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The Yugas: Their Importance in India and their Use by Western Intellectuals
and Esoteric and New Age Writers

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Religion Compass 8/12 (2014): 357–370, 10.1111/rec3.12139

The Yugas: Their Importance in India and their Use by

Western Intellectuals and Esoteric and New Age Writers
Luis González-Reimann*
University of California

Abstract
The first part of this article addresses the origin and importance of the yuga theory in India. The second
part deals with the discovery of the yuga system by the West, its use by modern Western esoteric writers,
and its relevance to New Age ideas, including attempts to determine the date of the beginning of a new
cosmic age. The second part will take up more space because it has been less explored.

Cosmic Cycles in India

THE YUGAS

A fundamental tenet of the traditional Hindu understanding of history is the belief in a

recurring cycle of Ages of the World called yugas. The yuga theory first appears in Sanskrit
literature around the beginning of the Common Era, when the centuries old Brahmanical
Vedic tradition was facing challenges from different quarters and was adjusting to new social
and religious realities. The earliest mentions of the theory appear in the Mahābhārata
(especially 3.148, 3.186–189, 12.224, Critical Edition), the brief Yuga Purān.a, and the Code
of Manu (the Mānava Dharmaśāstra, chapter 1), all dating from shortly before or after the start
of the Common Era.1 The word yuga had been in use since the R̥g Veda (ca. 1,200 BCE) to de-
note certain periods of time, but the classical yuga theory does not appear in Vedic literature
(González-Reimann 2009).
The theory posits that the world goes through a series of four historical periods named yugas
that define the characteristics of society and human behavior. The marker for the quality of the
four yugas is dharma, a term that refers to how close or far society is from the Brahmanical ideal of
social and moral conduct. Dharma descends as time goes by, meaning that in the first yuga, it is
followed by all, while in the last yuga, there is social chaos, and morality is at an all-time low.
The four yugas are Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, and their names are derived from the game
of dice. Kṛta is the name of the winning throw and Kali of the worst, while Tretā and Dvāpara
are descending stages between them. According to the Purān.as, one of the worst aspects of the
Kali Yuga, especially toward its end, is the confusion of the social classes (varn.as), particularly
when brahman priests behave like servants (śūdras) and vice versa.2
The Hindu yugas are similar to the Greek ages, inasmuch as they describe a degrading society,
but the fact that the Indian yugas derive their names from the dice game gives them an additional
element: they have a descending numerical value. The values are 4-3-2-1, from Kṛta to Kali.
This connection to numbers allowed for the yugas to be given a quantitative gradation in differ-
ent ways. Thus, the duration of the yugas was established according to the 4:3:2:1 ratio. In terms
of years, Kṛta was said to last 4,000, Tretā 3,000, Dvāpara 2,000, and Kali 1,000. Additionally,
transitional periods between yugas of one tenth of the duration of every yuga were established at
both the beginning and end of each. This amounts to a total of 10,000 years for the four yugas
without transitional periods, and 12,000 years including them. The early sources indicate that

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358 Luis González-Reimann

this was the original computation, but the duration of the yugas was soon increased astronom-
ically when these 12,000 years were explained as divine years. In order to convert them to
human years, they must be multiplied by 360, the number of days in an ideal year. This resulted
in the enormous duration of the yugas that appears in the later literature. The Kali Yuga by itself
now lasted 432,000 years, and the total of the four yugas increased to 4,320,000. These are the
standard numbers used in the Purān.as and other texts. Pingree (1963, pp. 238–239) believes that
the number 4,320,000 is of Babylonian origin because it is related to the duration of the
Babylonian kingdom before the f lood and is a fundamental number in the sexagesimal system.3
González-Reimann (1988, pp. 102–104) counters that 432,000 is a Vedic number used for
counting the syllables of Vedic texts, which could easily have been transferred to computations
of large time cycles. In any case, we have seen that the number is clearly explained by the ex-
pansion of divine years into human years using the ideal year of 360 days, itself a sexagesimal
number, which appears since early Vedic texts. Once the number was arrived at in this way,
it could have found confirmation in other sources.

KALPAS AND MANVANTARAS

The descending sequence of the four yugas repeats itself after Kali reaches its end. A new
Kṛta Yuga commences, and the cycle starts anew. The four yugas together are called a
mahāyuga, a great yuga. The cyclical nature of the mahāyuga ref lects the perception that his-
tory is a cyclical process, a perception that becomes prevalent in India at around the same
time as the yugas appear.4 Hindu cycles, however, include more than the rotation of the
four yugas. According to Puranic literature, 1,000 of these mahāyugas make up a larger cycle
called a kalpa or day of Brahmā, which is the basic cycle that defines the periodical creation
and destruction of the world. In addition, a separate cycle called a manvantara was then in-
corporated into the system. The manvantara is a period of Manu, the ancestor of humans,
who is mentioned in the R̥g Veda, the oldest Vedic text. Post-Vedic Hindu texts, however,
talk not only of one Manu, but of 14, each one presiding over his own manvantara. Late
Vedic as well as post-Vedic tradition associates Manu (or the Manus) with a large f lood,
which he survives.5 In an attempt to incorporate the new cycle of manvantaras into the
kalpa and mahāyuga system, every kalpa is said to include 14 manvantaras. This means that
the kalpa is divided, on the one hand, into 1,000 mahāyugas, and on the other into 14
manvantaras. This complicated system has sometimes confused modern writers, as we shall
see. A detailed analysis of the origin and development of the yugas and other Indian cosmic
cycles can be found in Gombrich 1975 and González-Reimann 2009.6

ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE OF YUGAS

The origin of the yuga theory is closely linked to the social and religious changes that took
place in the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of the Common Era, es-
pecially the incursions of foreign rulers into the subcontinent and the rise of non-Vedic tra-
ditions such as Buddhism and Jainism. Some Brahman authors felt that their world-view
and the centrality of the Vedic sacrifice were been threatened, and the yuga theory pro-
vided an explanation for such changes: they were attributed to the arrival of the Kali Yuga.
That meant that, for the authors, the Kali Yuga described the present, and this was also to
become a salient aspect of the yugas in the following centuries. The Vedic ritual was
assigned to Dvāpara, the yuga before Kali, thus providing a rationalization for its loss of im-
portance. The Kali Yuga was consequently seen as the yuga we are living in, the present
yuga, and this accounted for all of the world’s problems.

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 The Importance of Yugas 359

Regarding the starting date of Kali, it was soon agreed that the events of the Mahābhārata sig-
naled its beginning. Although the Epic itself says little about this, later literature took it as a given
(González-Reimann 2002). The only thing lacking was a precise date. That was provided,
probably in the fifth century, by astronomers of the Gupta period (fourth–sixth c. CE). They
worked under the assumption that large cycles started with a conjunction of all the planets at
the beginning of the constellation of Aries. They calculated the last conjunction to have taken
place in 3,102 BCE, and this became the definitive and unquestioned date for Kali’s point of
departure. Most mythic-historical chronology hinges on that date.7 Because the Kali Yuga is
said to last for 432,000 years, it is only in its early stages.
The supposed intimate connection between the start of the Kali Yuga and the Mahābhārata
has generally also been taken for granted by modern scholars. This includes prominent
Mahābhārata scholars such as Biardeau (1968, 1984–1985) and Hiltebeitel (1990).8 González-
Reimann (2002) challenges that assumption and argues that the connection between the Epic
and the Kali Yuga is not part of the main narrative, and is only found in late layers of the text.
Thomas (2007) questions one aspect of González-Reimann (2002), the connection between
the king and the yugas.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

In the centuries following the Gupta period, the negative nature of the Kali Yuga continued to
allow for the framing of changing social and religious circumstances. The presence of the Kali
Yuga was adduced to explain why many earlier social and religious practices were no longer
followed—or were explicitly discarded or forbidden. It was due, the reasoning went, to the
diminished capacities of people in Kali. Such practices were then labeled kalivarjyas, literally,
‘to be avoided/shunned in Kali.’9 The Kali Yuga would also be invoked to explain the arrival
of Islamic rule and of British colonial dominance. But more recently, growing expectations have
emerged of Kali ending soon and a new Kṛta Yuga returning. The name of the best yuga has
often been changed to Satya Yuga, the yuga of truth, and proponents of this fast-approaching
Satya Yuga have offered different explanations for why the traditional duration of Kali should
be rejected. Many modern gurus or their disciples, both in India and the West, have been
proclaiming the imminent end of the Kali Yuga for the last 150 years or so. This includes people
and organizations like Vivekananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sathya Sai Baba, and the Brahma
Kumaris. They have, in turn, inf luenced New Age ideas.10

Cosmic Cycles in the West

In the first millennium CE word reached Europe indirectly—through Islamic astrological
literature—of large cycles that ultimately had their origin in the numbers of the Indian kalpa
and the date calculated for the beginning of the Kali Yuga in 3,102 BCE. This, however, did
not include the characteristics of the yugas, and was mainly related to attempts to calculate the
date of the Biblical f lood, which was considered to be the same as the f lood described in Indian
texts.11 In fact, as we shall see later, descriptions of the f lood in Mesopotamian, Indian, and
Biblical literature were the link that made many 19th and 20th century esotericists think they
could calculate dates for the yugas by combining these different traditions.

THE 16th CENTURY: FIRST REPORTS

Europeans first became directly aware of the yuga system of history thanks to the writings of
early Christian missionaries who traveled to India in the 16th and 17th centuries. Members of

