 Eastern School Press edition). It was first published by C. Jinarajadasa in The Theosophist, July 1933, pp. 391–395; August 1933, pp. 505–509; September 1933, pp. 633–637; and October 1933, pp. 12–14. The greater part was subsequently revised into Section XXXV of the posthumous third volume of The Secret Doctrine (1897), “Symbolism of Sun and Stars,” pp. 315–324.

The later version preserves most of the manuscript’s discussion of the Kabiri, planetary symbolism, the sacred circle-dance, Christian solar theology, the seven-branched candlestick, Michael, and the solar identifications associated with Jehovah and Christ, but considerably expands the middle of the section with new material on the Cosmocratores, Damascius, Iamblichus, Zoroastrian and Christian angelology, and related themes. Conversely, the manuscript’s concluding discussion of lunar symbolism and the Christian Virgin—comparing such figures as Isis, Hathor, Cybele, Maia, Ceres, and Devakī—was omitted, together with its closing appeal for equal religious rights and freedom of interpretation. The change of title in the later volume reflects this narrowing and reshaping of the original subsection around solar and stellar symbolism.

1. Confession and Property in Common

. . . “And the Heaven was visible in seven circles, and the planets appeared with all their signs, in star-forms, and the stars were divided and numbered with the rulers that were in them, and their revolving course, through the agency of the divine SPIRIT.” ([“]Hermes” IV. 6)

Here Spirit denotes Pneuma, collective Deity, manifested in its “Builders,” or as the Church has it “the seven Spirits of the Presence,” the mediantibus angelis of whom Thomas Aquinas says that “God never works but through them” (Opus, II, ii). These seven “rulers” or mediating angels were the Kabeiri Gods of the ancients. This was so evident, that it forced from the Church, together with the admission of the fact an explanation and a theory whose clumsiness and evident “make up” for the occasion fail to impress even the Roman Catholics, those who believe in the infallibility of the Pope of Rome. (see Section II sub. section 4.) The reader is told, indeed, that while the planetary angels of the Church—to whom the latter has given a Ritual of their own and offers them prayers to this day—are divine beings, the genuine Seraphim¹—these very same angels of identical names of planets were, as the Gods of the Ancient “false,” no better than pretenders and cunning copies produced beforehand and through the craft and power of Lucifer, of the real Angels! Now what are the Kabeiri?

Kabeiri, as a name, is derived from Habir הבר great also Venus, this goddess being called to the present day Kabar, as her star also. The Kabeiri were worshipped at Hebron, the city of Anakin, or anakas (Kings, princes). They are the highest Planetary Spirits, the “greatest Gods” and “the Powerful.” Varron, following in this, Orpheus, calls these Gods θεοὶ εὐδυνατοὶ – “divine Powers.” The word Kabirim, when applied to men, and the words Heber, gheber (with reference to Nimrod, or the “giants” of Genesis VI) and Kabir are all derived from the “mysterious word”—[“]the Ineffable and the unpronouncable.” Thus it is they who represent tsaba the “host of heaven.” The Church however, bowing before the angel Anaël (the regent of Venus)² connects the planet Venus with Lucifer, the chief of the rebellion of Satan, apostrophized by the prophet Isaiah, so poetically in Verse 12 of his XIVth chapter. All the Mystery Gods were Kabeiri, as these “seven lectors[”] relate directly to the Secret Doctrine, their real status is of the greatest importance.

Suidas defines the Kabeiri as the gods who command all the others Daïmons (Spirits) “Καβείρους δαίμονας — σημαίνειν” Macrobius introduces them as “those Penates and tutelary deities, through whom we live, and learn and know” (Saturn I iii, ch. IV.) The teraphim through which the Hebrews consulted the oracles of the Urim and the Thumim, were the symbolical hieroglyphics of the Kabeiri. Nevertheless, the good Fathers have made of Kabir the synonym of Devil, and of Daimon (spirit)—a demon.

