Lecture: Planetary Magic

Planetary magic has long been a substantial component of the Western Mystery Tradition. While in modern Paganism elemental magic seems to predominate, a look through the grimoires of the Renaissance demonstrates that the seven ancient planets and seven days of the week were at that time a more common symbol set for evoking spirits and casting spells, while the elements were more often seen as part of the alchemical tradition. The planetary symbol set is thus highly suitable for advanced magical and mystical operations.

Macrocosmic Elements: Because the elemental system primarily represents the psyche of the magician, the LIRH also works with the elements. This is necessary because it is into the magician’s field of consciousness that macrocosmic forces must be invoked, and those forces must harmonize with the components of the magician’s personality in order to be accessible to his or her mind and will. However, in order to call in the macrocosmic aspects of the elements two changes are made.

The first change is the direction from which each element is called. The microcosmic elemental arrangement is called the Winds model, so named because it was inspired by the perceived qualities of the winds that blew from the four directions. This is the model with which most witches and Neo-Pagans are familiar – Air in the east, Fire in the south, Water in the west, and Earth in the north. The macrocosmic arrangement, however, is called the Tropical model and is based on attributing the cardinal signs of the Zodiac to the directions. In this arrangement Fire is in the east, Earth in the south, Air in the west, and Water in the north. This is arrangement used by the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram. The second change is to use elemental hexagrams rather than elemental pentagrams. The use of the hexagram here further aligns the forces conjured by the ritual with the macrocosmic realm symbolized by the hexagram.

It is also possible to open the equivalent of an Operant Field using more generic Neo-Pagan ritual forms. The casting of the circle would be unchanged, but the Calling of the Quarters should use the Tropical directions and the invoking elemental hexagrams rather than elemental pentagrams. This will probably seem odd the first time you try it, but since it works in the same way as the LIRH the increase in effective magical power should become immediately apparent.

Godhead Assumption: Once the Operant Field is established the next step is to invoke the Godhead – that is, some form of divinity. This step differs a great deal from magician to magician and is deliberately left very open to the will of the particular practitioner. The divinity invoked could be a patron deity, the God and/or Goddess of Neo-Paganism, or even the dynamic ground of creation itself. The goal is to externalize the seeds of divinity that lie within all spiritual practitioners so that they may connect with and/or influence the macrocosmic realm through the medium of planetary forces. Particular standardized methods that I have used in my own work include variations on Israel Regardie’s Middle Pillar Ritual and Aleister Crowley’s Elevenfold Seal from Liber V vel Reguli.

Planetary Attributions: The magical powers attributed to the planets can be found in the “Magical Powers [Western Mysticism]” column of Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777. These powers are based on the Golden Dawn version of the Tree of Life. Each planet has both a mystical and a magical side, the mystical side being represented by the Qabalistic sphere associated with the planet and the magical side being represented by the corresponding Path. Because of this dual nature, planetary magick can be used to produce both practical effects and mystical illumination.

As you can see here, from a mystical standpoint the various visions corresponding to the planets reach much of the way up the Tree of Life and from a magical standpoint the planetary powers encompass most of what people want to do when they get into magick – love spells, healing spells, wealth spells, and even curses. From my own experience fielding questions on magick from readers of my blog, I can tell you that I rarely am asked how to do anything outside of those four areas.

Planetary Days and Hours: The best time to perform a planetary operation is during the day and in the hour attributed to the planet. The planetary days follow the conventional scheme:

Sunday – Sun
Monday – Moon
Tuesday – Mars
Wednesday – Mercury
Thursday – Jupiter
Friday – Venus
Saturday – Saturn

Figuring the planetary hour is more complicated. I normally use an excellent application called ChronosXP that is available as a free download online, but you should also know how to figure it out by hand.

First you need to know the times for sunrise and sunset for the day on which the ritual will take place. The hours of the day begin with the day of the planet at sunrise and the hours of the night begin at sunset and run until the following sunrise. To find the length of each hour of the day, divide the total number of minutes between sunrise and sunset by 12. To find the length of each hour of the night, divide the total number of minutes between sunset and sunrise by 12. Therefore, the day and night hours will be of differing lengths depending upon the time of the year. The only two days of the year on which they will be of equal length are the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes.

Once you have the length of each hour calculated you next will need to assign a planet to each hour. This is accomplished by starting with the planet ruling the day for the first hour of the day and then assigning additional planets according to a pattern called the Chaldean Order. This is the order of apparent astrological motion in the sky and corresponds to the most common arrangements of planets on the Tree of Life, moving down the Tree.

Saturn --> Jupiter --> Mars --> Sun --> Venus --> Mercury --> Moon

Whenever you reach the end of the pattern with the Moon it cycles back to Saturn. So on a Sunday the hours would look like this:

Day Hours: 1st – Sun, 2nd – Venus, 3rd – Mercury, 4th – Moon, 5th – Saturn, 6th – Jupiter, 7th – Mars, 8th – Sun, 9th – Venus, 10th – Mercury, 11th – Moon, 12th – Saturn.

Night Hours: 1st – Jupiter, 2nd – Mars, 3rd – Sun, 4th – Venus, 5th – Mercury, 6th – Moon, 7th – Saturn, 8th – Jupiter, 9th – Mars, 10th – Sun, 11th – Venus, 12th - Mercury

Renaissance magicians believed that while the planetary day was auspicious the hour was even more so. Given a choice between performing a ritual on the appropriate day and during the appropriate hour on a different day the traditional choice would be the hour, though it was considered best to strive for both. In my experience the use of the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram for planetary workings ameliorates this requirement, especially when working with the operant field framework. The Greater Hexagram ritual allows you to tune your magical space to a particular planet at will rather than waiting for its day and hour to arise naturally, though it should be added that using these forms in addition to the days and hours rather than instead of them tends to produce the best results.

The Greater Ritual of the Hexagram: Following the Godhead Assumption, the next step of any Golden Dawn style planetary ritual is to perform the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram corresponding to the planet with which you are working. In the Golden Dawn context, Lesser rituals are general rites used to set up the basic magical field and Greater rituals are specific rites calling upon particular magical forces.

To perform the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram you start in the east and trace the hexagram of the planet in the appropriate color while vibrating the word of power ARARITA. You then trace the standard astrological symbol for the planet in the center of the hexagram in the color complimentary to that of the hexagram as you vibrate the godname corresponding to the planet. The names shown here are the Qabalistic godnames corresponding to the planetary spheres on the Tree of Life.

You then move clockwise, repeating these actions to the other three directions, and then finally return to face the east. Note that while the color changes depending on whether you are working with a planetary sphere or path the god-name remains the same. You then return the to east and make the declaration “Let the divine light descend!” as you visualize light of the sphere or path color descending from above and filling the temple space.

The hexagrams of the planets are obtained by mapping the figure of the hexagram onto the Tree of Life and tracing from the corresponding sphere point, clockwise to invoke and counter-clockwise to banish. The two special cases are Saturn, which is traced from the top point even though Binah, the sphere of Saturn, is actually located on the left-side pillar, and the Sun, which is constructed by tracing all six of the other hexagrams in order down the Tree starting with Saturn because the standard hexagram has no center point.

Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits: Following the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram you then perform the conjuration of the appropriate spiritual entity. Planets are associated with Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits. The names of these entities can be found in Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and are probably substantially older than even that source.

Francis Barrett’s The Magus is mostly a reworking of Agrippa that was done at the end of the Eighteenth Century. In this work, Barrett explains that you should use the Intelligence or a planet for good and the Spirit of a planet for evil. I had thought originally that this idea started with Barrett, but Agrippa does in fact include a similar though less pejorative statement. What I've found in working with these entities is that this classification is in error, perhaps reflecting a bias against practical magick. The real difference between Intelligences and Spirits is functional.

The Intelligence is conjured in order to interact with the state of consciousness associated with the planet, either for meditation or divination. When taking a mystical approach to working with a particular planet, it is the Intelligence that you will want to summon. The Spirit of a planet is used for accomplishing practical ends. When taking a magical approach to working with a planet it is the Spirit that you should be summoning. Keep in mind, though, that for such operations it is necessary to summon the Intelligence first because the Intelligence directs the action of the Spirit. A Spirit summoned on its own is more like a blind force that can prove difficult to control by magical means. This force is not likely to turn into a poltergeist and wreck your house or anything like that, but the operation that summoned it will probably be wasted.

