Fetching
One moment.
Eight numbers, from May to December 1942, printed in Montevideo by a body calling itself the Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos. The name is not incidental. Papus had founded a Groupe Indépendant d'Études Ésotériques in Paris in 1888 and given it a review called L'Initiation; Nº 6 of this magazine names him as its president and founder in so many words. What you are reading is a deliberate re-founding of that institution on the other side of the Atlantic, half a century later, with the same name and the same title over the door.
The first number sets out what the review means to be: the organ of an independent society of thought, open to criticism from its readers, "not a business either, nor anyone's means of livelihood", falling into "no particularism, and still less into any personalism". That claim is worth holding onto, because the volume keeps testing itself against it. A commentary on masonic ritual praises the symbols and then says plainly that the institution has forgotten what they mean. An article on Schopenhauer complains that philosophers and occultists each miss half of him. A poem on the second page rebukes the very piety the editorial has just described.
Four long series run through the volume and none of them finishes: Jehel's commentary on the masonic degrees, which reaches the raising of Hiram; Surya's astrology course, which builds one real chart for one real birth in Montevideo across six instalments; Asuri Kapila's course in the postures, with a Sanskrit glossary that reaches its seventy-third entry; and a treatise on the planetary hours that does conclude, in Nº 8, with Saturn and Jupiter. Threaded between them is something stranger — a Uruguayan woman signing herself Maya, who went to India, sat on the floor of Sri Ramana Maharshi's hall, and wrote it down. He asked her, as she left, whether she would visit the temple at Madura. She said the chance had gone. A railway official then sent her eight hundred kilometres in the wrong direction and she arrived at Madura. The magazine gives that sequence three issues and lets the reader draw the conclusion.
The volume closes in French, with Saint-Martin's "Le Cimetière d'Amboise" — begun in Nº 6, continued in Nº 7, still unfinished at the end of Nº 8.
On the apparatus. Every page of this volume carries commentary: 392 notes across 179 pages, marked by evidence tier, saying where a claim has been checked against a text the Press holds and where it has not. Quotations have been verified where verification was possible. Dante is misquoted here — nostri for vostri, which turns a rebuke of humanity into a shared observation. The "Prayer of Saint Francis" on p. 9 of Nº 4 is not by Francis; it first appears anonymously in 1912. Three arithmetical faults in the astrology course are identified, including one that does not affect its result and is marked as such. Where a contributor is right, that is recorded too, and he often is: the Gita is quoted accurately, the elemental triangles are correctly assigned, Montevideo's coordinates are right, and the mean daily motion of the Sun is given correct to the arcsecond.
On what is withheld. Five passages in this volume are not reproduced, amounting to 1,153 characters — about two hundredths of one per cent of the text. Each is marked where it stood, with the reason. The Press does not reproduce racial theory, racial-improvement doctrine, or period race-language used in pseudo-historical claims. Nothing is removed silently and nothing else has been altered; passages that merely use the vocabulary of 1942 while arguing against racial distinction — and there are several — stand as printed.
On the medical claims. The courses in this volume promise cures: of sterility, of gallstones, of arteriosclerosis, of spinal deformity. Nº 7 prints two clinical reports describing a man whose grey hair, baldness and wrinkles are said to have reversed over eleven years. These are reproduced because they are what the magazine said, and they are endorsed by nobody. Read them as evidence of what this readership was invited to believe.
1deseo de producción, de evasión y de ensanchar nuestro horizonte, sea por investigación de los planos superiores, sea por viajes y estudios de las ciencias ocultas o del arte.
2PARA LOS NACIDOS: de 19 a 23 de febrero, de 21 a 25 de mayo, de 23 a 27 de agosto y de 22 a 26 de noviembre.
3Urano en malos ángulos con el Sol – Podemos llamar a esta vibración, el rayo de la impulsividad y de precipitación y, en consecuencia, pueden sobrevenir mudanzas, viajes o cambios desfavorables, disputas, pleitos, accidentes, heridas u operaciones, empezadas precipitadamente, o de malos resultados por causa de la precipitación.
