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
re-united 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 storms, 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. It 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 the 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
Cepheus, 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 he 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
equinoctial year ends at the moment when the Sun and Moon, at the
Vernal Equinox, are united with Orion, the Star of Horus, placed 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 whenever he himself re-appears 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 Equinox.
Such are the coincidences of astronomical phenomena with the legend of
Osiris and Isis; sufficing to show the origin of the legend, overloaded
as it became at length with all the ornamentation natural to the
poetical and figurative genius of the Orient.
Not only into this legend, but into those of all the ancient nations,
enter the Bull, the Lamb, the Lion, and the Scorpion or the Serpent; and
traces of the worship of the Sun yet linger in all religions.
Everywhere, even in our Order, survive the equinoctial and solstitial
feasts. Our ceilings still glitter with the greater and lesser
luminaries of the Heavens, and our lights, in their number and
arrangement, have astronomical references. In all churches and chapels,
as in all Pagan temples and pagodas, the altar is in the East; and the
ivy over the east windows of old churches is the Hedera Helix of
Bacchus. Even the cross had an astronomical origin; and our Lodges are
full of the ancient symbols.