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.