the Assyrians arranged their exoteric teaching about the planets and their correspondences as follows:
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* See The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 357.
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NUMBERS 	  	METALS 	COLORS 	SOLAR DAYS OF WEEK
1 	Saturn 	Lead 	Black 	Saturday (whence Sabbath, in honor of Jehovah)
2 	Jupiter 	Tin 	White, but as often Purple or Orange 	Thursday
3 	Mars 	Iron 	Red 	Tuesday
4 	Sun 	Gold 	Yellow-Golden 	Sunday
5 	Venus 	Copper 	Green or Yellow 	Friday
6 	Mercury 	Quicksilver 	Blue 	Wednesday
7 	Moon 	Silver 	Silver-White 	Monday
To those who are unacquainted with the exoteric astrological natures ascribed in practice to the planetary bodies, it may be useful if we set them down here after the manner of Diagram II, in relation to their domain over the human body, colors, metals, etc., and explain at the
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same time why genuine Esoteric Philosophy differs from the astrological claims.
PLANETS 	DAYS 	METALS 	PARTS OF BODY 	COLORS
Saturn 	Saturday 	Lead 	Right Ear, Knees and Bony System 	Black*
Jupiter 	Thursday 	Tin 	Left Ear, Thighs, Feet and Arterial System 	Purple†
Mars 	Tuesday 	Iron 	Forehead and Nose, the Sex-functions and Muscular System 	Red
Sun 	Sunday 	Gold 	Right Eye, Heart and Vital Centers 	Orange‡
Venus 	Friday 	Copper 	Chin and Cheeks, Neck and Reins, and the Venous System 	Yellow§
Mercury 	Wednesday 	Quick-silver 	Mouth, Hands, Abdominal Viscera and Nervous System 	Dove or Cream¶
Moon 	Monday 	Silver 	Breasts, Left Eye, the Fluidic System, Saliva Lymph, etc. 	White||
* Esoterically, green, there being no black in the prismatic ray.
† Esoterically, light blue. As a pigment, purple is a compound of red and blue and in Eastern Occultism blue is the spiritual essence of the color purple, while red is its material basis. In reality, Occultism makes Jupiter blue because he is the son of Saturn, which is green, and light blue as a prismatic color contains a great deal of green. Again, the Auric Body will contain much of the color of the Lower Manas if the man is a material sensualist, just as it will contain much of the darker hue if the Higher Manas has preponderance over the Lower.
‡ Esoterically, the Sun cannot correspond with the eye, nose, or any other organ, since, as explained, it is no planet, but a central star. It was adopted as a planet by the post-Christian Astrologers, who had never been initiated. Moreover, the true color of the Sun is blue, and it appears yellow only owing to the effect of the absorption of vapors (chiefly metallic) by its atmosphere. All is Mâyâ on our Earth.
§ Esoterically, indigo or dark blue, which is the complement of yellow in the prism. Yellow is a simple or primitive color. Manas being dual in its nature, as is its sidereal symbol, the planet Venus, which is both the morning and evening star, the difference between the higher and the lower principles of Manas, whose essence is derived from the Hierarchy ruling Venus, is denoted by the dark blue and green. Green, the Lower Manas, resembles the color of the solar spectrum which appears between the yellow and dark blue, the Higher Spiritual Manas. Indigo is the intensified color of the heaven or sky, to denote the upward tendency of Manas towards Buddhi, or the heavenly Spiritual Soul. This color is obtained from the indigoferra tinctoria, a plant of the highest occult properties in India, much used in White Magic, and occultly connected with copper. This is shown
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Thus it will be seen that the influence of the solar system in the exoteric Kabalistic Astrology is by this method distributed over the entire human body, the primary metals, and the gradations of color from black to white; but that Esotericism recognizes neither black nor white as colors, because it holds religiously to the seven solar or natural colors of the prism. Black and white are artificial tints. They belong to the Earth, and are only perceived by virtue of the special construction of our physical organs. White is the absence of all colors, and therefore no color; black is simply the absence of light, and therefore the negative aspect of white. The seven prismatic colors are direct emanations from the Seven Hierarchies of Being, each of which has a direct bearing upon and relation to one of the human principles, since each of these Hierarchies is, in fact, the creator and source of the corresponding human principle. Each prismatic color is called in Occultism the “Father of the Sound” which corresponds to it; sound being the Word, or the Logos, of its Father-Thought. This is the reason why sensitives connect every color with a definite sound, a fact well recognized in modern science (e.g., Francis Galton’s Nature and Nurture*). But black and white are entirely negative colors, and have no representatives in the world of subjective being.
Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary bodies in the human brain also is defined thus: there are seven primary
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by the indigo assuming a coppery luster, especially when rubbed on any hard substance. Another property of the dye is that it is insoluble in water and even in ether, being lighter in weight than any known liquid. No symbol has ever been adopted in the East without being based on a logical and demonstrable reason. Therefore Eastern symbologists from the earliest ages have connected the spiritual and animal minds of man, the one with dark blue (Newton’s indigo), or true blue, free from green; and the other with pure green.,
¶Esoterically, yellow, because the color of the Sun is orange, and Mercury now stands next to the Sun, in distance, as it does in color. The planet for which the Sun is a substitute was still nearer the Sun than Mercury now is, and was one of the most secret and highest Planets. It is said to have become invisible at the close of the Third Race.
|| Esoterically, violet, because perhaps violet is the color assumed by a ray of sunlight when transmitted through a very thin plate of silver, and also because the Moon shines upon the Earth with light borrowed from the Sun, as the human body shines with qualifications borrowed from its double––the aërial man. As the astral shadow starts the series of principles in man, on the terrestrial plane, up to the lower, animal Manas, so the violet ray starts the series of prismatic colors from its end up to green, both being, the one as a principle and the other as a color, the most refrangible of all the principles and colors. Besides which there is the same great occult mystery attached to all these correspondences, both celestial and terrestrial bodies, colors, and sounds. In clearer words there exists the same law of relation between the Moon and the Earth, the astral and the living body of man, as between the violet end of the prismatic spectrum and the indigo and the blue. But of this more anon.
* [Title altered later to: Inquiry into Human Faculty and its Development, New York, 1883.]
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groups of faculties, six of which function through the cerebrum, and the seventh through the cerebellum. This is perfectly correct esoterically. But when it is further said that: Saturn governs the devotional faculties; Mercury, the intellectual; Jupiter, the sympathetic; the Sun, the governing faculties; Mars, the selfish; Venus, the tenacious; and the Moon, the instincts;––we say that the explanation is incomplete and even misleading. For, in the first place, the physical planets can rule only the physical body and the purely physical functions. All the mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual faculties are influenced by the occult properties of the scale of causes which emanate from the Hierarchies of the Spiritual Rulers of the planets, and not by the planets themselves. This scale, as given in Diagram II, leads the student to perceive in the following order: (1) color; (2) sound; (3) the sound materializes into the spirit of the metals, i.e., the metallic Elementals; (4) these materialize again into the physical metals; (5) then the harmonial and vibratory radiant essence passes into the plants, giving them color and smell, both of which “properties” depend upon the rate of vibration of this energy per unit of time; (6) from plants it passes into the animals; (7) and finally culminates in the “principles” of man.

