ASTROLOGICAL LORE OF ALL AGES

Written in 1945 by Elbert Benjamine

STELLAR RELIGION AND HEALING OF AKHENATEN

Through the efforts of Arthur Weigall, who served brilliantly for so many years as Inspector General of Antiquities in Egypt, historians are now able to reconstruct in detail the circumstances surrounding the life of Egypt's most spiritual ruler, Akhenaten.

His last works, published just before he died from the curses placed by the Priests of the Shadow to protect the tomb of the one who had restored them to power, through a careful comparison of all discoveries, for the first time have given a complete series of precise dates and events in Egypt's past.

As Lord Carnarvon was the first, so Mr. Weigall was the twentieth among those closely associated with the opening of the tomb of King Tutankhamen to meet an unusual and untimely death.  When the tomb was opened in 1923 Weigall was in vigorous health.  He immediately fell ill, and early in 1934 passed to the next plane at the age of fifty-three, suffering from a lingering and mysterious malady.

The list of events with precise datings which he worked out lend value to many interesting occurrences which heretofore have rested solely upon tradition.  And by uniting tradition to what is now historical record, we are able to get a clear picture of the struggle by which, at one period spiritual ideas of the most exalted order gained national acceptance.

Since the sinking of Atlantis and Mu there at all times have been those on earth who were familiar with the ancient spiritual wisdom; but the only time when the light shone full strength in Egypt and The Religion of the Stars was adopted by the nation as a whole, was during the reign and due to the efforts of our brother, Akhenaten.

As the world has now entered a cycle, or astral stream, of similar quality but of far greater power, drastic events are transpiring which, due allowance being made for environmental circumstances, are somewhat parallel to those which happened in his day.  We may therefore scan that past with considerable profit.  And while tradition should not be neglected, yet in the interest of clear analysis it should ever be thus labeled, and not confused with recorded fact.  Consequently, in what follows that which is tradition will be thus designated, and that which is of historical record, and all quotations used, will be from the works of Arthur Weigall.

History records that at the time of the early Sumerian kings in Chaldea the first dynasty of Lower Egypt was established, dated according to the Turin MS., 5,507 B.C.

At this time no suitable calendar was in use and the Egyptian system of writing had not been evolved.  Fifty kings were to reign before Menes, who commonly is considered the first historical ruler because, seven years after he came to the throne he established a calendar by which succeeding events could be, and were, recorded.

Menes,  who thus established the First Dynasty, came to the throne 3,407 B.C.

A dynasty usually consisted of a series of rulers who were close blood kin.  When the country was conquered by an invader, or some event such as a revolution permitted a new family to take charge, this commonly established a new dynasty.

In the First Dynasty there were 8 kings, in the Second Dynasty 9 kings, in the Third Dynasty 6 kings.  The Third Dynasty is interesting to us because the second king, Tosortho, 2868 - 2850 B.C., was revered as a philosopher, proverb maker, physician, scribe and architect.  At Sakkara he built what is known as the Step Pyramid, a rough square 351 by 393 feet, of six monstrous steps totaling nearly 200 feet in height, the largest stone edifice up to that time.

Then came the sixth king of the Third Dynasty, Snofru, 2813 - 2790 B.C., who built a stone pyramid just southwest of Memphis which, still 326 feet high and 700 feet at base is almost as large as the Great Pyramid.  Many traditions exist as to the influence of initiates in the life of Snofru.

He also built a second pyramid.  And immediately following him there commenced the Fourth Dynasty, although there seems to be no adequate political or hereditary reason why Khufu, who succeeded him, should be considered of a different dynasty.

Khufu, whom the Greeks called Cheops, was thus the first king of the Fourth Dynasty.  He ruled 2789 - 2767 B.C., the dynasty as a whoe, comprising seven kings, 2789 - 2716 B.C., being probably contemporaneous with the founding of the empire of Sargon the Great in Chaldea.

Khufu, or Cheops, employed 100,000 men, during the three months of the year that the population otherwise would have been idle due to their farms being flooded by the Nile.  It took him three years to build the road over which to haul the stone, and twenty more years to build the Great Pyramid.  The stones were ferried across the river during high water.  The pyramid, which is still one of the greatest wonders of the world, was originally 481 feet high, with a base of 451 feet, and covers 13 acres.

