ZODIACS OF ANCIENT INDIA AND EGYPT

"If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor — the Tyrian purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application? The indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if chemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more archæology and philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition."

Among other arts and sciences, the ancients — aye, as a heirloom from the Atlanteans — had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac.

As already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these with Zodiacal signs. The whole world's History is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt this was proved by the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sufi, the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past, as also of the future, history of our globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably.

As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, nor do they understand those they happen to know (witness Bentley), the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon (Travels in Egypt, Vol. II.) in which, if understood, the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students — who have examined and studied both very carefully — have to say of them. As asserted by the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, who was informed that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, thus was it found and corroborated by Mackey.[1] For he states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions, "And in that which shows the Poles (polar axes) at right angles, there are marks which prove that 'it was not the last time they were in that position; but the first' — after the Zodiacs had been traced." "Capricorn," he adds, "is represented at the North Pole, and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole; which is a confirmation that originally they had their winter when the Sun was in Cancer; but the chief characteristics of its being a monument commemorating the first time that the Pole had been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin." (See in Part II., §"A Mystery of the Zodiac.")

Broadly calculated, it is believed by the Egyptologists that the great Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C. (See Proctor, Knowledge, Vol. I. pp. 242, 400); and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 7 50 years before the Fourth Dynasty (supposed to have built the Pyramids) had appeared ("The Great Pyramid," Staniland Wake). Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's declaration that "all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile" (Rawlinson's "Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 345) is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis. It points to great civilization in prehistoric times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor ("the servants of Horus") were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. G. Maspero affirms, it is to this prehistoric race that "belongs the honour . . . of having founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the most important sanctuaries." This was before the great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet "they possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in civilization." It was, says Lenormant, "the country of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in the origin of civilization." What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000 years B.C. (Maspero). Now it is claimed that it is by means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal year) that the approximate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. "Assuming that the long narrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of the pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that . . . . Alpha Draconis, the then pole-star, was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170 B.C. (Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) But we are also told that "this relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an extraordinary one . . it could not occur again for a whole sidereal year" (ibid). This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal years, the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.

Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, as on the Dendera Zodiac, the same characteristics of the signs are found. Those who know well the Hindu symbols and constellations, will be able to find out by the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of the chronological time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the Lion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the original conformation of these constellations. "But in many places we see the Lion (Simha)," Mackey adds, "with his tail turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent's head; thereby showing that the Lion had been 'inverted'; which, indeed, must have been the case with the whole Zodiac and every other Constellation, when the Pole had been inverted."

Speaking of the Circular Zodiac, given also by Denon, he says: — There, "the Lion is standing on the Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which it is found that though six or seven hundred thousand years must have passed between the two positions, yet they had made but little difference between in the constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented very differently in the two. In the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is nursing her child; but it seems that they had not had that idea when the pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in this Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds in her hand an ear of wheat. It is much to be lamented that there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figure in the latter part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo which has taken away one Decan out of each sign."

Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs: namely, to the last three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years. The first of these (the "Aryan-Asiatics") witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the "giant Atlanteans"[2] who perished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) toward the close of the Miocene Age.[3] The fourth sub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans — the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this the reader is asked to glance at the diagram of the genealogical tree of the Fifth Root-Race — generally, though hardly correctly, called the Aryan race, and the explanations appended to it.

H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine ii, 430-434


[1] "The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated" by a strangely intuitional symbologist and astronomer, a kind of a self-made adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quarter of this century.

[2] The term "Atlantean" must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said "Asiatics." Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the "Europeans" were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world; which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as some African tribes comparatively are, even now).

[3] Says a teacher in "Esoteric Buddhism," on p. 64: "In the Eocene age, even in its very first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men the (Lemuro) Atlanteans had already reached its highest point (of civilization), and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking. . . ." And on page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To show how the continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary period (see p. 65 of the same work), and the last of "Atlantis" only 11,000 years ago; thus both overlapping — one the Atlantean period, and the other the Aryan.