4La calma y la reflexión son los mejores medios para neutralizar esta vibración.
5PARA LOS NACIDOS: de 20 a 23 de enero, de 21 a 23 de marzo, de 23 a 25 de junio, de 23 a 25 de septiembre, y eventualmente para los nacidos de 21 a 25 de mayo, pues éstos participan de la influencia anterior y de ésta.
6Urano en buenos aspectos con el Sol – Provoca los grandes cambios, la inspiración o el progreso material y espiritual debido a una comprensión superior.
7Quien estudia las ciencias ocultas y haya nacido en esas fechas, puede obtener, en este período, mayores conocimientos, si sabe aprovechar las ocasiones, las ideas que se le presentan o las relaciones con las personas a cuyo contacto llegue.
8Urano da las innovaciones, las invenciones y la inspiración, tanto en la profesión, en la actividad técnica como en la artística e intelectual.
9Da la posibilidad, a ellos y a los nacidos de 17 a 19 de enero, etc… de ensanchar el horizonte, y también perspectiva de viajes o cambios favorables.
10PARA LOS NACIDOS: de 22 a 27 de febrero; de 24 a 30 de mayo; de 26 de agosto a 1º de septiembre y de 25 a 30 de noviembre.
11Saturno en mal aspecto con el Sol – Sobre todo como consecuencia de este aspecto publico ahora este estudio sobre las vibraciones, ya que las personas influenciadas por él precisan ser avisadas para que, DURANTE ESTE MES DE JUNIO y también DURANTE JULIO, presten cuidado a su salud.
12Saturno y Urano se hallan en los primeros grados de Géminis y provocarán muchas enfermedades de las vías respiratorias y pulmones.
13En los años pasados, esos dos planetas estaban en el signo de Toro y ocasionaron muchas operaciones de apendicitis, enfermedades del sistema glandular y, por reflejo, las enfermedades de Escorpión, o sea, de todo el sistema genital y bajo vientre.
14Actualmente influencian más sobre la composición de la sangre (reflejo de Sagitario) y obre los pulmones, provocarán, para muchos no solamente bronquitis o asma, que se pueden volver crónicos, sino también fuertes y agudas crisis de reumatismo.
15No se pueden determinar todas las posibilidades sin los horóscopos individuales; pero en general, todos los que nacieron en las fechas indicadas y en los días inmediatamente siguientes, deben tomar grandes precauciones contra los resfríos y contra la posibilidad que las enfermedades se vuelvan crónicas.
16Tal vibración, considerada como una d las más desfavorables, da una gran tendencia a la depresión, al pesimismo y, como los pensamientos atraen a los acontecimientos, estamos bajo tal vibración más expuestos a las contrariedades y a las limitaciones de nuestra acción.
17La mejor manera de neutralizar esta influencia es utilizar esa época para una reclusión, física o mental, voluntaria, tratando de ahondar profundamente en nosotros mismos, más bien que buscando la expansión.
18Eso es evidente, ya que si buscamos mucho contacto con los demás en este período tendremos contrariedades.
19Esto no quiere decir que debamos dejarnos deprimir o ser pesimistas, al contrario; debemos reaccionar con toda la energía que da la alegría interna y no cerrar los ojos a la belleza que nos rodea, buscando así un apoyo contra tal vibración.
2018
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1a desire for production, for escape, and for widening our horizon, whether by investigation of the higher planes or by travel and the study of the occult sciences or of art.
2FOR THOSE BORN: 19 to 23 February, 21 to 25 May, 23 to 27 August and 22 to 26 November.
3Uranus in bad angles with the Sun — We may call this vibration the ray of impulsiveness and of precipitation; and in consequence there may come removals, journeys or unfavourable changes, disputes, lawsuits, accidents, injuries or operations begun precipitately, or turning out badly by reason of haste.
4Calm and reflection are the best means of neutralising this vibration.
