XXV NIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT.
This Degree is both philosophical and moral. While it
teaches the
necessity of reformation as well as repentance,
as a means of
obtaining mercy and forgiveness, it is also
devoted to an explanation of
the symbols of Masonry; and
especially to those which are connected
with that ancient
and universal legend, of which that of Khir-Om Abi is
but a
variation; that legend which, representing a murder or a
death,
and a restoration to life, by a drama in which
figure Osiris, Isis and
Horus, Atys and Cybele, Adonis and
Venus, the Cabiri, Dionusos, and
many another
representative of the active and passive Powers of
Nature,
taught the Initiates in the Mysteries that the rule of Evil
and
Darkness is but temporary, and that that of Light and
Good will be
eternal.
Maimonides says: "In the
days of Enos, the son of Seth, men fell into
grievous
errors, and even Enos himself partook of their
infatuation.
Their language was, that since God has placed
on high the heavenly
bodies, and used them as His
ministers, it was evidently His will that
they should
receive from man the same
veneration as the servants of a great
prince justly claim from the
subject multitude. Impressed
with this notion, they began to build
temples to the Stars,
to sacrifice to them, and to worship them, in the
vain
expectation that they should thus please the Creator of all
things.
At first, indeed. they did not suppose the Stars to
be the only Deities,
but adored in conjunction with them
the Lord God Omnipotent. In
process of time, however, that
great and venerable Name was totally
forgotten, and the
whole human race retained no other religion than
the
idolatrous worship of the Host of Heaven."
The
first learning in the world consisted chiefly in symbols. The
wisdom
of the Chaldæans, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Jews; of
Zoroaster,
Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras,
Socrates, Plato, of all
the ancients, that is come to our
hand, is symbolic. It was the mode,
says Serranus on
Plato's Symposium, of the Ancient Philosophers,
to
represent truth by certain symbols and hidden
images.
"All that can be said concerning the Gods," says
Strabo, "must be by
the exposition of old opinions and
fables; it being the custom of the
ancients to wrap up in
enigma and allegory their thoughts and
discourses
concerning Nature; which are therefore not
easily
explained."
As you learned in the 24th
Degree, my Brother, the ancient
Philosophers regarded the
soul of man as having had its origin in
Heaven. That was,
Macrobius says, a settled opinion among them all;
and they
held it to be the only true wisdom, for the soul, while
united
with the body, to look ever toward its source, and
strive to return to the
place whence it came. Among the
fixed stars it dwelt, until, seduced by
the desire of
animating a body, it descended to be imprisoned in
matter.
Thenceforward it has no other resource than recollection,
and
is ever attracted to toward its birth-place and home.
The means of
return are to be sought for in itself. To
re-ascend to its source, it must
do and suffer in the
body.
Thus the Mysteries taught the great doctrine of the
divine nature and
longings after immortality of the soul,
of the nobility of its origin, the
grandeur of its destiny,
its superiority over the animals who have no
aspirations
heavenward. If they struggled in vain to express its
nature,
by comparing it to Fire and Light, - if they erred
as to its original place
of abode, and the mode of
it
descent, and the path which, descending and ascending, it
pursued
among the stars and spheres, these were the
accessories of the Great
Truth, and mere allegories
designed to make the idea more impressive,
and, as it were,
tangible, to the human mind.
Let us, in order to understand
this old Thought, first follow the soul in
its descent. The
sphere or Heaven of the fixed stars was that Holy
Region,
and those Elysian Fields, that were the native domicile
of
souls, and the place to which they re-ascended, when
they had
recovered their primitive purity and simplicity.
From that luminous
region the soul set forth, when it
journeyed toward the body; a
destination which it did not
reach until it had undergone three
degradations, designated
by the name of Deaths; and until it had
passed through the
several spheres and the elements. All souls
remained in
possession of Heaven and of happiness, so long as they
were
wise enough to avoid the contagion of the body, and to
keep
themselves from any contact with matter. But those
who, from that lofty
abode, where they were lapped in
eternal light, have looked longingly
toward the body, and
toward that which we here below call life, but
which is to
the soul a real death; and who have conceived for it
a
secret desire,- those souls, victims of their
concupiscence, are
attracted by degrees toward the inferior
regions of the world, by the
mere weight of thought and of
that terrestrial desire. The soul, perfectly
incorporeal,
does not at once invest itself with the gross envelope
of
the body, but little by little, by successive and
insensible alterations,
and in proportion as it removes
further and further from the simple and
perfect substance
in which it dwelt at first. It first surrounds itself with
a
body composed of the substance of the stars; and
afterward, as it
descends through the several spheres, with
ethereal matter more and
more gross, thus by degrees
descending to an earthly body; and its
number of
degradations or deaths being the same as that of
the
spheres which it traverses.
The Galaxy,
Macrobius says, crosses the Zodiac in two opposite
points,
Cancer and Capricorn, 'the tropical points in the sun's
course,
ordinarily called the Gates of the Sun. These two
tropics, before his
time, corresponded with those
constellations, but in his day with
Gemini and Sagittarius,
in consequence of the precession of the
equinoxes; but the
signs of the Zodiac remained unchanged; and the
Milky Way
crossed at the signs Cancer and Capricorn, though not
at
those constellations.
Through these gates souls were
supposed to descend to earth and reascend
to Heaven. One,
Macrobius says, in his dream of Scipio, was
styled the Gate
of Men; and the other, the Gate of the Gods. Cancer
was the
former, because souls descended by it to the earth;
and
Capricorn the latter, because by it they reascended to
their seats of
immortality, and became Gods. From the Milky
Way, according to
Pythagoras, diverged the route to the
dominions of Pluto. Until they left
the Galaxy, they were
not deemed to have commenced to descend
toward the
terrestrial bodies. From that they departed, and to that
they
returned. Until they reached the sign Cancer, they had
not left it, and
were still Gods. When they reached Leo,
they commenced their
apprenticeship for their future
condition; and when they were at
Aquarius, the sign
opposite Leo, they were furthest removed from
human
life.
The soul, descending from the celestial limits, where
the Zodiac and
Galaxy unite, loses its spherical shape, the
shape of all Divine Nature,
and is lengthened into a cone,
as a point is lengthened into a line; and
then, an
indivisible monad before, it divides itself and becomes a
duad
- that is, unity becomes division, disturbance, and
conflict. Then it
begins to experience the disorder which
reigns in matter, to which it
unites itself, becoming, as
it were, intoxicated by draughts of grosser
matter: of
which inebriation the cup of Bakchos, between Cancer
and
Leo, is a symbol. It is for them the cup of
forgetfulness. They assemble,
says Plato, in the fields of
oblivion, to drink there the water of the river
Ameles,
which causes men to forget everything. This fiction is
also
found in Virgil. "If souls," says Macrobius, "carried
with them into the
bodies they occupy all the knowledge
which they had acquired of
divine things, during their
sojourn in the Heavens, men would not differ
in opinion as
to the Deity; but some of them forget more, and some
less,
of that which they had learned."
We smile at these notions
of the ancients; but we must learn to look
through these
material images and allegories, to the ideas,
struggling
for utterance, the great speechless thoughts
which they envelop: and it
is well for us to consider
whether we ourselves have yet found out any
better way of
representing to ourselves the soul's origin and its
advent
into this body, so entirely foreign to it; if,
indeed, we have ever thought
about it at all; or have not
ceased to think, in despair.
The highest and purest portion of
matter, which nourishes and
constitutes divine existences,
is what the poets term nectar, the
beverage of the Gods.
The lower, more disturbed and grosser portion, is
what
intoxicates souls. The ancients symbolized it as the River
Lethe,
dark stream of oblivion. How de we explain the
soul's forgetfulness of its
antecedents, or reconcile that
utter absence of remembrance of its
former condition, with
its essential immortality? In truth, we for the most
part
dread and shrink from any attempt at explanation of it to
ourselves.
Dragged down by the heaviness produced by this
inebriating draught,
the soul falls along the zodiac and
the milky way to the lower spheres,
and in its descent not
only takes, in each sphere, a new envelope of the
material
composing the luminous bodies of the planets, but
receives
there the different faculties which it is to
exercise while it inhabits the
body.
In Saturn, it
acquires the power of reasoning and intelligence, or what
is
termed the logical and contemplative faculty. From
Jupiter it receives the
power of action. Mars gives it
valor, enterprise, and impetuosity. From
the Sun it
receives the senses and imagination, which
produce
sensation, perception, and thought. Venus inspires
it with desires.
Mercury gives it the faculty of expressing
and enunciating what it thinks
and feels. And, on entering
the sphere of the Moon, it acquires the force
of generation
and growth. This lunary sphere, lowest and basest to
divine
bodies, is first and highest to terrestrial bodies. And the
lunary
body there assumed by the soul, while, as it were,
the sediment of
celestial matter, is also the first
substance of animal matter.
The celestial bodies, Heaven,
the Stars, and the other Divine elements,
ever aspire to
rise. The soul reaching the region which mortality
inhabits,
tends toward terrestrial bodies, and is deemed to
die. Let no one, says
Macrobius, be surprised that we so
frequently speak of the death of this
soul, which yet we
call immortal. It is neither annulled nor destroyed by
such
death: but merely enfeebled for a time; and does not thereby
forfeit
its prerogative of immortality; for afterward,
freed from the body, when it
has been purified from the
vice-stains contracted during that connection,
it is
re-established in all its privileges, and returns to the luminous
abode
of its immortality.
On its return, it
restores to each sphere through which it ascends,
the
passions and earthly faculties received from them:
to
the Moon, the faculty of increase and diminution of the body;
to
Mercury, fraud, the architect of evils; to Venus, the
seductive love of
pleasure; to the Sun, the passion for
greatness and empire; to Mars,
audacity and temerity; to
Jupiter, avarice; and to Saturn, falsehood and
deceit: and
at last, relieved of all, it enters naked and pure into
the
eighth sphere or highest Heaven.
All this
agrees with the doctrine of Plato, that the soul cannot
re-enter
into Heaven, until the revolutions of the Universe
shall have restored it
to its primitive condition, and
purified it from the effects of its contact
with the four
elements.
This opinion of the pre-existence of souls, as
pure and celestial
substances, before their union with our
bodies, to put on and animate
which they descend from
Heaven, is one of great antiquity. A modern
Rabbi, Manasseh
Ben Israel, says it was always the belief of the
Hebrews.
It was that of most philosophers who admitted the
immortality
of the soul: and therefore it was taught in the
Mysteries; for, as
Lactantius says, they could not see how
it was possible that the soul
should exist after the body,
if it had and not existed before it, and if its
nature was
not independent of that of the body. The same doctrine
was
adopted by the most learned of the Greek Fathers, and
by many of the
Latins: and it would probably prevail
largely at the present day, if men
troubled themselves to
think upon this subject at all, and to inquire
whether the
soul's immortality involved its prior existence.
Some
philosophers held that the soul was incarcerated in the body,
by
way of punishment for sins committed by it in a prior
state. How they
reconciled this with the same soul's
unconsciousness of any such prior
state, or of sin
committed there, does not appear. Others held that
God, of
his mere will, sent the soul to inhabit the body. The
Kabalists
united the two opinions. They held that there are
four worlds, Aziluth,
Briarth, Jezirath, and Aziath; the
world of emanation, that of creation,
that of forms, and
the material world; one above and more perfect than
the
other, in that order, both as regards their own nature and that of
the
beings who inhabit them. All souls are originally in
the world Aziluth,
the Supreme Heaven, abode of God, and of
pure and immortal spirits.
Those who descend from it
without fault of their own, by God's order,
are gifted with
a divine fire, which preserves them from the contagion
of
matter, and restores them to Heaven so soon as their
mission is ended.
Those who descend through
their own
fault, go from world to world, insensibly losing their love
of
Divine things, and their self-contemplation; until they
reach the world
Aziath, falling by their own weight. This
is a pure Platonism, clothed
with the images and words
peculiar to the Kabalists. It was the doctrine
of the
Essenes, who, says Porphyry, "believe that souls descend
from
the most subtile ether, attracted to bodies by the
seductions of matter."
It was in substance the doctrine of
Origen; and it came from the
Chaldæans, who largely studied
the theory of the Heavens, the
spheres, and the influences
of the signs and constellations.
The Gnostics made souls
ascend and descend through eight Heavens,
in each of which
were certain Powers that opposed their return, and
often
drove them back to earth, when not sufficiently purified. The
last
of these Powers, nearest the luminous abode of souls,
was a serpent
or dragon.
In the ancient doctrine,
certain Genii were charged with the duty of
conducting
souls to the bodies destined to receive them, and
of
withdrawing them from those bodies. According to
Plutarch, these were
the functions of Proserpine and
Mercury. In Plato, a familiar Genius
accompanies man at his
birth, follows and watches him all his life, and at
death
conducts him to the tribunal of the Great judge. These Genii
are
the media of communication between man and the Gods;
and the soul is
ever in their presence. This doctrine is
taught in the oracles of Zoroaster:
and these Genii were
the Intelligences that resided in the planets.
