Aquarian Axioms from H. P. Blavatsky

Our article Theosophy on The New Age of Aquarius presents all the key points and details that the Theosophical teachings provide about the Aquarian Age and we recommend reading it carefully.

According to Theosophy, the Aquarian Age has already begun. H. P. Blavatsky discloses in her article “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels” that the “old age,” the Age of Pisces, would end “about” the year 1900, with the New Age of Aquarius dawning in its place.

In the article linked to above, it was explained: “In some Lodges of the United Lodge of Theosophists, and in some ULT publications, one will sometimes find it said that 19th June 1902 was the precise date that the Aquarian Age definitively dawned. This date appears to have been first presented by Raghavan Iyer (1930-1995), an influential though in some respects controversial figure in the ULT . . . If the date was indeed 19th June, this means the sun was also, in another sense, in Gemini when that momentous new dawn of the Age of Aquarius occurred. Iyer proceeded to compile ten statements from among the June entries in HPB’s “Gems from The East” daily quotation book and presented them under the title “Aquarian Axioms” as having particular importance and relevance for this new era in which we are now living and, particularly, as seed-thoughts to meditate and reflect upon.”

This explains the background and origin of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Aquarian Axioms.” As clarified above, she herself did not call them that. It is also not known whether she herself wrote all ten of them, as the preface to “Gems from The East,” which she published in 1890, a year before her death, explains that the brief quotes provided for each day of the year are “culled chiefly from Oriental writings.” “Chiefly” but not entirely. Some can be recognised as her own work, while a great majority of them are not traceable to any known Oriental or Eastern writings, nor Western for that matter. Many may be from ancient esoteric sources, known to HPB but still unknown to the world at large.

Whatever their initial origin may be, and regardless of whether or not the 19th June 1902 date is in fact accurate, we present these ten short but deep axioms – described in “Gems from The East” as “Precepts and Aphorisms” – below, not merely for reading but for reflection and contemplation. Whenever the Aquarian Age may actually have dawned, no-one can deny the beauty and importance of these particular “Gems.”

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AQUARIAN AXIOMS

1. Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson.

2. Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow; whence springs suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.

3. To obtain the knowledge of Self is a greater achievement than to command the elements or to know the future.

4. Self-knowledge is unattainable by what men usually call “self-analysis.” It is not reached by reasoning or any brain-powers.

5. Real Self-knowledge is the awakening to consciousness of the divine nature of man.

6. Will creates intelligently; Desire blindly and unconsciously.

7. When desire is for the purely abstract – when it has lost all trace or tinge of “self” – then it has become pure.

8. Spirituality is not what we understand by the words “virtue” and “goodness.” It is the power of perceiving formless, spiritual essences.

9. The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being – this is the whole secret of life.

10. You cannot build a Temple of Truth by hammering dead stones. Its foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of Life.

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“When it [i.e. the sun] enters, in a few years, the sign of Aquarius, psychologists will have some extra work to do, and the psychic idiosyncrasies of humanity will enter on a great change.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels”)

“It is not he who repeats obstinately and parrot-like the old literary formulae and holds desperately to publishers’ traditions, who will find himself answering to the new needs; not the man who prefers his narrow party discipline to the search for the long-exiled Spirit of man and the now lost TRUTHS; not these, but verily he who, parting company with his beloved “authority,” lifts boldly and carries on unflinchingly the standard of the Future Man. It is . . . those who . . . will have bravely fought for human rights and man’s divine nature, who will become, if they only win, the teachers of the masses in the coming century, and so their benefactors. . . . Take advantage of, and profit by, the “tidal wave” which is now happily overpowering half of Humanity. Speak to the awakening Spirit of Humanity, to the human Spirit and the Spirit in man, these three in One and the One in All.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Tidal Wave”)

“It is not materialism that will have the upper hand. Everyone fanatically clinging to an idea isolating him from the universal axiom – “There is no Religion higher than Truth” – will find himself separated like a rotten plank from the new ark called Humanity.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The New Cycle”)

“The ethical and social expression of Aquarius is yet to unfold in this world of narrow moral and political categories. But its tone has been suggested in all the world-shaking ideas put forth by the Great Teachers of the human race. These ideas are the precious drops that presage the approaching monsoon. The ideals summed up in the beautiful ‘Aquarian Axioms’ are the cosmic and individual basis for the social and ethical forms of the future when all men will fully understand that “Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole.” When men know through the laboratory of their own seven-fold nature that “Harmony is the law of life,” and that true self-knowledge and spirituality “is the power of perceiving formless, spiritual essences,” then the whole world will be ready for the revolutionary forms of the Aquarian Age. But this can only happen when the old forms have been completely dissolved, for it is truly axiomatic that “You cannot build a Temple of Truth by hammering dead stones. Its foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of Life.” The earnest seeker of the New Age will never cease looking for that solvent within himself which will break down the barriers of pseudo-objective consciousness and reveal the oneness implicit in the concept of universal relativity and relationship.” (“Aquarius,” “Hermes” magazine, March 1977, published by the United Lodge of Theosophists in Santa Barbara, California, USA)