Geological
Transitions Take
Time, And They Generate
Anxiety
William Q.
Judge
A 2011 Editorial Note:
The following article
- first published in 1894 [1] - shows
that the debate about climate change among students of esoteric philosophy did not
start in the 20th century. Wild astrological statements and “occult”
speculations were numerous in the 1890s.
Theosophy teaches that geological transitions are gradual.
They take hundreds of years, at least. They also include moments of sudden, dramatic,
large scale change. In the case of Atlantis, it took many thousands of years. It
is quicker in smaller cycles.
One of the important sentences in “Direful Prophecies” says that “seismic disturbance is the physical sign of
disturbance in the moral, psychic, and mental fields”.
Indeed, our Earth is septenary in its consciousness.
Its several levels of consciousness have an intimate contact among them.
The physiological level of planetary
intelligence is demonstrated by James Lovelock in his brilliant “Gaia Theory”[2]. This is linked to the mental atmosphere
of average humanity, and to the higher levels of consciousness.
There is a living and
direct “dialogue” between geological and psychological evolution, or nature and
mind. Such a correlation is no secret: it is both individual and collective,
material and divine. It operates at every level. It was investigated by J-J. Rousseau,
Maine de Biran, H. P. Blavatsky and others. Some of its forms are subtle,
others, direct. At the collective physical level, for instance, mental and
emotional greed and materialism cause a worldwide destruction of forests, a
contamination of oceans, an excess of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other
climate-changing factors.
H.P.B. wrote in 1879 on the
relation between deforestation and the disappearance of decaying civilizations:
“We need only glance at the pages of history to see that the ruin and ultimate
extinction of national power follow the extinction of forests as surely as
night follows day. Nature has provided the means for human development; and her
laws can never be violated without disaster.”[3]
This is also a planetary event. It occurs under the
law of cycles.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
000
Direful Prophecies
William Q. Judge
The whole mystic
fraternity of Astrologers is now engaged in showing how the heavens portend
great changes on this our earth. They agree with H.P.B., who said that her
Eastern friends told her of coming cyclic changes now very near at hand.
Beyond doubt there is some truth in all these
sayings, although here and there the astrologers definitely prognosticating are
not supported by fact. Sepharial [4],
for instance, staked his reputation on the death of the Prince of Wales, which
did not come off, and now where is the reputation? Just as good as ever, for
astrologers know that either the judgment of the astrologer may be at fault
from sundry causes, or that the birth-hour may be wrong, or that some saving
aspect of the stars has been overlooked.
Great earthquakes like that of Zante or the one in
Kuchan come up, and the astrologers, while they regularly in those years
foresaw earthquakes, did not seem able to locate them for any spot. They were
afraid to say Persia for fear it might be in London. But earthquakes were foretold.
A steady prognostication of disturbance has been indulged in, and this general
outlook would seem right. The disturbances were expected in the realm of mind,
morals, and religion by those true astrologers who seldom speak, and the
increase of crime like that of bomb-throwing justifies each month the general
prediction. Seismic disturbance is the physical sign of disturbance in the
moral, psychic, and mental fields. This is an old axiom in the East. In the
record of the earthquake said to have taken place when Jesus died we have the
Christian reflection of the same idea.
That earthquakes, floods, and great social changes
would go on increasing has been known to Theosophists since the day Tom Paine
saw psychically “a new order of things for the human race opening in the
affairs of America”, before the revolution. And ever since the increment of
disaster has been great. The motto adopted by the makers of the Union - “A new
order of ages” - was an echo from the realm of soul to the ears of men on
earth. It marked a point in the cycle. The record of the disasters during the
years since then would be found appalling. It takes in Asia and Europe, and
would show millions of sudden deaths by violent earth-convulsions. And now in
1894 even Herbert Spencer, looking at the mental and social fields of human
life, says in a magazine article:
“A nation of which the legislators vote as they
were bid and of which the workers surrender their rights of selling their labor
where they please has neither the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the
maintenance of liberty.... We are on the way back to the rule of the strong
hand in the shape of the bureaucratic despotism of a socialistic organization
and then of the military despotism which must follow it; if, indeed, some social
crash does not bring the latter upon us more quickly.”