Thus the
secret science and mysterious emblems of initiation
were
connected with the Heavens, the Spheres, and the
Constellations: and
this connection must be studied by
whomsoever would understand the
ancient mind, and be
enabled to interpret the allegories, and explore
the
meaning of the symbols, in which the old sages
endeavored to delineate
the ideas that struggled within
them for utterance, and could be but
insufficiently and
inadequately expressed by language, whose words are
images
of those things alone that can be grasped by and are within
the
empire of the senses.
It is not possible for
us thoroughly to appreciate the, feelings with which
the
ancients regarded the Heavenly bodies, and the ideas to which
their
observation of the Heavens gave rise, because we
cannot put ourselves
in their places, look at the stars
with their eyes in the world's youth, and
divest ourselves
of the knowledge
which even the commonest of us have, that makes
us regard the Stars and
Planets and all the Universe of
Suns and Worlds, as a mere inanimate
machine and aggregate
of senseless orbs, no more astonishing, except in
degree,
than a clock or an orrery. We wonder and are amazed at the
Power
and Wisdom (to most men it seems only a kind of
Infinite Ingenuity) of the
MAKER: they wondered at the
Work, and endowed it with Life and Force
and mysterious
Powers and mighty Influences.
Memphis, in Egypt, was in
Latitude 29º 5" North, and in Longitude 30º 18'
East.
Thebæ, in Upper Egypt, in Latitude 25º 45' North, and Longitude
32º
43' East. Babylon was in Latitude 32º 30' North, and
Longitude 44º 23'
East: while Saba, the ancient with Sabæan
capital of Ethiopia, was about in
Latitude 15º
North.
Through Egypt ran the great River Nile, coming from
beyond Ethiopia, its
source in regions wholly unknown, in
the abodes of heat and fire, and its
course from South to
North. Its inundations had formed the alluvial lands
of
Upper and Lower Egypt, which they continued to raise
higher and higher,
and to fertilize by their deposits. At
first, as in all newly-settled countries,
those
inundations, occurring annually and always at the same period of
the
year, were calamities: until, by means of levees and
drains and artificial
lakes for irrigation, they became
blessings, and were looked for with joyful
anticipation, as
they had before been awaited with terror. Upon the
deposit
left by the Sacred River, as it withdrew into its
banks, the husbandman
sowed his seed; and the rich soil and
the genial sun insured him an
abundant
harvest.
Babylon lay on the Euphrates, which ran from
Southeast to Northwest,
blessing, as all rivers in the
Orient do, the arid country through which it
flowed; but
its rapid and uncertain overflows bringing terror and
disaster.
To the ancients, as yet inventors of no
astronomical instruments, and
looking at the Heavens with
the eyes of children, this earth was a level
plain of
unknown extent. About its boundaries there was speculation, but
no
knowledge. The inequalities of its surface were the
irregularities of a plane.
That it was a globe, or that
anything lived on its under surface, or on what it
rested
they had no idea. Every twenty-four hours the sun came up
from
beyond the Eastern rim of the world, and travelled
across the sky, over the
earth, always South of, but
sometimes nearer and sometimes further from
the point
over-head; and sunk below the
world's Western rim. With him went
light, and after him followed
darkness.
And every
twenty-four hours appeared in the Heavens another
body,
visible chiefly at night, but sometimes even when the
sun shone, which
likewise, as if following the sun at a
greater or less distance, travelled
across the sky;
sometimes as a thin crescent, and thence increasing to
a
full orb resplendent with silver light; and sometimes
more and sometimes
less to the Southward of the point
overhead, within the same limits as the
Sun.
Man,
enveloped by the thick darkness of profoundest night,
when
everything around him has disappeared, and he seems
alone with
himself and the black shades that surround him,
feels his existence a
blank and nothingness, except so far
as memory recalls him the glories
and splendors of light.
Everything is dead to him, and he, as it were, to
Nature.
How crushing and overwhelming the thought, the fear, the
dread,
that perhaps that darkness may be eternal, and that
day may possibly
never return; if it ever occurs to his
mind, while the solid gloom closes up
against him like a
wall! What then can restore him to like, to energy,
to
activity, to fellowship and communion with the great
world which God has
spread around him, and which perhaps in
the darkness may be passing
away? LIGHT restores him to
himself and to nature which seemed lost to
him. Naturally,
therefore, the primitive men regarded light as the
principle
of their real existence, without which life would
be but one continued
weariness and despair. This necessity
for light, and its actual creative
energy, were felt by all
men: and nothing was more alarming to them
than its
absence. It became their first Divinity, a single ray of
which,
flashing into the dark tumultuous bosom of chaos,
caused man and all
the Universe to emerge from it. So all
the poets sung who imagined
Cosmogonies; such was the first
dogma of Orpheus, Moses, and the
Theologians. Light was
Ormuzd, adored by the Persians, and Darkness
Ahriman,
origin of all evils. Light was the life of the Universe, the friend
of
man, the substance of the Gods and of the
Soul.
The sky was to them a great, solid, concave arch; a
hemisphere of
unknown material, at an unknown distance
above the flat level earth; and
along it journeyed in their
courses the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, and
the
Stars.
The Sun was to them a great globe of fire, of
unknown dimen
sions, at an unknown distance. The Moon was a mass
of softer light; the
stars and planets lucent bodies, armed
with unknown and supernatural
influences.
It could
not fail to be soon observed, that at regular intervals the days
and
nights were equal; and that two of these intervals
measured the same
space of time as elapsed between the
successive inundations, and
between the returns of
spring-time and harvest. Nor could it fail to be
perceived
that the changes of the moon occurred regularly; the
same
number of days always elapsing between the first
appearance of her
silver crescent in the West at evening
and that of her full orb rising in the
East at the same
hour; and the same again, between that and the
new
appearance of the crescent in the West.
It was
also soon observed that the Sun crossed the Heavens in a
different
line each day, the days being longest and the
nights shortest when the
line of his passage was furthest
North, and the days shortest and nights
longest when that
line was furthest South: that his progress North and
South
was perfectly regular, marking four periods that were always
the
same, - those when the days and nights were equal, or
the Vernal and
Autumnal Equinoxes; that when the days were
longest, or the Summer
Solstice; and that when they were
shortest, or the Winter Solstice.
With the Vernal Equinox,
or about the 25th of March of our Calendar, they
found that
there unerringly came soft winds, the return of warmth,
caused
by the Sun turning back to the Northward from the
middle ground of his
course, the vegetation of the new
year, and the impulse to amatory action
on the part of the
animal creation. Then the Bull and the Ram, animals
most
valuable to the agriculturist, and symbols themselves of
vigorous
generative power, recovered their vigor, the birds
mated and builded their
nests, the seeds germinated, the
grass grew, and the trees put forth
leaves. With the Summer
Solstice, when the Sun reached the extreme
northern limit
of his course, came great heat, and burning winds,
and
lassitude and exhaustion; then vegetation withered, man
longed for the
cool breezes of Spring and Autumn, and the
cool water of the wintry Nile
or Euphrates, and the Lion
sought for that element far from his home in
the
desert.
With the Autumnal Equinox came ripe harvests, and
fruits of the tree and
vine, and falling leaves, and cold
evenings presaging wintry frosts; and
the Principle and
Powers of Darkness, pre
vailing over those of Light, drove the
Sun further to the South, so that
the nights grew longer
than the days. And at the Winter Solstice the
earth was
wrinkled with frost, the trees were leafless, and the
Sun,
reaching the most Southern point in his career, seemed
to hesitate
whether to continue descending, to leave the
world to darkness and
despair, or to turn upon his steps
and retrace his course to the
Northward, bringing back
seed-time and Spring, and green leaves and
flowers, and all
the delights of love.
Thus, naturally and necessarily, time
was divided, first into days, and
then into moons or
months, and years; and with these divisions and
the
movements of the Heavenly bodies that marked them, were
associated
and connected all men's physical enjoyments and
privations. Wholly
agricultural, and in their frail
habitations greatly at the mercy of the
elements and the
changing seasons, the primitive people of the Orient
were
most deeply interested in the recurrence of the
periodical
phenomena presented by the two great luminaries
of Heaven, on
whose regularity all their prosperity
depended.
And the attentive observer soon noticed that the
smaller lights of
Heaven were, apparently, even more
regular than the Sun and Moon,
and foretold with unerring
certainty, by their risings and settings, the
periods of
recurrence of the different phenomena and seasons on
which
the physical well-being of all men depended. They soon felt
the
necessity of distinguishing the individual stars, or
groups of stars, and
giving them names, that they might
understand each other, when
referring to and designating
them. Necessity produced designations at
once natural and
artificial. Observing that, in the circle of the year,
the
renewal and periodical appearance of the productions of
the earth
were constantly associated, not only with the
courses of the Sun, but
also with the rising and setting of
certain Stars, and with their position
relatively to the
Sun, the centre to which they referred the whole
starry
host, the mind naturally connected the celestial and
terrestrial objects
that were in fact connected: and they
commenced by giving to
particular Stars or groups of Stars
the names of those terrestrial
objects which seemed
connected with them and for those which still
remained
unnamed by this nomenclature, they, to complete a
system,
assumed arbitrary and fanciful names.
Thus
the Ethiopian of Thebes or Saba styled those Stars under
which
the Nile commenced to overflow, Stars of Inundation, or that poured
out water
(AQUARIUS).
Those Stars among which the
Sun was, when he had reached the Northern Tropic
and began
to retreat Southward, were termed, from his retrograde motion, the
Crab
(CANCER).
As he approached, in Autumn, the
middle point between the Northern and Southern
extremes of
his journeying, the days and nights became equal; and the Stars
among
which he was then found were called Stars of the
Balance (LIBRA).
Those stars among which the Sun was, when
the Lion, driven from the Desert by
thirst, came to slake
it at the Nile, were called Stars of the Lion (LEO).
Those
among which the Sun was at harvest, were called those of the
Gleaning Virgin,
holding a Sheaf of Wheat
(VIRGO).
Those among which he was found in February, when
the Ewes brought forth their
young, were called Stars of
the Lamb (ARIES).
Those in March, when it was time to
plough, were called Stars of the Ox (TAURUS).
Those under
which hot and burning winds came from the desert, venomous
like
poisonous reptiles, were called Stars of the Scorpion
(SCORPIO).
Observing that the annual return of the rising
of the Nile was always accompanied by
the appearance of a
beautiful Star, which at that period showed itself in the
direction
of the sources of that river, and seemed to warn
the husbandman to be careful not to
be surprised by the
inundation, the Ethiopian compared this act of that Star to that
of
the Animal which by barking gives warning of danger, and
styled it the Dog (SIRIUS).
Thus commencing, and as
astronomy came to be more studied, imaginary figures
were
traced all over the Heavens, to which the different Stars were
assigned. Chief
among them were those that lay along the
path which the Sun travelled as he climbed
toward the North
and descended to the South: lying within certain limits
and
extending to an equal distance on each side of the line
of equal nights and days. This
belt, curving like a
Serpent, was termed the Zodiac, and divided into twelve
Signs.
At the Vernal Equinox, 2455 years before our Era,
the Sun was entering the sign and
constellation Taurus, or
the Bull; having passed through, since he commenced, at
the
Winter Solstice, to ascend Northward. the Signs
Aquarius, Pisces and Aries; on
entering the first of which
he reached the lowest limit of his journey Southward.
From
TAURUS, he passed through Gemini and Cancer, and reached
LEO
when he arrived at the terminus of his journey
Northward. Thence, through
Leo, Virgo, and Libra, he
entered SCORPIO at the Autumnal Equinox, and
journeyed
Southward through Scorpia, Sagittarius, and Capricornus
to
AQUARIUS, the terminus of his journey
South.
The path by which he journeyed through these signs
became the Ecliptic; and
that which passes through the two
equinoxes, the Equator.
They knew nothing of the immutable
laws of nature; and whenever the Sun
commenced to tend
Southward, they feared lest he might continue to do so,
and
by degrees disappear forever, leaving the earth to be ruled forever
by
darkness, storm, and cold.
Hence they rejoiced
when he commenced to re-ascend after the Winter
Solstice,
struggling against the malign influences of Aquarius and Pisces,
and
amicably received by the Lamb. And when at the Vernal
Equinox he entered
Taurus, they still more rejoiced at the
assurance that the days would again be
longer than the
nights, that the season of seed-time had come, and
the
Summer and harvest would follow.
And they
lamented when, after the Autumnal Equinox, the malign influence
of
the venomous Scorpion, and vindictive Archer, and the
filthy and ill-omened
He-Goat dragged him down toward the
Winter Solstice.
Arriving there, they said he had been
slain, and had gone to the realm of
darkness. Remaining
there three days, he rose again, and again
ascended
Northward in the heavens, to redeem the earth from
the gloom and darkness of
Winter, which soon became
emblematical of sin, and evil, and suffering; as
the
Spring, Summer, and Autumn became emblems of happiness
and immortality.
Soon they personified the Sun, and
worshipped him under the name of
OSIRIS, and transmuted the
legend of his descent among the Winter Signs,
into a fable
of his death, his descent into the infernal regions, and
his
resurrection.
The Moon became Isis, the wife
of Osiris; and Winter, as well as the desert or
the ocean
into which the Sun descended, became TYPHON, the Spirit
or
Principle of Evil, warring against and destroying
Osiris.