The Mysteries of the Kabeiri at Hebron (pagan and Jewish) were presided over by the seven planetary gods, among the rest by Jupiter and Saturn, under their mystery names, and they are referred to as ἀξιόχερσοϛ and ἀξιόχερσα and by Euripides as ἀξιόχρεωϛ ὁ θεόϛ. Creutzer, moreover shows that whether in Phoenicia or Egypt, the Kabeiri were always the seven planets as known in antiquity, who together with their father (the Sun)—referred to in otherwise as their “elder brother,” composed a powerful ogdoad;³ the eight superior powers, as πάρεδροι or solar assessors danced around him the sacred circular dance, the symbol of the rotation of the planets around the Sun.⁴ Jehovah and Saturn, moreover are one. It is quite natural, therefore, to find a French writer, d’Anselme applying as he does (in the Revue Parïenne, No. 6) the same terms of ἀξιόχερσοϛ and ἀξιόχερσα to Jehovah and Verb, for they are correctly applied. For it the circle dance prescribed by the Amazons for the mysterious being, the “circle-dance” of the planets, and characterized as the motion of the Divine Spirit carried on waves of the [“]great Deep” now be called “infernal” and “lascive” [lascivious] when performed by the pagans, then the same epithet ought to be applied to David’s dance, to the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges XXI 2 i et seq.) as much as to the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I Kings XVIII. 26) for they were identical and all pertained to Sabean worship. King David (a “friend of God’s”) dance, during which he uncovered himself before his maid-servants in a public thouroughfare saying, “I will play (act wantonly) before יהוה and I will be yet more vile than this,” etc. was certainly more reprehensible than any circle-dance during the Mysteries, or even the modern Rasa Mandala in India,⁵ which is the same thing. It is David who introduced Jehovistic worship in Judea after sojourning so long among the Tyrians and Philistines where these rites were common. “David knew nothing of Moses; and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as that one of the many (Kabeirean) gods of the neighbouring nations—a tutelary deity of his own, יהוה, to whom he had given the preference and chosen among ‘all other (Kabeiri) gods’[”] (Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 45); and who was one of the “associates” חבר, chabir, of the Sun. The Shakers dance the [“]circle dance” to this day when moving for the Holy Ghost to move them. In India, it is Nara-yana who is [“]the mover on the waters”; and Narayana is Vishnu, in his secondary form, Vishnu being Chrishna—his avatar—in whose honour the “circle dance” is enacted now by the Nautches of the temple, he being the SUN (god) and they the Planets symbolized by the Gopis.

Let the reader turn to de Mirville’s works—a Roman-Catholic writer or to “Monumental Christianity” by Dr. Lundy, a Presbyterian divine, if he wants to appreciate to any degree the subtlety and casuisty of their reasonings. No one ignorant of the Occult Versions can fail to be impressed with the proofs brought forward to show how cleverly and perseveringly “Satan has worked for long millenniums to tempt a humanity, unblessed with an infallible Church.” To compare it the better with our version (that [of] the pagan philosophers), which has already been noticed, it is given here—verbatim: —

“We (Christians)[”] he says, [“]are blamed for having plagiarized pagan symbols, planets, Sun and Moon?[”] Very well; but St. Peter himself has told us “May the divine Lucifer arise in your hearts”;⁶ and God says (through Malachi) that the Sun shall arise for those who fear His Name, (IV. 2); and the SUN is Christ . . . “I will send my son FROM the SUN” said the Eternal through the voice of prophetic traditions; and prophecy, having become history (?), the Evangelists respected in their turn: The sun rising from on high visited us (Luke I. 78.)⁷ (Pneumatologie).

Here it becomes necessary to break the flow of the author’s oratory to make a few remarks. What Malachi meant by the “Sun of Righteousness”—no one but the Kabalists know; and what the Greek, and as we believe the Protestant Church also mean, by that “Sun” is Christ, accepting the term and applying it, whether rightly or wrongly, at all events metaphorically. As to the above sentence pilfered from a Sibyl and Virgil who repeats it, we really cannot see the right, the Church would have to view this as a prophecy relating to Christ, seeing that both Sibyl and Virgil who repeats after her—“Here comes the Virgin and Apollo’s reign,” are held as pagans, and Apollo or Apollyon is viewed as a form of Satan or the Antichrist. The Latin Church is brave, and had the courage of her opinions at all times. Why does she not try to be as logical as she is daring? If the Sibyline promise “He will send his Son from the sun” applies to Christ, then either Christ and Apollo are one, then why call the latter a Demon? Or the prophecy had nought to do with the Christian Saviour. In such a case why appropriate it?

But de Mirville goes farther. He shows us St. Denys the Areopagite, affirming that “the Sun is the special signification (?) the sign and the stature [statue] of God” (De Divin. Nom. ch. IV).⁸ [“]It is by the Eastern door that the glory of the Lord penetrated into the temples of the Jews and Christians, that divine glory being sunlight.” . . . “We build our churches toward the East” says St. Ambrosius—“for during our mysteries we begin by renouncing him who is in the West” (De Trinit.).

