(38) Where then the King (viz. the Light of the Sun) is so very joyful in the Spirit, and does so highly triumph, exult, and rejoice, that he moves all the Essences of the Stars, and brings them into their highest Degree, to generate her; where then all Centers of the Stars fly open, and the loving Virgin beholds herself in them. Where then the Essences of the Soul (in the Light of the Virgin) can see in the Centers of the Stars, what is in its Original and Source.

(10) If all this be true, we must at once admit signification, though, neither singly nor collectively, can we ascribe to the stars any efficacy except in what concerns the All and in what is of their own function.

We must admit that the Soul before entering into birth presents itself bearing with it something of its own, for it could never touch body except under stress of a powerful inner impulse; we must admit some element of chance around it from its very entry, since the moment and conditions are determined by the kosmic circuit: and we must admit some effective power in that circuit itself; it is co-operative, and completes of its own act the task that belongs to the All of which everything in the circuit takes the rank and function of a part.

(6) But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a horse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from the Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the kosmic circuit its part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought into being: allow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the man, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the physical constitution; still does such action explain character, vocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material elements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and becoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine the stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of a doctrine that makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in their decline or are being carried to a position beneath the earth- as if a decline from our point of view brought any change to themselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres and to make the same figure around the earth.

Nor may we think that these divine beings lose or gain in goodness as they see this one or another of the company in various aspects, and that in their happier position they are benignant to us and, less pleasantly situated, turn maleficent. We can but believe that their circuit is for the protection of the entirety of things while they furnish the incidental service of being letters on which the augur, acquainted with that alphabet, may look and read the future from their pattern- arriving at the thing signified by such analogies as that a soaring bird tells of some lofty event.

(5) And if the star itself was changed and smiled, What became I, who by my nature am Exceeding mutable in every guise! As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil, The fishes draw to that which from without Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it; So I beheld more than a thousand splendours Drawing towards us, and in each was heard: "Lo, this is she who shall increase our love." And as each one was coming unto us, Full of beatitude the shade was seen, By the effulgence clear that issued from it. Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have An agonizing need of knowing more; And of thyself thou'lt see how I from these Was in desire of hearing their conditions, As they unto mine eyes were manifest. "O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes To see the thrones of the eternal triumph, Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned With light that through the whole of heaven is spread Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee."

(40) Just as the diagram representing the front view of man illustrates his divine principles in their regenerated state, so the back view of the same figure sets forth the inferior, or "night," condition of the sun. From the Sphere of the Astral Mind a line ascends through the Sphere of reason into that of the Senses. The Sphere of the Astral Mind and of the Senses are filled with stars to signify the nocturnal condition of their natures. In the sphere of reason, the superior and the inferior are reconciled, Reason in the mortal man corresponding to Illumined Understanding in the spiritual man.

(17) In the soul sleep a strange process occurs, namely, the preparation for the sloughing off of the lower sheaths of the soul, leaving it free to enter the life on the Astral Plane clad only in the garments of its highest stage of spiritual attainment reached by it. Each soul awakens on the Astral Plane prepared to dwell on the plane of its highest and best, leaving the rest behind it. It awakens on the plane in which the highest and best in itself is given a chance to develop and expand, and to make progress, for the soul may, and does, make great progress in these between-births sojourns on the Astral Plane.

(7) But, if the stars announce the future- as we hold of many other things also- what explanation of the cause have we to offer? What explains the purposeful arrangement thus implied? Obviously, unless the particular is included under some general principle of order, there can be no signification.

We may think of the stars as letters perpetually being inscribed on the heavens or inscribed once for all and yet moving as they pursue the other tasks allotted to them: upon these main tasks will follow the quality of signifying, just as the one principle underlying any living unit enables us to reason from member to member, so that for example we may judge of character and even of perils and safeguards by indications in the eyes or in some other part of the body. If these parts of us are members of a whole, so are we: in different ways the one law applies.

All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another, a process familiar to all of us in not a few examples of everyday experience.

But what is the comprehensive principle of co-ordination? Establish this and we have a reasonable basis for the divination, not only by stars but also by birds and other animals, from which we derive guidance in our varied concerns.

All things must be enchained; and the sympathy and correspondence obtaining in any one closely knit organism must exist, first, and most intensely, in the All. There must be one principle constituting this unit of many forms of life and enclosing the several members within the unity, while at the same time, precisely as in each thing of detail the parts too have each a definite function, so in the All each several member must have its own task- but more markedly so since in this case the parts are not merely members but themselves Alls, members of the loftier Kind.

Thus each entity takes its origin from one Principle and, therefore, while executing its own function, works in with every other member of that All from which its distinct task has by no means cut it off: each performs its act, each receives something from the others, every one at its own moment bringing its touch of sweet or bitter. And there is nothing undesigned, nothing of chance, in all the process: all is one scheme of differentiation, starting from the Firsts and working itself out in a continuous progression of Kinds.

