by Lynn Koiner
A reprint from the early 1980s with some updating
The astronomical science of the ancients is generally supposed to have included knowledge of only seven bodies in the solar system— the Sun, Moon and five planets. The addition to this number of three more planets within the past two hundred years is popularly considered to be one of the triumphs of modern astronomy.
A closer investigation into the problem, however, seems to indicate that contemporary scientists are only rediscovering information known to the sages of the ancient world. The Babylonians (today’s Iraq) knew the length of the Saros Cycles and Series,1 the occurrence of spots on the Sun, the phases of Mercury and Venus, and the periodicity of comets. The Mayans of Central America had a calendar that was more accurate than the one we use today.
According to astrologer, Mary, Elsnau, the Assyrians knew that Saturn is surrounded by a flat ring and that Jupiter has four moons. Of course, only since modern space exploration have we discovered additional moons that were not seen from earth, even with the best technology. The Incas of Peru knew about the rings of Saturn. Their representation of the deity of that planet shows him riding on a flat disk together with smaller attendants, representing his numerous moons.
In the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities of the British Museum, there is an oval piece of rock crystal, one and one-half inches in diameter and one-quarter of an inch thick. It is plano-convex, very crudely polished but still capable of focusing light rays into a point. Much debate has raged over whether this object is a genuine lens or merely an ornament. In view of the evidence, it seems probably that the ancients did possess telescopes of a sort— or, at least, aids to vision.2
It appears that, in addition to the seven bodies generally known, the astronomical priestcraft knew of a number of others planets— some of which have not as yet been discovered by present-day scientists. With increasing interest in planetary observation using the Hubble telescope, new members of our solar system family have been discovered. Because the outer planets did not conform strictly to the orbits laid down for them, the search was on for new planets— Pluto’s binary dwarf planet, Charon; the in-house comet, Chiron; and Eris were discovered since the 1990s. Even planets in other solar systems have been photographed.
In an earlier article, I wrote, “While Pluto was not discovered until 1930, HP Blavatsky in 1888, referred to this planet as the 7th. If counting the Earth as one, Pluto is the 7th planet outward. Before its discovery, AA Bailey in ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY referred to a planet beyond Neptune. Pluto was not unknown to the ancients. Cayce stated in his readings that the ancients called this planet Vulcan; before its discovery, Cayce, like Blavatsky, called this planet Septimus (seven).”
The evidence for an as-yet-unrecognized planet is strong enough to encourage work in that direction. The esoteric writings of HP Blavatsky and AA Bailey refer to this planet as Vulcan. I will discuss this planet from both a scientific and esoteric point of view.
Since 1700, when Cassini and Maraldi observed an unknown body transiting the Sun. There was a report of Guillaums who watched a similar occurrence in 1929. More than seventy observations of this type have been made, many of them by men of unimpeachable reputation and high ability.
Despite the existence of observations over a period of 150 years previous, the problem of an intra-Mercurial planet was first seriously discussed in 1857 when a combination of the facts that Mercury was not conforming to its calculated orbit and the reported observation by Ritter of an unidentified body crossing the Sun on June 11, 1988, brought the question into prominence among astronomers.3
L.H. Weston collected much information about the ancient knowledge of this planet in a brochure he published in 1909 (available from the American Federation of Astrologers). He stated that the selection of the name Vulcan was due to a singular mythological story which gives an almost exact description of an inner planet. An intra-Mercurial planet is pretended to be hot, like a blacksmith’s iron, because it is so close to the Sun. The Vulcan of mythology (Tubal-Cain of the Bible) was feigned to be a blacksmith. Vulcan caught Mars and made sport of him before Olympus. We actually find some invisible planet near the Sun producing a detrimental effect on Mars. Weston concludes that it is probable that Vulcan was the true name for the great intra-Mercurial planet and attributes of the Vulcan mythology correspond with the scientific effects of the intra-Mercurial planet of Chaldean astrology.
Weston refers to Democritus, philosopher and astrologer of the 3rd century B.C., and states that there were certain planets invisible and unknown to the common observations of his day. He mentions the Jewish worship of an invisible deity situated in a place too intensely light to gaze upon and presents evidence to show that the Egyptians had knowledge of Vulcan, an intelligence which was possibly derived from the early Atlantean astrologers who preceded the Egyptian race.
According to HP Blavatsky in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, Vulcan has its orbit between Mercury and the Sun. It has not been photographed at the time because its physical body is etheric, a similar density as our own aura. According to esoteric philosophy, it became invisible to our naked eye during the 3rd Root Race (Lemurians/the continent in the Pacific) after the fall of man into physical generation.
Since man has already passed the densest part of our evolution of the Earth Chain, we are slowly ascending toward the etheric plane ourselves, at which time we will once again see the planet Vulcan. Alice A. Bailey frequently stated that much of humanity will have developed etheric vision by the 21st Century. Nowadays, many people who do not consider themselves to have any special gift, are beginning to see the light radiating from physical bodies, to see part of the aura even though they cannot distinguish the colors. It is this evolutionary development that will enable man to see the planet Vulcan in its etheric body.
1 The Saros cycle is an eclipse cycle with a period of 223 synodic months (approximately 6585.3213 days, or nearly 18 years 11 days 8 hours), that can be used to predict eclipses of the Sun and Moon. One cycle after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur west of the original location. A series of eclipses that are separated by one Saros cycle is called a Saros series.
2 I wrote this long before the internet but there are links supporting this. http://einhornpress.com/telescopes.aspx http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s148930.htm
3 In the 1990s, an astrologer in Baltimore acquired an astronomical almanac from the late 1800s and it contained an astronomical ephemeris for Vulcan, the inter-Mercurial planet.