“Him who is in the West” is Typhon, the Egyptian—the West having been held by them as the “TYPHONIC GATE OF DEATH.” Thus, having borrowed from the Egyptians Osiris, the Church Fathers thought as little of helping themselves to his brother. But then again—“The prophet Baruch⁹ speaks of the stars that rejoice in their vessels and citadels (vasa castrensia) ϕυλακη (Chapt. III); and Ecclesiastes applies the same terms to the sun, which, is said to be ‘the admirable vessel of the most High One,[’] and the ‘citadel of the Lord’ ϕυλακη too.”¹⁰ “For the sacred writer (Solomon!),” exclaims de Mirville “there remains no doubt in his heart; it is a Spirit who rules the Sun’s course. Hear what he says (in Ecclesiates V. 5.) ‘The sun also ariseth,’—and its spirit lighting all in its circular-path (gyrat gyrans) returneth according to his circuits.”¹¹

De Mirville seems to quote from texts either rejected by, or unknown to the Protestants, in whose Bible there is no XLIII chap. in Ecclesiates; nor is the Sun made to go “in circuits” in the latter, but the wind. (See ch. I. 5. 6). This is a question to be settled between the Roman and the Protestant churches. The point to show is, the strong element of heliolatry in the former—hence Sabeanism to this day.

An Œcumenical Council having put a stop to Christian astrolatry by declaring the absence of any sidereal souls (in Sun or planets) St. Thomas, the angelic doctor, took upon himself to settle every difference by declaring that all such expressions meant an intelligence in the Sun and stars, not resident in but only an assisting and directing intelligence. (See opus cit., X.) Thereupon, de Mirville, comforted, quotes Clement the Alexandrian, and reminds the reader of the opinion of that philosopher, on the interrelation that exists “between the seven branches of the candlestick and the seven stars of the Revelation,” and the sun: “The six branches,” he says, “fixed to the central candlestick have lamps, for the sun, placed in the midst of the wandering ones (πλανητω ν) pours his beams on them all. But this golden candlestick hides one more mystery still; it is the sign of Christ, not only in shape (non figurâ solâ), but because he sheds his light through the ministry of the seven spirits primarily created and who are the seven eyes of the Lord.”

“Therefore,” argues de Mirville, “the principal planets are to the seven primeval spirits, according to Clement, that which the candlestick-sun is to Christ himself, namely, their vessels, their φυλακαι, etc.” (page 39.)

Plain enough, to be sure; and one can make anything he likes with it—now. But what we maintain is, that before Christian Scholastics turned their brains upside down to squeeze out of them this meaning (against which the Jews, for one, and their Kabalists too have, and do now, object,) the seven-branched chandelier of the Israelites as well as the “wanderers” of the Greeks, had a far more natural meaning, a purely astrological one, to begin with. Indeed, from Magi and Chaldees, down to the much laughed at Zadkiel, every astrological work will tell its reader that the Sun placed in the midst of the planets, with Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, on one side and Venus, Mercury and the Moon on the other, whose (the planets) line crosses through the whole Earth, has ever meant what Hermes tells us, namely, the thread of destiny, or “whose actions (influence) is called destiny.[”]¹² But symbols, for symbols, we prefer the Sun to a chandelier. One can understand, how the latter came to represent the Sun and Planets. There is poetry and grandeur in the Sun made to symbolize “the Eye of Ormuzd” or of Osiris, and of being the Vahan (vehicle) of the highest Deity. But one must fail for ever to perceive that any particular glory is rendered to Christ by assigning to Him the trunk of a candlestick in a Jewish Synagogue, as a mystical seat of honour!

But let us see how the Marquis disposes of other people’s Gods and Saviours.

“Christ then,” he says, (pg. 40) [“]is represented by the trunk of the candlestick: He is the Vine, the support of all the solar system, and all the planets are merely its branches. St. Clement tells us that it is Christ”. . . “It is impossible not to remember at this stage that Jacob on his death bed, adores the apex of the sceptre of his son Joseph. Now Joseph is the prototype of Christ; hence it is before the latter that the patriarch desired to bow down, by bowing before the apex of Joseph’s rod.” (Pneumat., page 40. Vol. IV.)¹³