From the journey of the Sun through the twelve
signs came the legend of the
twelve labors of Hercules, and the
incarnations of Vishnu and Buddha.
Hence came the legend of
the murder of Khürüm, representative of the Sun,
by the
three Fellow-crafts, symbols of the three Winter signs,
Capricornus,
Aquarius, and Pisces, who assailed him at the
three gates of Heaven and
slew him at the Winter Solstice.
Hence the search for him by the nine Fellowcrafts,
the
other nine signs, his finding, burial, and
resurrection.
The celestial Taurus, opening the new year,
was the Creative of Bull of the
Hindus and Japanese,
breaking with his horn the egg out of which the world
is
born. Hence the bull APIS was worshipped by the Egyptians,
and
reproduced as a golden calf by Aaron in the desert.
Hence the cow was
sacred to the Hindus. Hence, from the
sacred and beneficent signs of Taurus
and Leo, the
human-headed winged lions and bulls in the palaces
at
Kouyounjik and Nimroud, like which were the Cherubim set
by Solomen in his
Temple: and hence the twelve brazen or
bronze oxen, on which the layer of
brass was
supported.
The Celestial Vulture or Eagle, rising and
setting with the Scorpion, was
substituted in its place, in
many cases, on account of the malign influences of
the
latter: and thus the four great periods the of the year were mailed
by the
Bull, the Lion, the Man (Aquarius) and the Eagle;
which were upon the
respective standards of Ephraim, Judah,
Reuben, and Dan; and still appear
on the shield of American
Royal Arch Masonry.
Afterward the Ram or Lamb became an
object of adoration, when, in his turn,
he opened the
equinox, to deliver the world from the wintry reign of
darkness
and evil.
Around the central and simple
idea of the annual death and resurrection of
the Sun a
multitude of circumstantial details soon clustered. Some
were
derived from other astronomical phenomena; while many
were merely
poetical ornaments and
inventions.
Besides the Sun and Moon, those ancients also
saw a beautiful Star, shining
with a soft, silvery light,
always following the Sun at no great distance when
he set,
or preceding him when he rose. Another of a red and angry color,
and
still another more kingly and brilliant than all, early
attracted their attention,
by their free movements among
the fixed hosts of Heaven: and the latter by
his unusual
brilliancy, and the regularity with which he rose and set,
These
were Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Mercury and
Saturn
could scarcely have been noticed in the world's
infancy, or until
astronomy began to assume the proportions of a
science.
In the projection of the celestial sphere by the
astronomical priests, the
zodiac and constellations,
arranged in a circle, presented their halves
in diametrical
opposition; and the hemisphere of Winter was said to
be
adverse, opposed, contrary, to that of slew him Summer.
Over the
angels of the latter ruled a king (OSIRIS or
ORMUZD), enlightened,
intelligent, creative, and
beneficent. Over the fallen angels or evil genii
of the
former, the demons or Devs of the subterranean empire
of
darkness and sorrow, and its stars, ruled also a chief.
In Egypt the
Scorpion first ruled, the sign next the
Balance, and long the chief of the
Winter signs; and then
the Polar Bear or Ass, called Typhon, that is,
deluge, on
account of the rains which inundated the earth while
that
constellation domineered. In Persia, at a later day,
it was the serpent,
which, personified as Ahriman, was the
Evil Principle of the religion of
Zoroaster.
The
Sun does not arrive at the same moment in each year at
the
equinoctial point on the equator. The explanation of
his anticipating
that point belongs to the science of
astronomy; and to that we refer you
for it. The consequence
is, what is termed the precession of the
equinoxes, by
means of which the Sun is constantly changing his place
in
the zodiac, at each vernal equinox; so that now, the signs
retaining
the names which they had 300 years before Christ,
they and the
constellations do not correspond; the Sun
being, now in the
constellation Pisces, when he is in the
sign Aries.
The annual amount of precession is 50 seconds
and a little over [50"
1.]. The period of a complete
Revolution of the Equinoxes, 25,856
years. The precession
amounts to 30º or a sign, in 2155.6 years. So
that, as the
sun now enters Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, he
entered
Aries at that period, 300 years B.C., and Taurus
2455 B.C. And the
division of the Ecliptic, now called
Taurus, lies in the Constellation
Aries; while the sign
Gemini is in the Constellation Taurus. Four
thousand six
hundred and ten years before Christ, the sun entered
Gemini
at the Vernal Equinox.
At the two periods, 2455 and 300
years before Christ and now, the
entrances of the sun at
the Equinoxes and Solstices into the signs,
were and are as
follows:-
B.C.
2455.
Leo
Scorpio
Aquarius
Vern.
Equinox, he entered Taurus
Summer
Solstice
Autumnal Equinox
Winter
Solstice
B.C.
300.
Aries
Cancer
Libra
Capricornus
Vern.
Eq
Summer Sols
Autumn Eq
Winter
Sols
1872.
Pisces
Gemini
Virgo
Sagittarius
Vern.
Eq
Sum. Sols
Aut. Eq
Winter
Sols
From confounding signs with causes came the worship of
the sun and stars. "If,"
says job, "I beheld the sun when
it shined, or the moon progressive in brightness;
and my
heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand,
this
were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for I
should have denied the God
that is above."
Perhaps
we are not, on the whole, much wiser than those simple men of the
old
time. For what do we know of effect and cause, except
that one thing regularly or
habitually follows
another?
So, because the heliacal rising of Sirius preceded
the rising of the Nile, it was
deemed to cause it; and
other stars were in like manner held to cause extreme
heat,
bitter cold, and watery storm.
A religious reverence for
the zodiacal Bull [TAURUS] appears, from a very
early
period, to have been pretty general, - perhaps it was
universal, throughout Asia;
from that chain or region of
Caucasus to which it gave name; and which is still
known
under the appellation of Mount Taurus, to the Southern extremities
of the
Indian Peninsula; extending itself also into Europe,
and through the Eastern parts
of Africa.
This
evidently originated during those remote ages of the world, when
the
colure of the vernal equinox passed across the stars in
the head of the sign
from Aries.
from
Cancer.
from Libra.
from
Capricornus.
from Pisces.
from
Gemini.
from Virgo.
from
Sagittarius.
from Aquarius.
from
Taurus.
from Leo.
from Scorpio.
Taurus
[among which was Aldebarán]; a period when, as the most
ancient
monuments of all the oriental nations attest, the
light of arts and letters first
shone forth.
The
Arabian word AL-DE-BARÁN, means the foremost, or leading star: and
it
could only have been so named, when it did precede, or
lead, all others. The
year then opened with the sun in
Taurus; and the multitude of ancient
sculptures, both in
Assyria and Egypt, wherein the bull appears with lunette
or
crescent horns, and the disk of the sun between them,
are direct allusions to
the important festival of the first
new moon of the year: and there was
everywhere an annual
celebration of the festival of the first new moon, when
the
year opened with Sol and Luna in Taurus.
David sings: "Blow
the trumpet in the New Moon; in the time appointed; on
our
solemn feast-day: for this is a statute unto Israel,
and a law of the God of
Jacob. This he ordained to Joseph,
for a testimony, when he came out of the
land of
Egypt."
The reverence paid to Taurus continued long after,
by the precession of the
Equinoxes, the colure of the
vernal equinox had come to pass through Aries.
The Chinese
still have a temple, called "The Palace of the horned Bull" and
the
same symbol is worshipped in Japan and all over
Hindostan. The Cimbrians
carried a brazen bull with them,
as the image of their God, when they overran
Spain and
Gaul; and the representation of the Creation, by the Deity in
the
shape of a bull, breaking the shell of an egg with his
horns, meant Taurus,
opening the year, and bursting the
symbolical shell of the annually-recurring
orb of the new
year.
Theophilus says that the Osiris of Egypt was supposed
to be dead or absent
fifty days in each year. Landseer
thinks that this was because the Sabæan
priests were
accustomed to see, in the lower latitudes of Egypt and
Ethiopia,
the first or chief stars of the Husbandman
[BOÖTES] sink achronically beneath
the Western horizon; and
then to begin their lamentations, or hold forth the
signal
for others to weep: and when his prolific virtues were supposed to
be
transferred to the vernal sun, bacchanalian revelry
became devotion.
Before the colure of the Vernal Equinox
had passed into Aries, and after it had
left Aldebarán and
the Hyades, the Pleiades were, for seven or eight
centuries,
the leading stars of the Sabæan year. And thus
we see, on the monuments, the
disk and crescent, symbols of
the sun and moon in conjunction, appear
successively, -
first on the head, and then on the neck and back of the
Zodiacal
Bull, and more recently on the forehead of the Ram.
The
diagrammatical character or symbol, still in use to denote Taurus, ,
is
this very crescent and disk: a symbol that has come down
to us from those
remote ages when this memorable
conjunction in Taurus, by marking the
commencement, at once
of the Sabæan year and of the cycle of the
Chaldean Saros,
so pre-eminently distinguished that sign as to become
its
characteristic symbol. On a bronze bull from China, the
crescent is attached
to the back of the Bull, by means of a
cloud, and a curved groove is provided
for the occasional
introduction of the disk of the sun, when solar and
lunar
time were coincident and conjunctive, at the
commencement of the year, and
of the lunar cycle. When that
was made, the year did not open with the stars
in the head
of the Bull, but when the colure of the vernal equinox
passed
across the middle or later degrees of the asterism
Taurus, and the Pleiades
were, in China, as in Canaan, the
leading stars of the year.
The crescent and disk combined
always represent the conjunctive Sun and
Moon; and when
placed on the head of the Zodiacal Bull, the
commencement
of the cycle termed SAROS by the Chaldeans,
and Metonic by the Greeks;
and supposed to be alluded to in
job, by the phrase, "Mazzaroth in his
season"; that is to
say, when the first new Moon and new Sun of the year
were
coincident, which happened once in eighteen years and a
fraction.
On the sarcophagus of Alexander, the same symbol
appears on the head of
a Ram, which, in the time of that
monarch, was the leading sign. So too in the
sculptured
temples of the Upper Nile, the crescent and disk appear, not
on
the head of Taurus, but on the forehead of the Ram or
the Ram-headed God,
whom the Grecian Mythologists called
Jupiter Ammon, really the Sun in
Aries.
If we now
look for a moment at the individual stars which composed and
were
near to the respective constellations, we may find
something that will connect
itself with the symbols of the
Ancient Mysteries and of Masonry.
It is to be noticed that
when the Sun is in a particular constellation, no part
of
that constellation will be seen, except just before
sunrise and just after
sunset; and then only the edge of
it: but the constellations opposite to it will
be visible.
When the Sun is in Taurus, for example, that is, when Taurus
sets
with the Sun,
Scorpio rises as he sets, and
continues visible throughout the night. And if
Taurus rises
and sets with the Sun to-day, he will, six months hence, rise
at
sunset and set at sunrise; for the stars thus gain on the Sun
two hours a month.
Going back to the time when, watched by
the Chaldean shepherds, and the
husbandmen of Ethiopia and
Egypt,
"The milk-white Pull with golden horns
"Led
on the new-born year,"
we see in the neck of TAURUS, the
Pleiades, and in his face the Hyades, "which
Grecia from
their showering names," and of whom the brilliant Aldebarán is
the
chief ; while to the southwestward is that most
splendid of all the constellations,
Orion, with Betelgueux
in his right shoulder, Bellatrix in his left shoulder,
Rigel
on the left foot, and in his belt the three stars
known as the Three Kings, and
now as the Yard and Ell.
Orion, ran the legend, persecuted the Pleiades; and to
save
them from his fury, Jupiter placed them in the Heavens, where he
still
pursues them, but in vain. They, with Arcturus and
the Bands of Orion, are
mentioned in the Book of Job. They
are usually called the Seven Stars, and it is
said there
were seven, before the fall of Troy; though now only six are
visible.
The Pleiades were so named from a Greek word
signifying to sail. In all ages
they have been observed for
signs and seasons. Virgil says that the sailors gave
names
to "the Pleiades, Hyades, and the Northern Car: Pleiadas,
Hyadas,
Claramque Lycaonis Arcton." And Palinurus, he
says,
Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, Geminosque
Triones,
Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona
-
studied Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and the Twin
Triones, and Orion
cinctured with gold.
Taurus was
the prince and leader of the celestial host for more than
two
thousand years; and when his head set with the Sun
about the last of May, the
Scorpion was seen to rise in the
Southeast.
The Pleiades were sometimes called Vergiliœ, or
the Virgins of Spring; because
the Sun entered this cluster
of stars in the season of blossoms. Their Syrian
name was
Succoth, or Succothbeneth, derived from a Chaldean word
signifying
to speculate or observe.
The Hyades are
five stars in the form of a V, 11º southeast of
the
Pleiades. The Greeks counted them as seven. When the Vernal
Equinox
was in Taurus, Aldebarán led up the starry host;
and as he rose in the East,
Aries was about 27º
high.
When he was close upon the meridian, the Heavens
presented their most
magnificent appearance. Capella was a
little further from the meridian, to the
north; and Orion
still further from it to the southward. Procyon, Sirius,
Castor
and Pollux had climbed about half-way from the
horizon to the meridian.
