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222 DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT
beings, still incarnated, but withdrawn from the world, Adepts, Rishis, Arhats, Mahatmas, Yogis and so forth.
This group also offers the best justification for the practices of Palmistry and Astrology by a dog:118 proved, like Euclid's axioms, more by an appeal to necessity than by scientific evidence--called Karma, which states that all our actions and sufferings in this life are a necessary result of our conduct in previons existence-existence and subsistence being alternate and continuous as the swing of a pandulum. Hence the belief that our destiny is pre-ordained and written is not absurd to Theosophists, but this does not justify their belief in the practice of Palmistry or Astrciogy unless they can show proof of the invariable connection of the marks and signs with the written, fixed destiny. This is the one part of augury that wants more scientific light thrown on it.
Practioners of these arts claim that the connection between the signs and the events has been established by an observation extending over many thousands of years, and appeal to the antiquity of the practice, and the fact that many eminent mathematicians, astronomers and philosophers who have taken the trouble to observe the connection, have established the fact. On the other side, disbelievers in this connection point to discrepancies between the Western and Eastern systems as to Astrology and Palmistry, and the fact that both claim their system as the true one: they admit that
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