Part 44 (1/2)
The learned author of the Sabaean Researches, Landseer, advances another theory in regard to the legend of Osiris; in which he makes the constellation Bootes play a leading part. He observes that, as none of the stars were visible at the same time with the Sun, his actual place in the Zodiac, at any given time, could only be, ascertained by the Sabaesan astronomers by their observations of the stars, and of their heliacal and achronical risings and settings. There were many solar festivals among the Sabaeans, and part of them agricultural ones; and the concomitant signs of those festivals were the risings and settings of the stars of the Husbandman, Bear-driver, or Hunter, BOoTES. His stars were, among the Hierophants, the established nocturnal indices or signs of the Sun's place in the ecliptic at different seasons of the year, and the festivals were named, one, that of the _Aphanism_ or disappearance; another, that of the _Zetesis,_ or search, etc., of Osiris or Adonis, that is, of _Bootes._
The returns of certain stars, as connected with their concomitant seasons of spring (or seed-time) and harvest, seemed to the ancients, who had not yet discovered that gradual change, resulting from the apparent movement of the stars in longitude, which has been termed the precession of the equinoxes, to be eternal and immutable; and those periodical returns were to the initiated, even more than to the vulgar, celestial oracles, announcing the approach of those important changes, upon which the prosperity, and even the very existence of man must ever depend; and the oldest of the Sabaean constellations seem to have been, an astronomical _Priest,_ a _King,_ a _Queen,_ a _Husbandman,_ and a _Warrior_; and these more frequently recur on the Sabaean cylinders than any other constellations whatever. The _King_ was _Cepheus_ or _Chepheus_ of Ethiopia: the _Husbandman, Osiris, Bacchus, Sabazeus, Noah_ or _Bootes_. To the latter sign, the Egyptians were nationally, traditionally and habitually grateful; for they conceived that from Osiris all the greatest of terrestrial enjoyments were derived. The stars of the Husbandman were the signal for those successive agricultural labors on which the annual produce of the soil depended; and they came in consequence to be considered and hailed, in Egypt and Ethiopia, as the genial stars of terrestrial productiveness; to which the oblations, prayers, and vows of the pious Sabaean were regularly offered up.
Landseer says that the stars in Bootes, reckoning down to those of the 5th magnitude inclusive, are _twenty-six,_ which, seeming achronically to disappear in succession, produced the fable of the cutting of Osiris into twenty-six pieces by Typhon. There are more stars than this in the constellation; but no more that the ancient votaries of Osiris, even in the clear atmosphere of the Sabaean climates, could observe without telescopes.
Plutarch says Osiris was cut into _fourteen_ pieces: Diodorus, into _twenty-six_; in regard to which, and to the whole legend, Landseer's ideas, varying from those commonly entertained, are as follows:
Typhon, Landseer thinks, was the _ocean_, which the ancients fabled or believed surrounded the Earth, and into which all the stars in their turn appear successively to sink; [perhaps it was DARKNESS personified, which the ancients called TYPHON. He Was hunting by moonlight, says the old legend, when he met with Osiris].
The ancient Saba must have been near lat.i.tude 15 north. Axoum is nearly in 14, and the Western Saba or Meroe is to the north of that.
Forty-eight centuries ago, Aldebaran, the leading star of the year, had, at the Vernal Equinox, attained at daylight in the morning, an elevation of about 14 degrees, sufficient for him to have ceased to be _combust_, that is, to have emerged from the Sun's rays, so as to be visible. The ancients allowed _twelve_ days for a star of the first magnitude to emerge from the solar rays; and there is less twilight, the further South we go.
At the same period, too, Cynosura was not the pole-star, but Alpha Draconis was; and the stars rose and set with very different degrees of obliquity from those of their present risings and settings. By having a globe constructed with circ.u.mvolving poles, capable of any adjustment with regard to the colures, Mr. Landseer ascertained that, at that remote period, in lat. 15 north, the 26 stars in Bootes, or 27, including Arcturus, did not set anchronically in succession; but several set simultaneously in couples, and six by threes simultaneously; so that, in all, there were but _fourteen_ separate settings or disappearances, corresponding with the fourteen pieces into which Osiris was cut, according to Plutarch. Kappa, Iota, and Theta, in the uplifted western hand, disappeared together, and last of all. They really skirted the horizon; but were invisible in that low lat.i.tude, for the three or four days mentioned in some of the versions; while the _Zetesis_ or search was proceeding, and the women of Phnicia and Jerusalem sat weeping for the Wonder, Thammuz; after which they immediately reappeared, below and to the eastward of _a_ Draconis.
And, on the very morning after the achronical departure of the last star of the Husbandman, Aldebaran rose heliacally, and became visible in the East in the morning before day.
And precisely at the moment of the heliacal rising of Arcturus, also rose Spica Virginis. One is near the middle of the Husbandman, and the other near that of the Virgin; and Arcturus may have been the part of Osiris which Isis did not recover with the other pieces of the body.
At Dedan and Saba it was thirty-six days, from the beginning of the _aphanism_, i.e., the _disappearances_ of these stars, to the heliacal rising of Aldebaran. During these days, or forty at Medina, or a few more at Babylon and Byblos, the stars of the Husbandman successively sank out of sight, during the _crepusculum_ or short-lived morning twilight of those Southern climes. They disappear during the glancings of the dawn, the special season of ancient sidereal observation.
Thus the forty days of mourning for Osiris were measured out by the period of the departure of his Stars. When the last had sunken out of sight, the vernal season was ushered in; and the Sun arose with the splendid Aldebaran, the Tauric leader of the Hosts of Heaven; and the whole East rejoiced and kept holiday.