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360 Luis González-Reimann

different monastic orders wrote about the religions and beliefs they encountered in the subcon-
tinent, and the theory of the yugas was usually included in their accounts.
One of the first mentions of the yugas by a European is found in Antonio Rubino’s
Relatione d’alchune cose principali del regno de Bisnaga (Account of some of the Main Things about
the Kingdom of Vijayanagara), published in 1608. Rubino was an Italian Jesuit missionary
who lived in Vijayanagara, in South India, from 1606 to 1610. He begins his account with
a brief description of the yugas. He discounts their long durations as something inspired by
the devil, but he could relate to the beginning date of the Kali Yuga—3,102 BCE—
because it fit with his own Biblical understanding of chronology. He gives a very concise
description of the yugas, mentioning their descending nature, and he understands this decay
as a progression from a time when God was close to man to a time when he becomes
almost inaccessible. Rubino used the chronology of the Kali Yuga as a backdrop for writing
about the dynastic history of South India (Rubiès, p. 223).12
A few years after Rubino’s account, in 1630, Henry Lord published a two-part book entitled
A Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the East-Indies.13 Lord, an English protestant employed by the
East India Company, lived in Gujarat in the early 17th century. The first part of his book is
called A Discovery of the Sect of the Banians. Lord frames his description of the ‘Banian religion’
using the four yugas for his narrative. However, he inverts the names of the middle yugas,
resulting in the sequence Kṛta, Dvāpara, Tretā, and Kali. In his phonetic transcription, the yugas
are called Curtain (Kṛta), Dvauper (Dvāpara), Tetra (Tretā), and Kolee (Kali). Lord erroneously
considers the Kali Yuga to be the longest one, and in his conclusion dismisses their supposed
antiquity because it would mean that the Banians are the most ancient people. Like Rubino,
he considers Indians to have been lead astray by the devil.
In subsequent years, other accounts of Hindu beliefs and practices were published, prominent
among which is Abraham Roger’s The Open Door to Hitherto Concealed Heathenism, published in
Dutch in Leiden in 1651. Roger was a Dutch Calvinist minister to the Dutch East India
Company who lived in Pulicat—on the Eastern coast of India—from 1632 to 1642. As part
of his description of brahmanical religion, in chapter five of his book, Roger provides a very
brief description of the four yugas, including their durations.14
The impact of these early accounts was limited. The Jesuit descriptions were meant for
internal use within the order and were not made public at the time. Even those works that were
published did not have a significant effect in Europe, which means that the theory of the yugas
was hardly noticed.15 Things were to change drastically, however, in the 18th century,
especially in England and France.

THE 18TH CENTURY: THE CONTROVERSY OVER CHRONOLOGY

The 18th century brought an explosion of interest in India, which was largely fueled by the
growing British presence in the subcontinent. In France, Voltaire (1694–1778), who was a
towering and inf luential intellectual figure of the period, welcomed the recently popularized
knowledge of the yuga theory with its long durations and the challenge they posed for Biblical
chronology. To a Europe accustomed to a Biblical chronology that made the world only a few
thousand years old, the discovery of India and its tradition of yugas presented a challenge. In his
book, The Birth of Orientalism, App views Voltaire as an early orientalist who was ‘determined to
use Ancient India and China to destabilize Biblical authority.’16 Voltaire considered India to be
the oldest civilization, and the yugas played a crucial role in this perception. We may recall that
the reason why Lord had rejected the yuga chronology a century earlier was because it would
mean that Indians were the oldest people. For Voltaire and others that was precisely the import
of the yuga theory and what made it appealing. The stated thesis of App’s book is that the

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 The Importance of Yugas 361

discovery of Asian religions helped Europe go beyond Biblical studies,17 and Asian, especially
Indian concepts of time and history played a key role in this.
Voltaire had read the writings of John Z. Holwell (1711–1798) and Alexander Dow
(1735/6-1779), both of whom wrote enthusiastically of the antiquity of Indian traditions
as portrayed in the yuga chronology. A third author, Nathaniel Halhed (1751–1830), also
partially supported Indian views.18 The popularity of these extremely long chronologies,
however, was short lived. William Jones (1746–1794) refuted them, and he insisted on
the primacy of Biblical chronology and the validity of the Biblical narrative that considered
the Mosaic account to be the correct one.19 In a 1995 article entitled ‘Indian Time, European
Time’, Trautmann gives a good account of the conf lict between the two chronologies and the
social and intellectual context in which it took place. He summarizes the positions of Halhed,
Dow and Jones, and includes the opinions of James Mill and Hegel. Jones’ opinion was very
inf luential, and by the 19th century, the impact of the yuga chronology in European intellectual
circles had all but disappeared. With one important exception: writers of esoteric or occult
literature.

THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES: ESOTERIC WRITERS ON THE YUGAS

The yugas and their chronology were to become important in esoteric circles toward the end of
the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In that milieu, the yugas played a very
inf luential role in emergent millenarian ideas about an approaching age of spiritual enlighten-
ment and social justice.