The planetary Angels incorporate the qualities of both the Intelligence and the Spirit but are more general in their function. They are appropriate for rituals that would otherwise call for activity from both the Intelligence and Spirit, such as a ritual in which you need to find out some unknown piece of information and then perform a particular action based on it, or for a mystical operation in which you seek to somehow integrate the totality of a planet’s nature.

This table shows the planetary Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits:

Specific sigils are associated with the Intelligences and Spirits. Also, there is a particular character related to each planet. The character of the planet represents everything related to its sphere of influence, encompassing the Angel, Intelligence, and Spirit. The character of the appropriate planet should be placed upon the altar for any planetary operation. The sigil of the Spirit or Intelligence is then drawn onto another sheet and placed over the sheet depicting the character. The Angel of a planet may be summoned using the character alone and does not require an additional sigil, though there are various methods by which such a sigil could be constructed. The characters and sigils for the planets are as follows:








Since the characters of the planets are used over and over again when working this sort of magick, it is a useful practice to build a set of seven planetary tablets depicting the character and other particulars related to each planet. These can be constructed using appropriate colors and incorporating the various names of power, but should not include the sigils of the Intelligence or Spirit. We constructed our own sets of these years ago when we did our first series of planetary workings and they have served us well ever since.

A simple way to make a tablet for a planet is to take a regular sheet of paper and print or draw onto it a large rendering of the character for the planet in question. The character itself is what’s required, not any particular artistic rendering of it. The reason that the sigils of the Intelligence and Spirit should not be drawn onto the tablet is because these two classes of entities represent specific aspects of the planet’s nature. The character, on the other hand, represents the totality of the planet’s sphere of influence, which is what the tablet should ideally represent. Another option is to use the Tarot cards shown in the first table corresponding to the planets as tablets, so long as you don’t mind their small size relative to a full sheet of paper.

For straightforward evocation, the sigil may be drawn onto a smaller piece of paper and positioned on the tablet so that it is visible to the magician in some fashion. There are many different ways that this can be done, suited to your own particular style of working. The sigil that should be used for this purpose is for the “terminal” entity that you will be summoning. So even though you need to summon the Intelligence in order to control the Spirit you just would want the sigil of the Spirit drawn out if it is to the Spirit that you will be delivering your charge. If you are summoning the Intelligence on its own you would use the sigil of the Intelligence. To summon the Angel you don’t need any sigil besides the character of the planet.

The Conjuration: Conjurations can be found in many forms throughout the Renaissance tradition of grimoire magick, which is the milieu out of which the names and sigils of the Intelligences and Spirits arose. Some magicians delight in conjurations that are both elaborate and poetic, whereas others prefer a simpler and more direct approach. I tend to be of the latter school, and thus the conjurations I use are shorter and more to the point than those of many ceremonialists.

There are two key factors that you need to consider when constructing a basic conjuration. The first is the spiritual hierarchy to which the Angel, Intelligence, or Spirit belongs. According to the framework of Hermetic Qabalah the hierarchy is fourfold, representing the four Qabalistic worlds.

1. The Godname is attributed to the archetypal world of Atziluth and rules the Angel.
2. The Angel is attributed to the creative world of Briah and rules the Intelligence.
3. The Intelligence is attributed to the formative world of Yetzirah and rules the Spirit.
4. The Spirit is attributed to the material world of Assiah.

In our original planetary ritual series we used four conjurations that navigated the entire hierarchy to get down to the Spirit, but this is not strictly necessary. You should have already tuned your ritual space to the appropriate Godname with the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram, so there’s no need to call upon the Godname again except as a controlling name for summoning the Angel. Conjuring the Intelligence is similar, in that the Angel name is used as a controlling name for the Intelligence but not actually summoned. The Spirit is a special case in that the conjuration must be twofold. First, the Intelligence is summoned by the name of the Angel, and only once this is done is the Spirit summoned by the name of the Intelligence.

The following examples should clarify these instructions. The words in all capitals should be vibrated or intoned to the best of your ability:

The Angel of Jupiter, Sachiel
Oh glorious and mighty SACHIEL, you who command and rule over the intelligences and spirits of TZEDEQ, behold me, and in the name of the same your God, the expansive and merciful EL, attend and appear before me now. 

The Intelligence of Jupiter, Jophiel
Oh glorious JOPHIEL, brilliant intelligence of TZEDEQ, behold me, and in the name of SACHIEL attend and appear before me now. 

The Spirit of Jupiter, Hismael
Oh glorious JOPHIEL, brilliant intelligence of TZEDEQ, behold me, and in the name of SACHIEL I summon you that I may call upon your spirit HISMAEL to attend and appear before me. 

(Pause until the presence of Jophiel is perceived before continuing) 

Oh mighty HISMAEL, strong spirit of TZEDEQ, behold me, and in the name of JOPHIEL attend and appear before me now.

Once the conjuration is complete you and any other magicians with whom you are working begin to chant the name of the Angel, Intelligence, or Spirit until the entity is perceived upon the altar, generally above the tablet. Chanting in this manner is not included in any of the old grimoires, but my working group has found it to be a very effective method. Often we have sensed physical cold spots over our tablets that develop along with the chant, and on a number of occasions we have measured tangible electromagnetic fields with an EMF meter during our latest series of operations.

It is important to note that relatively minor physical effects like these are all that you are likely to experience in terms of material phenomena. Several recent authors on grimoire magick, most notably Joseph Lisiewski in Ceremonial Magick and the Power of Evocation claim that unless you get things like poltergeist phenomena in the temple the evocation is a failure and must be abandoned. This idea bears little resemblance to my experience over the years with this style of magick. There have been cases in which I sensed little in the temple besides a vague presence and my charge was accomplished perfectly, and similarly there have been cases in which I sensed a clear physical manifestation and my charge was not accomplished. So far there seems to be little correlation between the phenomena occurring in the temple during an operation and whether or not that operation succeeds, regardless of what traditional grimoire practitioners insist. Success – the accomplishment of your charge – is your proof, parlor tricks are not.

The Charge: Once the entity you are summoning has appeared the next step is to deliver your charge. This simply means the task you want the entity to accomplish, the questions you want it to answer, or the state of consciousness that you want it to induce. These should be stated in a simple, literal, and to the point manner. An important principle to keep in mind is that magick will always follow the path of least macrocosmic resistance. This means that (1) the evoked entity will tend to follow the literal meaning of your statement and (2) that you should never specify a particular means by which your charge must come to pass unless that means is absolutely essential to the function of the spell.

The first point there is likely the origin of old stories about hostile evoked entities twisting the wording of magicians’ charges. In my experience this has little to do with hostility and much more to do with the entity trying to find a way to fulfill the charge within the range of probability that it can influence. If you give the spirit a charge like “bring me a car by this time tomorrow” that’s a very unlikely event, at least if you mean a car that you can drive around and which you will be able to keep. So the spirit might arrange for a thief to abandon a stolen car in front of your house after a joyride, arrange for someone to give you a broken-down car that would need to be repaired, or even arrange for a small child to lose a toy car someplace on your property for you to find. In all these cases the entity brought you a car – just not the sort of car you wanted. So when it comes to defining what you want the spell to do you need to be very specific.

At the same time, the second point means that you should be as deliberately vague as you can be about how you want the spell to come to pass. If you charge the spirit with bringing you a sum of money, for example, you don’t want to specify “by winning the lottery” or “as a gift from so-and-so” because defining the means in that manner makes the outcome much more unlikely. Most people have more ways available to them than they generally consider for money to come into their lives, especially when struggling with finances that seem dire. If you simply charge the spirit to bring you the sum of money all possible paths by which the money could come will be open. Limiting certain particular means may be practical, such as for example adding the caveat that the spirit should not damage your property in such a way that you will get the money through an insurance settlement and have to pay it right back out again, but you want to do this sparingly so that as many paths can be open as possible.