Regulus had just risen upon the
ecliptic. The Virgin still lingered below the
horizon.
Fomalhaut was half-way to the meridian in the Southwest; and to
the
Northwest were the brilliant constellations, Perseus,
Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and
Andromeda; while the Pleiades had
just passed the meridian.
ORION is visible to all the
habitable world. The equinoctial line passes through
the
centre of it. When Aldebarán rose in the East, the Three Kings in
Orion
followed him; and as Taurus set, the Scorpion, by
whose sting it was said
Orion died, rose in the
East.
Orion rises at noon about the 9th of March. His
rising was accompanied with
great rains and storms, and it
became very terrible to mariners.
In Boötes, called by the
ancient Greeks Lycaon, from lukos, a wolf, and by
the
Hebrews, Caleb Anubach, the Barking Dog, is the Great
Star ARCTURUS,
which, when Taurus opened the year,
corresponded with a season remarkable
for its great
heat.
Next comes GEMINI, the Twins, two human figures, in
the heads of which are
the bright Stars CASTOR and POLLUX,
the Dioscuri, and the Cabiri of
Samothrace, patrons of
navigation; while South of Pollux are the brilliant
Stars
SIRIUS and PROCYON, the greater and lesser Dog: and
still further South,
Canopus, in the Ship
Argo.
Sirius is apparently the largest and brightest Star
in the Heavens. When the
Vernal Equinox was in Taurus, he
rose heliacally, that is, just before the Sun,
when, at the
Summer Solstice, the Sun entered Leo, about the 21st of
June,
fifteen days previous to the swelling of the Nile.
The heliacal rising of Canopus
was also a precursor of the
rising of the Nile. Procyon was the forerunner of
Sirius,
and rose before him.
There are no important Stars in
CANCER. In the Zodiacs of Esne and
Dendera, and in most of
the astrological remains of
Egypt, the sign of this
constellation was a beetle (Scarabœus), which
thence became
sacred, as an emblem of the gate through which souls
descended
from Heaven. In the crest of Cancer is a cluster of
Stars
formerly called Prœsepe, the Manger, on each side of
which is a small
Star, the two of which were called Aselli
little asses.
In Leo are the splendid Stars, REGULUS,
directly on the ecliptic, and
DENEBOLA in the Lion's tail.
Southeast of Regulus is the fine Star
COR
HYDRÆ.
The combat of Hercules with the Nemæan
lion was his first labor. It was
the first sign into which
the Sun passed, after falling below the Summer
Solstice;
from which time he struggled to re-ascend.
The Nile
overflowed in this sign. It stands first in the Zodiac of
Dendera,
and is in all the Indian and Egyptian
Zodiacs.
In the left hand of VIRGO (Isis or Ceres) is the
beautiful Star SPICA
Virginis, a little South of the
ecliptic. VINDEMIATRIX, of less magnitude,
is in the right
arm; and Northwest of Spica, in Boötes (the
husbandman,
Osiris), is the splendid star
ARCTURUS.
The division of the first Decan of the Virgin,
Aben Ezra says, represents a
beautiful Virgin with flowing
hair, sitting in a chair, with two ears of corn in
her
hand, and suckling an infant. In an Arabian MS. in the Royal
Library
at Paris, is a picture of the Twelve Signs. That of
Virgo is a young girl with
an infant by her side. Virgo was
Isis; and her representation carrying a
child (Horus) in
her arms, exhibited in her temple, was accompanied by
this
inscription: "I AM ALL THAT IS, THAT WAS, AND THAT SHALL
BE;
and the fruit which I brought forth is the
Sun."
Nine months after the Sun enters Virgo, he reaches
the Twins. When
Scorpio begins to rise, Orion sets: when
Scorpio comes to the meridian,
Leo begins to set, Typhon
reigns, Osiris is slain, and Isis (the Virgin) his
sister
and wife, follows him to the tomb, weeping.
The Virgin and
Boötes, setting heliacally at the Autumnal
Equinox,
delivered the world to the wintry constellations,
and introduced into it the
genius of Evil, represented by
Ophiucus, the Serpent.
At the moment of the Winter
Solstice, the Virgin rose heliacally (with the
Sun), having
the Sun (Horus) in her bosom.
In LIBRA are four Stars of
the second and third magnitude, which we shall
mention
hereafter. They are Zuben-es-Chamali, Zuben-el-Gemabi,
Zuben-
hak-rabi, and Zuben-el-Gubi. Near the last of these is the
brilliant and
malign Star, ANTARES in Scorpio.
In
SCORPIO, ANTARES, of the 1st magnitude, and remarkably red,
was
one of the four great Stars, FOMALHAUT, in Cetus,
ALDEBARAN in
Taurus, REGULUS in Leo, and ANTARES, that
formerly answered to the
Solstitial and Equinoctial points,
and were much noticed by astronomers.
This sign was
sometimes represented by a Snake, and sometimes by
a
Crocodile, but generally by a Scorpion, which last is
found on the Mithriac
Monuments, and on the Zodiac of
Dendera. It was considered a sign
accursed, and the
entrance of the Sun into it commenced the reign
of
Typhon.
In Sagittarius, Capricornus, and
Aquarius there are no Stars of importance.
Near Pisces is
the brilliant Star FOMALHAUT. No sign in the Zodiac
is
considered of more malignant influence than this. It was
deemed indicative
of Violence and Death. Both the Syrians
and Egyptians abstained from
eating fish, out of dread and
abhorrence; and when the latter would
represent anything as
odious, or express hatred by Hieroglyphics, they
painted a
fish.
In Auriga is the bright Star CAPELLA, which to the
Egyptians never set.
And, circling ever round the North
Pole are Seven Stars, known as Ursa
Major, or the Great
Bear, which have been an object of universal
observation in
all ages of the world. They were venerated alike by
the
Priests of Bel, the Magi of Persia, the Shepherds of
Chaldea, and the
Phœnician navigators, as well as by the
astronomers of Egypt. Two of
them, MERAK and DUBHE, always
point to the North Pole.
The Phœnician and Egyptians, says
Eusebius, were the first who ascribed
divinity to the Sun,
Moon, and Stars, and regarded them as the sole causes
of
the production and destruction of all beings. From them went
abroad
over all the world all known opinions as to the
generation and descent of
the Gods. Only the Hebrews looked
beyond the visible world to an invisible
Creator. All the
rest of the world regarded as Gods those luminous
bodies
that blaze in the firmament, offered them
sacrifices, bowed down
before them, and raised neither
their souls nor their worship above the
visible
heavens.
The Chaldeans, Canaanites, and Syrians, among whom
Abraham lived,
did the same. The Canaanites consecrated
horses and chariots to the
Sun. The inhabitants of Emesa in
Phœnician adored him under the name
of Elagabalus; and the
Sun, as Hercules, was the great Deity of the
Tyrians. The
Syrians worshipped, with fear and dread, the Stars of
the
Constellation Pisces, and consecrated images of them in
their temples.
The Sun as Adonis was worshipped in Byblos
and about Mount Libanus.
There was a magnificent Temple of
the Sun at Palmyra, which was
pillaged by the soldiers of
Aurelian, who rebuilt it and dedicated it anew.
The
Pleiades, under the name of Succoth-Beneth, were worshipped
by
the Babylonian colonists who settled in the country of
the Samaritans.
Saturn, under the name of Remphan, was
worshipped among the Copts.
The planet Jupiter was
worshipped as Bel or Baal; Mars as Malec,
Melech, or
Moloch; Venus as Ashtaroth or Astarte, and Mercury as
Nebo,
among the Syrians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, and
Canaanites. '
Sanchoniathon says that the earliest
Phoenicians adored the Sun, whom
they deemed sole Lord of
the Heavens; and honored him under the name
of BEEL-SAMIN,
signifying King of Heaven. They raised columns to
the
elements, fire, and air or wind, and worshipped them;
and Sabæism, or
the worship of the Stars, flourished
everywhere in Babylonia. The Arabs,
under a sky always
clear and serene, adored the Sun, Moon, and
Stars.
Abulfaragius so informs us, and that each of the
twelve Arab Tribes
invoked a particular Star as its Patron.
The Tribe Hamyar was
consecrated to the Sun, the Tribe
Cennah to the Moon; the Tribe Misa
was under the protection
of the beautiful Star in Taurus, Aldebarán; the
Tribe Tai
under that of Canopus; the Tribe Kais, of Sirius; the
Tribes
Lachamus and Idamus, of Jupiter; the Tribe Asad, of
Mercury; and so on.
The Saracens, in the time of Heraclius,
worshipped Venus, whom they
called CABAR, or The Great; and
they swore by the Sun, Moon, and
Stars. Shahristan, an
Arabic author, says that the Arabs and Indians
before his
time had temples dedicated to the seven Planets.
Abulfaragius
says that the seven great primitive nations,
from whom all others
descended, the Persians, Chaldæans,
Greeks, Egyptians, Turks, Indians,
and Chinese, all
originally were Sabæists, and worshipped the Stars.
They
all, he says, like the Chaldæans, prayed turning toward the
North
Pole
three times a day, at Sunrise, Noon,
and Sunset, bowing themselves
three times before the Sun.
They invoked the Stars and the Intelligences
which inhabited
them, offered them sacrifices, and called the fixed
stars
and planets gods. Philo says that the Chaldæans
regarded the stars as
sovereign arbiters of the order of
the world, and did not look beyond the
visible causes to
any invisible and intellectual being. They regarded
NATURE
as the great divinity, that exercised its powers through
the
action of its parts, the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Fixed
Stars, the
successive revolutions of the seasons, and the
combined action of
Heaven and Earth. The great feast of the
Sabæans was when the Sun
reached the Vernal Equinox: and
they had five other feasts, at the times
when the five
minor planets entered the signs in which they had
their
exaltation.
Diodorus Siculus informs us that
the Egyptians recognized two great
Divinities, primary and
eternal, the Sun and Moon, which they thought
governed the
world, and from which everything receives its
nourishment
and growth: that on them depended all and the
great work of generation,
and the perfection of all effects
produced in nature. We know that the
two great Divinities
of Egypt were Osiris and Isis, the greatest agents
of
nature; according to some, the Sun and Moon, and
according to others,
Heaven and Earth, or the active and
passive principles of generation,
And we learn from
Porphyry that Chæremon, a learned priest of Egypt,
and many
other learned men of that nation, said that the
Egyptians
recognized as gods the stars composing the
zodiac, and all those that by
their rising or setting
marked its divisions; the subdivisions of the signs
into
decans, the horoscope and the stars that presided therein,
and
which were called Potent Chiefs Heaven: that
considering the Sun as the
Great God, Architect, and Ruler
of the World, they explained not only the
fable of Osiris
and Isis, but generally all their sacred legends, by
the
stars, by their appearance and disappearance, by their
ascension, by the
phases of the moon, and the increase and
diminution of her, light; by the
march of the sun, the
division of time and the heavens into two parts,
one
assigned to darkness and the other to light; by the
Nile and, in fine, by
the whole round of physical
causes.
Lucian tells us that the bull Apis, sacred to the
Egyptians, was the image
of the celestial Bull, or Taurus;
and that Jupiter Ammon, horned like a
ram, was an image of
the constellation Aries. And Clemens of Alexandria
assures
us that the four principal
sacred animals, carried in their
processions, were emblems of the
four signs or cardinal
points which fixed the seasons at the equinoxes
and solstices,
and divided into four parts the yearly march of the
sun.
They worshipped fire also, and water, and the Nile,
which river they
styled Father, Preserver of Egypt, sacred
emanation from the Great God
Osiris; and in their hymns in
which they called it the god crowned with
millet (which
grain, represented by the pschent, was part of the
headdress
of their kings), bringing with him abundance. The
other elements
were also revered by them: and the Great
Gods, whose names are
found inscribed on an ancient column,
are the Air, Heaven, the Earth,
the Sun, the Moon, Night,
and Day. And, in fine, as Eusebius says, they
regarded the
Universe as a great Deity, composed of a great number
of
gods, the different parts of itself.
The same
worship of the Heavenly Host extended into every part
of
Europe, into Asia Minor, and among the Turks, Scythians,
and Tartars.
The ancient Persians adored the Sun as
Mithras, and also the Moon,
Venus, Fire, Earth, Air, and
Water; and, having no statues or altars,
they sacrificed on
high places to the Heavens and to the Sun. On seven
ancient
pyrea they burned incense to the Seven Planets,
and
considered the elements to be divinities. In the
Zend-Avesta we find
invocations addressed to Mithras, the
stars, the elements, trees,
mountains, and every part of
nature. The Celestial Bull is invoked there,
to which the
Moon unites herself; and the four great stars,
Taschter,
Satevis, Haftorang, and Venant, the great Star
Rapitan, and the other
constellations which watch over the
different portions of the earth.
The Magi, like a multitude
of ancient nations, worshipped fire, above all
the other
elements and powers of nature. In India, the Ganges and
the
Indus were worshipped, and the Sun was the Great
Divinity. They
worshipped the Moon also, and kept up the
sacred fire. In Ceylon, the
Sun, Moon, and other planets
were worshipped: in Sumatra, the Sun,
called Iri, and the
Moon, called Handa. And the Chinese built Temples
to
Heaven, the Earth, and genii of the air, of the water, of the
mountains,
and of the stars, to the sea-dragon, and to the
planet Mars.