(8) There is reported to us from the highest occult sources of information the fact that the ALL presents Itself alternately in great periods of Manifestation (called the Cosmic Days), followed by a like great period of Unmanifestation (called the Cosmic Nights). During the Cosmic Night the Eternal Parent exists as if wrapped in an unconscious and dreamless sleep, from which with the Dawn of the new Cosmic Day it awakens gradually into Manifestation. The Cosmic Day, in turn, gradually finds itself changing into a Twilight, which slowly but surely darkens into the Cosmic Night when all again is stilled and quiet. And so on, and on, and on, in infinite sequence and repetition—in infinite rhythm—the Cosmos presents this succession of Days and Nights: of Manifestation and Unmanifestation. And, so it has been forever and ever, and will continue forever and ever, without end, ceasing, or interruption. Such is the report of the wise and the illumined teachers of the race.

(13) Though Men must not cast the Pearl in the Way that the Beasts may tread it under Foot, much less must Men throw it among the Grains [or Husks] to be devoured by the Swine; (for that would not be beneficial to the wanton World, because that seeks nothing thereby but to misuse itself therewith; for the Devil whom the World serves teaches it, when it learns the Ground of the Heaven, and of the Stars, to will presently to be a God, as Lucifer did:) Yet I will write somewhat of the Beginning and Virtue or Power of the Stars, (because Man and all Or the wise Men's Masters, or Teachers. Creatures live in the Virtue, Working, and Essences of them, and that every Creature receives its Property from them,) for the Sake of him that seeks, who would willingly fly from the bestial Man, and would fain live in the true Man, who is the Image and Similitude of God; for to such it is very highly necessary to be known; also for the Lily's Sake which grows in the Tree of the sour Wrath towards the North in the Matrix.

(1) IF we consider the Separation and the Springing forth in the third Principle of this World, how the starry Heaven should spring up, and how every Star has a peculiar Form and Property in itself, in every of which a several Center is observed, so that every One of them is fixed [or steady] and Master [or Guider] of itself, and that every One of them rules in the Matrix of this World, and works and generates in the Matrix after their Kind; and then afterwards if we consider the Sun, which is their King, Heart, and Life, without whose Light and Virtue, they could neither act nor effect any Thing, but remain in the hard dark Death; and this World would be nothing but a fierce rough Hardness; and further, if we consider the Elements of Fire and Water, [and observe] how they continually generate one in another, and then how the Constellations rule in them, as in their own Propriety; and also consider what the Mother is, from whence all these Things must proceed; then we shall come to see the Separation, and the eternal Mother, the i Genetrix of all Things.

(1) Let him imagine, who would well conceive What now I saw, and let him while I speak Retain the image as a steadfast rock, The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions The sky enliven with a light so great That it transcends all clusters of the air; Let him the Wain imagine unto which Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day, So that in turning of its pole it fails not; Let him the mouth imagine of the horn That in the point beginneth of the axis Round about which the primal wheel revolves,— To have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven, Like unto that which Minos' daughter made, The moment when she felt the frost of death; And one to have its rays within the other, And both to whirl themselves in such a manner That one should forward go, the other backward; And he will have some shadowing forth of that True constellation and the double dance That circled round the point at which I was; Because it is as much beyond our wont, As swifter than the motion of the Chiana Moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds.

(29) For the Stars themselves are senseless, and have no Knowledge or Perception, yet their soft Operation in the Water makes a seething, flowing forth, or boiling up one of another, and in the Tincture of the Blood, they cause a Rising, Seeing, Feeling, Hearing, and Tasting. Therefore consider from whence the Tincture proceeds, wherein the noble Life springs up, that thus becomes sweet from Harshness, Bitterness, and Fire, and you shall certainly find no other Cause of it than the Light: But whence comes the Light, that it can shine in a dark Body? If you say it comes from the Light of the Sun. Then what shines in the Night, and enlightens your Senses and Understanding so, that though your Eyes are shut, you perceive and know what you do? Here you will say, the noble Mind leads you, and it is true. But whence has the Mind its Original? You will say, the Senses make the Mind stirring; and that is also true. But whence come they both? What is their Birth or Off- spring? Why is it not so with the Beasts?

(28) As almost incredible as it may seem, however, there are among us on earth today certain advanced souls in whom this consciousness has already begun to manifest itself; and their number is growing. Such souls have experienced an actual conscious realization of the truth that the One is All, and that other than the One there is nothing—the entire array of the Cosmic Phantasmagoria being perceived as Illusion, Mirage, Maya, Glamour, Unreality. Into such, the Soul of the Gods is beginning to manifest itself.

(27) Thus I must tell you; the Heaven is a Sower, and God gives him Seed, and the Elements are the Ground into which the Seed is sown; now the Heaven has the Constellation, and receives also the Seed of God, and sows all together one among another; now the Essences of the Stars receive the Seed in the Ground, and qualify [or are united] with it, and carry themselves along in the Herb, till a Seed also be in the Herb.

