THE SCHEME OF REDEMPTION
In addition to the creation of the world and the fall of man through
sin, we find all people in possession of a grand scheme of redemption,
and, like the former, we shall find them all essentially the same. They
all require a mediator between the angry God and disobedient man,
and they all require that this mediator shall be Divine, or semi-Divine.
Nothing less can satisfy Deity's demands; or, rather, let us say man's
own carnal imagination. It is simply another turn of our cosmic kaleidoscope,
and behold! the actors have changed. Capricorn becomes
the stable of the Goat, in the manger of which the young Savior of
the world is born. As a type of all, we will take the Gospel Savior.
It is again midnight. The Sun enters the sign Capricorn on the twenty-first of December. This is the lowest point of the arc, South, and for
three days he is stationary, or in darkness. And now it is Christmas
Eve. He (the Sun or Savior) begins to move, and at midnight is born
as the celestial Virgo is rising upon the Eastern quadrant of the skies;
hence the Sun-God is born of a Virgin. Then comes the flight to escape
Kronos, or Saturn (ruling Capricorn), who kills the young babes.
There is a period of silence in the God's history while the Sun is in
transit through the signs Capricorn and part of Aquarius. That is,
he is hidden or obscured by the clouded skies of this period. We hear
of him but once again until he, the Sun-God, or Savior, is thirty years
old, or has transited thirty degrees of space. He has entered the sign
Aquarius (symbolical of the Man.) Now begins the period of miracles.
Let us digress for a space, and refer to our chapter on the
constellations. We shall find a perfect analogy between this miracle-working period and the constellations Aquarius and Pisces, as therein
given. The first miracle we read of is turning water into wine. This
may be seen in a threefold aspect. The Sun-God changes by his life-forces the waters of winter into the rich vintage of the harvest, where
the Virgin (Virgo) Mother again appears. Again, the wine becomes
the blood—the life offered up on the vernal cross to strengthen, renew
and make merry with new life our Earth and its people. The devil
(or winter), with his powers of darkness, is defeated and man saved.
The final triumph is the crucifixion in Aries, the vernal equinox, about
the twenty-first of March, quickly followed by the resurrection, or
renewal of life. Then the God rises into heaven, to sit upon the throne
at the summer solstice, to bless his people. We read, that, the Savior
of mankind was crucified between two thieves. Very good. The
equinoctial point is the dividing line between light and darkness, winter
and summer. In other words, the Sun is resuming his northern arc,
to replenish the Earth with his solar force and preserve his people
from death in the coming winter. The life of a Buddha, a Krishna or
a Christ, are all found in their completeness in the life of Horus;
while
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are Isis, Horus and
Osirus. The same
trinity, under different names, are found in all nations. It is the
Sun,
Moon and Human Soul, which is the only true mediator of Man.
There is another version of this celestial crucifixion, wherein
the Sun-God-Savior, after the supper of the harvest in Virgo, is crucified
at the autumnal equinox upon the equator. We read that he
was dying from the sixth to the ninth hours—three hours, three signs,
or from the 21st of September to the 21st of December, when he is
laid in the tomb. This is the lowest point of the Sun's journey in
the southern hemisphere, and darkness holds the balance in our northern
hemisphere. The three days in the tomb are the three months,
or three signs, before the vernal equinox, or the resurrection, the rising
out of the South to bring salvation to the northern portion of our Earth.
We have now only to glance over various diverging lines of the
same cosmology and the same redemption. All these allegories typified
truths. They all teach the Initiate the mysteries of creation, of
man's destiny and his necessary Cycle of Material Probation. Some
of the most beautiful parables may be read in this light. Abraham,
and the story of his wanderings in the deserts of Asia Minor; of Lot
and his unfaithful wife, are to be seen still written in the heavens.
Hagar and Ishmael are still there; so also are Esau and his brother
Jacob; the story of Joseph and his brethren; of Sampson and his
twelve labors. This is the same beautiful story. The Sun, shorn of
his glory, or solar force, at the autumnal equinox, stands upon the
equator between the two pillars of the temple (or light and darkness),
and pulls down the temple (or signs) into the southern hemisphere.
And behind this we have the eternal truth of the soul, when, giving
way to the allurements of matter (Delilah), the soul is shorn of its
spiritual covering, or conscience, and sinks into matter and death.
And the story of David and Goliath can be read to-day as clearly
as of yore.
