The search for the New Planet"

When the student is ready, the Master always appears". This ancient statement of occult Truth applies equally to the macrocosm of our Solar System as it does to the individual affairs of man. Over recent centuries, the discovery of a planet in our system has always coincided with a major change in our culture and thought. With the discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1791 came the industrial revolution and great technological innovation. The arrival of Neptune into our mental horizons in 1846 brought with it the flowering of interest in spiritualism, the occult and eastern religions which occurred in the late Victorian period. With the discovery of Pluto in 1930 came the atomic age. Astrologers will readily see the astrological influence of these planets here.The existence of another planet in this Solar System has been mentioned on several occasions by the interplanetary Beings who have spoken through the Founder of The Aetherius Society, Dr. George King. He has given some tantalising, even apparently contradictory, clues regarding its location. In The Nine Freedoms, he states that "this young primitive world is in the Solar System, orbiting behind the Sun following exactly the same trajectory as Earth and is thereby not visible." Elsewhere he says that "It is in the Solar System in one way and just outside of it in another, in as much as it is outside the Sun". It is there that those not ready for the heightened vibrations of the New Age will continue their evolution.For many years now astronomers have been speculating about a tenth planet within our Solar System. Around the turn of the century the eminent American astronomer Percival Lowell devoted himself to the discovery of another planet in its outer reaches. He nicknamed this "Planet X". Lowell never found it, but his work led eventually to the discovery of Pluto. Pluto, however, being much smaller than Earth, is too small to be the planet he sought.Careful computations indicate that there could well be a large world in the outer reaches of the system, far beyond Pluto. These calculations are based on the ‘residuals' (the difference between a planet's predicted position and its actual position) of Uranus and Neptune. The problem is that these planets have only been observed for a relatively short period of time–Neptune has yet to complete a full orbit since its discovery in 1846. On the basis of existing data, however, accurate predictions of the orbits of these planets have yet to be made.Unless science needs to revise its assumptions regarding the law of gravity, the most likely reason for the perturbations in the orbits of these planets is the presence of "Planet X". In recent years the search for it has been led by Robert Harrington of the US Naval Observatory. He believes this planet has a mass of three to five times that of Earth; an elongated orbit, coming, at its closest to within 9 billion Kilometres of the Sun, and receding at its furthest to 21 billion Kilometres; and that its orbit is inclined at about 30 degrees to the plane of the Solar System. If true, this might possibly confirm the statement made by our Master about the new planet being within this Solar System, and yet outside of it in a way.If "Planet X" is the "new planet" mentioned in our teachings it is invisible because its long elliptical orbit has currently taken it way out into space–perhaps twice as far out as the planet Pluto! Orthodox science believes that life forms resembling those on Earth would be inconceivable at such a distance from the Sun. And it is unlikely that such a world would be a young one. Scientists would expect a "young" planet to have an orbit close to the Sun. Orthodox science has, however, been wrong before.That the planet lies on the other side of the sun implies that it has an orbit which mirrors that of Earth, in the sense that its year (or the time it takes to orbit around the Sun) is 365 days, like that of Earth. This may be too literal an interpretation–it is certainly one the orthodox scientist refutes as impossible.Science has much left to discover about our universe and the way it works. It would appear that the new planet, when it is discovered, will truly revolutionise our scientific thought.