Thus we see the divine essence of our Progenitors in heaven circling through seven stages; spirit becoming matter, and matter returning to spirit. As there is sound in nature which is inaudible, so there is color which is invisible, but which can be heard. The creative force, at work in its incessant task of transformation, produces color, sound and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration which compound and dissociate the atoms and molecules. Though invisible and inaudible to us in detail, yet the synthesis of the whole becomes audible to us on the material plane. It is that which the Chinese call the “Great Tone,” or Kung. It is, even by scientific confession, the actual tonic of nature, held by musicians to be the middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano. We hear it distinctly in the voice of nature, in the roaring of the ocean, in the sound of the foliage of a great forest, in the distant roar of a great city; in the wind, the tempest and the storm: in short, in everything in nature which has a voice or produces sound. To the hearing of all who hearken, it culminates in a single definite tone, of an unappreciable pitch, which, as said, is the F, or Fa, of the diatonic scale. From these particulars, that wherein lies the difference between the exoteric and the esoteric nomenclature and symbolism will be evident to the student of Occultism. In short, Kabalistic Astrology as practiced in Europe, is the semi-esoteric secret science, adapted for the outer and not the inner circle. It is, furthermore, often left incomplete and not infrequently distorted to conceal the real truth. While it symbolizes and adopts its correspondences on the mere appearances of things,

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esoteric philosophy, which concerns itself pre-eminently with the essence of things, accepts only such symbols as cover the whole ground, i.e., such symbols as yield a spiritual as well as a psychic and physical meaning. Yet even Western Astrology has done excellent work, for it has helped to carry the knowledge of the existence of a Secret Wisdom throughout the dangers of Mediaeval Ages and their dark bigotry up to the present day, when all danger has disappeared.
The order of the planets in exoteric practice is that defined by their geocentric radii, or the distance of their several orbits from the Earth as a centre, viz.: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. In the first three of these we find symbolized the celestial triad of supreme power in the physical manifested universe, or Brahmâ, Vishnu and Śiva; while in the last four we recognize the symbols of the terrestrial quaternary ruling over all natural and physical revolutions of the seasons, quarters of the day, points of the compass, and elements. Thus:
Spring 	Summer 	Autumn 	Winter
Morning 	Noon 	Evening 	Night
Youth 	Adolescence 	Manhood 	Age
Fire 	Air 	Water 	Earth
East 	South 	West 	North

But Esoteric Science is not content with analogies on the purely objective plane of the physical senses, and therefore it is obsolutely necessary to preface further teachings in this direction with a clear explanation of the real meaning of the word Magic.