5FOR THOSE BORN: 20 to 23 January, 21 to 23 March, 23 to 25 June, 23 to 25 September, and possibly for those born 21 to 25 May, since these share in the preceding influence and in this one.
6Uranus in good aspects with the Sun — Provokes great changes, inspiration, or material and spiritual progress owing to a higher understanding.
7Whoever studies the occult sciences and was born on those dates may obtain in this period a greater knowledge, if he knows how to take advantage of the occasions, the ideas presented to him, or the connections with the persons he comes into contact with.
8Uranus gives innovations, inventions and inspiration, in the profession, in technical activity, and in the artistic and intellectual alike.
9It gives them, and those born 17 to 19 January and so on, the possibility of widening their horizon, and also the prospect of favourable journeys or changes.
10FOR THOSE BORN: 22 to 27 February; 24 to 30 May; 26 August to 1 September; and 25 to 30 November.
11Saturn in bad aspect with the Sun — It is above all in consequence of this aspect that I now publish this study of the vibrations, since the persons influenced by it need to be warned so that DURING THIS MONTH OF JUNE, and also DURING JULY, they may take care of their health.
12Saturn and Uranus stand in the first degrees of Gemini and will provoke many illnesses of the respiratory passages and lungs.
13In past years those two planets were in the sign of Taurus and occasioned many operations for appendicitis, illnesses of the glandular system and, by reflection, the illnesses of Scorpio, that is, of the whole genital system and lower abdomen.
14At present they influence rather the composition of the blood (a reflection of Sagittarius) and the lungs, and will provoke for many not only bronchitis or asthma, which may become chronic, but also strong and acute crises of rheumatism.
15All the possibilities cannot be determined without the individual horoscopes; but in general all who were born on the dates indicated, and on the days immediately following, should take great precautions against chills and against the possibility of illnesses becoming chronic.
16Such a vibration, considered one of the most unfavourable, gives a great tendency to depression, to pessimism; and as thoughts attract events, we are under such a vibration more exposed to setbacks and to limitations of our action.
17The best way of neutralising this influence is to use that period for a voluntary seclusion, physical or mental, seeking to go deeply into ourselves rather than seeking expansion.
18This is evident, since if we seek much contact with others in this period we shall meet with setbacks.
19This does not mean that we should let ourselves be depressed or be pessimistic — on the contrary; we should react with all the energy that inner gladness gives, and not close our eyes to the beauty around us, seeking thus a support against such a vibration.
2018
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Philippe Nizier-Anthelme Vachod (1849–1905), known as Maître Philippe of Lyon. A healer of peasant origin who never qualified in medicine and was prosecuted repeatedly for practising it. Papus — Gérard Encausse, founder of the modern Martinist Order — regarded him as his own spiritual master, which inverts the usual picture of Papus as the head of the current.
Papus is called the "Balzac of Occultism" — a comparison to the novelist's mystical works rather than to the Comédie humaine. Balzac's Séraphîta (1834), a Swedenborgian novel, is held in the library in both French and English, and Balzac recurs across six issues of this run.
→ thread:balzac_seraphita_en
The French circle named here is the Paris occult revival at its height: Stanislas de Guaita (1861–1897), founder of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross; F.-Ch. Barlet; Hector Durville, the magnetist; and Phaneg. That Jehel can list them in a Montevideo monthly of 1942 indicates how directly the South American Martinist body understood itself as continuous with Lyon and Paris.
The threefold division of illness — physical to allopathy, astral to homeopathy and magnetism, spiritual to prayer and theurgy — is the practical doctrine underneath the healing accounts. It maps onto the ternary of body, soul and spirit that the Martinist commentary in the same issue derives from the masonic apron.
The earliest datable event in Cedaïor's initiatic life recorded anywhere in this corpus. A boy of twelve or thirteen, breaking a journey at Lyon, is set by Philippe to lay hands daily on a woman with breast cancer. Whatever is made of the outcome, the passage places Cedaïor in direct personal contact with the figure at the head of the French current — not as a reader of the tradition but as an instrument within it.
