-as the chorus tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the goddess may be propitiated by whatever sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the path it has once taken. "The triform Fates and ever mindful Furies" are her attributes only on earth, and begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of Providence, minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach. that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer—aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma—an eternal and immutable decree—is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or—break them.

Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways—which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them—would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the " ways of Providence." We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives,

not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, "the laws of life," one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself produced. For, according to the same writer, "the only conclusion one can come to is that these laws of life are their own avengers; and consequently that every avenging Angel is only a typified representation of their re-action." Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the artificers of our destinies, but rather those angels, the guardians of harmony. Karma-Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes produced and forces awakened into activity by our own actions. It is a law of occult dynamics that "a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence."

This state will last till man's spiritual intuitions are fully opened, which will not happen before we fairly cast off our thick coats of matter; until we begin acting from within, instead of ever following impulses from without; namely, those produced by our physical senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliative to the evils of life is union and harmony—a Brotherhood in actu, and altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but a variety of bad effects. And if a Brotherhood or even a number of Brotherhoods may not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each other's throats—still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into the mysteries of being, will always prevent some, while trying to comprehend that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional causes in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives the conviction that if— “ . . . . virtue in distress, and vice in triumph

....

Make atheists of mankind,"*

it is only because that mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own saviour as his own destroyer. That he need not accuse Heaven and the gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat this bit of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to forbear accusing That which—

"Just, though mysterious, leads us on unerring

Through ways unmark'd from guilt to punishment . . . —which are now the ways and the high road on which move onward the great European nations. The Western Aryans had, every nation

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and tribe, like their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, their Golden and their Iron ages, their period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while now, several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, an age BLACK WITH HORRORS.

It is true, on the other hand, that the exoteric cycles of every nation have been correctly made to be derived from, and depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are inseparably blended with the destinies of nations and men. But in their purely physical sense, Europe knows of no other cycles than the astronomical, and makes its computations accordingly. Nor will it hear of any other than imaginary circles or circuits in the starry heavens that gird them—

"With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb ..

But with the pagans, with whom, as Coleridge has it—“. . . . . Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the Deity . ." that "Deity" manifesting co-ordinately with, and only through Karma, and being that Karma-nemesis itself, the cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of certain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and prophecies based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold shell of astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit —Astrology. And, as the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth—besides potatoes and the periodical disease of that useful vegetable—(a statement which, not being amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while accepted)—those events have to be allowed to find themselves predetermined by even simple astronomical computations. Believers in astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich-like, to their own fate.

* Not all, however, for there are men of Science awakening to truth. This is what we read: Whatever way we turn our eyes we encounter a mystery. . . . all in Nature for us is the unknown. . . Yet they are numerous, those superficial minds for whom nothing can be produced by natural forces outside of facts observed long ago, consecrated in books and grouped more or less skilfully with the help of theories whose ephemeral duration ought, by this time, to have demonstrated their insufficiency, . . . . I do not pretend to contest the possibility of invisible Beings, of a nature different from ·ours and susceptible of moving matter to action. Profound philosophers have admitted it in all epochs as a consequence of the great law of continuity which rules the Universe. That intellectual life, which we see starting in some way from non-being (néant) and gradually reaching man, can it stop abruptly at man to reappear only in the infinite, in the sovereign regulator of the world? This is little probable." Therefore .. "I

This because their little historical period, so called, allows them no margin for comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their spiritual vision is still unopened and the atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their sight and chains it to the limits of physical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements and note the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical advents of those wanderers and "flaming messengers," and prophesy, in consequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers, the apparition of certain stars, comets, etc., etc. Are they soothsayers for all that? No, they are learned astronomers.

Why, then, should occultists and astrologers, as learned, be disbelieved, when they prophesy the return of some cyclic event on the same mathematical principle? Why should the claim that they know it be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, having recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and day, throughout a period embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the conjunction of the same constellations must necessarily produce, if not quite the same, at any rate, similar effects. Are the prophecies derided, because of the claim of the hundreds of thousands of years of observation, and the millions of years of the human races? In its turn modern Science is laughed at for its far more modest geological and anthropological figures, by those who hold to Biblical chronology. Thus Karma adjusts even human laughter at the mutual expense of sects, learned societies, and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of such future events, at any rate, all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, there is no psychic phenomenon involved. It is neither prevision, nor prophecy; no more than is the signalling of a comet or star, several years before its appearance. It is simply knowledge and mathematically correct computations which enable the Wise Men Of The East to foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; France, nearing such a point of her cycle, and Europe in general threatened with, or rather, on the eve of, a cataclysm, which her own cycle of racial Karma has led her to. The reliability of the information depends, of course, on the acceptation or rejection of the claim for a tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that they have preserved records of the racial development and of events of universal import ever since the beginning of the Fourth Race—that which preceded being traditional. Moreover, those who believe in Seership and Occult

no more deny the existence of Spirits than I deny soul while trying to explain certain facts without their hypothesis . . ." The Non-Defined Forces," Historical and Experimental Researches, p. 3. The above is written by A. de Rochas, a well-known man. of science in France, his work being one of the signs of the time. (Paris: Masson, Boulevard St. Germain, 1887.)

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powers will have no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of the information given, even if traditional, once the latter is checked and corrected by the corroboration of clairvoyance and esoteric knowledge. But in the present case no such metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, but a proof is given on what, to every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence the records preserved through the Zodiac for incalculable ages.

It is now amply proved that even horoscopes and judiciary astrology are not quite based on a fiction, and that stars and constellations, consequently, have an occult and mysterious influence on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the latter, why not with nations, races, and mankind in bulk? This, again, is a claim made on the authority of the Zodiacal records. We shall examine then, if you please, how far the Zodiac was known to the ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the moderns.

XVII.

"THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY."

"All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profess," said Jordan, justly adding to this—" and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions."

This becomes doubly true in the matter of scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for consideration—the prejudice and preconceptions of "authorities," so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for history. There are several such predetermined opinions among our learned Orientalists, yet few are more unjust or illogical than the general error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber's opinion that the peoples of India had no idea or knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient Hindus imported it into their country. We are further told, by several other "authorities," that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their neighbours with their invention. This, in the face of the Book of Job, declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the Hebrew canon, certainly prior to Moses, and which speaks of the making "of Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (Ash, Kesil, and