The ancients spoke of seven planets which they named the seven sacred planets, and they were serialized as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon.
The Sun and Moon are, however, used as substitutes for two secret planets, one near the sun and one over the moon, these secret planets being invisible to us at present. That near the Sun, an intra-mercurial planet, has been called Vulcan and was supposed to have been discovered in 1859, when a black spot was seen in transit across the solar disk; but since that time the discovery has not been verified by astronomers.The teaching regarding it is that it became invisible to our physical senses at about the midpoint of the third root-race; but as we have now reached again, on the upward arc, the plane corresponding to the same degree of development, in a relatively short cyclic period it should begin again to show itself.
The planet for which the Moon stands as a substitute, sometimes called the Planet of Death, is near the Moon and also invisible to our physical senses. It has a retrograde motion and is slowly dying.
Each of these seven planets is, like our earth, a chain of globes, sevenfold or twelvefold in composition, having six superior globes of finer, more ethereal matter above the physical globe. Only those globes which are on the same cosmic plane of nature are physically visible to each other. For instance, we can see only the fourth-plane planetary globes of each of the other planetary or sidereal chains because we are on the fourth cosmic plane.
These seven planets are called sacred because every one of the globes of the earth chain is under the dominant guidance, and is actually largely formed by, one of these planets, assisted in each case by the other six. Further, every root-race of every one of the globes during each round is under the protection and guidance of one of the seven sacred planets.
But the main reason for calling them sacred is that our universal solar system is composed of seven planes of being, or worlds, over which are the seven primordial logoi. These are subdivided into seven minor logoi or powers, forming sevenfold groups or minor solar systems, and our solar system is one such group. In our solar system, our sacred planets are the respective houses, each house containing the seven forces of one of the seven chief rays of the solar logos: one such chief ray being our particular logos.