This is the join between the French Martinist line and everything downstream of it in the estate. The corpus's account of its own descent runs through this moment; the lineage document should cite this passage rather than infer the connection.
The compass laid on the heart is read first as the "yoga science of respiration and control of the respiratory and cardiac rhythm". The same issue carries Asuri Kapila's Padmasana instructions and the pranayama phases. Masonic symbol and Indian practice are being read as one teaching — which is the characteristic move of this periodical, and the reason its praxis material cannot be sorted into separate traditions.
Concentration is directed either to Trikuti, the point between the brows, or to Anahata, the heart. Both recur as objects of attention in the Press's own practice material. Held beside the planetary-hour practice in the same run — where the hour of Venus is given to meditation on love and the affections — the heart appears as an object in two independent registers of this corpus.
→ hour-venus
The horoscope modelled as a radio receiver, with the Firmament as a transmitting station. The metaphor is precisely of its moment: broadcast radio was roughly twenty years old in 1942 and was the era's dominant image of invisible influence at a distance. The author is unnamed — "an S∴I∴ of the Martinist Order".
Padmasana is glossed from the Sanskrit — padma, lotus. The Sacred Books of the East, held in full across forty-seven volumes, supply the philological ground for these glosses; the course's Sanskrit is broadly sound and occasionally loose, as with Kukkutasana, glossed here as "mountain" where it means cockerel.
→ thread:sbe15_upanishads_pt2
"To know, to will, to dare and to keep silent" is the tetrad of the Sphinx, and it is Eliphas Lévi's. The Press holds Waite's translation, where the Ritual states it as a chain of conditions rather than a list: "In order to DARE we must KNOW; in order to WILL, we must DARE; we must WILL to possess empire, and to reign we must BE SILENT." The magazine gives the familiar mnemonic order — savoir, vouloir, oser, se taire — in which will and dare are transposed relative to Lévi's sentence. Both orders circulated; the doctrine is the same.
"I am as firm as a rock; nothing can shake me", to be repeated a dozen times, is autosuggestion in the Coué manner rather than anything in the Sanskrit sources — Émile Coué's method was at the height of its European vogue in the two decades before this page. The technique is grafted onto the posture.
"The Universe is mental" appears here for the third time in three issues — as an unattributed epigraph in Nº 1 p. 15, as the summary of the "Purely Philosophical Plane" here, and finally in Nº 7 p. 20, where a contributor credits it to the Emerald Tablet. It is the Kybalion's first principle (1908). Tracking the phrase across the run shows how a misattribution forms: repeated as a maxim until someone reaches for an older authority to anchor it.
The motto standing alone on this page — "Faithful to our duty, above all slander and all flattery" — is signed by Jehel and reads as the magazine's answer to something. Nº 1 had promised to accept criticism from readers; by the third issue the editors are declaring themselves proof against both attacks and praise.
An unusual editorial scruple, and worth marking: the writer explains the Apprentice's grip and word up to a point and then stops — "I cannot teach this in a review; thus, SOMETHING BEING MISSING, no profane reader will be able to have himself improperly recognised as a mason." He publishes the meaning and withholds the mechanism, which is the settled policy of the whole run.
Boaz is correctly given as the Apprentice's word — the Apprentice is seated at that column — with the variant spelling the magazine uses throughout. Nº 2 p. 7 had assigned the same pillar to Beauty and Form; the two instalments agree.
The Apprentice's symbolic age of three years is read as the ternary of body, soul and spirit. The masonic convention is older and simpler than the gloss — the degrees carry ages of three, five and seven — but the article consistently prefers a doctrinal reading to a historical one.
The best passage in the instalment: without the mallet the chisel does not penetrate, and the stone stays rough. Knowledge of any kind — intellectual, intuitive — yields nothing unless applied by will, and applied repeatedly. It is the same argument the astrology course makes in Nº 8 when it tells readers that those who do not work the calculations will never profit by the teaching.
