Chapter 1517

[←1504]

Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds: “The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind. from the larva or ovum of a minute insect up to man, at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence.... Upon the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this, that, in animals, changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks”—or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that: “Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day.... fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment ... [either cure or death taking place]. If the fourth [paroxysm] be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and ... the change for the better ... will be seen on the fourteenth day ... namely, about three or four o’clock a.m., when the system is most languid.” (Approaching End of the Age, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted).

This is pure “soothsaying” by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldæan Astrolatry and Astrology. Thus Materialistic Science—in its medicine, the most materialistic of all—applies our Occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in Nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in Nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling both evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and ornithology, as in the kingdom of the animal mammalia and man—why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient Adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that “in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower.” (Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Jan. 1843; ibid., loc. cit.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the Planet and Races? Dr. Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven. He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that: “The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours, and that single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrata.” (Ibid., p. 267.) If Science does this, why should she scorn the Occult information, that—to use Dr. Laycock’s language—one Week of the Manvantaric (Lunar) Fortnight, of fourteen Days (or seven Manus), that Fortnight of twelve Hours in a Day representing seven Periods or seven Races—is now passed? This language of Science fits our Doctrine admirably. Mankind has lived over “a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours,” since three and a half Races are now gone for ever, the Fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.