The celebrated Labyrinth was built in honor of
the Sun; and its twelve
palaces, like the twelve superb
columns of the Temple is, at Hieropolis,
covered with
symbols relating to the twelve signs and the
occult
qualities of the elements, were consecrated to the
twelve gods or
tutelary genii of the signs of the Zodiac.
The
figure of the pyramid and that of the obelisk,
resembling the shape of a
flame, caused these monuments to
be consecrated to the Sun and to
Fire. And Timæus of Locria says:
"The equilateral triangle enters into
the composition of
the pyramid, which has four equal faces and equal
angles,
and which in this is like fire, the most subtle and mobile of
the
elements." They and the obelisks were erected in honor
of the Sun,
termed in an inscription upon one of the
latter, translated by the
Egyptian Hermapion, and to be
found in Ammianus Marcellinus, "Apollo
the strong, Son of
God, he who made the world, true Lord of the
diadems, who
possesses Egypt and fills it with His glory."
The two most
famous divisions of the Heavens, by seven, which is that
of
the planets, and by twelve, which is that of the signs, are found
on
the religious monuments of all the people of the ancient
world. The
twelve Great Gods of Egypt are met with
everywhere. They were
adopted by the Greeks and Romans; and
the latter assigned one of
them to each sign of the Zodiac.
Their images were seen at Athens,
where an altar was
erected to each; and they were painted on the
porticos. The
People of the North had their twelve Azes, or Senate
of
twelve great gods, of whom Odin was chief. The Japanese
had the
same number, and like the Egyptians divided them
into classes, seven,
who were the most ancient, and five,
afterward added: both of which
numbers are well known and
consecrated in Masonry.
There is no more striking proof of
the universal adoration paid the stars
and constellations,
than the arrangement of the Hebrew camp in the
Desert, and
the allegory in regard to the twelve Tribes of
Israel,
ascribed in the Hebrew legends to Jacob. The Hebrew
camp was a
quadrilateral, in sixteen divisions, of which
the central four were
occupied by images of the four
elements. The four divisions at the four
angles of the
quadrilateral exhibited the four signs that the
astrologers
called fixed, and which they regard as subject
to the influence of the
four great Royal Stars, Regulus in
Leo, Aldebaran in Taurus, Antares
in Scorpio, and Fomalhaut
in the mouth of Pisces, on which falls the
water poured out
by Aquarius; of which constellations the Scorpion
was
represented in the Hebrew blazonry by the Celestial
Vulture or Eagle,
that rises at the same time with it and
is its paranatellon. The other
signs were arranged on the
four faces of the quadilateral, and in the
parallel and
interior divisions.
There is an astonishing coincidence
between the characteristics assigned by
Jacob to his sons,
and those of the signs of the Zodiac, or the planets that
have
their domicile in those signs.
Reuben is compared
to running water, unstable, and that cannot excel; and
he
answers to Aquarius, his ensign being a man. The water
poured out by Aquarius
flows toward the South Pole, and it
is the first of the four Royal Signs, ascending
from the
Winter Solstice.
The Lion (Leo) is the device of Judah; and
Jacob compares him to that animal,
whose constellation in
the Heavens is the domicile of the Sun; the Lion of
the
Tribe of Judah; by whose grip, when that of apprentice
and that of fellow-craft, -
of Aquarius at the Winter
Solstice and of Cancer at the Vernal Equinox, - had
not
succeeded in raising him, Khürüm was lifted out of the
grave.
Ephraim, on whose ensign appears the Celestial Bull,
Jacob compares to the ox.
Dan, bearing as his device a
Scorpion, he compares to the Cerastes or horned
Serpent,
synonymous in astrological language with the vulture or
pouncing
eagle; and which bird was often substituted on the
flag of Dan, in place of the
venomous scorpion, on account
of the terror which that reptile inspired, as the
symbol of
Typhon and his malign influences; wherefore the Eagle, as
its
paranatellon, that is, rising and setting at the same
time with it, was naturally
used in its stead. Hence the
four famous figures in the sacred pictures of the
Jews and
Christians, and in Royal Arch Masonry, of the Lion, the Ox, the
Man,
and the Eagle, the four creatures of the Apocalypse,
copied there from Ezekiel,
in whose reveries and rhapsodies
they are seen revolving around
blazing
circles.
The Ram, domicile of Mars, chief
of the Celestial Soldiery and of the twelve
Signs, is the
device of Gad, whom Jacob characterizes as a warrior, chief of
his
army.
Cancer, in which are the stars termed
Aselli, or little asses, is the device of the
flag of
Issachar, whom Jacob compares to an ass.
Capricorn, of old
represented with the tail of a fish, and called by
astronomers
the Son of Neptune, is the device of Zebulon,
of whom Jacob says that he dwells
on the shore of the
sea.
Sagittarius, chasing the Celestial Wolf, is the emblem
of Benjamin, whom Jacob
compares to a hunter: and in that
constellation the Romans placed the domicile
of Diana the
huntress. Virgo,
the domicile of Mercury, is borne on the
flag of Naphtali, whose eloquence
and agility Jacob
magnifies, both of which are attributes of the Courier of
the
Gods. And of Simeon and Levi he speaks as united, as are the
two
fishes that make the Constellation Pisces, which is
their armorial emblem.
Plato, in his Republic, followed the
divisions of the Zodiac and the
planets. So also did
Lycurgus at Sparta, and Cecrops in the
Athenian
Commonwealth. Chun, the Chinese legislator,
divided China into twelve
Tcheou, and specially designated
twelve mountains. The Etruscans
divided themselves into
twelve Cantons. Romulus appointed twelve
Lictors. There
were twelve tribes of Ishmael and twelve disciples of
the
Hebrew Reformer. The New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse
has twelve
gates.
The Souciet, a Chinese book,
speaks of a palace composed of four
buildings, whose gates
looked toward the four corners of the world. That
on the
East was dedicated to the new moons of the months of Spring;
that
on the West to those of Autumn; that on the South to
those of Summer;
and that on the North to those of Winter:
and in this, palace the Emperor
and his grandees sacrificed
a lamb, the animal that represented the Sun
at the Vernal
Equinox.
Among the Greeks, the march of the Choruses in
their theatres
represented the movements of the Heavens and
the planets, and the
Strophe and Anti-Strophe imitated,
Aristoxenes says, the movements of
the Stars. The number
five was sacred among the Chinese, as that of the
planets
other than the Sun and Moon. Astrology consecrated the
numbers
twelve, seven, thirty, and three hundred and sixty;
and everywhere seven,
the number of the planets, was as
sacred as twelve, that of the signs, the
months, the
oriental cycles, and the sections of the horizon. We
shall
speak more at large hereafter, in another Degree, as
to these and other
numbers, to which the ancients ascribed
mysterious powers.
The Signs of the Zodiac and the Stars
appeared on many of the ancient
coins and medals. On the
public seal of the Locrians, Ozoles was
Hesperus, or the
planet Venus. On the medals of Antioch on the Orontes
was
the ram and crescent; and the Ram was the special Deity of
Syria,
assigned to it in the division of the earth among
the twelve signs. On the
Cretan coins was the Equinoctial
Bull; and he also appeared on those of
the Mamertins and of
Athens. Sagittarius appeared on those of the
Persians.
In
India the twelve signs appeared upon the ancient coins.
The Scorpion
was engraved on the medals of the Kings of
Comagena, and Capricorn
on those of Zeugnia, Anazorba, and other
cities. On the medals of
Antoninus are found nearly all the
signs of the Zodiac.
Astrology was practised among all the
ancient nations. In Egypt, the
book of Astrology was borne
reverentially in the religious processions;
in which the
few sacred animals were also carried, as emblems of
the
equinoxes and solstices. The same science flourished
among the
Chaldeans, and over the whole of Asia and Africa.
When Alexander
invaded India, the astrologers of the
Oxydraces came to him to
disclose the secrets of their
science of Heaven and the Stars. The
Brahimins whom
Apollonius consulted, taught him the secrets of
Astronomy,
with the ceremonies and prayers whereby to appease the
gods
and learn the future from the stars. In China, astrology taught
the
mode of governing the State and families. In Arabia it
was deemed the
mother of the sciences; and old libraries
are full of Arabic books on this
pretended science. It
flourished at Rome. Constantine had his
horoscope drawn by
the astrologer Valens. It was a science in the
middle ages,
and even to this day is neither forgotten nor
unpractised.
Catherine de Medici was fond of it. Louis XIV.
consulted his horoscope,
and the learned Casini commenced
his career as an astrologer.
The ancient Sabæans
established feasts in honor of each planet, on
the day, for
each, when it entered its place of exaltation, or reached
the
particular degree in the particular sign of the zodiac
in which astrology
had fixed the place of its exaltation;
that is, the place in the Heavens
where its influence was
supposed to be greatest, and where it acted on
Nature with
the greatest energy. The place of exaltation of the Sun
was
in Aries, because, reaching that point, he awakens all
Nature, and
warms into life all the germs of vegetation;
and therefore his most
solemn feast among all nations, for
many years before our Era, was
fixed at the time of his
entrance into that sign. In Egypt, it was called
the Feast
of Fire and Light. It was the Passover, when the
Paschal
Lamb was slain and eaten, among the Jews, and
Neurouz among the
Persians. The Romans preferred the place
of domicile to that of
exaltation; and celebrated the
feasts of the planets under the signs that
were their
houses. The Chaldeans, whom and not the Egyptians,
the
Sabæans followed in this, preferred the places of
exaltation.
Saturn, from the length of time required for
his apparent revolution, was
considered the most remote,
and the Moon the nearest planet. After
the Moon came Mercury and
Venus, then the Sun, and then Mars,
Jupiter, and
Saturn.
So the risings and settings of the Fixed Stars, and
their conjunctions
with the Sun, and their first appearance
as they emerged from his rays,
fixed the epochs for the
feasts instituted in their honor; and the Sacred
Calendars
of the ancients were regulated accordingly.
In the Roman
games of the circus, celebrated in honor of the Sun and
of
entire Nature, the Sun, Moon, Planets, Zodiac, Elements, and
the
most apparent parts and potent agents of Nature were
personified and
represented, and the courses of the Sun in
the Heavens were imitated
in the Hippodrome; his chariot
being drawn by four horses of different
colors,
representing the four elements and seasons. The courses
were
from East to West, like the circuits round the Lodge,
and seven in
number, to correspond with the number of
planets. The movements of
the Seven Stars that revolve
around the pole were also represented, as
were those of
Capella, which by its heliacal rising at the moment
when
the Sun reached the Pleiades, in Taurus, announced
the
commencement of the annual revolution of the
Sun.
The intersection of the Zodiac by the colures at the
Equinoctial and
Solstitial points, fixed four periods, each
of which has, by one or more
nations, and in some cases by
the same nation at different periods,
been taken for the
commencement of the year. Some adopted the
Vernal Equinox,
because then day began to prevail over night, and
light
gained a victory over darkness. Sometimes the Summer
Solstice
was preferred; because then day attained its
maximum of duration, and
the acme of its glory and
perfection. In Egypt, another reason was, that
then the
Nile began to overflow, at the heliacal rising of Sirius.
Some
preferred the Autumnal Equinox, because then the
harvests were
gathered, and the hopes of a new crop were
deposited in the bosom of
the earth. And some preferred the
Winter Solstice, because then, the
shortest day having
arrived, their length commenced to increase, and
Light
began the career destined to end in victory at the Vernal
Equinox.
The Sun was figuratively said to die and be born
again at the Winter
Solstice; the games of the Circus, in
honor of the invincible God-Sun,
were then celebrated, and
the Roman year estab
lished or reformed by Numa, commenced.
Many peoples of Italy
commenced their year, Macrobius says,
at that time; and represented by
the four ages of man the gradual
succession of periodical increase and
diminution of day,
and the light of the Sun; likening him to an infant born
at
the Winter Solstice, a young man at the Vernal Equinox, a robust
man
at the Summer Solstice, and an old man at the Autumnal
Equinox.
This idea was borrowed from the Egyptians, who
adored the Sun at the
Winter Solstice, under the figure of
an infant.
The image of the Sign in which each of the four
seasons commenced,
became the form under which was figured
the Sun of that particular
season. The Lion's skin was worn
by Hercules; the horns of the Bull
adorned the forehead of
Bacchus; and the autumnal serpent wound its
long folds
round the Statue of Serapis, 2500 years before our era;
when
those Signs corresponded with the commencement of the
Seasons.
When other constellations replaced them at those
points, by means of
the precession of the Equinoxes, those
attributes were changed. Then
the Ram furnished the horns
for the head of the Sun, under the name of
Jupiter Ammon.
He was no longer born exposed to the waters of
Aquarius,
like Bacchus, nor enclosed in an urn like the God
Canopus;
but in the Stables of Augeas or the Celestial
Goat. He then completed
his triumph, mounted on an ass, in
the constellation Cancer, which then
occupied the
Solstitial point of Summer.