The social schema is more interesting than its context suggests. Putting brute force first inverts the order; putting passional force first perverts it by half; but putting the higher force alone first is also condemned, as sterile. The article refuses the purely spiritual solution as firmly as the material one.
The claim that a collectivity's synthesis is its initiates, because they alone are non-sectarian, is the magazine's founding self-justification restated — Nº 1 p. 2 had declared the review free of "particularism". Here it is generalised into a social theory, and it is the closest the run comes to a political programme.
"Masonry, if it were well practised, would always be — as was its true purpose — a neutral ground". The conditional is the point. Across three issues the writer has praised the masonic symbols and criticised their custodians for forgetting what they mean; here he says plainly that the institution has not kept its own purpose, and promises that Martinism goes deeper.
Papus is quoted making a point that most popular astrology drops: the four elements name states of matter — solid, liquid, gaseous, radiant — and it is "a very gross error" to read them as the physical earth, water, air and fire. His examples, earth of antimony and spirit of wine, are alchemical usages where the convention is plain.
The elemental triangles are correctly assigned: Fire 1-5-9, Earth 2-6-10, Air 3-7-11, Water 4-8-12, each set of three equally spaced round the wheel. The observation that Earth and Water interlock to form a hexagram is geometrically right — triangles offset by one house — as is the same for Fire and Air.
Papus dissents from his own contemporaries here, and the magazine prints it: he calls the inclusion of Uranus and Neptune "a lamentable error", holds that they belong to the passage between our system and the next, and refuses to use them. The Montevideo course reproduces the dissent, and Nº 1 p. 12 had already set the two planets aside on his authority.
The figures are period-approximate and mostly on the low side: Jupiter at 1,300 Earths is close to the true 1,321 by volume, but Saturn at 864, Uranus at 75 and Neptune at 86 all overstate the outer planets, whose true volumes are nearer 764, 63 and 58 Earths. The distances are given in leagues, a unit already archaic in 1942. The argument from magnitude and distance is doing real work, so the numbers matter.
The domiciles are given correctly and completely: Sun in Leo and Moon in Cancer with a single house each, the other five planets with a diurnal and a nocturnal seat — Mercury in Gemini and Virgo, Venus in Taurus and Libra, Mars in Aries and Scorpio, Jupiter in Pisces and Sagittarius, Saturn in Aquarius and Capricorn. This is the traditional scheme before the modern rulerships, consistent with dropping Uranus and Neptune.
The benefic and malefic classification is the traditional one, with Mercury and the Moon counted benefic. Note that the modern planets are admitted here as an afterthought — "whose influence is disputed" — immediately after Papus has refused them. The course is holding two positions at once, its authority's and its readers'.
"Deep Dreams", signed Vicente Parreta — one more named contributor of verse. The imagery is unlike anything else in the run: hollowed timbers, kettledrums of trunks, an oboe, "instruments of human fibre covered by the genius of the quixote". The Press has not identified him.
Two passages on this page are withheld. The Asana course turns from technique to a claim that the present race has degenerated and that the practice should prepare a fitter future race, with women fitted for motherhood so as to bear perfect children. The Press does not reproduce racial-improvement or eugenic doctrine. The technical instruction around them — the internal organs the postures are said to work, the progression from five minutes to an hour — is unaltered, and the course can be followed without the withheld lines.
The course now gives the limbs in Patanjali's order — yama, niyama, asana, pranayama — and calls the scheme ashtanga. Nº 2 p. 13 had put asana first. The instalments are not consistent with one another, and this one is the orthodox arrangement.
The glossary entry is wrong twice over: the swastika is not Chinese in origin, and "FO-GHUI" — Fu Xi, the mythical first sovereign — is placed in 1024 BC, whereas even the traditional Chinese chronology puts him nearer the twenty-ninth century BC. The symbol is Indus-valley and Indo-European in its ancestry; the entry appears to be repeating a garbled secondary source.