One thing I always avoid in my charges is the dubious notion of “harming none.” As anyone who has ever debated the Wiccan Rede knows this is a very slippery term. Its vague definition can derail an otherwise decent charge very quickly. The problem is this: let’s say that you cast a spell to bring you a sum of money and happen to be invested in a particular stock. One of the ways by which the money could manifest would be for the stock price to rise high enough for you to sell it and make a profit of the amount you want. The trouble is that if you put into the charge something like “causing no harm to anyone else” you’ll be cutting off that pathway. The stock market doesn’t create very much wealth and for the most part just moves it around. Whenever you make money on a stock a substantial portion of it comes at the expense of other investors. Even though most of these are huge institutional funds that can easily absorb such losses, this could still be seen as constituting “harm.” Similarly, let’s say you cast a spell to influence the numbers in a lottery drawing. If you win because of your spell, it likely means that the person who would have won if you hadn’t cast the spell will not. That could still be seen as constituting “harm.”

I prefer more descriptive terms such as “damage” and “injury,” such that my “harm none” phrase would be something more like “without damage to my property or injury to any person.” Also, before you jump to the conclusion that you should add in there something about preventing damage to the property of any other person think through what you’re doing very carefully. All sorts of things can affect the property of others that you do not usually consider. Let’s say that you’ve reduced the price of your house and it’s still not selling, so you do a spell that gets it sold. If the house sells for less than the average appraisal price on your block it means that your neighbors will see their property values drop. In effect, that’s “damage” to their property in a literal sense, but it is also in no way your responsibility nor should it be.

Obviously these sorts of phrases are irrelevant if you’re talking about casting a curse, since the very intent of such a spell is to cause damage and/or injury. The idea of “harming” no one besides the target of the spell should also be avoided, again because of its vagueness. It should be clear that people have interconnected social relationships such that causing injury to a particular person “harms” their friends and family members, even though this harm is indirect and thus of a much lesser degree. For example, if you cast a curse on someone and they break their arm their family members will likely be inconvenienced because your target will be unable to help with housework for some time while the arm heals and will probably have to pay out medical bills. Also, depending on your target’s job his or her co-workers may very well be inconvenienced in a similar manner by this loss of function.

The concept of magical ethics is strongly related to the nature of the charge. Some authors have spent a great deal of time discussing this subject, but it actually is quite simple. Anything that is ethical using mundane methods is similarly ethical using magical methods. There is no difference from a philosophical perspective. Some people like to throw around the idea that, for example, using magick to get ahead at your job is “cheating,” but the sentiment behind this statement is just as ridiculous as making the same claim regarding the use of your skills and intelligence. Similarly, if you find yourself in a situation in which you feel it would be ethical for you to assault someone it is likely just as ethical for you to curse them. But it is important to understand that these considerations are left up to the magician as a sovereign individual.

The idea of the “Threefold Law” is irrelevant to magical ethics since it is a mere superstition rather than a technical principle. Magical spells are not going to rebound on you unless you cast them spectacularly badly, and even then the rebound won’t be “threefold.” A similar point can be made for the Western New Age idea of “Karma” which in fact bears little resemblance to the concept of the same name originally appropriated from Buddhism and Hinduism. There is no force in the universe that is going to punish you for acting unethically, and similarly no force that will reward you for acting ethically. Even if this were so, an ethic based on fear is no different than that of Christian groups who preach that you need to be a nice person because otherwise God will torture you for eternity. For a choice to be meaningful it must be made on its own merits, not under any form of duress. But none of these means that you should act without considering the ethical consequences of your spells – in fact, as the decisions are wholly up to you it seems to me that you should consider them all the more carefully.

Time limits should also be a part of every charge. The reason this is important is that if no time limit is given the entity can keep trying to shift probability in accordance with your charge forever. Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits are all immortal. The problem with doing this is that whenever an entity is working on your behalf there is a noticeable reduction in the amount of power you have available for other operations. A magical effect is not accomplished only by an entity but rather arises from the relationship between the entity and yourself. If you get into the habit of sending spells out without time limits the various charges that you have running can in effect drain your magical power down to nothing long after the charges themselves become irrelevant. Charges to bring you something within, for example, a week will always terminate at the end of that week whether or not the entity called upon to accomplish it was successful in doing so or not. Otherwise your charge will only terminate once the intent is accomplished, which could take a very long time.

The License to Depart: Once you have delivered the charge the next step of the ritual is to license the Angel, Intelligence, or Spirit to depart from the temple and go about their business, whether this consists of simply returning to the place from whence they came or setting your will in motion. You dismiss the entity using the same controlling name as in the Conjuration, and it can be more or less wordy as you choose. This example is for Sachiel, the Angel of Jupiter, whose controlling name is the Godname, El.

O thou SACHIEL, praise and honor be unto thee for the splendor of thine office and the majesty of thy being. And the blessing of thy God, the expansive and merciful EL. Because thou hast diligently answered unto our demands, and hast been very ready and willing to come at our call, we do here license thee to depart unto thy proper place; without causing harm or danger unto man or beast. Depart, then, I say, and be thou very ready to come at our call, being duly exorcised and conjured by these sacred rites of magick. AMEN.

Note that “harm” is used here in the License to Depart whereas I recommended against making it part of the Charge. The difference is that the License only applies to the moment during which the entity is vacating the temple and has no bearing on the Charge itself.

Closing the Temple: Once the entity has been given the License to Depart a planetary rituals should be closed with either the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or with the Qabalistic Cross depending upon the nature of the Charge. For operations that are concluded as soon as the temple is closed the full banishing pentagram ritual is most appropriate. For operations that are expected to continue for some interval of time following the closing of the temple the Qabalistic Cross on its own is most appropriate. There is a bit of a gray area here, as an operation that will occur solely in the macrocosmic realm can also be closed with the banishing pentagram ritual, but most of the time when you’re performing a ritual for a specific practical purpose the desired outcome has at least a few microcosmic components.

Some sources claim that you need to “undo” your entire conjuring procedure by performing the Greater Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram for the planet and then the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram before wrapping up with the banishing pentagram ritual, but I recommend strongly against using this procedure. Since the hexagram represents the macrocosm, using banishing hexagrams in the context of an operation that you expect to continue running after you close the temple completely defeats the purpose of performing an operation in the first place. The problem is that if you banish the macrocosmic forces associated with the rite you are also shutting down whatever macrocosmic forces you set in motion with the charge.

The use of the LBRP/LBRH to open and close rituals, as taught by Regardie and passed on by popularizers like Kraig, is likely one reason that some magicians who go back to the old grimoires seem to get better results by following those procedures rather than what they have been told the Golden Dawn forms should be. The “banish-banish,” or as I call it the Banishing Field, shuts down all ongoing magical effects in both the microcosmic and macrocosmic realms. In short, if you do a spell that way it runs for the moment between the delivery of the Charge and the closing of the rite. It should be clear that this is profoundly suboptimal. I have experimentally determined that using the Operant Field to open and the LBRP or Qabalistic Cross on its own to close results in much more effective practical workings that if anything can exceed the probability shifts produced by the old grimoire formulas without more modern techniques or methods.

Conclusion: The power of planetary magic is substantial, but despite this many magicians overlook it as part of their regular practice. It is my hope that this presentation will prompt more of you to do so, whether you decide to use it for practical ends, enhanced realization, or both. I believe that this highly effective system constitutes an important component of both spiritual development and material success for anyone working with the Hermetic tradition and those related to it, and I strongly recommend it to all such practitioners on that basis.

Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans

LECTURE I. The Chaldeans

During the period of the French Revolution citizen Dupuis, in three bulky volumes "On the Origin of all Forms of Worship" (1794), developed the idea that the primary source of religion was the spectacle of celestial phenomena and the ascertainment of their correspondence with earthly events, and he undertook to show that the myths of all peoples and all times were nothing but a set of astronomical combinations. According to him, the Egyptians, to whom he assigned the foremost place among "the inventors of religions," had conceived, some twelve or fifteen thousand years before our era, the division of the ecliptic into twelve constellations corresponding to the twelve months; and when the expedition of Bonaparte discovered in the temples of the Nile valley, notably at Denderah, some zodiacs to which a fabulous antiquity was attributed, these extraordinary theories appeared to receive an unexpected confirmation. But the bold mythological fabric reared in the heavens by the savant of the Revolution fell to pieces when Letronne proved that the zodiac of Denderah dated, not from an epoch anterior to the most ancient of the known Pharaohs, but from that of the Roman emperors.