Other attributes the images of
the Sun borrowed from the constellations
which, by their
rising and setting, fixed the points of departure of
the
year, and the commencements of its four principal
divisions.
First the Bull and afterward the Ram (called by
the Persians the Lamb),
was regarded as the regenerator of
Nature, through his union with the
Sun. Each, in his turn,
was an emblem of the Sun overcoming the winter
darkness,
and repairing the disorders of Nature, which every year
was
regenerated under these Signs, after the Scorpion and
Serpent of
Autumn had brought upon it barrenness, disaster,
and darkness.
Mithras was represented sitting on a Bull;
and that animal was an image
of Osiris: while the Greek
Bacchus armed his front with its horns, and
was pictured
with its tail and feet.
The Constellations also became
noteworthy to the husbandman, which
by their rising or
setting, at morning or evening, indicated
the coming of
this period of renewed fruitfulness and new life. Capella,
or
the kid Amalthea, whose horn is called that of
abundance, awl whose
place is over the equinoctial point, or
Taurus; and the Pleiades, that long
indicated the Seasons,
and gave rise to a multitude of poetic fables, were
the
most observed and most celebrated in antiquity.
The
original Roman year commenced at the Vernal Equinox. July
was
formerly called Quintilis, the 5th month, and August
Sextilis, the 6th, as
September is still the 7th month,
October the 8th, and so on. The
Persians commenced their
year at the same time, and celebrated their
great feast of
Neurouz when the Sun entered Aries and the
Constellation
Perseus rose, - Perseus, who first brought
down to earth the heavenly fire
consecrated in their
temples: and all the ceremonies then practised
reminded men
of the renovation of Nature and the triumph of Ormuzd,
the
Light-God, over the powers of Darkness and Ahriman
their Chief.
The Legislator of the Jews fixed the
commencement of their year in the
month Nisan, at the
Vernal Equinox, at which season the Israelites
marched out
of Egypt and were relieved of their long bondage;
in
commemoration of which Exodus, they ate the Paschal Lamb
at that
Equinox. And when Bacchus and his army had long
marched in burning
deserts, they were led by a Lamb or Ram
into beautiful meadows, and to
the Springs that watered the
Temple of Jupiter Ammon. For, to the Arabs
and Ethiopians,
whose great Divinity Bacchus was, nothing was so
perfect a
type of Elysium as a Country abounding in springs and
rivulets.
Orion, on the same meridian with the Stars of
Taurus, died of the sting of
the celestial Scorpion, that
rises when he sets; as dies the Bull of Mithras
in Autumn:
and in the Stars that correspond with the Autumnal
Equinox
we find those malevolent genii that ever war
against the Principle of good,
and that take from the Sun
and the Heavens the fruit-producing power
that they
communicate to the earth.
With the Vernal Equinox, dear to
the sailor as to the husbandman, came
the Stars that, with
the Sun, open navigation, and rule the stormy Seas.
Then
the Twins plunge into the solar fires, or disappear at setting,
going
down with the Sun into the bosom of the waters. And
these tutelary
Divinities of mariners, the Dioscuri or
Chief Cahiri of Samothrace, sailed
with Jason to possess
themselves of the golden-fleeced ram, or Aries,
whose
rising in the
morning announced the Sun's entry into
Taurus, when the Serpentbearer
Jason rose in the evening,
and, in aspect with the Dioscuri, was
deemed their brother. And
Orion, son of Neptune, and most potent
controller of the
tempest-tortured ocean, announcing sometimes calm
and
sometimes tempest, rose after Taurus, rejoicing in the forehead
of
the new year.
The Summer Solstice was not less
an important point in the Sun's
march than the Vernal
Equinox, especially to the Egyptians, to whom it
not only
marked the end and term of the increasing length of the
days
and of the domination of light, and the maximum of the
Sun's elevation;
but also the annual recurrence of that
phenomenon peculiar to Egypt,
the rising of the Nile,
which, ever accompanying the Sun in his course,
seemed to
rise and fall as the days grew longer and shorter,
being
lowest at the Winter Solstice, and highest at that of
Summer. Thus the
Sun seemed to regulate its swelling; and
the time of his arrival at the
solstitial point being that
of the first rising of the Nile, was selected by
the
Egyptians as the beginning of a year which they called the Year
of
God, and of the Sothiac Period, or the period of Sothis,
the Dog-Star,
who, rising in the morning, fixed that epoch,
so important to the people
of Egypt. This year was also
called the Heliac, that is the Solar year,
and the
Canicular year; and it consisted of three hundred and
sixty-five
days, without intercalation; so that at the end
of four years, or of four
times three hundred and
sixty-five days, making 1460 days, it needed
to add a day,
to make four complete revolutions of the Sun. To
correct
this, some Nations made every fourth year consist,
as we do now, of
366 days: but the Egyptians preferred to
add nothing to the year of 365
days, which, at the end of
120 years, or of 30 times 4 years, was short
30 days or a
month; that is to say, it required a month more to
complete
the 120 revolutions of the Sun, though so many
were counted, that is,
so many years. Of course the
commencement of the 121st year would
not correspond with
the Summer Solstice, but would precede it by a
month: so
that, when the Sun arrived at the Solstitial point whence
he
at first set out, and whereto he must needs return, to
make in reality
120 years, or 120 complete revolutions, the
first month of the 121st
year would have
ended.
Thus, if the commencement of the year went back 30
days every 120
years, this commencement of the year,
continuing to
recede, would, at the end of 12 times 120
years, or of 1460 years, get
back to the Solstitial point,
or primitive point of departure of the period.
The Sun would then
have made but 1459 revolutions, though 1460
were counted;
to make up which, a year more would need to be added.
So
that the Sun would not have made his 1460 revolutions until the
end
of 1461 years of 365 days each, - each revolution being
in reality not
365 days exactly, but 365 ¼.
This
period of 1461 years, each of 365 days, bringing back
the
commencement of the Solar year to the Solstitial point,
at the rising of
Sirius, after 1460 complete Solar
revolutions, was called in Egypt the
Sothiac period, the
point of departure whereof was the Summer
Solstice, first
occupied by the Lion and afterward by Cancer, under
which
sign is Sirius, which opened the period. It was, says Porphyry,
at
this Solstitial New Moon, accompanied by the rising of
Seth or the Dog-
Star, that the beginning of the year was
fixed, and that of the
generation of all things, or, as it
were, the natal hour of the world.
Not Sirius alone
determined the period of the rising of the Nile,
Aquarius,
his urn, and the stream flowing from it, in opposition to
the
sign of the Summer Solstice then occupied by the Sun,
opened in the
evening the march of Night, and received the
full Moon in his cup.
Above him and with him rose the feet
of Pegasus, struck wherewith the
waters flow forth that the
Muses drink. The Lion and, the Dog,
indicating, were
supposed to cause the inundation, and so were
worshipped.
While the Sun passed through Leo, the waters doubled
their
depth; and the sacred fountains poured their streams through
the
heads of lions. Hydra, rising between Sirius and Leo,
extended under
three signs. Its 'head rose with Cancer, and
its tail with the feet of the
Virgin and the beginning of
Libra; and the inundation continued while
the Sun passed
along its whole extent.
The successive contest of light and
darkness for the possession of the
lunar disk, each being
by turns victor and vanquished, exactly
resembled what
passed upon the earth by he action of the Sun and
his
journeys from one Solstice to the other. The lunary
revolution
presented the same periods of light and darkness
as the year, and was
the object of the same religious
fictions. Above the Moon, Pliny said,
everything is pure,
and filled with eternal light. There ends the cone
of
shadow which the earth projects, and which produces
night; there ends
the sojourn of night
and
darkness; to it the air extends; but there we enter the
pure substance.
The Egyptians assigned to the Moon the demiurgic
or creative force of
Osiris, who united himself to her in
the spring, when the Sun
communicated to her the principles
of generation which she afterward
disseminated in the air
and all the elements. The Persians considered
the Moon to
have been impregnated by the Celestial Bull, first of
the
signs of spring. In all ages, the Moon has been
supposed to have great
influence upon vegetation, and the
birth and growth of animals; and the
belief is as widely
entertained now as ever, and that influence regarded
as a
mysterious and inexplicable one. Not the astrologers alone,
but
Naturalists like Pliny, Philosophers like Plutarch and
Cicero,
Theologians like the Egyptian Priests, and
Metaphysicians like Proclus,
believed firmly in these lunar
influences.
"The Egyptians," says Diodorus Siculus,
"acknowledged two great
gods, the Sun and Moon, or Osiris
and Isis, who govern the world and
regulate its
administration by the dispensation of the seasons . . .
.
Such is the nature of these two great Divinities, that
they impress an
active and fecundating force, by which the
generation of beings in
effected; the Sun, by heat and that
spiritual principle that forms the
breath of the winds; the
Moon by humidity and dryness; and both by
the forces of the
air which they share in common. By this
beneficial
influence everything is born, grows, and
vegetates. Wherefore this
whole huge body, in which nature
resides, is maintained by the
combined action of the Sun
and Moon, and their five qualities, - the
principles
spiritual, fiery, dry, humid, and airy."
So five primitive
powers, elements, or elementary qualities, are united
with
the Sun and Moon in the Indian theology, - air, spirit, fire,
water,
and earth: and the same five elements are recognized
by the Chinese.
The Phœnicians, like the Egyptians,
regarded the Sun and Moon and
Stars as sole causes of
generation and destruction here below.
The Moon, like the
Sun, changed continually the track in which she
crossed the
Heavens, moving ever to and fro between the upper and
lower
limits of the Zodiac; and her different places, phases,
and
aspects there, and her relations with the Sun and the
constellations,
have been a fruitful source of mythological
fables.
All the planets had what astrology termed their
houses, in the
Zodiac. The House of the Sun was in Leo, and
that of the Moon in
Cancer. Each other planet had two,
signs; Mercury had Gemini and
Virgo; Venus, Taurus and Libra;
Mars, Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter,
Pisces and Sagittarius;
and Saturn, Aquarius and Capricornus. From
this
distribution of the signs also came many mythological
emblems
and fables; as also many came from the places of
exaltation of the
planets. Diana of Ephesus, the Moon, wore
the image of a crab on her
bosom, because in that sign was
the Moon's domicile; and lions bore
up the throne of Horus,
the Egyptian Apollo, the Sun personified, for a
like
reason: while the Egyptians consecrated the tauriforn scarabæs
to
the Moon, because she had her place of exaltation in
Taurus; and for
the same reason Mercury is said to have
presented Isis with a helmet
like a bull's head.
A
further division of the Zodiac was of each sign into three parts of
10º
each, called Decans, or, in the whole Zodiac, 36 parts,
among which
the seven planets were apportioned anew, each
planet having an
equal number of Decans, except the first,
which, opening and closing
the series of planets five times
repeated, necessarily had one Decan
more than the others.
This subdivision was not invented until after
Aries opened
the Vernal Equinox; and accordingly Mars, having his
house
in Aries, opens the series of decans and closes it; the
planets
following each other, five times in succession, in
the following order,
Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the
Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc.;
so that to each sign are
assigned three planets, each occupying 10
degrees. To each
Decan a God or Genius was assigned, making thirtysix
in
all, one of whom, the Chaldeans said, came down upon
earth
every ten days, remained so many days, and
re-ascended to Heaven.
This division is found on the Indian
sphere, the Persian, and that
Barbaric one which Aben Ezra
describes. Each genius of the Decans
had a name and special
characteristics. They concur and aid in the
effects
produced by the Sun, Moon, and other planets charged with
the
administration of the world: and the doctrine in regard
to them, secret
and august as it was held, was considered
of the gravest importance;
and its principles, Firmicus
says, were not entrusted by the ancients,
inspired as they
were by the Deity, to any but the Initiates, and to
them
only with great reserve, and a kind of fear, and when
cautiously
enveloped with an obscure veil, that they might
not come to be known
by the profane.
With these
Decans were connected the paranatellons or those
stars
outside of the Zodiac, that rise and set at the same
moment with the
several divisions of 10º of each sign. As there
were anciently only fortyeight
celestial figures or
constellations, of which twelve were in the
Zodiac, it
follows that there were, outside of the Zodiac, thirty-six
other
asterisms, paranatellons of the several thirty-six
Decans. For example,
as when Capricorn set, Sirius and
Procyon, or Canis Major and Canis
Minor, rose, they were
the Paranatellons of Capricorn, though at a
great distance
from it in the heavens. The rising of Cancer was known
from
the setting of Corona Borealis and the rising of the Great
and
Little Dog, its three paranatellons.
The
risings and settings of the Stars are always spoken of
as
connected with the Sun. In that connection there are
three kinds of
them, cosmical, achronical, and heliacal,
important to be distinguished
by all who would understand
this ancient learning.
When any Star rises or sets with the
same degree of the same sign of
the Zodiac that the Sun
occupies at the time, it rises and sets
simultaneously with
the Sun, and this is termed rising or setting
cosmically;
but a star that so rises and sets can never be seen,
on
account of the light that precedes, and is left behind
by the Sun. It is
therefore necessary, in order to know his
place in the Zodiac, to
observe stars that rise just before
or set just after him.
