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Hokitika Guardian, 25 January 1929, Page 7

BACK TO ASTROLOGY

AIR KIPLING’S SUGGESTION TO THE DOCTORS. LONDON, Nov. 20. Mr Rudyard Kipling, who. was the chief guest at the annual dinner of the x.oyal Society of Aledicine at Alay Fair Hotel, London, last night, said; Nearly three hundred years ago there was an astrologer-physician called Nicholas Culjxsppor, practising in Spitaliields. And it happened that a friend’s maidservant fell sick with what the local practitioner diagnosed as plague. Culpepper was called in as a second opinion. AVhen lie arrived the family were packing up the beds preparatory to going away and leaving the girl to die. He took charge. There was no silly nonsense about looking for the characteristic plague tongue. He only asked at what hom the young woman had taken to her bed. 'They gave him, as I need not tell you, “the hour of the decumbiture.” Ho then erected a horoscope, and inquired of the face of the heavens how the malady might prove.” The face of the heavens indicated it was not plague—but just small-pox, which our ancestors treated almost as lightly as we do. An<l small-pox it turned out to he. Preposterous as all this was, you must remember that Oul[Kipper justified his practice by the theory that “this creation, though composed of contraries, is one united body, of which man is the. epitome, and that he therefore who would understand the mystery of healing must look as high as the stars.” UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE. That was a distorted shadow of the ancient idea that the universe is one in ultimate essence—which essence is sustained and embraced and interpenetrated by a creative motion or inner beat—the pneuma of certain Greek physicians who practised five hundred years before St,Paul preached at Athens. But if lie could return to earth today and see how things have progressed in the mystery of healing 1 fancy he would he quite at ease in your Zion. He believed in the transmutation ol metals. He could he shown that in full blast at a Royal Society soiree—wit! emanations. He would find that the essential unity of creating is admitted as far forth as wo have plumbed infinity, and that man, Culpepper’s epitome of all, is in himself a universe of universes, each universe ordered—negatively and positively—by sympathy and antipathy—on the same lines n.s hold the stars in their courses, AIR INFLUENCES. Consequently ho would not he astonished to see men snatch out or the air an influence—an inner heat or pneumii-.-,.0f which they know no more than that it visibly warms, lights, ami works for t/iem, and, invisibly, transmits thejr speech and vision to one, side of the world on the instant that they themselves speak or look from the other. And the news that unknown influences from out of the skies lash and tear through all matter ovreywherat all times would be received by him will perfect calm. Doing an astrologer, lie would o f course go to Grcnwicli Observatory, to |loarn more about those influences. There he would he given monographs on terrestrial magnetism—its daily storms, discussed without any relation to the severity or incidence of prevalent epidemics and diseases. From Greenwich ho would certainly push on to the who would tell him that there are unknown heavenly influences which prevent millions <> r bold youths and blushing maidens from bearing the music they would dance to influences which at Limes cause the spoken word to die out under the stars, as the note of a rubbed fingercliowl dies when the hand is lifted. Presently—fo'i 1 he was always stronger on theory than research—lie would fetch up among the laboratories where, if lie was as lucky as I was this summer, lie would lie shown marvellous films of infected tissues being subjected to the influence of an influence called radium. Then, T fancy, the fun would begin. Up to that point he would find the main axiom which he had quoted three centuries before accepted, proven, and in use; the influence, the inner breath, the* iMiciuna —not only exceeding all bounds of wonder and heMef in its proper manifestations, but under the name of electricity, piping and singing in the market place on a commercial basis.

So, as with bis small-pox case, ins first question after he had seen the films would be: “What was the aspect of the Heavens at the time these phenomena occurred?” He would take it for granted that, with the whole universe alight to signal some tremendous secret to mankind, men would naturally look as high as the stars. S'QAIE QUESTIONS.

Isn’t it likely that the multitude and significance of the revelations, heaped upon us within the past few years, have made men, in self-defence, specialise more and more narrowly'' Haven’t "c been driven headlong to abandon our conceptions of life, motion, and matter? And isn’t it human that in that upheaval men may have carried off each his own cherished pre-possession, and camped beside it—just as refugees do after an earthquake ? Is it then arguable that.we may still mistake secondary causes for primary ones, and attribute to instant ami visible agents of disease unconditioned activities, which, in truth, depend on sole breath drawn from the motion of tho universe—of the entire universe, revolving as one body (or dynamo, if you choose), through infinite but occupied space? Tho idea is wildly absurd ? Quite true. But what does that matter if any fraction of any idea helps towards mastering even one combination in the great timelocks of life and death?

Suppose, then, at some future time, when tho bacteriologist and the physicist are for the moment at a standstill, wouldn’t it be interesting if they took their problem to the astronomers and—in modern scientific language, of course—put to him Nicholas Culpepper’s curious question: “What was the aspect of the Heavens when such and such phenomena were observed?"