Eight articles; the S.D.M. Avatara serial reaches its ceremonial climax, and the number closes with two literary pieces sharing page 21.
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La Iniciación: Mensuario del Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos
The Initiation: Monthly of the Independent Group of Esoteric Studies
La Iniciación · Año IV, Nº 36 · April 1945
Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileOperator ruling: no copyright implications asserted for this work. Uruguay life+50 (Leo d. 1970 → PD 2020); US URAA restoration assessed at ~2041 in the collection plan and overridden by the operator.
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1Cosmic Influences and Reactions of Living Beings.
2Meteorological influences. By Pitágoras S∴I∴ Hygrometric state of the air and of the soil—The content of water in the air and in the soil also has great importance in the life of living beings, and its variations cannot fail to exercise influence upon them.
3It is known, in effect, that very humid ambiences produce a disturbance in the metabolism and, above all, that special sensitivity of the respiratory passages to the diseases grouped under the name of rheumatic.
4On the contrary, very dry ambiences can also produce harm in the respiratory passages, especially if, through a pathological state of the nasal mucosae, these cannot moisten the air that reaches the pulmonary alveoli.
5But, besides these fairly well-known influences of the hygrometric variations, there exists a whole series of phenomena also produced by the variations of the hygrometric state, and known from time immemorial, to which academic science has not paid due attention — considering them as forming part of the domain of popular superstitions, without realising, or without wishing to realise, that these phenomena are facts and that, therefore, they deserved study, both of themselves and of the causes that may produce them.
6We have already said that birds, at the approach of rain — that is, as those magnetic and hygrometric variations of the ambience [Sic: the Spanish prints de1, with a numeral] establish themselves little by little — place themselves on roofs oriented toward the east; bees return to their hives long before sunset; chickens roll in the dust and bristle their feathers; swallows fly close to the ground; flies molest the domestic animals; cows grow agitated and run, etc.3 All these manifestations of the animals have been used by the ancients and, at present, by countryfolk, to make forecasts about the state of the weather; and it is interesting to note that these forecasts have never failed — one might even say they are much more exact than those which the various Observatories or Meteorological Stations, endowed with the most diverse and perfected scientific instruments, can supply.
7Besides these temporary variations there exist others which we might call seasonal, for they are produced on the occasion of the transit from one season to another.
8On this occasion various animals behave differently, and we mention here, for brevity, only one, described by the celebrated naturalist Linnaeus.
93 In the Almanach Hachette 1936 we can read some data concerning weather forecasts according to the behaviour of animals.
10Thus, for example: "Toad that sings, sun promised; Swallow that flies high, the weather will be fine.
11Venturesome snail, the weather will be rainy.
12Swallow that flies low, it will soon rain.
13Guinea-hen flushed that cries, calls the rain.
14Bramble-frog that comes out goes seeking the rain.
15Duck irritated and fish that leaps call the rain and the wind". · 18
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
April 1945; the wrapper carries forward.
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Masthead stereotype unchanged.
The chronology reaches high politics: the duke of Chartres named Grand Master (1772), the Grand Orient of France created — and the Lyon martinists unsatisfied, seeing "with an eye very different from that of common masons". Willermoz turns to Strasbourg and the Strict Observance.
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The Lyon rectification lands: two years of negotiation to the Grand Provincial Chapter of Auvergne (July 1774), thirteen martinists named among its ~20 founders, baron von Weiler presiding; then La Bienfaisance founded — "the true headquarters of the Lyon martinists" for years to come. Pasqually dies two months after this founding: the column's quiet hinge between eras.
AQUARIUS: Burgoyne's urn of Minos, baptismal fonts as "remains of that great astral religion", Reuben's blessing — and the sign of inductive science, whose natives "cannot advance one step beyond" the demonstrable: the course's critique of positivism folded into a sign-reading.
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Julevno's Aquarius is gentler than his Capricorn — constancy, sciences, music; the compositor prints ajos (garlics) for ojos twice, mirrored with glosses.
The sixth face's trades update the old authors for 1945: "a tendency to mechanics, radio, etc." — the one place the course's French sources are visibly modernised by the Montevideo desk.
Kapila's food taxonomy — Plastic, Energetic, Catalytic, Hydric — braids 1940s dietetics with prana: energetic foods "contain little substance and a greater quantity of prana". The anti-meat, raw-fruit hygiene of the era given a yogic frame.
"Physiological water" — the claim that the body wants the water of fruits, not of rivers or bottles: the serial's most quotable dietetic doctrine, argued from the phenomenology of thirst.
The H.A.B.M. Shamballa hymn — the fraternity's page rises to its fullest cosmology yet: Shamballa as "the seat of the spiritual government of the world", invisible, inviolable, "the only reality amid the illusions". Printed in April 1945, its rebuke of science "applied to destructive and fratricidal ends" reads against the war's final weeks.
The Shamballa page's anti-scientism — discoveries as "crumbs" of the true Science — completes the number's pairing: Aquarius's inductive school on page 6, its rebuke on page 12.
The invocation mantra printed in full — AUM… Om, Om, Om, JRIM, IM NAM NAMAH — with Yoga Devi's ordinance that members repeat it daily: the serial crosses from narrative into practice; the praxis layer carries it.
The Yoga Devi Diksha (11 May 1922): the lake of one hundred and eight steps, the bathing by hierarchs in their hundreds, the ray of light circling thousands of miles and seen worldwide — the S.D.M.'s central miracle-narrative, printed with its arithmetic intact.
The Mitra Brinda founded: the principal Yantra consecrated 4 May 1923 with sixty-four lesser yantras for members' persons — the order's talismanic layer documented; Vanga Pitta places the Mandala's seat in Bengal.
The enthronement slokas — the Child on the golden dais, Kamandalu and Yoga-sceptre, the Atmic sign — and Jehel's copy-date 9-3-45: Montevideo transcribing Madras's 1923 ceremonies twenty-two years on.
The Chilean Section photograph: Vajra Yogi Dasa, ritually vested, before his own painted portrait of the young Avatara — the only photograph of a living officiant the run has printed, and the first documentary trace of the S.D.M.'s Chilean ashrama in these pages. Registered to the imagery layer with its caption as printed.
The weather-lore catalogue — swallows, bees, the Almanach Hachette's rhymes — argued as fact "much more exact than the Observatories": the serial's standing defence of peasant empiricism against academic dismissal.
Linnaeus's lemmings, marching their straight line to the sea, as seasonal sensitivity; then Dr. Sardou's "meteoric sensitivity" and the rheumatic on the bell-tower — the column's humour is its method: the body as the better barometer.
Galeotti's acclimatisation passage — Europeans in the tropics, children "weak and often sterile, as has frequently been observed in the English Indies" — quoted from the 1928 pathology textbook: period colonial medicine transmitted as textbook fact; kept as printed with its source cited.
Maya's prose-poem "Let Us Seek the Silence", dedicated to the V. H. Kundala — "the stars are the flowers of the sky, and the earth is the sky of the flowers" — beside Adhemar's La Plata tale of the Guru: the rock on the path that proves hollow, covered in symbols, and is the disciple's own SELF; "Come, I am thyself". Two registers of the same lesson sharing one page.
GIDEE prospectus stereotype at page 22.
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Library back cover and imprint close the number.
QA gate report
- PASS G1 coverage 334/334
- PASS G11 alignment 291/291
- PASS G0 source kind 1/1
- PASS G6 page anchoring 334/334
- PASS G3 bracket legality 334/334
- PASS G10 numeric fidelity 334/334
- PASS G2 no unanchored English 334/334
- PASS G4 no pipeline scaffolding 334/334