Now for a moment let us turn from recorded history to tradition:

Tradition has it that when the darkness settled over Atlantis and Mul colonists were sent to what later became the sever centers of ancient civilization, and took with them records having to do with the ancient stellar religion.  In Egypt there was quarried out, near the town of Ynu, a secret vault in the rock, closed by an immense movable block of sandstone.  The knowledge of this Chamber of the Rolls and the Library of Tahuti, which embraced records from Atlantis, was reserved to initiates.

Such initiates then, even as today, were ever alert to place true spiritual knowledge before as wide a number of people as possible.  But even as today, what thus could be placed before them depended upon the willingness and ability of the people to accept such exalted doctrines.

Even in Atlantis and Mu there was a continuous struggle upon the part of graft, greed, corruption and the inversive side of Pluto to suppress true wisdom and to pervert the spiritual to the end that what we call priestly and political racketeers might dominate and exploit the people in every possible way.  And before their destruction the light had vanished from these two ancient lands.

Of Egypt's seven thousand years of history, with the single exception of a decade under the reigh of Akhenaten, the general public had no more knowledge of the true meaning of spirituality, of the real nature of existence after death, of the wider significance and purpose of life, than do the people of the world today.  Then, as now, and as at all times, there were some individuals who had received the light, and even among the general public some who had a clearer conception of the spiritual side of things than others.  But then, as now, there was the constant effort to keep the people in ignorance and servility.

The rulers of Egypt always were approached by the initiates and given such knowledge of the wisdom religion as they were willing to receive.  Some of them, such as Tosortho, Snofru and Khufu went far along the path of true initiation.

But so powerful had the priestly group become that, with the exception of Akhenaten, they felt that opposition to them in religious matters would mean a revolution and loss of the throne.  Even as in the past powerful financial groups have been the real rulers of the U.S. and many other countries, so in Egypt, in so far as religion and its material spoils system were concerned, the priestly group, with their vast holdings of property, and ability to sway the multitude through superstition, were too powerful to unseat.

Yet Tosortho and Snofru availed themselves of the knowledge of initiates who had access to the Library of Tahuti.

Khufu, or Cheops, when he came to the throne, being a very ambitious man, had a great desire to do something which would glorify his name above that of any past or future ruler of Egypt.  And following the example of preceding rulers, he decided to build a pyramidal monument for himself.  But he wished this pyramid to excel any that later might be constructed.  So he sent for an initiate named Didi, who was famed for his learning, and asked his help.

It had been customary for the initiates of Atlantis and Mu, not in the form of a pyramid, but in their various temples, to incorporate measurements and relations which they found to exist as correspondences throughout Nature.  That is, in the very masonry of their edifices they had incorporated The Religion of the Stars.  And these measurements and correspondences, as well as other wisdom, wee on the rolls in the Library of Tahuti.

The initiate Didi, employed by Khufu, therefore presented plans for the pyramid which should in its structure embrace the relations between the various phases of Nature, the measurements and as many other correspondences as possible, as recorded in the Library of Tahuti, so that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh should express in stone The Religion of the Stars.

Because the Great Pyramid - which is the only pyramid to contain such measurements and correspondences - is an accurate portrayal of stellar cycles and influences, both past and future, like the Bible it has come to be used as a basis of prophecy.  When the premise is correct, that is, when based upon accurate and reliable knowledge of astrological influences, either the Great Pyramid or the Bible can be used to calculate the nature and date of future events.  But because of the many who have written books on the subject few have had the required detailed knowledge of astrology to take a proper starting point, or accurately to trace stellar correspondences, almost every variety of drivel possible has been written in relation to Bible prophecy and Pyramid prophecy.

That we are at the end of one dispensation and the commencement of another (the Plutonian Period of the Aquarian Age) the stars point out clearly.  But that all the horrible things prophesied are going to come to pass, even though the whole world is undergoing upheaval and radical change, is not foretold in Bible or Pyramid, but is the result of hysteria and a fear complex in the minds of those who, feeling the impact of the new astral energy-stream, place upon the inevitable transition of adaptation to the new period and the vast and sanguine struggle involved in making the adaptation, an interpretation which is but the expression of their own inward anxiety.

The Brotherhood of Light - The Church of Light has set itself the task of making it impossible for any person in the world to be ignorant of the fundamental doctrines of The Religion of the Stars.  Let us see whether its traditions coincide with the historical findings of Weigall.  In the Declaration of Principles of The Brotherhood of Light (now incorporated as The Church of Light) published in May, 1915, nearly a score of years before Weigall made his study of ancient dates, occurs this passage:

"According to our traditions, in the year 2,440 B.C., a group separated from the Theocracy of Egypt, and throughout all subsequent times, as a secret order, the name of which translated into English means, The Brotherhood of Light, has been perpetuated."