Science in her cycles of hypotheses is liable to repeat herself. An attempt has recently been made to restore to favour the fancies of Dupuis, by renovating them with greater erudition. Only, the mother country of "astral mythology" is to be sought, not on the banks of the Nile, but on those of the Euphrates. The "Pan-Babylonists," as they have been called, maintain that

Behind the literature and cults of Babylon and Assyria, behind the legends and myths, behind the Pantheon and religious beliefs, behind even the writings which appear to be purely historical, lies an astral conception of the universe and of its phenomena, affecting all thoughts, all beliefs, all practices, and penetrating even into the domain of purely secular intellectual activity, including all branches of science cultivated in antiquity. According to this astral conception, the greater gods were identified with the planets, and the minor ones with the fixed stars. A scheme of correspondences between phenomena in the heavens and occurrences on earth was worked out. The constantly changing appearance of the heavens indicates the ceaseless activity of the gods, and since whatever happened on earth was due to divine powers, this activity represented the preparation for terrestrial phenomena, and more particularly those affecting the fortunes of mankind. . . . Proceeding further, it is claimed that the astral-mythological cult of ancient Babylonia became the prevailing Weltanschauung of the ancient Orient, and that whether we turn to Egypt or to Palestine, to Hittite districts or to Arabia, we shall find these various cultures under the spell of this conception.

[paragraph continues]It furnishes the key to the interpretation of Homer as well as of the Bible. 1 In particular, all the Old Testament should be explained by a series of sidereal myths. The patriarchs are "personifications of the sun or moon," and the traditions of the Sacred Books are "variations of certain 'motifs,' whose real significance is to be found only when they are transferred to phenomena in the heavens."

Such is a wholly impartial summary of the theories professed by the advocates of the Altorientalische Weltanschauung. I borrow it, with slight abbreviation, from an address delivered by Morris Jastrow, Jr., at the Oxford Congress in 1908.  Now of this system. it may be said that what is true in it is not new, and what is new is not true. That Babylon was the mother of astronomy, star-worship, and astrology, that thence these sciences and these beliefs spread over the world, is a fact already told us by the ancients, and the course of these lectures will prove it clearly. But the mistake of the Pan-Babylonists, whose wide generalisations rest on the narrowest and flimsiest of bases, lies in the fact that they have transferred to the nebulous origins of history conceptions which were not developed at the beginning but quite at the end of Babylonian civilisation. This vast theology, founded upon the observation of the stars, which is assumed to have been built up thousands of years before our era,--nay, before the Trojan War,--and to have imposed itself on all still barbarous peoples as the expression of a mysterious wisdom, cannot have been in existence at this remote period, for the simple reason that the data on which it would have been founded, were as yet unknown.

How often, for instance, has the theory of the precession of the equinoxes been brought into the religious cosmology of the East! But what becomes of all these symbolical explanations, if the fact be established that the Orientals never had a suspicion of this famous precession before the genius of Hipparchus discovered it?  Just as the dreams of Dupuis vanished when the date of the Egyptian zodiacs was settled, so the Babylonian mirage was dispelled when scholars advanced methodically through the desert of cuneiform inscriptions and determined the date when astronomy began to take shape, as an exact science, in the observatories of Mesopotamia. This new delusion will depart to the realm of dreams to join the idea, so dear to poets of old, of Chaldean shepherds discovering the causes of eclipses while watching their flocks.

When we have to ascertain at what date oriental star-worship effected the transformation of Syrian and Greek paganism, we shall not find it necessary to plunge into the obscurity of the earliest times; we shall be able to study the facts in the full light of history. "An astral theory of the universe is not an outcome of popular thought, but the result of a long process of speculative reasoning carried on in restricted learned circles. Even astrology, which the theory presupposes as a foundation, is not a product of primitive popular fancies but is rather an advanced scientific hypothesis." In this first lecture, then, we shall have to begin by asking ourselves at what date a scientific astronomy and astrology were developed at Babylon, and then proceed to examine how they led to the formation of a learned theology and gave to Babylonian religion its ultimate character.

Let us consult, the historians of astronomy. The original documents of Chaldean erudition have been deciphered and published during these last twenty years mainly by the industry of Strassmaier and Kugler,  and we are able to-day to realise to some extent what knowledge the Babylonians possessed at different periods.

Now here is one first discovery pregnant with consequences: before the eighth century no scientific astronomy was possible owing to the absence of one indispensable condition, namely, the possession of an exact system of chronology. The old calendar already in use about the year 2500, and perhaps earlier, was composed of twelve lunar months. But as twelve lunar periods make only 354 days, a thirteenth month was from time to time inserted to bring the date at which the festivals recurred each year, into harmony with the seasons. It was only little by little that greater precision was attained by observing at what date the heliac rising of certain fixed stars took place. So inaccurate a computation of time allowed of no precise calculations and consequently of no astronomy worthy of the name. In fact, during the first twenty or thirty centuries of Mesopotamian history nothing is found but empirical observations, intended chiefly to indicate omens, and the rudimentary knowledge which these observations display, is hardly in advance of that of the Egyptians, the Chinese, or the Aztecs. These early observers could employ only such methods as do not necessitate the record of periodic phenomena. For instance, the determination of the four cardinal points by means of the rising and setting of the sun, for use in the orientation of temples, was known from the very earliest antiquity.

But by degrees, direct observation of celestial phenomena, intended either to enable soothsayers to make predictions or to fix the calendar, led to the establishment of the fact that certain of these phenomena recurred at regular intervals, and the attempt was then made to base predictions on the calculation of this recurrence or periodicity. This necessitated a strict chronology, at which the Babylonians did not arrive till the middle of the eighth century B.C.: in 747 they adopted the so-called "era of Nabonassar." This was not a political or religious era, or one signalised by any important event. It merely indicated the moment when, doubtless owing to the establishment of a lunisolar cycle, they kept properly constructed chronological tables. Farther back there was no certainty in regard to the calculation of time. It is from that moment that the records of eclipses begin which Ptolemy used, and which are still sometimes employed by men of science for the purpose of testing their lunar theories. The oldest is dated March 21, 721 B.C.

For the period of the Sargonides, who reigned over Nineveh from the year 722, the documents of the famous library of Ashurbanapal, and especially the reports made to these Assyrian kings by the official astrologers, allow us to form a sufficiently clear idea of the state of their astronomical knowledge. They had approximately traced the ecliptic, that is, the line which the sun seems to follow in the sky during its annual course, and they had divided it into four parts corresponding to the four seasons. Without having succeeded in establishing the real zodiac, they attempted at any rate, with the object of testing the calendar, to draw up the list of constellations whose heliac rising corresponded to the various months. From the fixed stars they already distinguished the planets to the number of five; they had traced their course, now forwards now backwards, and determined, at least approximately, the duration of their synodic revolutions,--for instance, one tablet calculates that this duration in the case of Venus is 577.5 days, instead of the actual 584. But as yet they had no idea of their respective distances from the earth, for the order in which the seven principal stars are enumerated in the inscriptions of Nineveh,--the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, has no relation to any astronomical fact. Jupiter, or Marduk, is put at the head of the five planets, because Marduk is the principal god of Babylon. Finally, those priests had not only fixed with remarkable accuracy the duration of the lunar period at a little more than twenty-nine and one half days, but, having ascertained that eclipses occurred with a certain periodicity, they had gone so far as frequently--but not regularly--to predict their recurrence. In their reports to the kings of Nineveh astrologers often prided themselves on the fact that an eclipse which they had foreseen, had occurred. This was their great achievement.