A Star that is in the Fast when
night commences, and in the West when
it ends, is said to
rise and set achronically. A Star so rising or setting
was
in opposition to the Sun, rising at the end of evening twilight,
and
setting at the beginning of morning twilight, and this
happened to each
Star but once a year, because the Sun
moves from West to Fast, with
reference to the Stars, one
degree a day.
When a Star rises as night ends in the
morning, or sets as night
commences in the evening, it is
said to rise or set heliacally, because
the Sun (Helios)
seems to touch it with his luminous atmosphere. A
Star thus
re-appears after a disappearance, often, of several
months,
and thenceforward it rises an hour earlier each
day, gradually
emerging from the Sun's rays, until at the
end of three months it
precedes the Sun six hours, and
rises at midnight. A Star sets
heliacally, when no longer
remaining visible above the western horizon
after sunset,
the day arrives when they cease to
be seen setting in the
West. They so remain invisible, until the Sun
passes so far
to the Eastward as not to eclipse them with his light; and
then
they re-appear, but in the East, about an hour and a half
before
sunrise: and this is their heliacal rising. In this
interval, the cosmical
rising and setting take
place.
Besides the relations of the constellations and
their paranatelIons with
the houses and places of
exaltation of the Planets, and with their places
in the
respective Signs and Decans, the Stars were supposed
to
produce different effects according as they rose or set,
and according
as they did so either cosmically,
achronicany, or heliacally; and also
according to the
different seasons of the year in which these
phenomena
occurred; and these differences were carefully marked
on
the old Calendars; and many things in the ancient
allegories are
referable to them.
Another and most
important division of the Stars was into good and
bad,
beneficent and malevolent. With the Persians, the
former, of the
Zodiacal Constellations, were from Aries to
Virgo, inclusive; and the
latter from Libra to Pisces,
inclusive. Hence the good Angels and Genii,
and the bad
Angels, Devs, Evil Genii, Devils, Fallen Angels, Titans,
and
Giants of the Mythology. The other thirty-six
Constellations were equally
divided, eighteen on each side,
or, with those of the Zodiac, twenty-four.
Thus the
symbolic Egg, that issued from the mouth of the
invisible
Egyptian God KNEPH; known in the Grecian
Mysteries as the Orphic
Egg; from which issued the God
CHUMONG of the Coresians, and the
Egyptian OSIRISS, and
PHANES, God and Principle of Light; from
which, broken by
the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, the world emerged;
and
which the Greeks placed at the feet of BACCHUS
TAURI-CORNUS;
the Magian Egg of ORMUZD, from which came the
Amshaspands and
Devs; was divided into two halves, and
equally apportioned between the
Good and Evil
Constellations and Angels. Those of Spring, as for
example
Aries and Taurus, Auriga and Capella, were the
beneficent
stars; and those of Autumn, as the Balance,
Scorpio, the Serpent of
Ophiucus, and the Dragon of the
Hesperides, were types and subjects
of the Evil Principle,
and regarded as malevolent causes of the ill
effects
experienced in Autumn and Winter. Thus are
explained the mysteries of
the journeyings of the human
soul through the spheres, when it
descends to the earth by
the Sign of the Serpent, and returns to the
Empire of light
by that of the Lamb or Bull.
The creative action of Heaven
was manifested, and all its demiurgic
energy developed,
most of all at the Vernal Equinox, to which refer all
the fables
that typify the victory of Light over Darkness, by the
triumphs
of Jupiter, Osiris, Ormuzd, and Apollo. Always the
triumphant god
takes the form of the Bull, the Ram, or the
Lamb. Then Jupiter wrests
from Typhon his thunderbolts, of
which that malignant Deity had
possessed himself during the
Winter. Then the God of Light
overwhelms his foe, pictured
as a huge Serpent. Then Winter ends; the
Sun, seated on the
Bull and accompanied by Orion, blazes in the
Heavens. All
nature rejoices at the victory; and Order and Harmony
are
everywhere re-established, in place of the dire
confusion that reigned
while gloomy Typhon domineered, and
Ahriman prevailed against
Ormuzd.
The universal
Soul of the World, motive power of Heaven and of
the
Spheres, it was held, exercises its creative energy
chiefly through the
medium of the Sun, during his
revolution along the signs of the Zodiac,
with which signs
unite the paranatellons that modify their influence,
and
concur in furnishing the symbolic attributes of the
Great Luminary that
regulates Nature and is the depository
of her greatest powers. The
action of this Universal Soul
of the World is displayed in the
movements of the Spheres,
and above all in that of the Sun, in the
successions of the
risings and settings of the Stars, and in their
periodical
returns. By these are explainable all the metamorphoses
of
that Soul, personified as Jupiter, as Bacchus, as
Vishnu, or as Buddha,
and all the various attributes
ascribed to it; and also the worship of
those animals that
were consecrated in the ancient Temples,
representatives on
earth of the Celestial Signs, and supposed to
receive by
transmission from them the rays and emanations which
in
them flow from the Universal Soul.
All the old
Adorers of Nature, the Theologians, Astrologers, and
Poets,
as well as the most distinguished Philosophers,
supposed that the
Stars were so many animated and
intelligent beings, or eternal bodies,
active causes of
effect here below, animated by a living principle,
and
directed by an intelligence that was itself but an
emanation from and a
part of the life and universal
intelligence of the world: and we find in the
hierarchical
order and distribution of their eternal and
divine
Intelligences, known by the names of Gods, Angels,
and Genii, the
same distributions and
the same
divisions as those by which the ancients divided the
visible
Universe and distributed its parts. And the famous
divisions by seven
and by twelve, appertaining to the planets and
the signs of the zodiac,
is everywhere found in the
hierarchical order of the Gods, and Angels,
and the other
Ministers that are the depositaries of that Divine
Force
which moves and rules the world.
These, and
the other Intelligences assigned to the other Stars,
have
absolute dominion over all parts of Nature; over the
elements, the
animal and vegetable kingdoms, over man and
all his actions, over his
virtues and vices, and over good
and evil, which divide between them
his life. The passions
of his soul and the maladies of his body, - these
and the
entire man are dependent on the heavens and the genii
that
there inhabit, who preside at his birth, control his
fortunes during life,
and receive his soul or active and
intelligent part when it is to be reunited
to the pure life
of the lofty Stars. And all through the great body
of the
world are disseminated portions of the universal
Soul,
impressing movement on everything that seems to move
of itself, giving
life to the plants and trees, directing
by a regular and settled plan the
organization and
development of their germs, imparting constant
mobility to
the running waters and maintaining their eternal
motion,
impelling the winds and changing their direction or
stilling them,
calming and arousing the ocean, unchaining
the storm pouring out the
fires of volcanoes, or with
earthquakes shaking the roots of huge
mountains and the
foundations of vast continents; by means of a force
that,
belonging to Nature, is a mystery to man.
And these
invisible Intelligences, like the stars, are marshalled in
two
great divisions, under the banners of the two
Principles of Good and
Evil, Light and Darkness; under
Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and
Typhon. The Evil Principle
was the motive power of brute matter; and
it, personified
as Ahriman and Typhon, had its hosts and armies of
Devs and
Genii, Fallen Angels and Malevolent Spirits, who
waged
continual wage with the Good Principle, the Principle
of Empyreal Light
and Splendor, Osiris, Ormuzd, Jupiter or
Dionusos, with his bright
hosts of Amshaspands, Izeds,
Angels, and Archangels; a warfare that
goes on from birth
until death, in the soul of every man that lives.
We have
heretofore, in the 24th Degree recited the principal
incidents
in the legend of Osiris and Isis, and it remains
but to point
out the astronomical phenomena which it has
converted into mythological
facts.
The Sun, at the
Vernal Equinox, was the fruit-compelling star that by
his
warmth provoked generation and poured upon the
sublunary world all the
blessings of Heaven; the beneficent
god, tutelary genius of universal
vegetation, that
communicates to the dull earth new activity, and stirs
her
great heart, long chilled by Winter and his frosts,
until from her bosom burst
all the greenness and perfume of
spring, making her rejoice in leafy forests
and grassy
lawns and flower-enamelled meadows, and the promise
of
abundant crops of grain and fruits and purple grapes in
their due season.
He was then called Osiris, Husband of
Isis, God of Cultivation and
Benefactor of Men, pouring on
them and on the earth the choicest
blessings within the
gift of the Divinity. Opposed to him was Typhon,
his
antagonist in the Egyptian mythology, as Ahriman was
the foe of Ormuzd,
the Good Principle, in the theology of
the Persians.
The first inhabitants of Egypt and Ethiopia,
as Diodorus Siculus informs us,
saw in the Heavens two
first eternal causes of things, or great Divinities,
one
the Sun, whom they called Osiris, and the other the Moon, whom
they
called Isis; and these they considered the causes of
all the generations of
earth. This idea, we learn from
Eusebius, was the same as that of the
Phœnicians. On these
two great Divinities the administration of the
world
depended. All sublunary bodies received from them
their nourishment and
increase, during the annual
revolution which they controlled, and the
different seasons
into which it was divided.
To Osiris and Isis, it was held,
were owing civilization, the discovery of
agriculture,
laws, arts of all kinds, religious worship, temples, the
invention
of letters, astronomy, the gymnastic arts, and
music; and thus they were the
universal benefactors. Osiris
travelled to civilize the countries which he
passed
through, and communicate to them his valuable discoveries.
He
built cities, and taught men to cultivate the earth.
Wheat and wine were his
first presents to men. Europe,
Asia, and Africa partook of the blessings
which he
communicated, and the most remote regions of India
remembered
him, and claimed him as one of their great
gods.
You have learned how Typhon, his brother, slew him.
His body was cut into
pieces, all of which were collected
by Isis, except his
organs of generation, which had been
thrown into and devoured in the
waters of the river that
every year fertilized Egypt. The other portions were
buried by
Isis, and over them she erected a tomb. Thereafter she
remained
single, loading her subjects with blessings. She
cured the sick, restored
sight to the blind, made the
paralytic whole, and even raised the dead.
From her Horus
or Apollo learned divination and the science of
medicine.
Thus the Egyptians pictured the beneficent action
of the two luminaries
that, from the bosom of the elements,
produced all animals and men, and
all bodies that are born,
grow, and die in the eternal circle of generation
and
destruction here below.
When the Celestial Bull opened the
new year at the Vernal Equinox, Osiris,
united with the
Moon, communicated to her the seeds of fruitfulness
which
she poured upon the air, and therewith impregnated
the generative
principles which gave activity to universal
vegetation. Apis, represented by
a bull, was the living and
sensible image of the Sun or Osiris, when in union
with
Isis or the Moon at the Vernal Equinox, concurring with her
in
provoking everything that lives to generation. This
conjunction of the Sun
with the Moon at the Vernal Equinox,
in the constellation Taurus, required
the Bull Apis to have
on his shoulder a mark resembling the Crescent
Moon. And
the fecundating influence of these two luminaries
was
expressed by images that would now be deemed gross and
indecent, but
which then were not
misunderstood.
Everything good in Nature comes from Osiris,
- order, harmony, and the
favorable temperature of the
seasons and celestial periods. From Typhon
come the stormy
passions and irregular impulses that agitate the brute
and
material part of man; maladies of the body, and violent
shocks that injure
the health and derange the system;
inclement weather, derangement of the
seasons, and
eclipses. Osiris and Typhon were the Ormuzd and Ahriman
of
the Persians; principles of good and evil, of light and
darkness, ever at war
in the administration of the
Universe.
Osiris was the image of generative power. This
was expressed by his
symbolic statues, and by the sign into
which he entered at the Vernal
Equinox. He especially
dispensed the humid principle of Nature, generative
element
of all things; and the Nile and all moisture were regarded
as
emanations from him, without which there could be no
vegetation.
That Osiris and Isis were the Sun and Moon, is
attested by
many ancient writers; by Diogenes Laertius,
Plutarch, Lucian, Suidas,
Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and
others. His power was symbolized
by an Eye over a Sceptre. The
Sun was termed by the Greeks the Eye
of Jupiter, and the
Eye of the World; and his is the All-Seeing Eye in
our
Lodges. The oracle of Claros styled him King of the Stars and
of
the Eternal Fire, that engenders the year and the
seasons, dispenses
rain and winds, and brings about
daybreak and night. And Osiris was
invoked as the God that
resides in the Sun and is enveloped by his
rays, the
invisible and eternal force that modifies the sublunary
world
by means of the Sun.
Osiris was the same God
known as Bacchus, Dionusos, and Serapis.
Serapis is the
author of the regularity and harmony of the world.
Bacchus,
jointly with Ceres (identified by Herodotus with Isis)
presides
over the distribution of all our blessings; and
from the two emanates
everything beautiful and good in
Nature. One furnishes the germ and
principle of every good;
the other receives and preserves it as a
deposit; and the
latter is the function of the Moon in the theology of
the
Persians. In each theology, Persian and Egyptian, the
Moon acts
directly on the earth; but she is fecundated, in
one by the Celestial Bull
and in the other by Osiris, with
whom she is united at the Vernal
Equinox, in the sign
Taurus, the place of her exaltation or greatest
influence
on the earth. The force of Osiris, says Plutarch, is
exercised
through the Moon. She is the passive cause
relatively to him, and the
active cause relatively to the
earth, to which she transmits the germs of
fruitfulness
received from him.
