isis unveiled: chapter chapter VIII (our place among infinities)

"Later, in the Pythagorean speculations, Zeus became the metaphysical trinity; the monad evolving from its invisible SELF the active cause, effect, and intelligent will, the whole forming the Tetractis. Still later we find the earlier Neoplatonists leaving the primal monad aside, on the ground of its utter incomprehensibleness to human intellect, speculating merely on the [...]

isis unveiled: chapter chapter VIII (our place among infinities)

"The radical element of the oldest religions was essentially sabaistic; and we maintain that their myths and allegories - if once correctly and thoroughly interpreted, will dovetail with the most exact astronomical notions of our day. We will say more; there is hardly a scientific law - whether pertaining to physical astronomy or physical geography [...]

isis unveiled: chapter chapter VIII (our place among infinities)

"We have brought sufficient testimony in the preceding chapter to show that the ancients must have used as good optical instruments as we have now. Were the instruments in possession of Nebuchadnezzar of such moderate power, and the knowledge of his astronomers so very contemptible, when, according to Rawlinson's reading of the tiles, the Birs-Nimrud, [...]

isis unveiled: chapter chapter VIII (our place among infinities)

"In just twice two hundred years from the date of that prophecy, we had the Crimean war, during which the alliance of the Gallic Cock and English Bull interfered with the political designs of the Russian Bear. In 1856 the war was ended, and Turkey, or the Crescent, closely escaped destruction. In the present year [...]

isis unveiled: chapter chapter VIII (our place among infinities)

"A witty joke may sound very prettily, even in a learned treatise, and the word "coincidence" may be applied to anything we are unwilling to accept. But a sophism is not a truism; still less is it a mathematical demonstration, which alone ought to serve as a beacon - to astronomers, at least. Astrology is [...]