It is evident that Philolaus referred to the central spiritual Sun, whose beams and effulgence are only mirrored by our central Star, the Sun. This is as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the profane of pagan antiquity, it was, of course, the physical Sun that was the “highest God” for them, as it seems—if Chevalier Drach's view be accepted—to have now virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If words mean anything, the statement made by the Chevalier Drach that “this sun is, undeniably, the second hypostasis of the Deity,” imply what we say; as “this Sun” refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and “hypostasis” means substance or subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity—distinctly personal. As the author, being an ex-Rabbi, thoroughly versed in Hebrew, and in the mysteries of the Zohar, ought to know the value of words; and as, moreover, in writing this, he was bent upon reconciling “the seeming contradictions,” as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity—the fact becomes quite evident.
But all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved naturally and in the course of the development of the doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the Divine Beings worshipped by all nations in antiquity, but of declaring idolatrous, not only the Pagans ancient and modern, but every Christian nation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke. The accusation brought against herself by more than one man of Science, of worshipping the stars like true Sabæans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted, yet no star-worshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars and planets, as will be shown before the last page of this work is written; none the less is it true that those Philosophers alone who studied Astrology and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be sought in, and expected from, the Occult forces emanating from those constellations.
Section XXIV. Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy.
There is a physical, an astral, and a super-astral Universe in the three chief divisions of the Kabalah; as there are terrestrial, super-terrestrial, and spiritual Beings. The “Seven Planetary Spirits” may be ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts' content, yet the need of intelligent ruling and guiding Forces is so much felt to this day that scientific men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of ancient systems, find themselves obliged to generate in their inner consciousness some kind of semi-mystical system. Metcalf's “sun-force” theory, and that of Zaliwsky, a learned Pole, which made Electricity the Universal Force and placed its storehouse in the Sun,[400] were revivals of the Kabalistic teachings. Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity, producing “the most powerful, attractive, calorific, and luminous effects,” was present in the physical constitution of the Sun and explained its peculiarities. This is very near the Occult teaching. It is only by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun-reflector, and the powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion, that one can explain (a) the evident absence of any waste of power and luminosity in the Sun—inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and (b) the behaviour of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted rule of weight and gravity. And Zaliwsky makes this “solar electricity” “differ from anything known on earth.”
Father Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce
Forces of quite a new order and quite foreign to gravitation, which he had discovered in Space,[401]
in order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he develops a theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency “would lend itself to all the whims of the comets.” He suspects that:
Notwithstanding all the actual researches on the rapidity of light—that dazzling product of an unknown force ... which we see too frequently to understand—that light is motionless in reality.[402]