Ancient Oracles and Occult Prophecies

Veda Vyasa, Hermes Trismegistus, Hesiod, Thomas Taylor, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 13 pages

Four ancient oracles and occult prophecies gathered from the Vishnu-Purāna, Hesiod's Works and Days and the Hermetic dialogue with Asclepius, in Thomas Taylor's rendering, with annotation from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The frontispiece is a portrait of the Prophet Samuel, and a closing page lists further reading from the Down to Earth Series.

The four prophecies are given headings that state their content: the future is now; might will be right, and envy will run riot among men; the heathen East will slay the decadent West; and Egypt shall be forsaken when divinity returns from earth back to heaven. The first, from the Vishnu-Purāna and dated in the text some twenty millennia back, describes contemporary monarchs of churlish spirit and violent temper, short-lived and insatiable, whose subjects follow their example until property alone confers rank, wealth is the only source of devotion, falsehood the only means of success in litigation, and every text a scripture that people choose to think so. The second, after Hesiod and dated some 2,700 years back, is the lament of the fifth race — a race of iron that will never cease from toil by day or night, where father will not be like children nor guest to host, where the villain will bring down his better by telling crooked tales, and where Decency and Moral Disapproval veil their faces and depart for Olympus; a footnote sets a second rendering alongside it that identifies the age with Kali-Yuga. The fourth, from the address of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, foretells the Nile bursting forth with a torrent of blood, the dead exceeding the living, and the survivor known for an Egyptian only by his language, in a land once the greatest lover of the gods on earth — closing on the line that darkness shall be preferred to light and death judged more useful than life.

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