The cycle of nine is at the root of almost all the mysteries of human life. It crops up in all the astronomical cycles as if it were at the root of them, and as representing cosmic energy (Fohat) and the human will (Ichcha) it manifests in all purpose and all action, cosmical and human. For Mars (nine) is desire (kama) and desire is that which underlies both will and action. There is a period of cosmic activity which runs in a nine-year cycle. It has even been shown that meteorology cannot shake free of it. The year 1893 was a year of drought, rain being unknown from April to October of that year, and the summer was exceptionally hot. The same may be said of 1902 and 1911, which are years falling in the nine-year cycle. But 1894, 1903 and 1912 were wet summers, and the temperature also abnormally low. Dr. Goad, who studied meteorology from the same standpoint of cosmic interplay, considered that Mars was of chief importance in weather predictions. Some people appear to think that the icebergs on which the _Titanic_ foundered are responsible for the wet summer of 1912. I dare venture the opinion that it was something many degrees warmer than an iceberg. That icebergs in the temperate zone have a tendency to condense the air and so to produce rain seems reasonable, but who loosed the chains that bind the icebergs to the poles. Undoubtedly it was our Vulcan. In a scheme of thought that regards the whole world as a symbol, and that is the standpoint we are taking in this study of the cosmos, planets are not necessarily causative but they are necessarily symbolic. The symbol of humanity is the number Nine, and this is the number of the planet Mars. Hence we may say that for the present and during the whole course of this age of the world’s evolution or unfoldment, we are under the dominion of Mars. The sooner we get into wireless communication with him and understand some of his ways the better it will be for us. For he is not only the maker of chains but the breaker of them, inasmuch as he represents both the Desire that fashions them and the Will that looses them. Nine is also the cosmic factor. We have already seen that the precession of the equinoxes is at the rate of 1° in seventy-two years, and 30° or one sign in 2,160 years, the whole circle being completed in 25,920 years. All these numbers are multiples of nine. Twice nine gives us the solar cycle, three times nine the number of the asterisms, in six times nine years the eclipses move through one sign of the zodiac, and in 648 through the entire circle. But this is nine times seventy-two, and so we find ourselves again and again enmeshed by the network of a nonal necessity. As the Old Philosopher truly says: “Heaven’s net has large meshes, yet nothing escapes it!”