In Egypt the earliest movement in the
waters of the Nile began to
appear at the Vernal Equinox,
when the new Moon occurred at the
entrance of the Sun into
the constellation Taurus; and thus the Nile
was held to
receive its fertilizing power from the combined action of
the
equinoctial Sun and the new Moon, meeting in Taurus.
Osiris was often
confounded with the Nile, and Isis with
the earth; and Osiris was
deemed to act on the earth, and
to transmit to it his emanations,
through both the Moon and
the Nile; whence the fable that his
generative organs were
thrown into that river. Typhon, on the other
hand, was the
principle of aridity and barrenness; and by his
mutilation
of Osiris was meant that. drought which caused
the Nile to retire within
his bed and shrink up in
Autumn.
Elsewhere than in Egypt, Osiris was the symbol of
the refreshing rains
that descend to fertilize the earth;
and Typhon the burning winds of
Autumn; the stormy rains that rot
the flowers, the plants, and leaves;
the short, cold days;
and everything injurious in Nature, and that
produces
corruption and destruction.
In short, Typhon is the
principle of corruption, of darkness, of the lower
world
from which come earthquakes, tumultuous commotions of the
air,
burning heat, lightning, and fiery meteors, and plague
and pestilence.
Such too was the Ahriman of the Persians;
and this revolt of the Evil
Principle against the Principle
of Good and Light, has been
represented in every cosmogony,
under many varying forms. Osiris, on
the contrary, by the
intermediation of Isis, fills the material world
with
happiness, purity, and order, by which the harmony of
Nature is
maintained. t was said that he died at the
Autumnal Equinox, when
Taurus or the Pleiades rose in the
evening, and that he rose to life
again in "lie Spring,
when vegetation was inspired with new activity.
Of course
the two signs of Taurus and Scorpio will figure most
largely
in the mythological history of Osiris, for they
marked the two equinoxes,
2500 years before our Era; and
next to them the other constellations,
near the equinoxes,
that fixed the limits of the duration of the
fertilizing
action of the Sun; and it is also to be
remarked that Venus, the
Goddess of Generation, has her
domicile in Taurus, as the Moon has
there her place of
exaltation.
When the Sun was in Scorpio, Osiris lost his
life, and that fruitfulness
which, under the form of the
Bull, he had communicated, through the
Moon, to the Earth.
Typhon, his hands and feet horrid with serpents,
and whose
habitat in the Egyptian planisphere was under
Scorpio,
confined him in a chest and flung him into the
Nile, under the 17th
degree of Scorpio. Under that sign he
lost his life and virility; and he
recovered them in the
Spring, when he had connection with the Moon.
When he
entered Scorpio, his light diminished, Night reassumed
her
dominion, the Nile shrunk within its banks, and the
earth lost her
verdure and the trees their leaves.
Therefore it is that on the Mithriac
Monuments, the
Scorpion bites the testicles of the Equinoctial Bull,
on
which sits Mithras, the Sun of Spring and God of
Generation; and that,
on the same monuments, we see two
trees, one covered with young
leaves, and at its foot a
little bull and a torch burning; and the
other loaded with
fruit, and at its foot a Scorpion, and a torch reversed
and
extinguished.
Ormuzd or Osiris, the beneficent Principle that
gives the world light,
was personified by the Sun, apparent
source of light. Darkness,
personified by Typhon or
Ahriman, was his natural enemy. The Sages
of Egypt
described the necessary and eternal rivalry or opposition
of
these principles, ever pursuing one the other, and one
dethroning the
other in every annual revolution, and at a
particular period, one in the
Spring under the Bull, and
the other in Autumn under the Scorpion, by
the legendary
history of Osiris and Typhon, detailed to us by
Diodorus
and Synesius; in which history were also
personified the Stars and
constellations Orion, Capella,
the Twins, the Wolf, Sirius, and
Hercules, whose risings
and settings noted the advent of one or the
other
equinox.
Plutarch gives us the positions in the Heavens of
the Sun and Moon, at
the moment when Osiris was murdered by
Typhon. The Sun, he says,
was in the Sign of the Scorpion,
which he then entered at the Autumnal
Equinox. The Moon was
full, he adds; and consequently, as it rose at
sunset, it
occupied Taurus, which, opposite to Scorpio, rose as it
and
the Sun sank together, so that she was then found alone
in the sign
Taurus, where, six months before, she had been
in union or
conjunction with Osiris, the Sun, receiving
from him those germs of
universal fertilization which he
communicated to her. It was the sign
through which Osiris
first ascended into his empire of light and good. It
rose
with the Sun on the day of the Vernal Equinox; it remained
six
months in the luminous hemisphere, ever preceding the
Sun and above
the horizon during the day; until in Autumn,
the Sun arriving at Scorpio,
Taurus was in complete
opposition with him, rose when he set, and
completed its
entire course above the horizon during the
night;
presiding, by rising in the evening, over the
commencement of the long
nights. Hence in the sad
ceremonies commemorating the death of
Osiris, there was
borne in procession a golden bull covered with black
crape,
image of the darkness into which the familiar sign of Osiris
was
entering, and which was to spread over the Northern
regions, while the
Sun, prolonging the nights, was to be
absent, and each to remain
under the dominion of Typhon,
Principle of Evil and Darkness.
Setting out from the sign
Taurus, Isis, as the Moon, went seeking for
Osiris through
all the superior signs, in each of which she
became full in
the successive months from the Autumnal to the
Vernal
Equinox, without finding him in either. Let us
follow her in her allegorical
wanderings.
Osiris was
slain by Typhon his rival, with whom conspired a Queen
of
Ethiopia, by whom, says Plutarch, were designated the
winds. The
paranatellons of Scorpio, the sign occupied by
the Sun when Osiris was
slain, were the Serpents, reptiles
which supplied the attributes of the Evil
Genii and of
Typhon, who himself bore the form of a serpent in
the
Egyptian planisphere. And in the division of Scorpio is
also found
Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia, whose setting
brings stormy winds.
Osiris descended to the shades or
infernal regions. There he took the
name of Serapis,
identical with Pluto, and assumed his nature. He was
then
in conjunction with Serpentarius, identical with Æsculapius,
whose
form he took in his passage to the lower signs, where
he takes the names
of Pluto and Ades.
Then Isis
wept for the death of Osiris, and the golden bull covered
with
crape was carried in procession. Nature mourned the
impending loss of
her Summer glories, and the advent of the
empire of night, the withdrawing
of the waters, made
fruitful by the Bull in Spring, the cessation of the
winds
that brought rains to swell the Nile, the shortening
of the days, and the
despoiling of the earth. Then Taurus,
directly opposite the Sun, entered
into the cone of shadow
which the earth projects, by which the Moon is
eclipsed at
full, and with which, making night, the Bull rises and
descends
as if covered with a veil, while he remains above
our horizon.
The body of Osiris, enclosed in a chest or
coffin, was cast into the Nile.
Pan and the Satyrs, near
Chemmis, first discovered his death, announced
it by their
cries, and everywhere created sorrow and alarm. Taurus,
with
the full Moon, then entered into the cone of shadow,
and under him was
the Celestial River, most properly called
the Nile, and below, Perseus, the
God of Chemmis, and
Auriga, leading a she-goat, himself identical with
Pan,
whose wife Aiga the she-goat was styled.
Then Isis went in
search of the body. She first met certain children who
had
seen it, received from them their information, and gave them in
return
the gift of divination. The second full Moon
occurred in Gemini, the Twins,
who presided over the
oracles of Didymus, and one of whom was Apollo,
the God of
Divination.
She learned that Osiris had, through mistake,
had connection with her
sister Nephte, which she discovered
by a crown of leaves of the melilot,
which he had left behind
him. Of this connection a child was born, whom
Isis, aided
by her dogs, sought for, found, reared, and attached
to
herself, by the name of Anubis, her faithful guardian.
The third full Moon
occurs in Cancer, domicile of the Moon.
The paranatellons of that sign
are, the crown of Ariadne or
Proserpine, made of leaves of the melilot,
Procyon and
Canis Major, one star of which was called the Star of
Isis,
while Sirius himself was honored in Egypt under the
name of Anubis.
Isis repaired to Byblos, and seated herself
near a fountain, where she
was found by the women of the
Court of a King. She was induced to visit
his Court, and
became the nurse of his son. The fourth full Moon was
in
Leo, domicile of the Sun, or of Adonis, King of Byblos.
The
paranatellons of this sign are the flowing water of
Aquarius, and
Cephens, King of Ethiopia, called Regulus, or
simply The King. Behind
him rise Cassiopeia his wife, Queen
of Ethiopia, Andromeda his
daughter, and Perseus his
son-in-law, all paranatellons in part of this
sign, and in
part of Virgo.
Isis suckled the child, not at her breast,
but with the end of her finger, at
night. She burned all
the mortal parts of its body, and then, taking the
shape of
a swallow, she flew to the great column of the palace, made
of
the tamarisk-tree that grew up round the coffin
containing the body of
Osiris, and within which it was
still enclosed. The fifth full Moon
occurred in Virgo, the
true image of Isis, and which Eratosthenes calls
by that
name. It pictured a woman suckling an infant, the son of
Isis,
born near the Winter Solstice. This sign has for
paranatellons the mast
of the Celestial Ship, and the
swallow-tailed fish or swallow above it,
and a portion of
Perseus, son-in-law of the King of Ethiopia.
Isis, having
recovered the sacred coffer, sailed from Byblos in a
vessel
with the eldest son of the King, toward Boutos,
where Anubis was,
having charge of her son Horus; and in
the morning dried up a river,
whence arose a strong wind.
Landing, she hid the coffer in a forest.
Typhon, hunting a
wild boar by moonlight, discovered it, recognized the
body
of his rival, and cut it into fourteen pieces, the number of
days
between the full and new Moon, and in every one of
which days the
Moon loses a portion of the light that at
the commencement filled her
whole disk. The sixth full Moon
occurred in Libra over the divisions
separating
which
from Virgo are the Celestial Ship, Perseus, son of
the King of Ethiopia
and Boötes, said to have nursed Horus.
The river of Orion that sets in
the morning is also a
paranatellon of Libra, as are Ursa Major, the
Great Bear or
Wild Boar of Erymanthus, and the Dragon of the North
Pole
or the celebrated Python from which the attributes of Typhon
were
borrowed. All these surround the full Moon of Libra,
last of the Superior
Signs, and the one that precedes the
new Moon of Spring, about to be
reproduced in Taurus, and
there be once more in conjunction with
the
Sun.
Isis collects the scattered fragments of
the body of Osiris, buries them,
and consecrates the
phallus, carried in pomp at the Pamylia, or feasts
of the
Vernal Equinox, at which time the congress of Osiris and
the
Moon was celebrated. Then Osiris had returned from the
shades, to aid
Horus his son and Isis his wife against the
forces of Typhon. He thus
reappeared, say some, under the
form of a wolf, or, others say, under
that of a horse. The
Moon, fourteen days after she is full in Libra,
arrives at
Taurus and unites herself to the Sun, whose fires
she
thereafter for fourteen days continues to accumulate on
her disk from
new Moon to full. Then she unites with
herself all the months in that
superior portion of the
world where light always reigns, with harmony
and order,
and she borrows from him the force which is to destroy
the
germs of evil that Typhon had, during the winter,
planted everywhere in
nature. This passage of the Sun into
Taurus, whose attributes he
assumes on his return from the
lower hemisphere or the shades, is
marked by the rising in
the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and
by the
heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and
which
thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of
Spring, in his triumph
over the darkness or
Typhon.
Isis, during the absence of Osiris, and after she
had hidden the coffer
in the place where Typhon found it,
had rejoined that malignant enemy;
indignant at which,
Horus her son deprived her of her ancient diadem
when she
rejoined Osiris as lie was about to attack Typhon:
but
Mercury gave her in its place a helmet shaped like the
head of a bull.
Then Horus, as a mighty warrior, such as
Orion was described, fought
with and defeated Typhon; who,
in the shape of the Serpent or Dragon
of the Pole, had
assailed his father. So, in Ovid, Apollo destroys the
same
Python, when Io, fascinated by Jupiter, is metamorphosed into
a
cow, and placed in the sign of the Celestial Bull, where
she becomes
Isis. The equi
noctial year ends at
the moment when the Sun and Moon, at the Vernal
Equinox,
are united with Orion, the Star of Horns, placed of in
the
Heavens under Taurus. The new Moon becomes young again
in
Taurus, and shows herself as a crescent, for the first
time, in the next
sign, Gemini, the domicile of Mercury.
Then Orion, in conjunction with
the Sun, with whom he
rises, precipitates the Scorpion, his rival, into
the
shades of night, causing him to set he whenever he himself
reappears
on the eastern horizon, with the Sun. Day
lengthens and the
germs of evil are by degrees eradicated:
and Horus (from Aur, Light)
reigns triumphant, symbolizing,
by his succession to the characteristics
of Osiris, the
eternal renewal of the Sun's youth and creative vigor
at
the Vernal of Equinox.
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