tower of Belus, and the image of Belus. They did not worship the stars as God, who they thought of as too great to be
concerned with mundane affairs; but they worshipped those whom they believed He had appointed as mediators between
God and man. Their religion was based upon a belief in one impersonal, universal Principle, but to which they gave no
name. To their lesser gods they erected huge temples, of a peculiar construction, specially adapted for star worship. Here
they healed the sick, and performed certain magical ceremonies. An inscription on the pedestal of a statue erected to Nebo,
reads: "To the god Nebo, guardian of the mysteries, director of the stars: he who presides at the rising and setting of the
sun; whose power is immutable, and for whom the heaven was created." In the time of Alexander the Great, 356 B.C., the
Chaldaeans alleged that their Astrology had existed 473,000 years.
Chaldaean Oracle. An Oracle venerated as highly by the Chaldaeans as was the one at Delphi, by the Greeks. It taught
that "Though Destiny may be written in the stars, it is the mission of the divine soul to raise the human soul above the
circle of necessity." The Oracle promised victory to any one who developed that masterly will. The Chaldaean teachings
with regard to karma and reincarnation, are today found in Theosophy.
Changeable Signs. v. Signs.
Character. The sublime strength of Astrology is in its delineation of character. As destiny is subservient to character, no
prediction should be ventured until the patterns of emotional stimulation and environment are understood. Character is the
cumulative result of the aggregate of experience. Daily cosmic stimulation through birth receptivities constitutes a portion
of the aggregate of experience. But cosmic stimulation is a conditioning process that determines only the nature of one's
reactions, while the reaction takes place only when called into play by some accidental encounter within an environment.
Thus environment plus reaction produces an event, and the sum total of events becomes the aggregate of experience - out
of which one learns or fails to learn to control reaction, and thereby character evolves.
Character of Planets. v. Planets.
Characteristics of the Signs. v. Signs.
Chart. v. Figure.
Chronocrators. Markers of Time. (1) To the ancients the longest orbits within the solar system were those of Jupiter, 12
years, and Saturn, 30 years. Thus the points at which Jupiter caught up with and passed Saturn marked the greatest super-
cycle with which they were able to deal. This phenomenon occurred every 20 years at an advance of about 243°. Therefore,
for some 200 years or more (exactly 198 years, 265 days) these conjunctions would recur successively in a Sign of the
same element. Thereby every 800 to 960 years it would return in Sagittarius, making the Grand Climactic conjunction
which marked supreme epochs in the history of mankind. This conjunction made its reappearance in Sagittarius around the
commencement of the Christian era, and again in the eighth and sixteenth centuries, bringing periods of great world-
upheaval. For this reason Jupiter and Saturn are called the great chronocrators - a word which does not appear in Webster's
Dictionary nor the Encyclopedia Britannica, but about which volumes have been written by astrological authorities.
The 20-year conjunctions are termed minims, or specialis; the 200-year cycle, media, or trigonalis - change of trigons; and
the 800-year cycle, maxima, or climacteria. In the series there are ten conjunctions in Signs of the Fire-element, ten in
Earth, and so on.
Tycho Brahe (in his Progymnasin, Bk. 1) said that all the odd-numbered climacteria: 1, 3, 5, etc., were auspicious,
"ushering in signal favors of the Almighty to mankind." Both Kepler and Alsted said that the climacteria would "burn up
and destroy the dregs and dirty-doings of Rome." The Star of Bethlehem is frequently presumed to have been a Jupiter-
Saturn conjunction, possibly reinforced by Mars. The associating of this conjunction with the record of Joshua having
commanded the Sun and Moon to stand still, and of Ahab's report that the Sun had retrograded 10°, is probably erroneous,
for these more than likely had to do with readjustments of the calendar to correct the effect of precession, as was done in
1582 when Pope Gregory XIII ordered the suppression of ten days in order to restore the equinox to its rightful date.
It appears that Daniel utilized the climacteria as the basis of his "Seventy Weeks of Prophecy," wherein he connected the