Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish...

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."

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 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, [Glyph], 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.

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.

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,—

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.

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.

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 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.