THE YEAR 1881

[Bombay Gazette, Bombay, March 30,1881]

To the Editor of the Bombay Gazette.

SIR,

I believe very few of the millions who began three months since to date their letters “1881” ever gave a thought to the strangeness of this new grouping of figures. Yet, another such combination will not happen in the Christian Chronology before the year 11811 just 9930 years hence. Besides the well-known prophecy of Mother Shipton—which may have a more occult meaning than is generally supposed—our year 1881 offers that strange fact hitherto unnoticed that from whichever of four sides you look at its figures—from right or left if written horizontally, or from top or bottom, if arranged vertically—you will always have before you the same mysterious and kabalistic number of 1881. And truly kabalistic it is, being the correct number of the three figures which have most perplexed mystics and Christians for no less than sixteen or seventeen centuries. Among the rest the great Newton, who worked over the problem a considerable number of years. The year 1881, in short, is the number of the Great Beast, of the Revelation, the number 666 of St. John’s Apocalypsis—that Kabalistic Book, par excellence.
See for yourself 1+8+8+1 makes 18:18 divided thrice gives three time six, or, placed in a row, 666, “the number of a man: and his number is six hundred three score and six.”
And now “Here is wisdom. . . . Let him who hath understanding” then find out the relation that “Mystery, Babylon

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the Great, the Mother . . .”—of all sorts of ugly things—has with A.D. 1881. Those who carry Revelation in their pockets know as little as the “heathen” since they could never tell us what the puzzle meant? And yet the Hebrew Kabalists understood the “Patmos Yogi.” They knew well what he meant by his 666. Rabbi Gorodek who, so far back as 1791, asserted the Apocalypse to be far older than Christianity, and endeavoured to prove John to be no other than Oannes—the Chaldean Dagon or Man-Fish—promised us the solution for this year.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Bombay, March 29.

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