Category: Isis Unveiled: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

"We have but to open the most common book on astrology, and compare the descriptions embraced in the Fable of the Twelve Houses with the most modern discoveries of science as to the nature of the planets and the elements in each star, to see that without any spectroscope the ancients were perfectly well-acquainted with [...]

"If their mode of impressing upon the popular minds the great astronomical truths differed from the "system of education" of our present century and appears ridiculous to some, the question still remains unanswered: which of the two systems was the best? With them science went in hand with religion, and the idea of God was [...]

"As to calling in question the intrinsic knowledge of the ancients on the ground of their "superstitious deductions from natural phenomena", it is as appropriate as it would be if, five hundred years hence, our descendants should regard the pupils of Professor Balfour Stewart as ancient ignoramuses, and himself a shallow philosopher. If modern science, [...]

"It seems to us that the fable illustrates the different phases of the moon. We, the inhabitants of the earth, never see but one-half of our bright satellite, who thus turns her back to her mother Juno. The sun, the moon, and the earth are constantly changing positions with relation to each other. With the [...]

"Diana-Luna is the daughter of Zeus by Proserpina, who represents the Earth in her active labor, and, according to Hesiod, as Diana Eilythia-Lucina she is Juno's daughter. But Juno, devoured by Kronos or Saturn, and restored back to life by the Oceanid Metis, is also known as the Earth. Saturn, as the evolution of Time, [...]

"An old Hindu legend says that Brahma-Prajapati, having fallen in love with his own daughter, Ushas (Heaven, sometimes the Dawn also), assumed the form of a buck (ris'ya) and Ushas that of a female deer (rohit) and thus committed the first sin. Upon such a desecration, the gods felt so terrified, that uniting their most [...]

"The marked respect paid by the Buddhists to the sapphire-stone - which was also sacred to Luna, in every other country - may be found based on something more scientifically exact than a mere groundless superstition. They ascribed it to a sacred magical power, which every student of psychological mesmerism will readily understand, for its [...]

"As the sun, what better image could be found for Jupiter emitting his golden rays than to personify this emanation in Diana, the all-illuminating virgin Artemis, whose oldest name was Diktynna, literally the emitted ray, from the word dikein. The moon is non-luminous, and it shines only by the reflected light of the sun; hence, [...]

"It may be easily proved that from time immemorial Saturn or Kronos, whose ring, most positively, was discovered by the Chaldean astrologers, and whose symbolism is no "coincidence", was considered the father of Zeus, before the latter became himself the father of all the gods, and was the highest deity. He was the Bel or [...]

"In his astronomical aspect Zeus-Dionysus has his origin in the zodiac, the ancient solar year. In Libya he assumed the form of a ram, and is identical with the Egyptian Amun, who begat Osiris, the taurian god. Osiris is also a personified emanation of the Father-Sun, and himself the Sun in Taurus. The Parent-Sun being [...]