The destruction of Nineveh in the year 606 B.C. did not interrupt the conquests of astronomy. Under Nebuchadnezzar (604-561) Babylon returned to the days of her past glory, and in this ancient sanctuary of science, amid the general prosperity, astronomy received a new impetus, which was not checked by the almost voluntary submission of the old Semitic capital to the kings of Persia in 539. A valuable tablet, dated 523, shows the astonishing advance made since the fall of Assyria. Here for the first time we find the relative positions of the sun and the moon calculated in advance; we find, noted with their precise dates, the conjunctions of the moon with the planets and of the planets with each other, and their situation in the signs of the zodiac, which here appears definitely established,--or, to put it more briefly, the monthly ephemerides of the sun and the moon, the principal phenomena of the planets, and eclipses. All this indicates an intensity of thought and a perseverance in observation of which we have as yet no other example, and F. X. Kugler has therefore very properly regarded this tablet as the oldest known document of the scientific astronomy of the Chaldeans. True science is at length disencumbered of the empirical determinations which had accumulated in the course of many centuries. From that time some fifty documents, now deciphered,--the most recent of which belongs to the year 8 B.C.,--enable us to follow its development under the dominion of the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Parthians until about the commencement of our era. There is noticeable a continual advance and an increasing improvement in the methods employed, at least up to the end of the second century B.C., to which belong the most perfect examples which we possess. Chronological reckonings are rendered more accurate by the adoption of a lunisolar cycle of nineteen years; the zodiac is definitely established by the substitution for the ancient constellations of variable sizes of a geometrical division of the circle in which the planets move, into twelve equal parts, each subdivided into three portions or decans, equivalent to ten of our degrees. If the Babylonians were not aware of the precession of the equinoxes before the Greeks, at least they discovered the inequality of the seasons, resulting from a variation in the apparent speed of the sun. Above all, they calculated with astonishing accuracy the duration of the various lunar months, and, if they did not fully grasp the data of the problem of solar eclipses, they determined the conditions under which those of the moon took place. Finally,--and this was a still more arduous and complicated problem,--having determined the periods of the sidereal and synodic revolutions of the planets, they constructed perpetual ephemerides giving year by year the variations in the position of these five stars; then in the second century before our era they became so bold as to attempt an a priori calculation of planetary phenomena, such as they had previously worked out for the moon and the sun.

We have been obliged to introduce into this description certain technical details in order to fix exactly the period at which Chaldean science became established. It was not, as we have been asked to believe, in the remote obscurity of the fourth or even the fifth millennium that the mighty fabric of their astronomy was reared. It was during the first millennium that it was laboriously and gradually constructed. From this it follows that in Babylonia and in Greece, the two nations among whom the methodical study of the heavens led to the construction of systems which imposed themselves on the world, the development of these theories was partly contemporaneous. In the sixth century, when Thales is said to have predicted an eclipse, the Greeks began by being disciples of the Orientals, from whom they borrowed the rudiments of their knowledge. But towards the middle of the fifth century they soared aloft on their own wings and soon reached greater heights than their former teachers.

The Babylonians after all had studied astronomy only empirically. By applying to it trigonometry, of which their predecessors were ignorant, the Greeks attained a certainty hitherto unknown, and obtained results previously impossible. But for several centuries the development of the two sciences went on side by side in East and West, and to a large extent independently. It would now be impossible to say to whom amongst the Greeks or the Babylonians belongs the credit of certain discoveries. But it is the peculiar distinction of the Chaldeans that they made religion profit by these new conceptions and based upon them a learned theology. In Greece science always remained laic, in Chaldea it was sacerdotal.

There is every reason for believing that religious origins were much the same among the Babylonians as among other Semitic peoples. Here as elsewhere differentiation comes only with progress. Numerous traces are found of a primitive "animism" which regarded as divinities animals, plants, and stones, as well as wind, rain, and storm, and believed them to have mysterious relations with mankind. Being experts in divination, the Chaldeans devoted themselves from the first to the practice of deriving omens from phenomena and occurrences in which they saw manifestations of the will of that motley host of spirits which filled the universe: movements of the clouds, direction of the wind, thunder and lightning, earthquakes and floods, as well as the birth of monstrous animals, the inspection of the liver, or even the appearance of locusts seemed to be portents favourable or unfavourable to human undertakings. All this was set down in writing and codified by the priests--for, every kind of superstition was codified by these Semites as well as the laws of Hammurabi. But among the countless multitude of gods who peopled the realm of nature, the Babylonians attributed a particularly powerful influence to the stars. These brilliant objects, which they saw moving unceasingly over the vault of heaven,--conceived as a solid dome quite close to the earth,--inspired them with superstitious fear. Any one who has experienced the impression produced by the splendour of an Eastern night will understand this sense of awe. They believed that in the complicated patterns of the stars, which gleamed in the night, they could recognise fantastic shapes of polymorphous monsters, of strange objects, of sacred animals, of imaginary personages,--some of which still figure on our celestial maps. These formidable powers might be favourable or inimical. In the clearness of their transparent atmosphere the Chaldean priests continually watched their puzzling courses: they saw them appear and disappear, hide themselves under the earth to return at the other extremity of the horizon, rising again to a new life after a transitory death, always victorious over the darkness; they observed them losing themselves in the brilliance of the sun to emerge from it presently, like a young bridegroom entering the bridal chamber to issue forth again in the morning; they followed also the windings of the planets, whose complicated path seemed to aim at throwing off the track an enemy who threatened their course; they were astonished that in eclipses the moon and even the sun himself could grow dim, and they believed that a huge black dragon devoured them or concealed them from view. The sky was thus unceasingly the scene of combats, alliances, and amours, and this marvellous spectacle gave birth to a luxuriant mythology in which there appeared, subject to no law but their own passions, all the heroes of fable, all the animals of creation, all the phantoms of imagination.

Between beings and objects, all alike conceived as living, primitive animism everywhere establishes hidden and unexpected relations, which it is the object of magic to discover and utilise. In particular, the influence which the stars exerted upon our world seemed undeniable. Did not the rising and setting of the sun every day bring heat and cold, as well as light and darkness? Did not the changes of the seasons correspond to a certain state of the sky? What wonder, therefore, that by induction men arrived at the conclusion that even the lesser stars and their conjunctions had a certain connection with the phenomena of nature and the events of human life. At an early time--and here the Pan-Babylonists are right--arose the idea that the configuration of the sky corresponds to the phenomena of the earth. Everything in sky and earth alike is incessantly changing, and it was thought that there existed a correspondence between the movements of the gods above and the alterations which occurred here below. This is the fundamental idea of astrology. Perhaps in this scheme of coincidences the Babylonians even went so far as to divide the firmament into countries, mountains, and rivers, corresponding to the geography known to them.

Here, as everywhere, the human mind long sought the way of truth in the maze of conjectures and chimeras. But the very delusion which peopled the heavenly abodes with kindly or hostile powers, whose incessant evolutions were a menace or a promise to mankind, urged the Chaldeans to study assiduously their appearances, evolutions, and disappearances. With indefatigable patience they observed them, and noted the most important social or political events which had accompanied or followed such and such an aspect of the heavens, in order to assure themselves that a given coincidence would be regularly repeated. Thus they engraved on their tablets with scrupulous care all the astronomical or meteorological phenomena from which they derived their prognostications: phases of the moon, situation and conjunctions of the planets, eclipses, comets, falls of aerolites, and halos.

The purely empirical and very simple determinations, accompanied by predictions, which have been preserved to us, are naive and almost puerile: even in the time of the Sargonides there is nothing in them which recalls the learned precision of a Greek horoscope. But from this mass of documents, laboriously collected in the archives of the temples, the laws of the movements of the heavenly bodies were disengaged with increasing precision. Primitive man commonly believes that new stars are produced each time they disappear, that the sun dies and is born each day or at least each winter, that the moon is swallowed up during eclipses, and that another takes its place. To these early ideas, all vestiges of which did not disappear, nay, have not disappeared--we speak still of a "new moon"--there succeeded the discovery that the same stars always traversed the upper spheres with a brightness which increased and diminished by turns. With the irregularity of atmospheric disturbances was necessarily contrasted the regularity of side-real revolutions and occultations. Little by little the priestly astronomers, as we have seen, succeeded in constructing an astronomical calendar and foretelling the return, at a fixed date, of phenomena previously described, and they were able to predict to the astonished crowds the arrival of the eclipses which terrified them. There is nothing surprising in the fact that, as they ascribed to the heaven itself the revelation of this marvellous knowledge, they should have seen in astronomy a divine science.