Fabre d’Olivet and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre

Already in 1822, the yugas appeared in a book by the Frenchman Antoine Fabre d’Olivet
(1767–1825) entitled Histoire philosophique du genre humain, published decades later in English
under the title Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social State of Man and of the Destiny
of the Adamic Race. D’Olivet compares the yugas (yougs) to the Greek ages of the world, but
considers both traditions to be mistaken in that the sequence should go from bad to good times
instead of the opposite. To him, the Kr̥ta/Satya Yuga is the worst age, and the yugas gradually
improve until they reach the Kali Yuga, a time when Vis.n.u, sword in hand (a reference
to Kalki), will confront ‘the incorrigible sinners’ and forever banish vices and evils from the face
of the Earth.20 D’Olivet claims to derive this mistaken ascending quality of the yugas from the
Purān.as, but the Purān.as describe the yugas as a strictly descending cycle. It is true that the
end of the Kali Yuga brings the return of Vis.n.u as Kalki, but that is not because the yugas have
gradually improved until they reach a culminating point. Rather, it is because they have come
to the lowest point in the cycle, at which time it is imperative for Vis.n.u to restore dharma.
D’Olivet’s curious inversion of the quality of the yugas is due to his evolutionary view of society.
He dismisses the ideas of those who propose an ideal, romantic historical past. Therefore, the
yugas must ref lect an ascending, evolutionary sequence.21
The same year that d’Olivet’s book was published in France, a book called The Mythological
Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated, by Restoring to their Fables and Symbols their Original Meaning
appeared in England. The author, Samson Arnold Mackey, criticizes those who do not accept
the yuga numbers as real. He links the cycles of the yugas and the manvantaras to the precession of
the equinoxes, although his emphasis lies in the belief that there have been several reversals of
the Earth’s poles throughout large periods of hundreds of thousands of years.22 Mackey sees
Greek and Hindu myths as symbolical records of such reversals. His ideas would later have some
inf luence on occult writers.

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362 Luis González-Reimann

In 1883, Alexander Cunningham, a British army engineer in India who was interested in
archeology and founded the Archeological Survey of India, published a book entitled Book of
Indian Eras, in which he suggested that the mahāyugas, the manvantaras and the kalpas had been
invented by Indian astronomers after learning about precession from Western sources.23
Cunningham was mentioned as a source by the noted Indologist E. W. Hopkins in 1915, in
his book Epic Mythology, when asserting that for Indian astronomers, large Hindu cycles were
based on precession.24
Some 60 years after d’Olivet’s book, and one year after Cunningham’s, Alexandre Saint-Yves
d’Alveydre (1842–1909), an important French occultist, published his book Mission des juifs (The
Mission of the Jews) in 1884. Saint-Yves followed d’Olivet in considering the yugas to increase in
moral quality instead of descending, but he also launched a renewed defense of yuga and
manvantara chronology. Geology had already shown the Earth to be millions of years old, so
yuga chronology could be given a fresh interpretation. For Saint-Yves, the sages of India had
inherited an ancient spiritual science that knew of the Earth’s great antiquity, and such knowl-
edge was embedded in yuga chronology.25 The Hindu tradition of several Manus associated
with f loods sparked the imagination of Saint-Yves and other occultists because a great f lood
was also part of the Biblical narrative. Saint-Yves used yuga and manvantara chronology in an
attempt to calculate the age of ‘terrestrial humanity’. To that purpose, he accommodated the
numbers in a curious way. Although he first gives the duration of the yugas in human years,
he then switches to divine years without clarifying the distinction. He incorrectly takes the
mahāyuga to be the same as the manvantara, and therefore gives the manvantara a length of
12,000 years. As six Manus have passed, and as we are now in the Kali Yuga (the Golden
Age, in his description) of the seventh manvantara, he concludes that the antiquity of ‘terrestrial
humanity’ is ‘80,000 plus a few thousand years’. 26 His calculation is 72,000 (six Manus along
with six deluges) plus a little more than 12,800 (the time from the start of the Satya to the
beginning of the Kali). This gives us 82,800, plus the elapsed time of the current Kali Yuga,
as the age of humanity.

René Guénon and Alain Daniélou

The next relevant—and very important—link in the chain of French esoteric writers is René
Guénon (1886–1951). Guénon wrote an inf luential article on Hindu cycles entitled ‘Quelques
remarques sur la doctrine des cycles cosmiques’ (Some Remarks on the Doctrine of
Cosmic Cycles). It was published in French in 1938, and in English translation the year before.
The English version appeared in the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, and it is notewor-
thy that the journal was edited by the Indologist Stella Kramrisch, who was also the translator of
the article and was inf luenced by it. At the time, ideas of an esoteric bent, especially regarding
symbolism in art, where sometimes included in academic indological writing.27
In his article on cosmic cycles, Guénon took up the issue of the age of ‘terrestrial humanity,’
which Saint-Yves had tried to determine. According to his calculations, the age of humanity
was not 80 thousand plus years, because he considered the four yugas to last for a total of
64,800 years. Like Saint-Yves before him, Guénon based his calculations on the Hindu yugas
and manvantaras combined with calculations from other cultures. In Guénon’s case, the other
early sources were Greek and Babylonian ones. And also like Saint-Yves, he mistakenly takes
the mahāyuga to be the same as the manvantara.28 Guénon also used the cycle of the precession
of the equinoxes in order to translate yuga numbers into measurable astronomical periods, but
his calculations took a different route from that of Saint-Yves.29 He considered the cycle of pre-
cession to last 25,920 years, and proceeded as follows.30 He took the Great Year of Persian and
Greek sources to be exactly 12,960 years—presumably based on a passage in The Republic of

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 The Importance of Yugas 363

Plato (546)—which is half his cycle of precession. He then decided that the duration of the Kṛta
Yuga was one precessional round (two Great Years) and computed the lengths of the remaining
yugas by applying the traditional yuga 4:3:2:1 ratio from there. The result of his numerical
manipulation is as follows:

Krta Yuga ¼ 2 Great Years ¼ 25; 920 ðone round of precessionÞ

˙
Tretā Yuga ¼ 1:5 Great years ¼ 19; 440
Dvāpara Yuga ¼ 1 Great Year ¼ 12; 960
Kali Yuga ¼ 0:5 of a Great Year ¼ 6; 480

This gives a total of 64,800 years for the duration of the mahāyuga, which, it must be remem-
bered, Guénon sees as equal in length to the manvantara. Guénon finds confirmation for this
number in the purported duration of the rule of the Babylonian king Xisuthros (Ziusudra),
given as 64,800 years.
Because Ziusudra is a hero in the Sumerian f lood story, Guénon considers him to be none
other than the Indian Manu, whose story is associated with a f lood, and therefore the reign
of Ziusudra should have the same duration as a Hindu manvantara. As we know, however,
the manvantara is not the same as the mahāyuga, and equating the Kṛta Yuga with a round of
precession has no basis.
As discussed at the start of this article, the notion that the end of the Kali Yuga brings a moral
breakdown in which (brahmanical) societal norms are ignored and the hierarchy of social classes
is turned on its head is a central element of early Indian descriptions of the yugas. This notion
became a recurring theme—even the guiding thread—in Guénon’s writings. He viewed the
modern world as corrupted by materialism and the value of quantity, or substance, as opposed
to quality, or essence.31 To him, this was a sign that the Kali Yuga was nearing its end, and he
was convinced that our current ‘terrestrial humanity,’ our manvantara, would be destroyed and
replaced by a new, more spiritual humanity with the birth of a new manvantara and its corre-
sponding new round of four yugas, starting with the Kṛta/Satya Yuga.32
It is important at this point to mention the inf luential scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade
(1907–1986). Eliade was rooted in esoteric traditions and was inf luenced by Guénon. Although
Eliade didn’t attempt to calculate dates based on yuga chronology, he did place a great emphasis
on notions of cyclical time, which he considered to be part of ‘archaic’ thought. Like Guénon
and other esotericists, Eliade was critical of modernity, and his high esteem for ‘archaic’ thought
was probably inf luenced by the ‘perennial philosophy’ (discussed below). But for Eliade, the
system of yugas was an elaboration of Hindu intellectuals that were far removed from the ancient
‘traditional religion’, and they thus obscured the sense of the ‘religiousness of the cosmos’
(religiosité cosmique) that was originally a part of cyclical time.33 In a way, Eliade could be seen
as the undercover voice of esoteric ideas in academic studies of religion in the second half of
the 20th century.34
But let’s return to Guénon. A central component of his approach to yuga chronology and to
ancient cultures in general is the conviction that there existed a ‘primordial tradition’ that has
survived only fragmentarily—and is often encrypted—in the texts of the different religions. This
tenet is fundamental to all esoteric writers, and they see it as their task to discover and link the
dispersed traces of this ‘primordial tradition’ in order to uncover the ‘true’ ancient spiritual
science. The term philosophia perennis, perennial philosophy, is frequently employed to refer
to this ‘primordial tradition’..
Guénon attempted to get academic recognition for his theories, but his stubborn contention
of the existence of a ‘primordial tradition’ got in his way. He tried to obtain a doctorate from the
Sorbonne under the Indologist Sylvain Lévi, but Lévi soon realized the nature of his approach

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364 Luis González-Reimann

and wrote to the dean that Guénon ‘intends to exclude all the elements that do not correspond
to his conception…’ and that he ‘…is ready to believe in a mystical transmission of a profound
truth that appeared to the human mind in the first ages of the world’.35 Consequently, the dean
refused to allow Guénon to be a candidate for the doctorate.
Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) offered his own set of calculations. Daniélou had become a
follower of śaivism in India, and was interested in promoting Guénon’s ideas in the subcon-
tinent by translating his works into Hindi.36 He was intent on calculating the date of the
end of the Kali Yuga, for which he presents a garbled account of yuga and manvantara num-
bers, and arrives at the year 2,442 CE. He bases his computation on a faulty translation of a
few lines from the Lin. ga Purān.a (1.4.5ab, 1.4.32bc–33ab).37 He wrongly takes the mahāyuga
to contain 71.42 manvantaras, when the opposite is true: 71.2 mahāyugas make up one
manvantara. He calls the mahāyuga (4,320,000 years) a day of the gods, although a few lines
later he calls the same cycle a year of the gods. In fact, in the Purān.as it is neither, one
thousand mahāyugas (not one) equals one day of Brahmā (not of the gods). Elsewhere, Daniélou
also confuses the mahāyuga for the manvantara—just like Saint-Yves and Guénon—but in his
case, this makes his own statements contradictory. Daniélou’s confused computation yields a
total of 60,487 years for the mahāyuga, which he then subdivides into the four yugas accord-
ing to the 4:3:2:1 ratio. Taking the standard Purān.ic date of 3,102 BCE for the beginning
of Kali, he arrives at 2,442 CE for its conclusion.38