History records the building of other pyramids than those mentioned, that the Fifth Dynasty, 2715 - 2588 B.C., embraced 9 kings and that the Sixth Dynasty, 2587 - 2459 B.C., embraced 6 kings.  The last of this line of kings was Menthesuph, who reigned only one year; after which a period of anarchy ensued lasting 6 years.

After 6 years of anarchy, which we may well believe was fomented by priestly racketeers striving to dominate the land, Neterkere, the founder of the Seventh Dynasty, came to the throne.  But in the year 2452 B.C., he was murdered by the exploiting group and his sister, Nitokris, given his place.  After reigning 12 years Nitokris committed suicide.

Weigall quotes Heroditus in regard to the suicide of Nitokris, which preceded the separation of The Brotherhood of Light from a Theocracy which had become irreparably corrupt and bent on keeping the people in superstition that they might profit thereby.

It seems that the nobles who comprised the political group - which we may be sure were incited by the Priests of the Shadow, as these constantly strove to dominate the policies of the throne - having murdered her brother and placed her on the throne, commenced to exert undue pressure upon Queen Nitokris.  Perhaps she had the enlightenment of the people at heart.  At all events she arrived at a point where she realized she could no longer resist the demands of this iniquitous group.

She therefore had a building erected near the river on a low-lying site which was well below the level of the Nile floods, and she had a fine hall built as a cellar beneath it, such as those now to be seen in the temple of Denderah, but larger.

Secretly she had a tunnel made which should bring the floodwater directly to the building.  Then she gave a royal banquet to which she invited all these treacherous nobles.  As soon as they were in the crypt enjoying themselves, she went above, closed the trap door, turned on the water, and drowned the lot.  Having accomplished this, and knowing, we may believe, the power of the priestly racketeers who had used the nobles for their own ends, she committed suicide by shutting herself in a room filled with charcoal fumes.

No wonder The Brotherhood of Light, in order to persist, became a secret organization.  The priests of Amen grew to be the strongest group in Egypt.  They had vast holdings, levied immense financial tribute, and had built at Karnak and Luxor stupendous temples.  The with characteristic cunning of the Lower-Pluto forces, they taught the nobles that to give their daughters to be Brides of Amen was an honor.

These Brides of Amen, recruited from among the most attractive maidens of the land, were dedicated to temple service.  That is, they were prostitutes who catered to the services of those who had money; but the money they received for their prostitution was made holy by giving it to the priests.  When they grew too old to be attractive, and thus failed to yield a good revenue to the temple, the priests arranged for them marriage with rich merchants.  The merchants were given to understand that this prostitution, because it was to benefit the god Amen, was rather an asset than a detriment to their brides.

Such doctrines are everywhere characteristic of the inversive side of Pluto, and we find similar institutions in India today.  This is but one of a hundred subtle ways by which an inversive priesthood compel people to do their bidding.

To conserve space, let us now skip the intervening dynasties down to the Eighteenth, which was founded by Ahmouse I in 1580 B.C.,, over 1,300 years after the building of the great pyramids, and some 2,000 years after Menes founded the first recorded dynasty.  At this time Amen was the presiding god at Thebes, which had become the capital.  Then as rules came Amenhotep I, followed by Thutmosis I, Thutmosis II, Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III, and Thutmosis IV, who was the grandfather of Akhenaten.  Thutmosis IV ascended the throne in 1,420 B.C., and Akhenaten's other grandfather, Yuaa, who was not a priest of Amen, but of Min, and who was an initiate, was born about 1,470 B.C.

Probably due to this initiate, Yuaa, even before Akhenaten came to the throne, the wife of Amenhotep III, Queen Tiy, mother of Akhenaten and daughter of Yuaa, had endeavored to suppress the power and iniquities of the dark priests of Amen.  The organization of Amen had its headquarters at Karnak.  Led by the hand of Tiy, who was called the Great Queen, Amenhotep III came to be known as the Magnificent.

When Amenhotep III died, in the 36th year of his reign, Queen Tiy assumed control in behalf of her 13 year old boy, Amenhotep IV.  And subsequent events inicate that he was given opportunity to gain the wisdom of his grandfather, Yuaa, the initiate.