It is impossible to exaggerate the religious importance which an eminently superstitious people attached to these discoveries. Schiaparelli, a most competent historian of the exact sciences in antiquity, has remarked that "the tendency which dominates the whole Babylonian astronomy is to discover all that is periodic in celestial phenomena, and to reduce it to a numerical expression in such a manner as to be able to predict its repetition in the future."  The scientific discoveries which were made from the Assyrian period onwards enabled astrologers, as we have seen, to foresee certain events with an absolute certainty which no other kind of prognostication attained. An endless perspective reaching far into the future was opened to minds astonished at their own audacity. Divination by means of the stars was thus elevated above all other methods which were in contemporary use. It is beyond doubt that the pre-eminence henceforth assigned to astrology was bound to lead to a transformation of the whole of theology. "The science of the observation of the heavens, which had been perfected little by little by the priests, became in their hands a body of astral doctrine, which never lost the flavour of the school, but which nevertheless permeated the entire Babylonian religion, and at least in part transformed it."

The development of the old Babylonian religion bears no relation to astronomical theories. It was rather political circumstances which gave to certain gods in turn the primacy among the multitude of divinities worshipped in the land of Sumer and Accad, and, in accordance with a process which is repeated everywhere, caused the functions of other local powers to be attributed to their all-usurping and all-absorbing personality. When Babylon is the capital of the kings, it is the patron of this city, Marduk, identified with Bel, that occupies the foremost place in the Pantheon; when Nineveh is the seat of empire, it is Ashur. Even the groupings and hierarchies, which most plainly betray the intervention of priestly combination, do not appear to be prompted by astronomical speculations. In the system of triads, which theologians conceived, the primacy was given to Anu, Enlil, and Ea, spirits of Heaven, Earth, and Water; below these they placed Sin, Shamash, or Ramman, and Ishtar, the genii of the Sun and the Moon or the atmosphere and the goddess of the fertility of the earth, identified with the planet Venus. In spite of the presence in this symmetrical arrangement of the two luminaries at all times worshipped in that country, and sometimes of the most brilliant of the stars, it is impossible to see an astral principle in this grouping. Prof. Jastrow, the best judge in these matters, does not hesitate to regard the truly sidereal cult, which grew up at Babylon under the influence of the learned theories developed by the priestly caste, as a new religion. I quote his words:

The Star-worship which developed in Babylon and Assyria in connection with the science of the observation of the heavens was at bottom a new religion, the victory of which brought about the decadence of the old popular belief. In point of fact, in the ritual of worship, in ceremonies of incantation and purification, in hymns and prayers, in the chants of ceremonial lamentation, in old festivals, in honour of the gods of nature, just as in hepatoscopy (or examination of the livers of victims) and in the other kinds of divination, which were maintained up to the end of the Babylonian empire, popular ideas always survived. The priests would have been careful not to destroy or imperil the dominion which they exercised over the multitude by changing the forms of worship in the direction of the new religion. But astral doctrines could not, for all that, fail to make their influence felt little by little as a dissolvent force.

The new doctrines were reconciled or combined after a fashion with the old creeds by placing the abode of the gods in the stars, or by identifying them with the latter. By a logical and fully justified development of primitive belief, which attributed to the sun and moon a powerful effect upon the earth, a preponderating influence over the determination of destiny had also been assigned to the five planets, which like the former traversed the constellations of the zodiac. These were therefore identified with the principal figures of the Assyrio-Babylonian pantheon. In accordance with the rank which was assigned to them and in accordance also with the brightness, colour, or duration of the revolution of the stars, relations were established between stars and gods. To Marduk, the foremost of the latter, was assigned Jupiter, whose golden light burns most steadily in the sky, Venus fell to Ishtar, Saturn to Ninib, Mercury to Nebo, Mars, by reason of its blood-red colour, to Nergal, patron of war. As for the fixed stars, singly or grouped in constellations, they were correlated with the less important lords, heroes, or genii. This was no impediment to regarding Ishtar, for instance, always as the goddess of the fertility of the earth, and worshipping her as such. Thus, as in the paganism of the Roman period, divinities assumed a double character, the one traditional and based on ancient beliefs, the other adventitious and inspired by learned theories.

The origin of this religious evolution goes back far into the past, but we are not able at the present day to mark the stages of its development and to assign dates to them. Perhaps it will be possible some day to follow the progress of Babylonian astronomy in the cuneiform tablets, and to show how an ever-widening conception of the heavens little by little transformed the modes of belief. Doubtless the theories of astronomers never completely eliminated the naive tales which tradition related about the divine stars; here, as elsewhere, the enquiry into physical causes failed to get rid of mythical survivals, and the doctrines of oriental cosmographers continued to be encumbered with absurd notions. In order to be convinced on this point it is sufficient to glance at the astronomic curiosities of the Book of Enoch, which as late as the first century before our era echoes the old Chaldean doctrines.

It may be regarded as proved that this astral religion succeeded in establishing itself in the sixth century B.C., during the period of the short-lived glory of the second Babylonian empire, and after its fall, when new ideas derived from East and West were introduced, first by the Persians and afterwards by the Greeks, into the valley of the Euphrates. If, as we shall show, the Platonic dialogue, the Epinomis, is inspired by this religion, it had already formulated some of its chief dogmas before the fourth century. The essential characteristics of its theology are known to us, not from native texts, but from the information supplied by Western writers on "Chaldean" beliefs. The word Χαλδαῖος, Chaldaeus, bore amongst the ancients very different meanings from time to time. These terms designated first of all the inhabitants of Chaldea, that is, lower Mesopotamia, and next the members of the Babylonian priesthood. Thus at the period of the Achamenid kings, in the official processions of Babylon, there walked first the magi, as Quintus Curtius states, that is to say the Persian priests established in the conquered capital, then the Chaldaei, that is the native sacerdotal body. Later the epithet Χαλδαῖος was applied as a title of honour to the Greeks who had studied in the Babylonian schools and proclaimed themselves disciples of the Babylonians; finally it served to denote all those charlatans who professed to foretell the future according to the stars. The variations in meaning of this ethnical term, which ultimately became, like the term magi, a professional designation, have produced in turn an immense exaggeration of the antiquity, or an undue depreciation of the worth, of the data furnished us by Diodorus Siculus, Philo of Alexandria, and other writers on the religious and cosmic system of the "Chaldeans." These pieces of information, as might be expected, are of value only for the period immediately preceding these authors. They apply to those conceptions which were current among the priests of Mesopotamia under the Seleucids at the moment when the Greeks entered into continuous relations with them. Some of these conceptions are certainly very much older, and go back to ancient sacerdotal traditions. Diodorus contrasts the unity of the doctrines of the hereditary caste of the Chaldeans with the divergent views of the Greek philosophers on the most essential principles; but it is possible that the speculative mind of the Greeks had contributed to the clear formulation of these ancient beliefs and to the co-ordination of the dogmas of this religion, as it had done also in the case of astrology, which is a part of that religion.

The following are the broad lines of this theology.

From the leading fact established by them, namely, the invariability of the sidereal revolutions, the Chaldeans had naturally been led to the idea of a Necessity, superior to the gods themselves, since it commanded their movements; and this Necessity, which ruled the gods, was bound, a fortiori, to hold sway over mankind. The conception of a fatality linked with the regular movements of the heavens originated at Babylon, but this universal determinism was not there carried to its ultimate logical consequences. A sovereign providence had, it is true, by an irrevocable decree regulated the harmony of the world. But certain disturbances in the heavens, irregular occurrences such as appearances of comets or showers of falling stars, sufficed to maintain the belief in the exceptional operation of a divine will interfering arbitrarily in the order of nature. Priests foretold the future according to the stars, but by purifications, sacrifices, and incantations they professed to drive away evils, and to secure more certainly the promised blessings. This was a necessary concession to popular beliefs which the very maintenance of the cult demanded. But under normal conditions, as experience proved, the divine stars were subject to an inflexible law, which made it possible to calculate Beforehand all that they would bring to pass.