Yugas and Astrological Ages

Saint-Yves, Guénon, and Daniélou all link the yuga cycle to the precession of the equinoxes, but
they don’t provide precise correlations between the yugas and the astrological ages, which are
determined by precession.39 It was students of Guénon’s ideas who took up the subject and
came up with a detailed correlation.
Of special importance were Gaston Georgel (1899-?) and Jean Phaure (1928–2002). Both
authors continued using Saint–Yves’ and Guénon’s incorrect equation of the mahāyuga and
the manvantara, and they accepted Guénon’s durations for the yugas. Guénon, however, had
stated that he would not attempt to determine the point of departure of the cycle and our
position in it, although he did write that we were well into the Kali Yuga and that Puranic
descriptions of it were an accurate characterization of modern times.40 Georgel did calculate
the end of Kali, and arrived at the year 2031CE.41 He didn’t go into much detail regarding
the astrological ages, but he did say that the Kali Yuga corresponded to the ages of Taurus, Aries,
and Pisces combined.42 As the astrological age following Pisces is Aquarius, this aligned
expectations of a new Satya Yuga with predictions regarding the arrival of the Age of Aquarius.
Phaure used the same correlation between yugas and astrological ages, but he gave several
possible dates for the beginning of the Satya Yuga and the Age of Aquarius. They mainly fall
between 2000 and 2,160 CE.43 For Phaure, Christian prophecies regarding the end of times
were of primary importance, and they are made to coincide with the new Satya Yuga and
the Age of Aquarius.
Georgel and Phaure were mainly concerned with correlating yugas and astrological ages with
Biblical chronology, but another author inf luenced by Guénon tried to establish the beginning
of Kali with reference to the astrological ages by using the Mahābhārata and its traditional asso-
ciation with the start of Kali. Paule Lerner interpreted the events described in the Mahāhārata as
the transition between the ages of Aries and Pisces, although neither the text nor subsequent
Hindu tradition makes the connection.44
At this point, we must mention the Indian yogi/guru Sri Yukteswar (1855–1936), who made
a different correlation of the yugas and precession. To him, the cycle of four yugas is not a

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 The Importance of Yugas 365

descending cycle that starts anew after the end of the Kṛta/Satya Yuga, but a combination of a
descending half—from Satya to Kali— and an ascending half in the reverse order.45 Both halves
equal one round of precession, which he gave as 24,000 years. He contended that we are now in
the early stages of an ascending Dvāpara Yuga. According to his system, the Age of Aquarius will
start around 2,500 CE. His theory was adopted in the West by followers of Paramahansa
Yogananda (1893–1952), who was Yukteswar’s disciple.46

Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society

Blavatsky (1831–1891) was one of the founders of the Theosophical Society (1875). She was a
contemporary of Saint-Yves, and had read his statements about the yugas. She presents a
convoluted system of ages that prominently features Hindu cycles, which she sometimes
portrays accurately and other times inaccurately. She states, correctly, that a day of Brahmā is
made up of 1,000 mahāyugas as well as of 14 manvantaras, but on other occasions, she equates
the day of Brahmā with one mahāyuga, or with a manvantara.47 Like Guénon would do after
her, Blavatsky refused to provide dates for the end of Kali, but also like Guénon, she saw Puranic
predictions about Kali as an accurate portrayal of her times, and as the harbinger of a new
Golden Age.48 Blavatsky’s vague predictions were given a more precise expression by Annie
Besant (1847–1933), also of the Theosophical Society, who was convinced that the new Satya
Yuga was at hand.49 The Theosophical Society was very inf luential among many occult figures
of the early 20th century, and the belief in a new Satya Yuga was an important element of such
inf luence. Although many esotericists ended up leaving the Society or criticizing it (Guénon
among them), they continued to believe in the arrival of the Golden Age Such is the case of
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), who presented his own interpretation. For Steiner, the Kali Yuga
ended in 1899, and the first half of the 20th century would see growing numbers of people with
clairvoyant powers as a manifestation of the Satya Yuga.50 Steiner, like many French occultists,
interpreted the new yuga in a Christian context associated with the second coming of Christ.
Another esotericist of note, Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998), who was inf luenced by Guénon
and was a firm believer in the ‘perennial philosophy’, also talked of the approaching end of
the Kali Yuga. In a series of interviews from the 1960s, he said the new Satya Yuga was only
decades away.51

The New Age Movement

Not all esotericists attempted to combine the yugas with the astrological ages in a precise man-
ner, like some French writers did, but a somewhat general consensus emerged among occult
writers that humanity was on the threshold of a new cosmic age. New Age predictions of a
dawning age also include psychics such as Edgar Cayce and others who, in one form or another
talk of the birth of a new era.52 This New Age was increasingly described as the Age of Aquarius,
and it is with reference to it that the New Age movement was named.53 The Satya Yuga is often
said to coincide with the Age of Aquarius. To many of these authors, all early traditions had to
agree—or be made to agree—regarding the dawning of a new age, and this prompted the
conf lation of the yugas and the astrological ages. It also allowed for more elements to be
included in the mix, such as expectations about the return of Christ, the appearance of the
Mahdi, or the alleged Mayan prophecies about the end of a cycle.
We can say that in the second half of the 20th century, esotericism largely morphed into New
Age thinking, or that the New Age engulfed esotericism. Either way, such ideas are no longer
seen as occult or esoteric, but have been incorporated into the manifold spectrum of New Age
thought.