(45) But that I now write, that the Stars rule in all Beasts, and other Creatures; and that every Creature received the Spirit of the Stars in the Creation, and that all Things still stand in the same Regimen; this the Simple will hardly believe, though the Doctor knows it well, and therefore we direct them to Experience. Behold, a Male and Female beget young Ones, and that often; now they come forth out of one only Body, and yet are not of one Kind, [nor of the same] Colour and Virtue, nor [shape or] Form of Body. All this is caused by the Alteration of the Stars; for when the Seed is sown, the Carver makes an image according to his Pleasure; yet according to the first Essence, he cannot alter that; but he gives the Spirit in the Essence to it according to his Power, [or Ability or Dominion,] as also Manners, and Senses, Colour and Gesture like himself, to be as he is, and as the Constellation is in its Essence at that Time, (when the [Creature] draws Breath) [first in its Mother's body,] whether [the Essence] be in Evil or in Good, [inclined] to Biting, Worrying and Striking, or to Meekness, [or loving Kindness and Gentleness;] all as the Heaven is at that Time, so will also the Spirit and the Beast be.

(1) That the circuit of the stars indicates definite events to come but without being the cause direct of all that happens, has been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument: but the subject demands more precise and detailed investigation for to take the one view rather than the other is of no small moment.

The belief is that the planets in their courses actually produce not merely such conditions as poverty, wealth, health and sickness but even ugliness and beauty and, gravest of all, vices and virtue and the very acts that spring from these qualities, the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to suppose the stars to be annoyed with men- and upon matters in which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can surely do them no wrong.

They will be distributing what pass for their good gifts, not out of kindness towards the recipients but as they themselves are affected pleasantly or disagreeably at the various points of their course; so that they must be supposed to change their plans as they stand at their zeniths or are declining.

More absurdly still, some of them are supposed to be malicious and others to be helpful, and yet the evil stars will bestow favours and the benevolent act harshly: further, their action alters as they see each other or not, so that, after all, they possess no definite nature but vary according to their angles of aspect; a star is kindly when it sees one of its fellows but changes at sight of another: and there is even a distinction to be made in the seeing as it occurs in this figure or in that. Lastly, all acting together, the fused influence is different again from that of each single star, just as the blending of distinct fluids gives a mixture unlike any of them.

Since these opinions and others of the same order are prevalent, it will be well to examine them carefully one by one, beginning with the fundamental question:

(57) Now you may well perceive that the Birth of the Sun takes its Original in the Fire, and attains his Personality and Name in the Kindling of the soft, white, and clear Light, which is Himself; and Himself makes the pleasant Smell, Taste, and Satisfaction [or Reconciliation and Well-pleasing] in the Father, and is rightly the Father's Heart, and another Person; for he opens and produces the second Principle in the Father; and his own Essence is the Power or Virtue and the Light; and therefore his is rightly called the Power or Virtue of the Father.

(2) Moreover, the lations of the stars approximate to the eternal circulations of the heavens, not only locally, but also in powers, and the irradiations of light. But these are moved conformably to the mandates of the celestial Gods. For the most pure, agile, and supreme part of the air, is adapted to be enkindled [ i. e. is most inflammable], so that when the Gods assent, it is immediately set on fire. And if some one thinks that certain effluxions of the celestial bodies are imparted to the air, his opinion will not be discordant with what is frequently effected by the divine art. The union, also, and sympathy of the universe, and the simultaneous motion of the most remote parts, as if they were near, and belonged to one animal, cause these signs to be sent from the Gods to men in the most luminous manner, primarily, indeed, through the heavens, but afterwards through the air.

(29) What we have said so far in our consideration of the individuals manifesting flashes or glimpses of this phase of consciousness, applies in a much greater degree to those who have penetrated fully into the higher sub-planes of this great Plane of Consciousness. On this planet, and on others, dwell Beings so fully awakened and unfolded in this phase of consciousness that they are as Supernatural Beings to the ordinary human being. Many of such beings are performing important offices in the unfoldment of the race, and the betterment of mankind. Many of these people have been regarded as Angels or Demi-Gods by ordinary people with whom they have come in contact in the past, and many of them are the Invisible Helpers of whose presence many of the race have been made aware by actual experiences.

(3) The “Thirty-six,” who have the name of Horoscopes, are in the [self] same space as the Fixed Stars; of these the essence-chief, or prince, is he whom they call Pantomorph, or Omniform, who fashioneth the various forms for various species. The “Seven” who are called spheres, have essence-chiefs, that is, [have each] their proper rulers, whom they call [all together] Fortune and Heimarmenē, whereby all things are changed by nature’s law; perpetual stability being varied with incessant motion. The Air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which all things are made—(there is, however, an essence-chief of this, a second [Air])—mortal from mortal things and things like these.