In oriental civilisations, which are priestly civilisations, the intimate union of learning and belief everywhere characterises the development of religious thought. But nowhere does this alliance appear more extraordinary than at Babylon, where we see a practical polytheism of a rather gross character combined with the application of the exact sciences, and the gods of heaven subjected to the laws of mathematics. This strange association is to us almost incomprehensible, but it must be remembered that at Babylon a number was a very different thing from a figure. Just as in ancient times and, above all, in Egypt, the namehad a magic power, and ceremonial words formed an irresistible incantation, so here the number possesses an active force, the number is a symbol, and its properties are sacred attributes. Astrology is only a branch of mathematics, which the heavens have revealed to mankind by their periodic movements.

From their, main discovery, that of the invariability of astronomical laws, the Chaldeans had deduced another important conclusion, namely, the eternity of the world. The world was not born in the beginning, it will not be subject to destruction in the future; a divine providence has from the out-set ordered it as it shall be for ever. The stars, in fact, perform their revolutions according to ever invariable cycles of years, which, as experience proves, succeed each other to infinity. Each of these cosmic cycles will be the exact reproduction of those which have preceded it, for when the stars resume the same position, they are bound to act in precisely the same manner as before. The life of the universe, then, was conceived as forming a series of vast periods, which the most probable estimate fixed at 432,000 years. As early as the beginning of the third century before our era, Berosus, a priest of Bel, expounded to the Greeks the theory of the eternal return of things, which Nietzsche prided himself on having discovered.

In the same way as it regarded numbers as sacred, this religion of astronomers defied Time, the course of which was bound up with the revolutions of the heavens. At regular intervals it brought back the moon, the sun, the stars to their starting-point, and as it seemed to govern their movements, it was naturally regarded as a divine power. It was the heavenly bodies that by their regular movements taught man to divide into successive sections the unbroken chain of moments. Each of the periods marked in the unending flight of time shared the divinity of the stars, particularly the Seasons. In their worship old festivals of nature were combined with ideas derived from astrology.

Babylonian theology had never entirely broken with the primitive veneration with which Semitic tribes regarded all the mysterious forces surrounding man. In the time of Hammurabi the supreme triad was composed, as we have said, of the gods of Heaven, Earth, and Water. Sidereal theology had systematised this very ancient cult of the powers of nature by connecting them with astronomical theories. A vast pantheism had inherited and codified the ideas of ancient animism. The eternal world is wholly divine, either because it is itself God, or because it is conceived as containing within it a divine soul which pervades all things. The great reproach which Philo the Jew casts upon the Chaldeans is precisely this, that they worship the creation instead of the Creator.

This world is worshipped in its entirety, and worship is paid also to its various parts: first of all, to Heaven, not only in virtue of a reminiscence of the old Babylonian religion, which gave the foremost place in the Pantheon to Anu, but also because it is the abode of the higher powers. Among the stars the most important were conceived to be the moon and the sun,--for it is in this order that they were placed,--then the five planets, which were, as we have seen, dedicated to, or identified with, the principal divinities of mythology. To them was given the name of Interpreters, because, being endowed with a particular movement, not possessed by the fixed stars, which are subject to a motion of their own, they above all others make manifest to man the purposes of the gods. But worship was also bestowed on all the constellations of the firmament, as the revealers of the will of Heaven, and in particular on the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the thirty-six decans, which were called the Counsellor Gods; then, outside the zodiac, on twenty-four stars, twelve in the northern, and twelve in the southern hemisphere, which, being sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, became the Judges of the living and the dead. All these heavenly bodies, whose variable movements and activities had been observed from the remotest times, announced not only hurricanes, rains, and scorching heats, but the good or evil fortune of countries, nations, kings, and even of mere individuals.

The domain of the divine god did not end at the zone of the moon, which is the nearest to us. The Chaldeans also worshipped, as beneficent or formidable powers, the Earth, whether fruitful or barren, the Ocean and the Waters that fertilise or devastate, the Winds which blow from the four points of the horizon, Fire which warms and devours. They confounded with the stars under the generic name of Elements (στοιχεῖα) these primordial forces, which give rise to the phenomena of nature. The system which recognises only four elements, prime sources of all things, is a creation of the Greeks.

If all the movements of the heavens inevitably have their reactions upon the earth, it is, above all, the destiny of man that depends upon them. The Chaldeans admitted, it appears, that the principle of life, which warms and animates the human body, was of the same essence as the fires of heaven. From these the soul received its qualities at birth, and at that moment the stars determined its fate here below. Intelligence was divine, and allowed the soul to enter into relations with the gods above. By contemplating the stars the faithful received from them the revelation of all knowledge as well as all prescience. The priestly astrologers were always to some extent visionaries, who regarded as inspirations from on high all the ideas which sprang up in their own minds. Doubtless they had already conceived the idea that after death pious souls re-ascend to the divine stars, whence they came, and in this celestial abode obtain a glorious immortality.

To sum up, at the moment when the Greeks conquered Mesopotamia under Alexander, they found above a deep substratum of mythology a learned theology, founded on patient astronomical observations, which professed to reveal the nature of the world regarded as divine, the secrets of the future, and the destinies of man. In our next lecture we shall attempt to show what influence the Babylonian religion in contact with Hellenism exerted and underwent in turn, and how it was combined with the Stoic philosophy.

Footnotes

4:1 See e.g. Fries, Studien zur Odyssee (Mitt. Vorderasiat. Gesellschaft), 1910.
4:2 Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions. Oxford, 1908, i, p. 234; cf. Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens and Assyriens, ii (1910), p. 432.
5:1 See below, Lecture II,
5:2 Jastrow, l.c., p. 236.--Since this lecture was written, an excellent paper on this subject has been published by Carl Bezold, Astronomie, Himmelschau and Astrallehre bei den Babyloniern (Sitzungsb. Akad. Heidelberg, 1911, Abh. No. 2).
6:1 F. X. Kugler, S. J., Die Babylonische Mondrechnung, 1900, and Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel, 1907--1909 (in progress). A clear and able resume of Kugler's researches has been given by Schiaparelli; see below,
7:1 One of these eclipses is noted both in Ptolemy's Almagest and in a cuneiform tablet, see Boll, in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie, s. v. "Finsternisse," col. 2354.
10:1 See below, Lecture II, on the cycle of Meton.
13:1 Schiaparelli, I Primordi ed i Progressi dell’ Astronomia presso i Babilonesi (Extr. of "Scientia," Rivista di Scienza, iii), Bologna, 1908, p. 22.
14:1 Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens and Assyriens, ii, p. 432.
14:2 Jastrow, op. cit., ii, p. 455.
16:1 Jastrow, l.c.
16:2 See below, Lecture II,
16:3 Quint. Curtius, v, 1, 22.
17:1 Diodor. Sic., ii, 29--31; Philo, De Migr. Abrah., 32; Quis Rerum div. Heres sit, 20 etc.
20:1 See below, Lecture II,
21:1 See below, Lecture VI.

The Correspondence of Neptune

Neptune (♆) is the ruling planet of Pisces for most Western astrologers. Prior to the discovery of Neptune, Jupiter was considered the ruler of Pisces. Some modern astrologers consider Jupiter a co-ruler of Pisces. Some astrologers do not believe that Neptune rules any particular sign, even though they may use the planet in chart interpretation.

Neptune is associated with illusion, deception, religions, spirituality, mass media, music, drugs, extreme sensitivity, psychic phenomena, and altered states of consciousness. The discovery of Neptune in 1846 coincided with the discovery of anesthetics and hypnotism.

Octaves 

Neptune is the higher Octave of Venus

Rules: Inspiration, Dreams, Affiliation, Friends, Creativity, Compassion

Detriment: Drifting from Reality, Absent Mindedness, Carelessness, Stubbourness

Element: Water

Day of the Week: Thursday

Number: 8 and 12

Astrological Sign: Pisces

Colour: Purple, Blue, White

Metal: Iron, Bronze

Gods: Neptune,

Goddesses: Ishtar

Crystals: Sapphire, Amethyst, Coral, Jade

Herbs & Oil: Lilac, clove, Sage, Violet, Lily Carnation, Heliotrope, Poppy, Clove, Nutmeg

Plants: Plants connected to the sea, sea anemones, seaweed, sea grasses, pond and underwater plants, cowbane, parsley, mosses, ferns.