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366 Luis González-Reimann

In closing, it is important to point out the three main misunderstandings found in many es-
oteric and New Age writers who deal with the topic of the yugas. In the first place, they seem
unaware of the origins of the yuga theory in India, which can be dated to around the beginning
of the common era. Secondly, Indian astronomers calculated the starting date of Kali and many
cycles by major planetary conjunctions, not with reference to precession.54 And lastly, many au-
thors confuse the different cycles. We have seen how Guénon and others erroneously took the
mahāyuga to be the same as the manvantara, but there were also other ways in which the cycles
were mixed up. Eliade, for instance, repeatedly says that a manvantara includes 14 kalpas, when
the opposite is the case.55 From an esoteric and perennial philosophy perspective, one can, of
course, say that one is discovering the ancient and long forgotten ‘true’ meaning of Indian cos-
mic cycles. This is, in fact, what many authors argue. But it remains true that many of them are
not aware of, or choose to ignore, these three misunderstandings.
Arguing that one has unveiled the hidden meaning of a text or a textual tradition by
deciphering a supposedly hidden code, or by putting together pieces from widely divergent
sources, or by reading it from an alleged higher level of perception remains a fruitful exegetical
strategy for reading into texts what we would like for them to say. Such reinterpretations and
reinventions of religious and traditional literature are nothing new, and will surely continue
in the future.

Short Biography

Dr Luis González-Reimann received his M.A. in South Asian studies from El Colegio de
México, and his Ph.D. in South Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley,
where he teaches. He is the author of The Mahābhārata and the Yugas (Peter Lang 2002,
Indian reprint Motilal Banarsidass 2010), and other books. He publishes in English and
Spanish, and among his recent articles in English are: The Coming Golden Age: On
Prophecy in Hinduism, in Prophecy in the New Millennium, ed. By Harvey and Newcombe
(Ashgate 2013); Ending the Mahābhārata: Making a Lasting Impression, in the International
Journal of Hindu Studies, 2011; and Cosmic Cycles, Cosmology and Cosmography, in vol.
1 of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009).

Notes
* Correspondence address: Luis González-Reimann, University of California, Berkeley, USA. E-mail:
reimann@cal.berkeley.edu

1
For translations, see, respectively, van Buitenen 1975 (only Book 3), Mitchiner 2002, and Olivelle 2005.
2
For how the Purān.as describe the waning of dharma and the characteristics of the Kali Yuga, see von Stietencron 2005
[1986]. Mahābhārata 3.186–189 is the blueprint for later descriptions.
3
van der Waerden 1978, pp. 359–363 also favors a Babylonian origin for the number.
4
A good discussion of cyclical and linear time in India can be found in Thapar 2007, who also looks at historical eras in
connection with identity. Malinar 2007 looks at time concepts in India, and how they have influenced scholars’ perceptions.
5
For the development of the Indian flood story, see González-Reimann 2006.
6
González-Reimann has more details regarding Vedic antecedents and the conflation of cycles, while Gombrich adds
Buddhist and Jain cycles.
7
For the way astronomers calculated the cycles, see González-Reimann 1986 (in Spanish). For the different schools of
Indian astronomy and mathematical details of cycle computations, see Pingree 1981.
8
Many authors follow Biardeau and Hiltebeitel on this matter, such as Koskikallio 1994, who also includes the
Jaiminibharata, a later text, in his discussion. For more authors, see González-Reimann 2002.

