Esoteric Astrology (eBook)

The Cosmic Order

Hermes Trismegistos

The basis of the ancient wisdom teachings, that have survived all ages, is the knowledge of the transcendental harmony of the cosmos as the reflection of which the world appears. It reveals the principle of order according to which the cosmos functions.

With the beginning of our era, however, this knowledge, that can be traced back to Sumerian times, was no longer understood and largely suppressed until it finally only remained in the myths of many peoples of the Earth in symbolic form and was banished to the realm of fable by the rational mind of scientifically enlightened people.

But recently, the interest in esoteric knowledge is experiencing a revival, and people are beginning to remember the great wisdom teacher of Egypt, Hermes Trismegistos, who was worshipped in Egypt as the god Thoth and is generally regarded as the founder of the hermetic sciences. He is credited with a complete work of over 40 volumes of which, however, only a few have survived. Yet, his wisdom lived on in many great thinkers, scientists and philosophers of ancient Greece who were still initiated into the "secret knowledge" in the Mystery Schools of ancient times.

Of Pythagoras, one of the most outstanding wisdom teachers of antiquity, we know that he had been ordained as a priest in Egypt and Babylonia. His universal knowledge on ethics, mathematics, metaphysics, music, mysticism, politics and religion has influenced many other Greek philosophers, like Plato, but also the great thinkers, mathematicians, musicians and scientists of the later centuries and the esotericists of modern times.

Pythagoras taught that the fundamental principles, according to which the universe functions, are to be found in the system of rational numbers, in which the structure of the macrocosm as well as the microcosm is reflected. He was aware that a single law governs all energies pulsating in the cosmos which has an analogous effect on all levels of existence. And this law, he recognised in the rational numbers that govern all visible physical phenomena.

At the centre of the Pythagorean philosophy is the postulate of the unity of the universe, the blueprint of which contains a numerical key that corresponds to musical harmonies. This entire cosmology is based on the relationship between numbers, geometric forms and sounds which in turn can be regarded as symbols of a central spiritual idea.

As a demonstration of this cosmic structure, Pythagoras used a lyre to prove that a string produces the notes of the musical scale if their length ratios are tuned to each other in such a way that they can be expressed as quotients of whole numbers.

For example, the octave of the fundamental sounds at half the length of the string, the fifth at two-thirds, the fourth at three-fourths, etc.

A basic rule is immediately apparent: the lower the numerical ratios, the more harmonious the sound. And this is – as we shall see – not only a musical but a cosmic basic rule, for the higher development of all life forms is based on the striving for harmony. If we follow this basic insight that all parts of the cosmos are musically and harmoniously ordered, then the structure of our universe can also be demonstrated through a vibrating tone string. When a string vibrates, it is not only the whole string that vibrates in the fundamental tone, but inevitably also half the string as the next higher octave and also the third of the string, the fifth, etc. Thus all the notes of the scale sound as overtones when a fundamental tone is tuned. Consequently, the overtone series can also be regarded as a model of the universe because each tone potentially contains all tones, just as the structure of an atom shows the same principle as the entire universe.

From this realisation, it follows logically that the orbits of the planets cannot be arbitrary either, but they must correspond to musical harmonies, as they too are part of this harmonically ordered sound structure of the world.

In the 17th century, this idea was taken up and confirmed by the German astronomer, mathematician and astrologer Johannes Kepler who had been largely influenced by the Pythagorean wisdom. He devoted his entire life to the research of the harmony of the spheres, not as a poetic image but as the ultimate secret of the universe. In an all-embracing synthesis of geometry, music, astrology and astronomy, he was able to show that the inner structure of the universe is based on numbers and geometric shapes in space which correspond to musical harmonies.

Johannes Kepler

In his monumental work Harmonices Mundi he proved that the distances between the ellipses of the planetary orbits of the solar system are comparable to the distances of the overtone series and that the velocities as well as the orbital periods of the planets are related to each other in such a way that they correspond to musical harmonies. And this has since been confirmed beyond doubt by modern science.1

According to the Pythagorean theorem, which Plato made public, the world structure is based on the "five regular solids" (polyhedra) being the only geometric forms that are symmetrical in three directions of space and have a common centre. And these solids are formed from regular triangles, quadrilaterals and pentagons.

To prove this, Kepler built a model of the world structure, placing the so-called "five platonic solids" inside each other and giving each of them two spheres: an inner sphere on which the centres of all the body surfaces lie and an outer sphere on which all the body corners lie. Thus he obtained six spheres in and around the five solids.

If we look at the spheres that are surrounding the solids and filling them, the ratio of their radii actually corresponds to that of the planetary orbits from Mercury to Saturn.

On the basis of this construction plan, Kepler came to the conclusion that there must be an unknown planet between Jupiter and Mars because the planetary distances show an exact series of numbers using 100 for the distance of the planet Saturn from the Sun:

About 170 years later, the so-called planetoids, the remains of a broken planet, were discovered and proved Kepler's assumption. And the most recent scientific discoveries of harmonic research confirm that harmonic laws can be proven in the whole of nature, from the chemical elements to human beings.3

The arrangement of all bodies in space thus proves not to be arbitrary, but tuned according to precise musical laws which in turn can be expressed in numbers and geometric forms. We find the same musical-harmonic order in the arrangement of the planets, but also in the atoms, the spin numbers of which correspond to the interval ratios of music because the energy of the particles in the atom does not change smoothly but in whole-number jumps.4

And the human being is also essentially determined by harmonic laws, as anthropology and medicine have proven. In a simplified way, one could say that the human being is harmonically organised in space and time. The proportions of the human body correspond to the "golden section" which can be found in the whole of nature and in artistic creations that we automatically perceive as beautiful because the soul is resonating to harmony.

Today's harmonic research confirms musical laws even in the micro-world, and the ancient idea of the harmony of the spheres proves to be a fact. Thomas Michael Schmidt writes:5