Evidently this deeply philosophical and statistical
writer feels the pressure in the atmosphere of social and material life. There
is much unconscious prophecy in what he says. Earthquakes and deaths from them
are dreadful, but they can be avoided when their probable place is known. But
social earthquakes, moral pestilence, mental change belong to man, go with him
where he goes, and cannot be averted by any alteration of place.
In the Illustrated American a
writer on astrology gives definite prophecy of disaster. He erects a figure of
the heavens for noon of November 12, 1894, showing a conjunction of Sun,
Uranus, Venus, and Mercury in Scorpio, with Saturn only fifteen degrees away.
Astrologically this is very bad. With the moon at the full in Taurus - the bull
- it is ominous of floods and earthquakes. But we may add that in the psychic
Zodiac it shows floods and heaving in the moral and social structure of the
poor orphan man. Uranus and Saturn are bad planets anyway; they are erratic and
heavy, subtle, dark, and menacing. This writer predicts ominously, but remains
indefinite as to place. We will add that dying nations like those of Persia and
China will feel most whatever effects shall be due; and in Europe, while there
will be physical disturbance, the greater trouble will be in the social and
governmental structures.
The astrologer then runs forward to December 30,
1901, when he says six planets will be in one sign and in a line, with a
seventh opposite on the same line projected. This, it is said by such an
ancient sage as Berosus, will bring a flood when it takes place in the zodiacal
sign Capricorn, as is to be the case in 1901.
Many Theosophists believe these prognostications,
others deride them. The former ask what shall we do? Nothing. Stay where you
are. If you remove, it is more than likely you will run into the jaws of a
blacker fate. Do your duty where you find yourself, and if from your goodness
you are a favorite of the gods you will escape, while if you are not their
favorite it is better for you to die and take another chance at bettering your
character. Death will come when it will, and why should we fear, since it is “a
necessary end.” Theosophists too often occupy themselves with these woeful
lookings into the future, to the detriment of their present work. They should
try to discover the fine line of duty and endeavor, leaving the astrologers of
today, who are more at sea than any other mystics, to con over a zodiac that is
out of place and calculate with tables which delude with the subtle power that
figures have to lie when the basis of calculation is wrong.
[“Path” magazine, March,
1894.]
NOTES:
[1] The text
is reproduced from “Theosophical Articles”, W.Q. Judge, Theosophy Co., Los
Angeles, 1980, volume II, pp. 108-109. (CCA)
[2] The main idea in James
Lovelock’s Gaia Theory belongs to the ancient wisdom tradition, as the
very name of the theory - “Gaia” - reveals. Its central principle, that our
planet is alive and intelligent, is also clearly formulated in the books
written by H. P. Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine” among
them. Although Lovelock’s books are not formally theosophical and have clear
conceptual limitations, they contain many a theosophical element and make a
significant contribution to esoteric philosophy. See for instance “The Ages of
Gaia”, Norton & Co., New York-London, copyright 1988, 255 pp., and “The
Revenge of Gaia”, Penguin Books, 2007, 222 pp. (CCA)
[3] H.P.B. wrote this sentence in
her note entitled “The Ruin of India”, published at “The Theosophist”, November
1879, pp. 42-43. (CCA)
[4] “Sepharial” was the
pseudonym of Walter Richard Old, a London Theosophist close to H. P. Blavatsky
in her final years. In 1894-95, however,
Sepharial turned against W. Q. Judge and helped Annie Besant make accusations
against him. Mrs. Besant was thus able to obtain complete “political power”
within the Adyar Society. Sepharial
wrote dozens of books on astrology. See
the article “Walter Richard Old: The Man Who Held Helena Blavatsky’s Hand”, by
Kim Farnell, in “Theosophical History” magazine, April 2000, pp. 71-83. (CCA)
000
