Planets

Historical Context and Lessons from Atlantis

These cycles help realign the planet and prepare it for new phases of growth and development.

The origin of our alphabet

Hieroglyphic writing likely originated among the Tsabaists, early religious practitioners who worshipped the planets (Sir William Drummond, "Origines").

The kings of Atlantis become the Gods of the Greeks

Peru: Worshipped the sun, moon, and planets, with rituals involving sacrifices of fruits and flowers.

Egypt: In early ages, the Egyptians worshipped the sun and planets.

Turanian, in Ancient Chaldaea.

The planets themselves were not believed to influence human affairs directly.

The influence of a planet was believed to affect emotions and tendencies, but not to dominate free will.

Smaller temples represented other planets, each with unique features and colors.

Schools were dedicated to different planets, each with specialized teachings.

The idea that it is possible for the physical planets themselves to have any influence over human affairs was of course never held by any of the priests or teachers, nor even, so far as we can see, by the most ignorant of the common people at the early period of which we are now speaking.

All its physical constituents — the sun with his worderful corona, all the planets with their satellites, their oceans, their atmospheres, and the various ethers surrounding them — all these collectively made up His physical body, the expression of Him on the physical plane.

In the same way the collective astral worlds (not only the astral spheres belonging to these physical planets, but also the purely astral planets of all the chains of the system — such, for example, as planets B and F of our own Chain) made up His astral body, and the collective worlds of the mental plane were His mental body — the vehicle through which He manifested Himself upon that particular plane.

But since some of these periodic changes are much more rapid than others, a curious and complicated series of effects is produced, and it has been observed that the movement of the physical planets in their relation to one another furnishes a clue to the arrangement of these great spheres at any given moment.

In Chaldaea it was held that, in the gradual condensation of the original glowing nebula from which the system was formed, the location of the physical planets was determined by the formation of vortices at certain points of intersection of these spheres with one another and with a given plane.

They divided their followers into classes, assigning each to what would now be called his ruling planet, and their calendar was full of warnings addressed to these different classes; as, for example:

From this peculiar division of the people into types, according to the planets which indicated the position of the centre of influence to which they were most readily susceptible, there arose an equally curious arrangement both of the public temple services and of the private devotions of the worshippers.

But, quite apart from these observances, which seem to have been common to all, each person had his own special prayers to offer to the particular Deity to whom by birth he was attached; and the proper time for them varied constantly with the motion of his planet.

It might, however, be invoked at any time while above the horizon; and even while below it the Deity of the planet was not entirely out of reach, though in this case he was addressed only in some great emergency, and the whole ceremonial employed was entirely different.

What might be described as a kind of periodical prayer-book was issued for each planet, and all those who were attached to that planet were careful to provide themselves with copies of it.

Indeed, these calendars were something much more than mere reminders as to hours of prayer; they were prepared under special stellar conditions (each under the influence of its own Deity) and were supposed to have various talismanic properties, so that the devotee of any particular planet always carried its latest calendar about with him.

So far as we can see, there was no thought in his mind that the Spirit of the planet would in any way resent it if he neglected the hour, or indeed that it was possible for such a Spirit to feel anger at all ; the idea was rather that at that moment the Deity was pouring forth a blessing, and that it would be not only foolish but ungrateful to lose the opportunity so kindly offered.

Each of the planets had as signed to it at least two great feast days in the year and the Sun and Moon appropriated considerably more than two.

Closer examination, however, showed that ther was a plan, and a remarkable one — that not only th' gradually increasing distances of these smaller tern pies from the principal one had a definite ratio an< a definite meaning, but even the relative dimension of certain important parts of these fanes were no accidental, for they typified respectively the sizes o the planets and their distances from the solar orb.

There is nothing in this wonderful monument of ancient skill to prove to us that its designer knew the absolute sizes and distances of the planets at all, though of course he may have done so ; what is certain is that he was perfectly well acquainted with their relative sizes and distances.

The shrines devoted to the inner planets made a sort of irregular cluster which seemed quite close under the walls of the great Sun-Temple, while those of the giant outer members of the solar family were dotted at ever-increasing intervals over the plain, until the representative of far-away Neptune was almost lost in the distance.

All these hemispheres were brilliantly coloured, each bearing the hues which Chaldaean tradition associated with its particular planet.

These domes by no means always bore the same relation to the dimensions of their respective temples, but when compared one with another they were found to correspond closely to the sizes of the planets which they symbolised.

This may have been due to the use of a different standard for these huge globes, but it seems to us far more probable that the Chaldaean proportions were correct, and that in modern astronomy we have considerably over-estimated the size of the outer planets.

It is all but established now that the surface which we see in the case of Jupiter or Saturn is that of a deep, dense cloud-envelope, and not the body of the planet at all ; and if that be so, the Chaldaean representation of these globes is as accurate as the rest of their scheme.

Another point in favour of such a suggestion is that, if it were accepted, the extraordinarily low density commonly assigned by our astronomers to the outer planets would be brought more nearly into agreement with that of the other worlds within our ken.

Vulcan, the intra-Mercurial planet, was duly represented, and the place in the scheme where our earth should have come in was occupied by the temple of the Moon — a large one, though the hemisphere which crowned it seemed disproportionately small, being constructed exactly to the same scale as the rest.

Every planet which possesses satellites had them carefully indicated by properly proportioned subsidiary domes arranged round the primary, and Saturn's rings were also clearly shown.

On the principal festivals of any of the planets, all the votaries of the corresponding Deities (as we should say now, the people born under those planets) wore over or in place of their ordinary dress a mantle or cope of the colour considered sacred to the planet.

