Past karma

This is a short pamphlet written by esotericist Manly P Hall, mostly known for his books “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” and “The Secret Destiny of America”. I admit that I haven't read them (yet), but I did peruse his “Questions and Answers: Fundamentals of the Esoteric Sciences” some time ago. I was struck by its similarity to the message of the Theosophical Society.

In “Astrology and Reincarnation”, Hall argues that the human soul is successively reborn in all 12 signs of the zodiac. If we wish to know the horoscope of our previous life, we should look at the sun sign and ascendant sign immediately preceding the ones we have at present. Thus, an Aries with a Taurus ascendant is presumably a reborn Pisces with an Aries ascendant. In the same way, our future life will be influenced by the next sun sign and ascendant sign, in this case Taurus and Gemini. However, Hall also mentions a Tibetan system which is somewhat different, since some of the zodiacal signs symbolize non-human realms. Apparently, I was a human in my previous life, too, but I might just as well have been an animal or a hungry ghost (or a god, for that matter).

Hall's main point is that our birth isn't a co-incidence, but the result of past karma. Indeed, all star signs carry unresolved karmic issues from the signs immediately preceding them, the only exception being Aries which is a blank slate of sorts, since it initiates a new cycle. He also presents an alternative theory, where the South Node of the Moon symbolizes our karmic debts while the North Node shows our future possibilities. It's not clear how Hall wants to harmonize the different theories, or if he even wants to.

Hall then demonstrates how a horoscope can be used as a (partial) road map of the evolutionary journey of the soul, by attempting to prove that Alexander the Great was reborn as Julian the Apostate!

Whether or not you find these speculations useful might be the result of your past karma, I suppose, but I will give this article three stars.