XXV NIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT. ( Part 2 of 4 )
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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.
end 2 of 4