It may have been suggested either by auric appearances or by the ruddy hue of the physical planet.

On the principal festivals of any one of these planets, its adherents appeared in full dress, and marched in procession to its temple, decked with garlands of flowers, bearing banners and gilded staves, and filling the air with sonorous chanting.

On such an occasion the worshippers of the Sun filled the vast building to overflowing, while next to the walls marched the bands of Vulcan, next outside them those of Mercury, then the followers of Venus and so on, each planet being represented in the order of its position with reference to the Sun.

It is a wellknown property of the concave mirror that it forms in the air in front of it, at its focus, an image of whatever is reflected in it, and this principle was cleverly used by the priests in order, as they would probably have put it, to collect and apply the influence of each planet at the moment of its greatest power, A pedestal bearing a brazier was fixed in the floor beneath the focus of the mirror, and just as a planet was coming to the meridian and therefore shining through the slit in the roof, a quantity of sweet-smelling incense was thrown upon the glowing charcoal.

This carught the reflected image of the planet, and by tilting it the concentrated light received from the co cave mirror could be poured down upon certain spots on the floor of the temple.

The inner surface of the great dome was painted to represent the night-sky, and by some complicated mechanism the principal constellations were made to move over it exactly as the real stars were moving outside, so that at any time of the day, or on a cloudy night, a worshipper could always tell in the temple the precise position of any of the signs of the zodiac, and of the various planets in relation to them.

Luminous bodies were used to represent the planets, and in the earlior days of this religion, precisely as in the earlier days of the Mysteries, these bodies were real materialisations called into existence by the Adept Teachers, and moving freely in the air; but in both cases in later days, when less evolved men had to take the place of these exalted Beings, it was found difficult or impossible to make the materialisations work properly, and so their place was filled by ingenious mechanical contrivances — a kind of orrery on a gigantic scale.

This evidently aided in the development of the power of divination, of clairvoyance and of intuition ; and it was evident that the particular colour of light used depended not only upon the object sought, but upon the planet or type to which the priest belonged.

A little careful investigation shows that the terms, though sometimes synonymous, are not always so, for they seem to have included at least three quite different conceptions under the one title 'the Spirit of a planet'.

First they believed in the existence, in connection with each planet, of an undeveloped, semi-intelligent yet exceedingly potent entity, which we can perhaps best express in our Theosophical terminology as the collective elemental essence of that planet, regarded as one huge creature.

If in just the same way we can conceive of the totality of the elemental kingdoms in a particular planet energising as a whole, we shall have grasped exactly the theory held by the ancient Chaldaeans with regard to this first variety of planetary Spirit, for which 'planetary elemental' would be a far more appropriate name.

The priests held that the physical planets which we can see serve as pointers to indicate the position or condition of the great centres in the body of the LOGOS Himself, and also that through each of these great centres poured out one of the ten types of essence out of which, according to them, everything was built.

Each of these types of essence, when taken by itself, was identified with a planet, and this also was frequently called the Spirit of the planet, thus giving another and quite different meaning to the term.

In this sense they spoke of the Spirit of each planet as omnipresent throughout the solar system, as working within each man and showing itself in his actions, as manifesting through certain plants or minerals and giving them their distinctive properties.

Naturally it was this 4 Spirit of the planet' within man which could be acted upon by the condition of the great centre to which it belonged, and it was with reference to this that all their astrological warnings were issued.

When, however, the Chaldaeans invoked the blessing of the Spirit of a planet, or endeavoured by earnest and reverent meditation to raise themselves towards Him, they were using the expression in yet another sense.

They thought of each of these great centres as giving birth to and working through a whole hierarchy of great Spirits, and at the head of each of these hierarchies stood one great One who was called pre-eminently 'The Spirit of the planet,' or more frequently the Star-Angel.

It was whispered that when the festival of some particular planet was being held in that great temple, and when at the critical moment the image of the Star shone out brightly amid the incense-cloud, those whose eyes were opened by the fervour of their devotion had sometimes seen the mighty form of the Star-Angel hovering beneath the blazing orb, so that it shone upon his forehead as he looked down benignantly upon those worshippers with whose evolution he was so closely connected.

It was one of the tenets of this ancient faith that it was in rare cases a possibility for highly developed men, who were full of heartfelt devotion to their Angel, to raise themselves by stress of long-continued meditation out of their world into His — to change the whole course of their evolution, and secure their next birth not on this planet any more, but on His ; and the temple records contained accounts of priests who had done this, and so passed beyond human ken.

We noticed a case in which a priest was seen standing upon the flat roof of one of the temples and invoking in private devotion one of the planetary Spirits.1 He held in his hand a long staff tipped with some bituminous-looking substance, and he began his invocation by marking with this staff the astrological sign of the planet upon the pavement in front of him, the substance leaving a brilliant phosphorescent mark behind it upon the stone or plaster surface.

The educational arrangements of the country were not, as in Peru, directly in the hands of the priests, although it was they who decided by their calculations — evidently aided in some cases by clairvoyant insight — to which planet a child belonged.

The children attached to a particular planet attended the school of that planet, and were under teachers of the same type as themselves, so that the children of

Numerous religious or rather ethical precepts were learnt by heart, all indicating the conduct expected from 'a son of Mars,' the planet — or Venus or Jupiter as the case might be — under various conditions that might arise ; and the only literature studied was an endlessly voluminous commentary upon these, full of interminable stories of adventures and situations in which the heroes acted sometimes wisely, sometimes foolishly.