Amenhotep IV who thus ascended the throne in 1,375 B.C., through the death of his father, was born 1,388 B.C.  He early realized how completely his people were dominated by the shadow of the Lower-Pluto priests, and he determined to free them from such inversive influences.  At that time Amenism, with its magical rites, its many gods, its complicated ritual, and its host of corrupt priests, was the official religion of Egypt.  As Ra, the sun-god, was universally venerated by the public, these cunning priests of Amen, ever alert to political advantage, joined the name of Ra to Amen, so that the chief deity of the time was often referred to as Amen-Ra.

The king, surrounded by these priests, remained in the orthodox faith of Amen, as signified by the name he inherited, Amenhotep, until he was nineteen years of age.

At that time he contact the same spiritual source from which now emanates The Brotherhood of Light lessons.  This led him to perceive that the orthodox religion of Amen kept the minds of the people confused as to reality, steeped in fear, servile to the priests, and shut from them the knowledge which would lead to true spirituality, progress and happiness.

Ra, as worshipped in his time, was the disc of the sun.  But behind that disc he perceived an all-pervading spiritual intelligence, of which the physical sun is only the symbol.  And it became his ambition to establish a non-materialistic religion of Life, Light and Love, free from the graven images, incantations, and curses which encumbered Amenism.

When the king became one of the Brethren of the Light, he determined to spread the gospel of The Religion of the Stars, even as The Church of Light has determined to spread it to the world of today.  But having allied himself with the Legions of Light, he could no longer bear the name of Amen, a name denoting orthodoxy and its spiritual darkness.

Already at 16 or 17 years of age, in spite of the priests, he had introduced Stellar Art.  At 19 he decided the time was ripe to make his convictions clear to all.  He therefore renounced the name Amenhotep, with its implication of obedience to Amen.  And, in choosing a name to take the place of the one discarded, he joined the words which expressed his religion of Life, Light and Love.  Aten means light.  To indicate to his subjects that he was a Brother of the Light, he called himself Akhenaten, meaning Living in the Light.

Having changed his name, he commenced a vigorous campaign to establish the religion of Atenism (Light), and to eradicate the worship of the numerous gods and elementals of Amenism.  He taught his people there was a single, supreme, all-pervading, spiritual Deity, symbolized by Aten, or Light.

The vast material resources of Amen, with huge temples at Karnak, and their dominion at Thebes, with their spies at every hand, soon convinced the young king that he could not combat the Lower-Pluto forces amid surroundings so permeated with their accomplices and magic.  He decided, therefore, to move the capital and to collect about him in it only those who were willing to live constructively, willing to learn the truths of Nature, and who were willing to defy the power of the Amen priesthood.

He was only 19 when, having made this decision, he sailed down the river from Thebes to a point which was suitable for his purpose, some 160 miles above modern Cairo, and there founded the City of the Horizon.  After two years of feverish work a city there had arisen which, for beauty and art, perhaps has had no parallel in history.  Here at the age of 21 he took up his residence amid the many who, perceiving his wisdom and spiritual greatness, had joined forces with him.

From this new city, which was magnetized to his own spiritual ideas, he was successful, for the first time in recorded history, in suppressing corruption, dissipating ignorance, and spreading The Religion of the Stars throughout the length and breadth of the land.

To set forth all he taught would be to present the 21 Brotherhood of Light courses; for these, in modern terminology and with reference to the findings of  modern science, are merely a present-day interpretation of the same teachings which Akhenaten derived from his study of the rolls in the Library of Tahuti.  He taught the constructive use of astrological knowledge.

Instead of the curses and maledictions of Amen, he taught the use of beauty, of art, and of all enobling activities to lead the mind into channels which are completely constructive.

While he occupied the throne greed, corruption and exploitation were suppressed, and fear, hatred and vengeance were removed from religion.  According to Weigall he taught that God:  "Was the tender, loving Father of all men, ever-present and ever-mindful of his creatures.  There dropped not a sigh from the lips of a babe that the intangible Aten did not hear; no lamb bleated for its mother but the remote Aten hastened to soothe it.  He was the loving Father and Mother of all that he had made, who brought up millions by His bounty."

"As Akhenaten had completely revolutionized the beliefs of Egypt as to the nature of God, so he altered and purged the theories regarding the existence of the soul after death.  According to the old beliefs, the soul of man had to pass through awful places up to the judgment throne of Osiris, where he was weighed in the balances.  If he was found wanting he was devoured by a ferocious monster, but if the scales turned in his favor he was accepted into the Elysian fields.  So many were the spirits, bogies, and demigods which he was likely to meet before the goal was reached that he had to know by heart a tedious string of formulae, the correct repetition of which, and the correct making of the related magic, alone ensured his safe passage.  Akhenaten flung all these formulae into the fire, even Osiris himself with all his court."