“That there are positively two Suns—one the sun adored and the other the adoring sun”—is proven in the Apocalypse chap. XIX., V. 17—argues the same author. “We find in it the last angel standing in the sun, inviting all the nations¹⁴ to gather unto the Supper. This once is literally and simply an angel of the sun—who cannot be mistaken for the “Word” (logos), since a distinction is made between him and the “King of Kings” and the “Lord of Lords” etc. The Verbum is found in chap. VII. in the angel who ascends from the East, having the seal of the living God . . . in whom [we] have, according to St. Ambrosius and numerous other theologians to recognize Christ personally. He is the Sun adored, while the angel in the Sun, is the Sun who adores. Who may be the latter? . . . And who else could he be but the Morning Star, the guardian angel of the Verbum (?), his ferouer,¹⁵ or angel of the face, as the Verbum is the angel of the face (presence) of his father, his principal attribute, and strength, as his name implies. Michael that powerful rector glorified by the church as Rector potens (on Sept. 29th); he—who will fell the Antichrist, that vice-verb, in short, who represents his Master, and makes himself appear one with him. He is the suse victor, etc. (page 43.)

The conqueror of whom? Of Ormuzd, Osiris, Apollo, Mithra, Brahma and of all the solar gods known and unknown. For this is what the author says: —

“Thus the sun-god here is Honover or the Eternal. The prince or Vice-Verb (the antichrist, evidently) is Ormuzd, since he is the first of the seven Amshaspands (the demon-copies of the seven originals) caput angelorum; the lamb/hamal the Shepherd of the Zodiac (κριόϛ or κύριοϛ) and the antagonist of the snake. But the sun (the eye of Ormuzd) has also his rector—Korshid or mitraton who is the ferouer of the face of Ormuzd, his Ized, or the morning star. The Mazdeans had a triple sun. For us this Korshid-mitraton¹⁶ is the first of the psychopompean genie, leading the souls of the dead and the leaders of the Sun. The immolator of the Bull whose wounds are licked by the serpent in the famous Mithraic monument . . . etc. All these are the aerial powers and the rectors of the World of eternal darkness. St. Paul said so, he called them cosmocratores, the black potencies of hell, as opposed to the συρστοιχε ια or the superior elements,[”] page 81.

“If from the Zend we pass on to the Vedas, we will still find the same ideas there, Indra the god, and Light (?) the first of the seven rulers of the seven (Swargas) spheres, is found blended to a degree with Surya the God, who succeeds to him and is called in turn the regent of the Sun (?) Aditya, and Mithra, or the friend”. . . . The reader is asked at the juncture by the pious author, to notice the striking identity between the God Surya and the God Sura, appointed to conduct the souls toward the famous bridge of judgment, named for this reason the dog of the herds, whose identity with Sirius-Anubis (dog-star) of the Egyptians has escaped the notice of our orientalists. . . . [“]Yes,” goes on the author,—“Yes; all these ideas are common to pagans, to cabalists, gnostics and Christians. Nothing then is more puerile than to accuse us of plagiarism. Well, we agree, and do not contest it in the least: a very large portion of oriental ideas transpires in a great number of our sacred pages, and we blame those defenders of the faith who deny the fact. We only ask the reader to notice the wisdom and sobriety of ORTHODOX gnosticism, (Latin church) as compared with the folly of oriental Kabalism and heathenism . . .[”] (p. 44)

Nevertheless, it is this “folly,” the exuberance of oriental imagery and allegory that is the ground work of the modern church. This can be proved on the authority of de Mirville’s own statements and the confessions of more than one Roman Catholic. He glories in it and draws with pride the attention of his readers to these facts. And when he says that “the tabernacle of the Sun,” and even the solar ray serve Christ as a vehicle (Vahan) [“]to enter by the door opening to the East” no one can blame us for remarking that such is precisely the idea of the uneducated Parsi; and that therefore the educated Zoroastrians may be regarded as far above the Roman Catholic is himself above the Zulu fetish-worshipper in his. Yet the language of the author is as contemptuous as though his church had not helped herself to other nations’ property now giving it out as her own. But all that has now to be shown absolutely fallacious and useless. Yes; we all know the Orpheian verse: “It is Zeus, it is Ades, it is the Sun; it is Bacchus,” all those names having been synonyms for classic poets and writers. Thus for Democritus “Deity is but a soul in an orbicular fire,” and that fire is the Sun, for Iamblichus the sun was “the image of Divine intelligence”; for Plato, it was “an immortal and living being.” And therefore, the oracle of Claros asked to say who was the יהוה (Jehovah) of the Jews, answered, “it is the Sun.” Hence the words in Psalm XIX (v. 4) “In the sun hath he placed a tabernacle for himself”¹⁷ from whence “his going forth from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” (v. 6.)

