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, established 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, and 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 Cabiri 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 Serpent-bearer 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-l/4.
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 the 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
Phoenicians, 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 tauriform scarabæsus 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
10° 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 thirty-six 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 10° of each sign. As there were anciently only
forty-eight 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 East 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 East, 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 paranatellons 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, achronically, 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
OSIRIS, 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 or 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.