They are eternal, spiritual verities of human nature, and record,
not only the history of the human race, its mutations and transmutations,
but of the individual man and the suffering and delusive joys
of his material life. Aye, more! It is the record of all his past existence
and a type of his eternal destiny in the future.
Another turn of our cosmic kaleidoscope, and lo! the scene changes
—the play extended, the angles greater, caused by the revolution of
our solar parent through his celestial Zodiac. As the Sun passes out
of one sign into another, or, in other words, forms a different angle
to his own center of force, a new dispensation is born to the world;
or, rather, re-born under a new guise. The great Sun-God appears
to change his nature and manifests an entirely different set of attributes.
That is the way man personified this play of Nature, through his
imperfect conception of the cause of this change. But to him it was,
and is, a truth, and man's effort to externalize these attributes in a
Divine personality was, and is, strictly from the plane of his mental
development and spiritual unfoldment.
The two pictures of this Astro-Theology, as set forth in the two
divisions of the Jewish Bible, will illustrate our meaning. The Sun
had entered the sign Aries some time prior to the exodus from Egypt.
Aries is the constellation of Mars, the fiery, destructive and warrior
element, or force, in Nature, and we find the Jewish conception of
God a perfect embodiment of these attributes: The Lord of Hosts,
a God mighty in battle, delighting in the shedding of blood and the
smell of burnt offerings, ever marshalling the people to battle and
destroying their foes and the works of his own hands; a God imbued
with jealousy, anger, and revenge. This was the type set up by the
Jewish savior and lawgiver, Moses.
After a period of 2,160 years, we find the Christian cosmology
ushered in. The Sun has entered the sign Pisces, which is ruled by
Jupiter, the beneficent father. The Christ, or mediator, of the Christian
Gospel was an embodiment of the joint qualities of the sign and ruling
planet. Gentle, loving and merciful, His words were messages of
love and peace; His work was with the poor, oppressed and fallen;
he eschewed sacrifices and burnt offerings; a contrite heart was the
best offering; He taught the people that God was their Father, loving
all, just, yet merciful. But a strong taint of the old conception has
remained with the human race, hiding, at times, the beauty of the
latter concept. These are, again, the refractions of eternal truths,
viewed by man from his material plane. The elements are here presented,
the alphabet and its key clearly defined. Therefore, let each one
explore this tangled labyrinth of Astro-Theology for him or herself,
and work out the various correspondencies at leisure. It is enough
to indicate the starry originals of all this seemingly confused mass of
so-called Divine revelation in sacred books.
They, one and all, pertain to the same celestial phenomena, and
the various Bibles are the outcome of man's serious attempt to tabulate
and externalize this heavenly order, to record his conceptions
of these starry aspects and movements with their corresponding effects
upon the Earth.
Probably the purest system to us is that which may yet be derived
from Chaldean sources. This sacerdotal caste were the most perfect
in their astral conceptions and complete in their symbolic system of
recording, and if the great work found in King Sargon's library in
seventy tablets is ever translated, it will prove of priceless value to
the student of these weird, but sublime, astrological mysteries.
In conclusion, as we reflect upon the fourfold aspect of the
subject that we have presented in outline in these pages, the whole
imagery passes in review before the mental vision. We see that the
radiant constellations of the heavenly vault, with the beautiful reflection
and counterpart, the shining Zodiac, are the two halves of
the great Cycle of Necessity, the spiral of eternal, universal life,
which
binds the whole into unity, and unity into infinity. It is the grand
scheme of creative life. The seven principles of Nature, or Divine
Activities, are the forces producing the phenomena within seven
angelic states, seven kingdoms, and, by seven planets, upon the
external plane; the planets being the passive mediums of the positive
spiritual forces. Upon this dual spiral, which reflects the seven rays
of the solar spectrum is produced seven musical notes; one half of the
spiral in sound and color being the complementary of the other half.
Man, the Earth, and our solar system, are revolving, each orb in its
own key, and its own peculiar ray, meeting and blending with other
spirals, and the whole blending into one mighty spiral Cycle of
Progressive Life, revolving around the Eternal, Infinite Ego-God, ever
involving and evolving the attributes, powers and possibilities of the
One great central source of Being.
It is a grand orchestra, pealing out in richest melody and
sublime
harmony, the grand Anthem of Creation: "We Praise Thee, O God.''