The glossary definitions of yama and niyama are transposed relative to the standard: yama is the set of restraints — non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing — while niyama is the set of observances. The entry gives yama as "respect for life, right thinking and purity" and niyama as "mastery, continence", which blurs the pair. The body of the article on p. 13 has them the right way round.
"The Springs", signed Marta A. M. — another woman contributor named in the run, and the initials suggest an Order affiliation rather than a surname. The Press has not identified her.
The astronomy is right: Saturn entered Gemini in 1942 and Uranus was in Gemini from 1942, so the writer's statement that both stand in the first degrees of that sign is accurate for the date of the issue, as is the recollection that they were previously in Taurus. Whatever one makes of the inference, the observation is not invented.
Predicting illnesses of the respiratory passages and lungs from Saturn and Uranus in Gemini is the traditional sign-to-organ assignment — Gemini governs the lungs — applied mechanically. Published in mid-1942, it reads uncomfortably like a forecast of the tuberculosis and influenza of the war years; but the reasoning is from the scheme, not from any epidemiology.
The remedy offered for the difficult aspect is voluntary seclusion and inward work rather than avoidance of any external thing — and the writer immediately guards against fatalism: "This does not mean that we should let ourselves be depressed… on the contrary." The column consistently converts prediction into instruction.
The closing image returns to the wireless: become conscious of the surrounding vibrations rather than remain "little-selective and badly tuned" receivers. Nº 1 p. 14 had made the mind "a lucid antenna". The magazine reaches for the same 1942 technology whenever it needs a model of influence at a distance.
A methodological caution worth marking: the dates are to be read as beginning a day earlier and ending a day later, and the effect falls early or late in the month according to where the birthday sits in the period. The column is hedging its own precision, and says so openly.
Viswanatha Nayak is historical — the founder of the Madurai Nayak line in the sixteenth century, remembered for fortifying the city and reorganising its administration, much as the article says. The tale of the young general defeating his own suspected father in battle belongs to the dynastic legend rather than to the record.
Rani Mangammal is real and the account is close: she governed Madurai as regent for roughly fifteen years at the end of the seventeenth century, and is remembered above all for roads, choultries and public works still credited to her. Tradition holds that she was imprisoned and left to die; the article's "walled up alive" is one version of that end.
The Sangam academy is given 58 sages; the tradition usually numbers the last academy at forty-nine. The comparison to "the Academy of Sciences in our own day" is the writer's own, and a fair one for a readership that had no other frame for a corporation of poets.
Ravana is given "60 heads and 20 hands". He is Dasagriva, the ten-headed — twenty arms is right, sixty heads is not, and appears to be an error for ten. The episode itself is correctly told: Ravana attempting to lift Kailasa and pinned beneath it by Siva's toe.
Ardhanarishvara is accurately described — the half-Siva, half-Parvati image, with the masculine ornament in one ear and the feminine in the other — and the writer calls it "the principal esoteric key of YOGA". That is the magazine's own reading, and it connects this page to the polarity doctrine the masonic articles develop through Sun and Moon, Jakin and Boaz.
The Trimurti is correctly given, and the article answers the obvious objection well: Siva the destroyer is figured as a lingam because, in the Hindu scheme, destruction implies reproduction — he dissolves the bond of body and soul so that new worlds may form. The explanation is the traditional one, not an invention.
The Anasuya story is told accurately: the three goddesses send their husbands to test her, the visitors demand to be served by a naked hostess, and her chastity turns them into infants. The statue's slipping saree, which the writer notices, is the sculptor's allusion to that moment.
Sarasvati's lute with strings carved from the granite itself, "which can be distinguished", is a real feature of Madurai's sculpture and one of the things visitors are still shown. The writer's eye for what the tools could and could not do — "a sharp point with a primitive hammer" — is the best thing in her account.
The Madura visit concludes here, three issues after Ramana asked the question that produced it. Read Nº 1 p. 25, Nº 2 pp. 21–23 and this instalment in sequence: a refusal, an accident that overturns it, and then the temple itself described at length. It is the longest continuous narrative in Volume I.