Speculating relative to the order in which chaos had been organized,
the ancient Astrologers constructed a Cosmogony, which divided the
labors of God the Son, or second person in the Trinity, into six
periods of a thousand years each; and which, answering to the six
divisions of the 12,000 year cycle corresponding to the reproductive
months of Spring and Summer, taught that in the first period he made
the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, vegetation; in
the fourth, the Sun and Moon and "the stars also;" in the fifth, the
animals, fishes, birds, etc., and in the sixth, Man.
That vegetation was made before the Sun was not an inconsistent idea to
the originators of the ancient Cosmogony. They imagined that the heat
and light, emanating from the elementary fire, were sufficient to
stimulate its growth, after which God the Son gathered it together and
made the Celestial luminaries. In the solar fables this imaginary
element is called the fire-ether, or sacred fire of the stars.