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Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing
nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and
centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical
constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak
so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling
out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being
wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the
soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar
system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives
it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the
Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with
his own little solar cosmos.

What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much
of the rest)? But these do not prove the solidity of the "central
mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the
atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's
body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing
"a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery
prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?" We say that there is indeed a
"prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical,
mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic
reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as
Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will
consider the next interrogatory.



Question II.--Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?

Such is the accepted theory of modern science: it is not what the
"Adepts" teach. The former says--the sun "derives no important
accession of heat from without:"--the latter answer--"the sun needs it
not." He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for
the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of
vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not
cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a
cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age
by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for
the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to
achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting
humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical
textbooks of Missionary Schools--namely, that "the sun has an orbital
journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet
but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General
Readers.")

The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can
reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion,
in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or
even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has
already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted
within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and
physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial
chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is
acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly
speaking, though the body of the sun--a body that was never yet
reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented--cannot be said
to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which
the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the
sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to
science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for
the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark
lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth
could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other
hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or
not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain
stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or,
properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of
their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific
tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had?
The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun--an invisible orb of
which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing--has in him the
spirit of every element that exists in the solar system; and his
"Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far
more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our
planet having to await its further growth and development before any of
its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that
chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the
latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now
supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and
Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his
Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;" the ascetic's dress
being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring
matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital
principle in man's blood--the symbol of the vital principle in the sun,
or what is now called chromosphere. The "rose-coloured region!" How
little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though
hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its
presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red
matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of
their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never
see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of
matter.

---------
* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject.
The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the
sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The
Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to
leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth
(Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so. The
visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.
---------

If the "Adepts" are asked: "What then, in your views, is the nature of
our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"--they answer:
beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is
spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid,
liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital
electricity, condensed and made visible.*

---------
* If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of
the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he
would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible
planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron
claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh
from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which
is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen
without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in
magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is
a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the
elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast
attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth
in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God
himself, and how he is visible, how invisible," The italics are the
author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words
which had a double meaning in their code. Here "God himself" visible
and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum--Nature's seventh
principle.
----------

And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the
luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame,
no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account
for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without
combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and
flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of
a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that
undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the
"protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been
observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting
every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.; to
this the only answer that can be given is the following: the
appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were
the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the
sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us
to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow
one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes.
Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her
instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness
and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever
calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the
sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is
ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of
the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities--Sir W.
Herschel--says the following: "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and
if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a
shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary
cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of
the sun through the transparent ones." The underlined words, written
nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of
the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the
far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived. And what
the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his
assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the
solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent
fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque
vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view
to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of
our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is
like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a
cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon
from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an
astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from
our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas,
the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!

--------
* Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of
distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of
the question."
----------

The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the
more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W.
Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps
metaphorically!" It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid
bodies revolving near the sun's surface. "They have been conjectured to
be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid
matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque
masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...." When all his
anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose
intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all
astronomers comes near the truth--far nearer than any of those modern
astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his
"imaginative and fanciful theories." His only mistake, now shared by
most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally
observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun
itself. When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth
willow-leaf theory--"the definite shape of these objects, their exact
similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant
to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid
nature"--his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable
knowledge of physical science. When he adds: "Nothing remains but to
consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some
sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the
immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander
physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And
when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of
view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and
amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such
organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that
vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and
electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an
occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar
physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer
interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery
constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole
solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the
vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and
breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of
our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a
much as it gives out. Were the astronomers to be asked--what definite
and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory--what
knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere--they might,
perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present
theories. For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar
physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever
from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the
heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:--

Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption
possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some
general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work
upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and
physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by
spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner
constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the
axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction? They have no
means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of
determining, the sun's physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of
the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter,
such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being
ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls
upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly
surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable
velocity of many meteors;" (c) confessedly--they "have no means of
learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous
spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the
solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light "may
come from the surface layers only;" and, "it may be but a shell" ....
(truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion,
properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;" and "whether
these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only
processes of combustion which can actually take place there."
Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after
all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of
incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible
characteristic of the light of the glowing gas." Thus, the whole basis
of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they,
the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz.,
that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them
the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages,
prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the
authorities of the age in physical science--Professor Tyndall--saying
that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no
substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would
be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and
again:--".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do
not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this
enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a
diminution of his store ...."--after reading this, to see the men of
science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may
be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that
great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite
extension--a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to
Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the
sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit
of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to
shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of
conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the
flux of power is eternally the same." Mr. Tyndall speaks here as
though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori--"the sun is
cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds
as loud as it ever did.

No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will
not be extinguished. Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on
the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be
gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite
Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and
the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden
and--died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon
awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them--to die themselves for
their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have
to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only,
surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of
the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general
conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun: he will have
unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"--the mysterious, the
ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere
poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the
greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world
among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the
Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise
of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths
even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the
Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in
subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has
likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana "borrowed
from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from
the Gospel--in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the
Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the
same source! When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian
Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders,
then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the
historical truths of the West vindicated!



Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?


No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated
the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly
preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism"
(page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though
its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is
still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a
cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later
on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or
savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.

That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to
several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability,
and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual
blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish
between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign
to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric
times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what
criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an
excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the
public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some
20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and
historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology
bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature,
popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word--
superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and
"folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius,
mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of
pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest. The
latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of
about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were
hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately--
Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were
created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced
upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been
for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and
heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on
those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the
few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy--
hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got
early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth
clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern
Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they
are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be,
most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate
the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into
which most have slipped.

The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is
humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up
unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian
bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian
nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will
Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient
Judaism and modern Christianity.

So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older
civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has
assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical
chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal
History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe
and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition
furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian
nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data
coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time,
that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not
very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient
relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could
profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by
Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the
Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile
land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the
Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces"
under its beds of sand.

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