AN ALARMING PREDICTION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 15 May 1901, Page 4

AN ALARMING PREDICTION.

A Deluge next December.

On one of the Babylonian tablets exhumed from the ancient city of Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, is an inscription of surpassing interest and importance. It informs us that Capricorn was the ruling sign in the Zodiac at the time of the Deluge, an! students of occuL tism and astronomy arc now discussing the question whether it is reasonable to expect another Deluge when the zodiacal condition are similar. Berosus, the ancient Chaldean astronomer, emphatically declared that another flood would sural y take place whenever the moon, sun, and planets again occupied the sign of Capricorn. That this strange prediction is ounusual interest to persons now living i evident from the fact that in December, 1901, the sun, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will be located in the sign of Capricorn, as required by Berosus, while the moon and Neptune will be in the opposite sign—Cancer—towards the end of the month.

It may be argued that the conditions at that time will not be exactly the same as those which prevailed at the time of the Deluge, since neither Venus, Herschel, Neptune, nor the moon will be in Capricorn. The reply to this is that Herschel and Neptune were unknown at the time of the Delune, and that, consequently, even if they had been in Capricorn, neither Berosus nor any other astronomer could have chronicled the fact.

Since the time of Ptolemy, each of the 12 signs of the zodiac have been supposed to have a decided influence over certain cities and countries, and the experience of centuries, it is claimed, proves that misfortunes always comes to those cities and countries, whenever malefic planets are in their signs. If this be true, and there should bo even a partial flood in 1901, India, the Punjaub, Thrace, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Albania, Hesse, Mexico, Lithuania, and the city of Oxford would be most likely to suffer since they are the places over which Capricorn is said to hold sway. Cancer, however, will be afflicted at the same time by the presence of Neptune, and by the opposition of the other planets in Capricorn, and, as this sign is said to rulo Africa, Scotland, Holland, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Cadiz, Constantinople, Venice, Genoa, New York, Milan, and Manchester, occulists claim that these places will also be seriously afflicted in December 1901.