[Editor’s Note: The manuscript of this fragment, consisting of three sheets in H. P. Blavatsky’s own handwriting, is preserved in the Adyar Archives. The opening portion is missing, and the surviving text begins in the midst of a discussion of ancient astronomy and the zodiac. The fragment explores the astronomical knowledge of antiquity, particularly the precession of the equinoxes and the astronomical significance of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, while offering a characteristically satirical critique of later religious interpretations of ancient astronomical symbolism. It was first published in The Theosophist, Vol. LXXXV, No. 2 (November 1963), pp. 121–124, and subsequently reprinted by Boris de Zirkoff as “[Ancient Astronomy. The Great Pyramid]” in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. XIII, beginning on p. 321.]
. . . disintegrating the objective forms of the celestial cattle, by rending asunder the parent constellations from their progeny—the Zodiacal signs made them retrograde 30 degrees toward the West, so with Astrogony. As if to enforce the more emphatically upon the human mind the everlasting Wisdom of the axiom of the Founder of Astronomy, the Shepherd-god Hermes-A-Brahm—“as above so it is below; as in heaven, so on earth,” hardly yet twelve centuries ago we thought of perceiving that the collective wisdom of our patriarchal teachers had long time since emigrated or rather also moved—West; but never perceived that on its way it had lost as well as the “signs” all semblance of definite forms. In their ignorance, our astronomical predecessors of the Transitional Ages, scoffed at their predecessors, and these in their turn grinned at those who came before. It seems, almost, as if the discovery by Hipparchus the Nicaean, of the retrograde motion of the equinoctial points had a prophetic character in it, as relating to the simultaneously parallel retrogression of human understanding; till finally, and very happily for humanity, the cycle of intellectual Development till then on its downward path, having reached its nadir, suddenly proceeded onward, until it culminated in its highest point of altitude—the present glorious Age! How truly wise and prophetically inspired were the archaic Indo-Chaldees and Egyptians even in giving names to things may be inferred by one instance just recorded from Space, by one of my assistant-stargangers. It is well known to us that at whatever epoch the great Pyramid of Egypt may have been built, it must have been at a time when Draconis, the then Polar Star was at its lower culmination and the Pleiades—Alcyone especially—were on the same meridian above. By a calculation of Sir John Herschel in A.D. 1839—who correctly assumed that the long and narrow tubular entrance passage was built so as to level at the then polar star, the building of the Pyramid of Cheops was fixed upon the year 2170 B.C.—whereas it ought to have been—with far more propriety and regard to truth placed at 28,868 years B.C. by adding to the figures of 2170, the whole period of the preceding Equinoctial precession.1 R. A. Proctor an Astronomist of the same age, was the first to prove that, if we take the pyramid’s cubits, and multiply the number thereof in a base side of the Pyramid by the number fifty, and increase the result in proportion as the base Diagonal exceeds the measures of the side, the sum comes out in the number of years in the great precessional period. Therefore, there now remains no doubt, nor did it remain, long before the means of verifying events by examining their pictorial records in the galleries of Boundless Space were discovered—that the builders of the Pyramid had erected it as an Observatory of Occult Astrognosy, and—called the Polar Star Draco, or Draconis, for reasons, certainly perfectly known to themselves. And yet so retrograding proved the human intellect and so inconsistent with its own reforms that unable to follow their Shepherd forefather’s grand ideas, and yet anxious to prove that they knew as much and far more, they resorted to the following expedients. After having reviled Astrolotry, and trampled under their feet the Sacred Bulls Apis and Mnevis, symbolizing life, and worshipped in the days of Menes and in whom the God Ptah, Sokari, Osiris (Life and Light) were allegorically said to be resident, they yet instituted a Pastoral Religion in which instead of the sacred Bull, they worshipped a Lamb, equally the emblem of Life and Light and regarded as a grand Shepherd, and his assistant Pastors as their Spiritual Guides! They allowed all the heathen names of Stars named by their idolatrous forefathers to remain status quo, and, at the same time, perverted their meanings in the most cunning way. So, having erroneously and most ridiculously calculated that less than a fourth of the great astronomical cycle formed by the precedence in the equinoctial presentation has passed since man was placed upon the earth; they set themselves to making prophecies on quite an opposite basis. So, for instance, one of such Pastors or Shepherds at the head of a hydropathic sect named “Baptists,” in an old and now ruined city of the Atlantidian continent, called Philadelphia (probably a Greek colony, peopled by irresolute and ever trembling people called Quakers) took upon himself to interpret the presence of Draconis, the chief Star situated in the tail of the constellation Dragon or the Great Serpent in the following wise. He asked the people to believe that the entrance of the Great Pyramid was the “bottomless pit” or Hell, as they named the Hades of their forefathers! At the same time computing that the one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven inches from the beginning of the Grand Gallery of the Pyramid stood for A.D. 1877, years since the birth of the Lamb, and that there remained but a few inches more to bring the gallery to its end, he maintained it to be a prophecy. Very shortly, he said, “Draconis will again be on the meridian below the pole, . . . but just seven times lower than at the time of the Pyramid’s building. This final downwardness of seven times is strikingly suggestive of the Dragon’s complete dethronement. And what is still more remarkable, whilst Alpha Draconis is on the meridian at this low point, Aries, the Ram, appears on the meridian above, with the line passing exactly through his horns! A more vivid astronomical sign of the overthrow of Satan . . . . it is not possible to conceive. It is, as if the very heavens were proclaiming that the ever-living Lamb takes to him his great power, and enters upon his glorious reign!”
1. Bessel’s calculation.