The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment, the fear which so often warps and cripples the child's little mind and drives afar the possibility of a happy adult life, were no part of his teachings.  Instead, due allowance being made for the difference in times and other circumstances, his teachings relative to the next life were practically identical with those set forth in Brotherhood of Light Course XX.

With so many powerful enemies it is not to be wondered that he died in his thirtieth years.  He had arrayed himself as the opponent of all the selfish, brutal, inversive, ruthless and cruel Lower-Pluto forces.  Yet during the ten or eleven years just preceding his death he had the satisfaction of building up a superior culture, and of observing his people devoted to the religion of light, which is The Religion of the Stars.

He left no son to succeed him, and Smenkhhkara, husband of his eldest daughter, ruled but a few months.  He was not sufficiently obedient to the priests who carried out the will of the Lower-Pluto forces.  Then the husband of the third daughter came to the throne.  The Lower-Pluto forces were pleased with him.  This son-in-law of Akhenaten, who delivered the populace back into the power of the Lower-Pluto priests, was none other than Tutankhamen (note the ending), whose unspoiled tomb was opened in 1923 amid world-wide notoriety.  He immediately restored the priests of Amen, with the result that polytheism soon flourished again.

Akhenaten, as a Brother of Light, had no use for curses, no use for war, no use for fear, no use for vengeance.  But the priests of Amen were Brethren of the Shadows.  And there can be no doubt that the sudden tragedies which dogged the footsteps of all those who were present at the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb were due to the curses placed to guard it by the priests of Amen.  Lord Caravon and his party within a few years, one by one, felt the weight of the curses placed by the Lower-Pluto priests to protect the tomb of the one who had restored them to power.

Many writings of Akhenaten have been studied by scholars, and historians record:  "Such a synthesis of life and religion is unique in the world's history.  Life was rich and beautiful, joyous and ree, not in spite of, but because of religion.  For the religion was one from which the master mind of Akhenaten had banished superstition and fear and into which he had introduced sunshine and happiness."

Reading this one cannot but think of the inhibitions of Puritanism, and the doctrine of hell and eternal punishment, believed in by some even at present.

As to the man himself, Arthur Weigall says:

"He has given us an example three thousand years ago which might be followed at the present day; an example of what a husband and father should be, of what an honest man should do, of what a poet should feel, of what a preacher should teach, of what an artist should strive for, of what a scientist should believe, of what a philosopher should think."

Among other things he created a new art, Stellar Art, and developed a method of treatment, Stellar Healing.  All the essentials of this Stellar Healing are set forth in sufficient detail in the language of symbolical pictograph in his Stellar Art, so that were no other source of information available to us on this subject it would be possible to learn it all from the many pictures he has left.

Quoting from the Story of Religion, by Charles Francis Potter:

"With true artistic taste Akhenaten devised a symbol to illustrate what he meant.  There began to appear before long, on the walls of the temple and tombs, pictures of various scenes in the life of the king, pictures which have lasted even until today.

"Above each scene is portrayed the disc of the sun with distinct rays descending to certain parts of the bodies of the human beings in the picture and to the more prominent objects.  Each ray terminated in a miniature hand and some of the hands holding the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of life."

Without consuming many printed pages with descriptions of the pictures of this kind left by Akhenaten, their purport in so far as Stellar Healing is concerned can be summed up in four general ideas as follows, more details of which will be discussed later:

1.  Planetary energies reaching man not only map his character at birth, but exert definite influences over him, at times which can be predetermined, throughout the whole of his life.  This is pictured by the rays descending to certain parts of the bodies of human beings.

2.  The physical environment by which he is surrounded, each item of which also is influenced by planetary energies, also exerts an influence upon man.  To what extent this physical influence opposes or co-operates with the planetary energies operative at a given time must be ascertained by observation of the physical environment.  This is pictured by the various objects by which the human beings in the picture are surrounded.

3.  The events and conditions which are present at any given time in an individual's life are the offspring of his character as it exists at that time, energized by such planetary energies as then reach it, and acting upon the available physical environment, which influences both the trend and the importance of what occurs.  This is pictured by both rays and objects adjacent to human beings.

4.  The amount of control which an individual can exercise over what takes place in his life at a given time depends upon two factors whose relative importance constantly varies, but which on the average are of about equal power:  Upon his ability to energize and modify in the desired direction the factors of his character which respond to planetary energy; and upon his ability to select physical environmental conditions which offer little resistance to the events he desires.

Stellar Diagnosis - To be continued.