Jehovah, then is the Sun, and thence also the Christ of the Roman Church. And now the criticism of Dupuis on that verse becomes comprehensible as also the despair of the Abbé Foucher. “Nothing becomes more favourable to Sabeism than this text of the Vulgate![”] he exclaims (see Memoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, Vol. XXV, p. 2). And however disfigured the words and sense in the English authorized Bible, the Vulgate and the Septuagint give both the correct text of the original and translate the latter: “In the Sun he established his abode” τῷ ήλιῷ ε θετο ό ε χμα ἂυτοῦ; while the Vulgate applies the “heat” as coming direct from God and not from the Sun alone, since it is God who ushers forth from and in the Sun and performs the circuit: in sole pursuit . . . et ipse exultavit. From these facts will be seen that the Protestants were right in charging St. Justin with saying that “God has permitted us to worship the sun” even though the lame excuse set up that what was really meant was [“]God permitted to worship him in or within the Sun” (Bergier, art. “Sabeism”) proved to be quite correct.¹⁸

Thus, it stands to reason that whereas the Pagans located in the sun and stars only the Powers and occult forces of nature euhemerized into Apollo, Bacchus, Osiris and other solar gods, at the worst personal Spirits, “Gods,” subordinate as a hierarchy to the one ever invisible and unknown Deity—the Christians, in their hatred of philosophy accepted the sidereal localities, limiting to them their anthropomorphic “one living God”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Something had to be done in order to dispose of the ancient tenants: they were disgraced into demons.

Confessions to solar worship are followed by like avowals of lunar and sidereal symbols being common property of pagans and Christians.

“We have just seen” de Mirville says [“]what the Moon and Crescent were in the ideas of paganism; the Moon goddess ‘treading under her feet the Sun whose spouse she becomes,—as Neith, as Hathor, as Isis[’]—called Ray [by?] Pharoah Tootmes ‘the Mother of God’ and the ‘Queen of Heaven’ (British Museum); as Cybele on a lion with her infant in her arms; as Semele, also [‘]Queen of Heaven’ at the mention of whose name the demons trembled as they now tremble in good earnest at the name of the genuine ‘Queen’; as Proserpine, Astarte, Mylitta, Hecate having dominion over the hells and power over the Manes . . . or again, as Maïa, the ‘Virgin Mother,’ to whom the month of May was made sacred in Rome;¹⁹ as Ceres, receiving at Athens, the epithet of the ‘Afflicted Mother[’]²⁰ Αχάια, and in India that of Devaki, the immaculate virgin with God Chrishna in her arms—etc. etc.” Does this confessed adoption of the same names, titles, qualifications, disturb the writer? Not in the least; for this is what he says, “Well? And how could any of these concordances between these ‘Moon goddesses,[’] all these MACULATIONS and the really Immaculate Woman of the Apocalypse ‘clothed with the Sun, and with the Moon under her feet’—affect any one? Who can fail to see, that the planet which, in profane antiquity, centered in herself all the goddesses, as the Sun was blended with all the gods, has now to fulfill in the theodicy of old Catholicism, and in the person of the Christian Lucina, quite another mission? That the true Queen of Heaven, and the world, the moon of Justice, though sharing the same emblem and perchance (?) the same attributes as all others—to wit, those of tabernacle and association fulfills the same mission with regard to the true sun of Justice as the planet which reflects her light (?) fulfills with respect to the Sun?²¹ Since then (the Christian era) not a doctor of Divinity, not a hymn, not a faithful son of that Church, or poet, that does not repeat with that Church, ‘The Moon is the type of the Virgin,’ and with St. Bernard: [‘]Thou clothest thyself with the Sun, and He clothed thee with His beams’; and finally with the Church herself: ‘Light that conceived the Sun and daughter of the Sun, thyself, Aurora quœ solem paris, et ipsa solis filia.[’]” (Pneumat. Theologie Christeinne du Soliel 48-49.)

This must suffice. It is thus shown that the only point of difference between the exoterism of the Latin Church and that of the old Astrolators and even the modern Hindus and Parsis—lies in the entirely arbitrary interpretation by the churches of both, the Christians and the pagan systems;—especially by the Catholic, or rather Roman Church. Emblems, symbols, allegories and often even names being shown identical in both, we may proceed to point to a few more parallels in order to explain them in the light of esoterism. The Occultists have no desire to hurt anyone’s feelings—the Theosophists least of all. The[y] only claim the same privileges for themselves, that the Christians are monopolizing for nearly two millenniums: common rights for all—mutual respect shown for each other’s religions or—an equal liberty of opinion and right of interpretation as their opponents have.

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