The Connexion between Planets and certain Metals: New Evidence
Some readers may have thought that this Department has shown undue skepticism regarding astrology at times, but any criticism that has been made has always been directed against exaggerated claims, and mainly in favor of the need for great reserve in accepting widespread predictions about international and other public events. The number of failures is enormous (and generally ignored afterwards!), the number of successes extremely small. Yet it must be admitted that an unprejudiced observer, an honest critic, will find that the comparatively few successes or partial successes are more than can be explained by pure chance. In regard to character, as indicated in the chart drawn up for the moment of birth, the successful delineations are much greater, but a vast amount of study will have to be carried on before approximately convincing results can be expected. We must remember, too, that the Higher Astrology is only taught in the Mystery-Schools.
There is, however, a substantial foundation for astrology in the natural law of Analogy, but our modern astrology is held back by its ignorance of the existence and influence of the invisible globes of the solar system, a deprivation which invalidates many predictions and renders the art so uncertain. Some research students with a scientific background have been trying experiments in astro-chemistry with results that may be strong enough to convince unprejudiced minds that astrology has some basis after all. According to these experiments certain relative positions of the celestial bodies produce definite and unmistakable effects upon certain metals. Anyone who has an elementary chemical outfit, an astronomical almanac, and a sufficient store of patience can experiment for himself without having to take the word of anyone else. We feel that both from an occult and an astrological standpoint our readers would like to hear something of this new line of research.
Occultism has always claimed that a sympathetic relation exists between terrestrial metals and certain planets, i. e., quicksilver with Mercury, copper with Venus, iron with Mars, tin with Jupiter, and lead with Saturn. The sun and the moon are in harmony with gold and silver, respectively. Modern science still regards such correspondences as fanciful and ignores them. So far as we know, it has not even inquired into the possible reasons for them. It also brushes aside the possibility that the revolutions of the celestial bodies have any effect upon terrestrial metals except by ordinary gravitation. But if scientists would venture out of their conventional standards a little farther than the new atomic theories have driven them, they might find that certain discoveries made by Mrs. L. Kolisko, one of the rather heterodox scientific researchers already mentioned, would open an unexplored field of study.
We do not pretend to assert that the results of Mrs. Kolisko's researches may not have some explanation other than the one she presents, but this is simple, rational, and it seems impossible to think of another. She has given fifteen years of intensive study to the subject and has tried almost innumerable experiments with consistent results. A report of her work was recently published in Tomorrow (London), from which we have obtained the information here presented in very brief outline owing to lack of space to do it justice. Tests already made at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, Point Loma, have shown that extreme care and judgment in technique are required to avoid errors that would render the experiments useless. Mrs. Kolisko warns us that they must be conducted by one person as the process is so sensitive that the intrusion of another person may cause complications and failure. While this may seem strange to some, occult students will recognise that it is perfectly natural in such delicate matters.
Mrs. Kolisko's experiments were conducted with various metallic salts in solution. A strip of filter paper rolled into a cylinder was partly immersed in the liquid containing the metal to be studied. As the solution gradually crept up the dry part of the paper it crystallized into a definite pattern of colored markings with a definite edge. Each metal had its own characteristic pattern. Some, such as gold, produced bright colorings, others, like silver, were noted for a greater variety of forms.
So far, Mrs. Kolisko's observations were interesting enough, but she went farther. If the metals are really in sympathy with and correspond to the planets, might not the development of the chemical patterns reflect the vicissitudes of those planets as they move relatively to each other? With this idea in view, she decided to try if anything happened to the solar pattern (gold) as it developed on the filter paper during a total eclipse of the sun, when the solar radiation is greatly reduced by the interposition of the moon (silver).
She made the first trial during the 1927 eclipse, and the results were striking. Using gold chloride for the sun and silver nitrate for the moon, in combination, she found that the colored pattern developed by the gold component gradually faded as the eclipse proceeded, being quite overpowered by the silver lunar pattern. After totality the solar pattern again strengthened and finally resumed its original brightness. The same experiment was tried with equal success at subsequent eclipses, including that of 1933 when thick rain-clouds covered the sky and the eclipse could not be seen.
Thinking it likely that the moon would affect the corresponding metal of a planet at the time of conjunction of the moon and such planet, in the same way it affected the sun during the conjunction that caused the eclipse, Mrs. Kolisko tried numerous experiments with the proper metals at lunar-planetary conjunctions with complete success. For instance, the pattern given by the solution of chloride of tin was suppressed by that of the lunar silver chloride as soon as the moon was conjoined with Jupiter, and so forth with the others. In each case the normal appearance of the patterns was restored when the conjunction no longer operated. Similar effects were found to occur at oppositions of the moon with the planets.
But is it likely that such a confirmation of the occult teaching of the importance of the law of Analogy, of which H. P. Blavatsky speaks so often, will be listened to? Will even the more mystical astrologers welcome such an unexpected support to their claim that planetary positions powerfully affect things on the earth? These experiments require no trance mediumship, no mysterious proceedings, not even high mathematics; the methods are purely scientific and can easily be tried out. But even so, judging by the unhappy experiences of many discoverers of unwelcome occult truths we fear that if Mrs. Kolisko's researches attract any wide attention she must expect insults, the attribution of base motives, and the charge of gross superstition. There will be those, however, who will admire and respect her courage and devotion to Truth wherever it may lead.
Who is "Sandia Man'?
Gradually the authorities on American archaeology are retiring from their original bases to new positions in regard to the age of man in this country, forced back by a barrage of new discoveries! When the "Folsom Man" was found a few years ago in the Southwest, daring investigators ventured to suggest that he might be eight or ten thousand years old — a radical innovation on accepted views. Anyway he was the oldest possible human inhabitant of this continent and was decidedly a very barbarous kind of savage of purely nomadic habits and presumably no manners. All this is now upset by Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts of the Bureau of American Ethnology who has just discovered that the Folsom people had a community life in settlements with regular homes, and that they probably lived 25,000 years ago. Not only did they make the beautifully chipped and grooved javelin points associated with the name Folsom, and a variety of other stone tools, but they cut beads from bone and decorated them with simple patterns. They also used red and yellow paint. Dr. Roberts says that the Folsom culture compared favorably with the contemporary Stone Age culture of Europe. This is unexpected and will require considerable explaining.
But a step farther back into the unknown past of man in America has just been made by means of a discovery in the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a cave, beneath several stratified deposits — one of which included Folsom points — stone implements were found which were undoubtedly made by men who lived long before the Folsom people. These implements were found just above the bedrock and well separated from the higher stratum containing the Folsom points and bones of extinct animals. No human bones of either the Folsom or the older Sandia men have been found, but the Sandia javelin points closely resemble those of the Old Stone Age in Europe, the oldest implements found there. If they are actually as ancient as the older European artefacts American man could claim hundreds of thousands of years of existence instead of the beggarly tens of thousands which liberal-minded archaeologists rather grudgingly allow him, but naturally this will require very conclusive proof. Dr. Frank C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico, reporting the discovery of Sandia Man in The Scientific American for July, humorously speculates on the possible aspect of this ancient Stone Age type saying: "The probable truth is that even such an oldster of the last of the ice age as Sandia Man would look no worse if we saw him on the street than some of the least attractive of our politicians"!