Part 42 (2/2)
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 Solst.i.tial 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 G.o.d-Sun, were then celebrated, and the Roman year, established 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 G.o.d Canopus; but in the Stables of Augeas or the Celestial Goat. He then completed his triumph, mounted on an a.s.s, in the constellation Cancer, which then occupied the Solst.i.tial 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 princ.i.p.al 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, and whose place is over the equinoctial point, or Taurus; and the Pleiades, that long indicated the Seasons, and gave rise to a mult.i.tude 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 _s.e.xtilis_, 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-G.o.d, 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 Cabiri 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 Serpent-bearer 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 solst.i.tial 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 G.o.d, 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 Solst.i.tial 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 Solst.i.tial 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-l/4.
This period of 1461 years, each of 365 days, bringing back the commencement of the Solar year to the Solst.i.tial 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 Solst.i.tial 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 wors.h.i.+pped. While the Sun pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed upon the earth by the 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 a.s.signed 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 G.o.ds, 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 Phoenicians, 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 tauriform scarabaesus 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 10 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 a.s.signed three planets, each occupying 10 degrees. To each Decan a G.o.d or Genius was a.s.signed, making thirty-six 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.
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