Animals: Sea animals like fish, crustaceans, octopi,

Tarot: The Emperor

Neptune is the eighth furthest planet from the sun in our solar system, the fourth largest in diameter and the third most massive.

Neptune was discovered in 1848 and is considered a "new" planet by astrologers as obviously, prior to its discovery it was not used in astrological calculations. Therefore, opinion on how Neptune affects a chart may vary from one astrologer to the next and some do not take Neptune into account at all.

Neptune rules the imagination, dreams and visions and their expression through art, dance, music, poetry, etc. In a personal chart, Neptune can point to areas where a person may have problems seeing through illusion as well as where someone will find their best creative expression. Those who have a strong Neptune influence may have a spiritual calling or be drawn toward mysticism.

Neptune takes about 14 years to complete its journey through any one sign and is thus considered a "generational planet", exerting its force on an entire generation. Since Neptune rules imagination and its expression, the fashionable movies, music, art, etc. of a generation can be influenced by what sign Neptune is in. Neptune also affects a generations idealist attitudes and points to areas where a generation will find dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Neptune's Key Correspondences

Neptune is generally associated with water and the sea. It is associated with the Roman God Neptune and his Greek counterpart Poseidon. As a relatively recently discovered planet, it does not have much in the way of ancient associations.

Neptune rules the astrological sign Pisces (along with jupiter)

Colors: Green, blue, lavender

Minerals: Coral, aquamarine, platinum, neptunium

Body Part: the thalamus and spinal column

Action: Dissolving boundaries, expanding upon ideas, changing established rules

Represents: 

• Intuition, 
• idealism, 
• sacrifice, 
• glamour, 
• illusion, 
• evolution and decay

Plants Associated with Neptune

Neptune plants tend to be gently aromatic with a watery fragrance and/or intoxicating. Plants that grow in or near the sea and plants that seem to grow randomly in all directions may also be associated with Neptune.

• Bulrush, 
• Lobelia, 
• Morning glory, 
• Night-blooming jasmine, 
• Phragmytes, 
• Perilla, 
• Pine, 
• Reed, 
• Reed canary grass, 
• Water Lily

Neptune in Magick

Neptune energy is useful for any magick related to the nonphysical including connection to the divine and divination, especially concerning cataclysmic issues. It is also useful for any ritual relating to the sea or any large body of water. Neptune energy is useful in any healing magick associated with the spinal canal, mental illness, neuroses or any illness of mysterious origin.

The Four Pillars of Destiny (Chinese Astrology)

The Four Pillars of Destiny is an important component of Chinese fortune telling. The 'four pillars' refers to the year, month, day and hour pillars of a birthday in Chinese solar calendar. It is also known as the 'eight characters of birth time', the translation of Chinese phrase, Sheng Chen Ba Zi, shortly as Ba Zi. Ba Zi (Eight Characters) is represented by four pairs of characters respectively saying the year, month, day and hour of a birth time. Two characters in each pair are made up of one character from the Heavenly Stems and one from the Earthly Branches.

The theory of the Four Pillars of Destiny is based on Yin Yang and Wu Xing, and the pillars are represented on the basis of the heavenly stems & earthly branches.

Year Pillar – Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Earthly branches combines and create a sexagenary cycle (See this chart to find the year pillar. If your birth year is not in the 60-year circle, it can be calculated by extrapolation from the figures.) Here is a quick way to convert a year in western calendar into the one represented by stem and branch.

Year's Heavenly Stem – Last number of a year will indicate the year's stem

Jia	Yi	Bing	Ding	Wu	Ji	Geng	Xin	Ren	Gui
4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3

Year's Earthly Branch – the reminder (1-11) of the year divided by 12 will indicate the year's branch

Zi	Chou	Yin	Mao	Chen	Si	Wu	Wei	Shen	You	Xu	Hai
4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	0	1	2	3

Take the year 1985 for example. Last number 5 refers to Yi. 1985 divided by 12 equals an integer 165 with a reminder of 5. Number 5 refers to Chou. So 1985 is Yi Chou year.

Month Pillar – Month pillar has fixed early branches, lunar January to October represented by Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai, Zi and Chou. The heavenly stem is changing according to the year pillar. In fact, the division of two month branches is usually up to the 24 solar terms. From the Beginning of Spring which regarded as the real start of a year, the branch shifts every two solar terms. The representation by lunar months is only an only an approximation.

Earthly Branches and 12 Months

Branch	Zi	Chou	Yin	Mao	Chen	Si
Lunar	Nov.	Dec.	Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.
Solar	Daxue- Xiaohan	Xiaohan- Lichun	Lichun- Jingzhe	Jingzhe- Qingming	Qingming- Lixia	Lixia- Mangzhong
Branch	Wu	Wei	Shen	You	Xu	Hai
Lunar	May	Jun.	Jul.	Aug.	Sep.	Oct.
Solar	Mangzhou- Xiaoshu	Xiaoshu- Liqiu	Liqiu- Bailu	Bailu- Hanlu	Hanlu- Lidong	Lidong- Daxue

Day Pillar – The recondition to know a day's stem and branch, one should remember the stem and branch of the first day of that year in Chinese lunar calendar. Then, Chinese calendar has bigger and lesser month, respectively having 30 or 29 days. One stem-branch cycle needs 60 days. If the stem and branch of the first day of that lunar month has been known, there is a way to extrapolate any day within the month, by the different extrapolation rules applied to bigger and lesser months.

Hour Pillar – Similarly, the heavenly branches of the hour pillar is fixed. Jia hour refers to 23:00-01:00, and so forth. The heavenly stem of each day is up to the stem and branch of the day pillar.

Earthly Branches of 24 Hours (12 Shi Chen)

Zi	Chou	Yin	Mao	Chen	Si
23:00-00:59	01:00-02:59	03:00-04:59	05:00-06:59	07:00-08:59	09:00-10:59
Wu	Wei	Shen	You	Xu	Hai
11:00-12:59	13:00-14:59	15:00-16:59	17:00-18:59	19:00-20:59	21:00-22:59

Here is the Four Pillars Chart for an individual born at 18:00, on April 12, 1985 (lunar February 23, 1985) in western calendar for example. Generally, a yellow calendar book is necessary to help find the accurate pillars. Now, it is not difficult to find an online Ba Zi calculator.

 

Pillars	Hour	Day	Month	Year
Heavenly Stems	Ding	Ding	Geng	Yi
Wu Xing/Yin Yang	Yin Fire	Yin Fire	Yang Metal	Yin Wood
Earthly Branches	You	Chou	Chen	Chou
Wu Xing/Yin Yang	Yin Metal	Yin Earth	Yang Earth	Yin Earth

It has only eight characters, but the relation of the eight characters is very complicated. According to the four pillars' representation theory, year pillar represents ancestors and parents; month pillar represents brothers and sisters; day stem represents oneself; day branch represent spouse; hour pillar represents offspring. In addition, the heavenly stems have their own characteristics which are related to the Five Elements (Wu Xing). The missing element in a baby's 'eight characters of birth time' will be usually added into its name as an action of compensation. Among the ten heavenly stems, there are compatible and opposite relations. While among the earthly branches, the relations are more complex, combination, clash, restriction, harm, etc. Abundant relationships may have accurate explanation on the luck of one self or relatives.

The ancient people believed that birth time is a kind of Qi (aura, something of spirit). People born in the Wei hour have an aura field of Wei. If the birth time is in Wei hour but closing to Shen, the aura field has changed gradually to that of the Shen hour. The Four Pillars was created based on vague time, as the time division in ancient time could not be accurate as it is in modern times. So, are there any errors if calculating the Ba Zi because of the time difference? An individual is unique replying on the combination of time, space and spirit. While the Four Pillars mainly talks about time, occasionally space but non spirit. It is an outcome of Chinese metaphysics which is special, interesting but the accurate is debatable.