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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1In effect, he describes for us thus the behaviour of certain mice at the approach of winter: "At the approach of the rigorous colds, and sometimes without apparent cause, the lemmings4 abandon their natural dwelling, the high mountain chain of Norway, to undertake a long journey toward the sea.
2"The emigrating band, composed of myriads of individuals, walks at a short trot and in a straight line through all obstacles, never letting itself be deflected from its rectilinear march.
3They walk forming files, making rectilinear furrows, parallel, two fingers deep and separated from one another by a distance of many yards.
4They devour everything that hinders them in their passage, herbs and roots.
5Nothing deflects them from their route.
6If a man places himself in their path, they slip between his legs.
7If they meet a haystack, they gnaw it and pass through; if it is a rock, they go round it in a semicircle and resume their rectilinear direction on the other side.
8If it is a lake, they cross it swimming, in a straight line, whatever its breadth.
9Is it a ship that stands in their way in the midst of the waters — the lemmings climb over it and throw themselves into the water on the other side.
10The rapid current of a river does not stop them, though they should all perish." Animals, then — and much more than man — possess that meteoric sensitivity, as Dr. Sardou called it: that sensitivity to external agents to which they react in a fairly clear and evident form.
11But there also exist men — especially those who have suffered wounds of importance, or are affected by neuritis or neuralgias, or the so-called arthritics or rheumatics — who possess that meteoric sensitivity.
12These, in effect, are much more sensitive than the generality of persons to the pains or discomforts that manifest themselves at the approach of a change of weather.
13In 1921, when the meteorological institutes began to be created, a caricature appeared in which an old rheumatic was represented perched on a bell-tower, and countryfolk saying: "We have no need of all these novelties; better to perch father Francisco on the top of the church; with his rheumatism he would inform us much better than all these new inventions".
14These persons are, in effect, the best subjects for predicting the state of the weather, for one might say they are much more sensitive than the most perfected barometers or hygrometers; but not all react in the same manner. Their reactions are in relation to the complexity of the meteorological influences, on the one hand, and to their state of hypervagotonia or hypersympathicotonia, on the other.
15It has been established, for example, that on the Côte d'Azur, while some manifest a greater sensitivity at the approach of the east winds that bring rain, others are more sensitive to the mistral, the west wind which is generally dry and cold.
16To understand how these subjects can predict changes of weather from 12 to 48 hours before the barometer or hygrometer has given any indication in the same direction, one must know that the ions of the air condense water vapour first into drops and then into clouds, and that, moreover, they increase the conductivity of gases for electricity. 4 A species of field-mice of the Scandinavian countries.
17· 19
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