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Table Ill lists information given us about the powers and qualities in Nature and their correspondences. This information is in the third volume (Vol. V, Adyar ed.) of The Secret Doctrine. Probably the most common classification of the qualities in Nature is that in which the planets are used to personify each its own quality,
PLANETS 	HUMAN PRINCIPLES 	COLOURS
(& TATTVA) 	MUSICAL
NOTES 	NUMBERS 	METALS 	GLANDS, ETC
Mars
Generation

	Käma Rupa
Animal instincts
& passions.

	Red
(Tejas = Fire) 	Do 	1 & 10 	Iron 	Liver
Sun
Life giver,
Substitute for Inter-Mercurial
secret planet

	Präna or Jiva
Life 	Orange
(Pritjhivi i.e. Earth) 	Re 	2
Spiritual and
Physical Life
	Gold 	Heart
Mercury
Messenger and Interpreter

	Buddhi
Spiritual Soul 	Yellow
(Anupädaka) 	Mi 	3
Devachanic Triad 	Mercury 	Pituitary
Manas-Antakärana

Saturn 	Käma Manas
Animal Soul 	Green
(Vayu = Air) 	Fa 	4
Between material &
spiritual triads
	Lead 	Corpora-Quadri-gemina
Jupiter 	Auric Envelope 	Blue (Ädi) 	So 	5 	Tin 	 
Venus 	Manas
Human Soul 	Indigo or Dark
Blue (Äkäsha)

	La 	6 	Copper 	Pineal
Moon
Earth's Planet

	Lings-Sarira
Astral Double
'Parent' of Physical 	Violet
(Apas = water) 	Ti 	7
Reflection of
septenary man 	Silver 	Spleen

Mars typifies the energy behind generation. It corresponds to the instrument of our emotions and particularly the desires of our psychic natures which impel us to action, sometimes violent. In the matter of colour and quality, it is red and Fiery - to be understood in the old philosopher's sense.

The Sun is the lord of all life. At the level of our ordinary being it is the source of präna, the JÏva, the life principle of our individual life. It is spiritual and physical life. Its colour correspondence is orange and its tattva, somewhat surprisingly, is Earth.

Mercury, in H.P.B.'s classification, is equated to Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, the vehicle of Ätmä, and its colour is yellow and tattva Anupädaka.

Saturn is equated to Chronos, time. He is the tester of our strength, he corresponds in us to the hard parts and bone structure of our bodies. In terms of human principles, he is Käma-Manas, the animal soul as against the human Egoic soul which comes under Venus. Saturn's colour is green and the tattva is Air.

The expansive Jupiter is equated to the auric envelope, that which envelops all other human principles, and his colour is blue and tattva Ädi.

Venus corresponds to Manas, the thinker, but in this, case the thinker at the higher level as opposed to Kä ma-Manas. It is that faculty which puts us in touch with and enables us to intuit the qualities in Nature at a high level. Its colour is indigo or dark blue and in general terms it corresponds to Äkäsha, the substance of the universe that can manifest at various levels, such as the physical, psychic, etc.

Lastly we have the Moon, in The Secret Doctrine described as the earth's parent and corresponding to linga-sarira, the double, the mould of the physical body. Its tattva is. water and its colour violet.

The other columns of the table give us the correspondences in terms of musical notes, numbers, metals and the internal organs of the body.

We must remember that all this information, as given, has a symbolic significance only. Its real meaning can only be apprehended when our inner faculties, corresponding to the qualities symbolized in the table particularly by the planets, are more and more able to respond, and the qualities. are then increasingly inbuilt into our own natures. We should remember also that the correspondences given in this table are the esoteric ones and not the exoteric ones commonly given in other literature. All Nature fits this seven-fold pattern. This is one of the distinguishing marks of Theosophical occultism as against every other system. For example, in most literature there are five tattvas, or elementary principles, whereas in the esoteric system there are seven. In many classifications there are five or fewer human principles. In the esoteric system there are seven.