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 The Importance of Yugas 367
9
For a detailed study of the kalivarjyas, see Kane 1946, pp. 926–968.
10
For the context in which the yuga theory appeared, and for its continued importance up to modern times, see
González-Reimann 2013, pp. 116–117, which briefly discusses modern interpretations. These are dealt with in more
detail in González-Reimann 2002, pp. 180–187. For the use of the yugas in religious traditions, see González-
Reimann 2002, pp. 172–180.
11
On kalpa and yuga computations in Islamic Astrology, see Kennedy 1964 and Pingree 1968, pp. 27ff.
12
Text in Italian with English summary in Rubiés 2007 [2001], pp. 243ff. Rubiés provides a good description of the early
Jesuit understanding of Hinduism.
13
For a modern edition of Lord’s text with a summary and a useful introduction, see Sweetman 1999.
14
For details on Roger, see Sweetman 2003, pp. 89ff. An abbreviated English translation of Roger’s text was later published
in London in 1734 as part of a collection by Bernard Picart that also included Lord’s text. They are in volume 3 of the
collection. The English title of volume 3 is The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Idolatrous Nations.
15
See Lorenzen 2006, p. 124.
16
App 2010, p. 38. Chapter 1 is devoted to Voltaire and his sources.
17
App 2010, p. xiii.
18
Different writers transliterated the word yuga in different ways, such as jug, yoog, jug, yogue, and iogue.
19
For a recent edition of the relevant writings of Holwell, Dow, Halhed, and Jones with a useful introduction, see Marshall
1970. For Halhed and Jones as early orientalists see, respectively, Rocher 1983 and Franklin 2011.
20
D’Olivet’s discussion of the yugas appears in vol. 1, chapter V, pp. 107–116. In Redfield’s English translation, the pages are
29–36. For Kalki, see González-Reimann 2013.
21
D’Olivet was a very influential figure among occultists and writers in France for many decades. For a study of d’Olivet and
his influence, see Cellier 1953.
22
Mackey was not the first one to write about an inversion of the poles. For the development and impact of the theory, see
Godwin 1996, with Mackey’s description on pp. 196–202. The inversion of the poles literally refers to a complete inversion
of the Earth’s axis, thereby turning the Northern Hemisphere into the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. It is not to be
confused with the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, which does not alter the position of the geographical poles.
23
Cunningham 1883, p. 4.
24
Hopkins 1915, pp. 196–97.
25
For Saint-Yves on the yugas, see 1973 [1884], vol. 1, pp. 52–55. Saint-Yves also believed in the inversion of the poles.
26
Saint-Yves 1973 [1884], vol. 1, p. 54.
27
Of foremost importance in this regard was Ananda Coomaraswamy, to whom the volume of the journal just mentioned
was dedicated.
28
Confusing the Hindu cycles is not unusual even in academic writing. A recent example is Flood 1996, p. 113, who makes
the same mistake as Saint-Yves and Guénon of equating the mahāyuga with the manvantara.
29
In 1916, p. 35, Frank Higgins, a freemason, also assumed that yugas and kalpas were linked to precession.
30
The actual value of precession is about 25,772 years, but 25,920 allows for neat sexagesimal calculations (25,920/
60 = 432), which is what Guénon aims for. Elsewhere (1957, p. 62, n. 1), Guénon states that the main cyclical numbers
are 72, 108, and 438, which are all exact fractions of 25.920. Kramrisch, who had translated Guénon’s article on Indian
cycles, quotes and follows Guénon on this. Kramrisch 1976 [1946], vol 1, pp. 36–37.
31
Guénon 1945, pp. 22ff. Most of Guénon’s writings have been translated into English. A useful introduction to Guénon’s
ideas is Rooth 2008.
32
See Guénon 1990 [1927], p. 118, and 1945, pp. 367–368. See also 1968 [1930], p. 21.
33
Eliade 1959, 107–108 (Trask’s translation). In the French edition (1956), the pages are 93–94.
34
For a brief discussion of Eliade in this context, see, Faraone and Lincoln 2011, pp. 10–12, with an extensive bibliography.
See also Hanegraaff 2012, pp. 302–307. For a comparison between Eliade and Guénon see Spineto 2001.
35
Lardinois 2013, p. 230; p. 189 in the original 2007 French edition. Lardinois’ book is an excellent source for the
intersection of Indology and esotericism in France in the first half of the 20th century.
36
Lardinois 2013, p. 252; p. 205 in the French edition. For details, see Daniélou 1984, pp. 138–139, and the
correspondence between Daniélou and Guénon in Grossato 2002.
37
Daniélou references the 1885 Calcutta Sanskrit edition of the Purāna. This must be Vidyasagara’s edition, which I consulted.
38
For Daniélou’s computations, see Daniélou 1987, pp. 192–197. In the French edition, pp. 14–18.
39
The astrological ages are determined by the position of the spring equinox against the backdrop of the zodiacal
constellations. The equinox falls back through them in a period of 25,772 years, one round of precession.

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368 Luis González-Reimann
40
Guénon 1937, 1938.
41
Georgel 1976, p. 191.
42
Georgel 1976, p. 204. The astrological ages proceed in the reverse order of the signs of the zodiac throughout the year.
43
Phaure 1973, pp. 332ff.
44
Lerner 1988, p. 22.
45
The division of the yuga cycle into a descending and an ascending half had been used many centuries earlier by Jain
authors. See González-Reimann 2002, pp. 182–183, or 2013, p. 118.
46
Yukteswar 1963 [1894], Introduction. For his disciples’ use of the theory, see Pratt 2007 [1932–1933], and more recently
Selbie and Steinmetz 2010.
47
See, respectively, The Secret Doctrine 1, p.132; 2, pp. 90–91; 1, p. 78.
48
The Secret Doctrine 2, p. 93.
49
See González-Reimann 2013, p. 115.
50
Steiner 1971 [1961], p. 62.
51
Biès 1998, p. 9.
52
For an overview of psychics, see Godwin 2011, chapters 9–10. Godwin 2011 offers a good overview and more details of
how many esoteric writers used the theory of the yugas, including Guénon and others mentioned here.
53
On the academic study of New Age movements, see Hanegraaff 1996.
54
For precession in early Indian astronomy, see Pingree 1972.
55
As in Eliade 1973 [1957], p. 179, and Eliade 1959, p. 108 (p. 94 in the French edition, 1956). He repeats the mistake
virtually every time he discusses the topic.

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© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/12 (2014): 357–370, 10.1111/rec3.12139

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