"Go to your fortepiano and execute upon the lower register of keys the seven notes of the lower octave - up and down. Begin pianissimo; cresendo from the first key and having struck fortissimo on the last lower note go back diminuendo getting out of your last note a hardly perceptible sound - 'morendo pianissimo'... The first and last notes will represent to you the first and last spheres in the cycle of evolution - the highest! The one you strike once is our planet." (Mahatma Letters, p. 73, #13)

"Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, where the matter of our perception exhibits itself in its grossest form. ...Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our Earth must be on different and superior planes." (letter from Mahatma K.H. quoted in Secret Doctrtine I, p. 166)

"It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present, and Mercury just beginning to get out of it... Again, both (Mars and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth's sidereal lords and superiors as you are independent of the 'principles' of Daumling (Tom Thumb)..." (letter from Mahatma K.H. quoted, in Secret Doctrine I, p. 165)

Neo-Theosophy:

"There are ten schemes of evolution at present existing in our solar system, but only seven of them are at the stage where they have planets in the physical world. These are: 1 . . . ; 2 . . . ; 3. that of the Earth, Mars and Mercury, which has three visible planets, because it is in its fourth incarnation..." (C. W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy, p. 124)

"... our Earth Chain, or Terrene Chain, is the fourth in succession, and has therefore three of its seven globes in physical manifestation, its third globe, C, being what is called the planet Mars, and its fifth globe E, what is called the planet Mercury." (Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither, p. 9)