With the exception of the Stars ?, e? and d, Bootes did not begin to reappear in the Eastern quarter of the Heavens till after the lapse of about four months. Then the Stars of Taurus had declined Westward, and Virgo was rising heliacally. In that lat.i.tude, also, the Stars of Ursa Major [termed anciently the Ark of Osiris] set; and Benetnasch, the last of them, returned to the Eastern horizon, with those in the head of Leo, a little before the Summer Solstice. In about a month, followed the Stars of the Husbandman; the chief of them, Ras, Mirach, and Arcturus, being very nearly simultaneous in their heliacal rising.
Thus the Stars of Bootes rose in the East immediately after Vindemiatrix, and as if under the genial influence of its rays; he had his annual career of prosperity; he revelled orientally for a quarter of a year, and attained his meridian alt.i.tude with Virgo; and then, as the Stars of the Water-Urn rose, and Aquarius began to pour forth his annual deluge, he declined Westward, preceded by the Ark of Osiris. In the East, he was the sign of that happiness in which Nature, the great G.o.ddess of pa.s.sive production, rejoiced. Now, in the West, as he declines toward the Northwestern horizon, his generative vigor gradually abates; the Solar year grows old; and as his Stars descend beneath the Western Wave, Osiris dies, and the world mourns.
The Ancient Astronomers saw all the great Symbols of Masonry in the Stars. Sirius still glitters in our Lodges as the Blazing Star, (_l'etoile Flamboyante_). The Sun is still symbolized by the point within a Circle; and, with the Moon and Mercury or Anubis, in the three Great Lights of the Lodge. Not only to these, but to the figures and numbers exhibited by the Stars, were ascribed peculiar and divine powers. The veneration paid to numbers had its source there. The three Kings in Orion are in a straight line, and equidistant from each other, the two extreme Stars being 3 apart, and each of the three distant from the one nearest it 1 30'. And as the number _three_ is peculiar to apprentices, so the straight line is the first principle of Geometry, having length but no breadth, and being but the extension of a point, and an emblem of Unity, and thus of Good, as the divided or broken line is of Duality or Evil. Near these Stars are the Hyades, _five_ in number, appropriate to the Fellow-Craft; and close to them the Pleiades, of the master's number, _seven_; and thus these three sacred numbers, consecrated in Masonry as they were in the Pythagorean philosophy, always appear together in the Heavens, when the Bull, emblem of fertility and production, glitters among the Stars, and Aldebaran leads the Hosts of Heaven (_Tsbauth_).
Algenib in Perseus and Almaach and Algol in Andromeda form a right-angled triangle, ill.u.s.trate the 47th problem, and display the Grand Master's square upon the skies. Denebola in Leo, Arcturus in Bootes, and Spica in Virgo form an equilateral triangle, universal emblem of Perfection, and the Deity with His Trinity of Infinite Attributes, Wisdom, Power, and Harmony; and that other, the generative, preserving, and destroying Powers. The Three Kings form, with Rigel in Orion, two triangles included in one: and Capella and Menkalina in Auriga, with Bellatrix and Betelgueux in Orion, form two isosceles triangles with Tauri, that is equidistant from each pair; while the first four make a right-angled parallelogram,--the oblong square so often mentioned in our Degrees.
Julius Firmicus, in his description of the Mysteries, says, ”But in those funerals and lamentations which are annually celebrated in honor of Osiris, their defenders pretend a physical reason. They call the seeds of fruit, Osiris; the Earth, Isis; the natural heat, Typhon: and because the fruits are ripened by the natural heat, and collected for the life of man, and are separated from their marriage to the earth, and are sown again when Winter approaches, this they would have to be the death of Osiris: but when the fruits, by the genial fostering of the earth, begin again to be generated by a new procreation, this is the finding of Osiris.”
No doubt the decay of vegetation and the falling of the leaves, emblems of dissolution and evidences of the action of that Power that changes Life into Death, in order to bring Life again out of Death, were regarded as signs of that Death that seemed coming upon all Nature; as the springing of leaves and buds and flowers in the spring was a sign of restoration to life: but these were all secondary, and referred to the Sun as first cause. It was _his_ figurative death that was mourned, and not theirs; and that with that death, as with his return to life, many of the stars were connected.
We have already alluded to the relations which the twelve signs of the Zodiac bear to the legend of the Master's Degree. Some other coincidences may have sufficient interest to warrant mention.
Khir-Om was a.s.sailed at the East, West, and South Gates of the Temple.
The two equinoxes were called, we have seen, by all the Ancients, the Gates of Heaven, and the Syrians and Egyptians considered the Fish (the Constellation near Aquarius, and one of the Stars whereof is Fomalhaut) to be indicative of violence and death.
Khir-Om lay several days in the grave; and, at the Winter Solstice, for five or six days, the length of the days did not perceptibly increase.
Then, the Sun commencing again to climb Northward, as Osiris was said to arise from the dead, so Khir-Om was raised, by the powerful attraction of the Lion (Leo), who waited for him at the Summer Solstice, and drew him to himself.
The names of the three a.s.sa.s.sins may have been adopted from three Stars that we have already named. We search in vain in the Hebrew or Arabic for the names _Jubelo, Jubela_, and _Jubelum_. They embody an utter absurdity, and are capable of no explanation in those languages. Nor are the names _Gibs, Gravelot, Hobhen_, and the like, in the Ancient and Accepted Rite, any more plausible, or better referable to any ancient language. But when, by the precession of the Equinoxes, the Sun was in Libra at the Autumnal Equinox, he met in that sign, where the reign of Typhon commenced, three Stars forming a triangle,--_Zuben-es Chamali_ in the West, _Zuben-Hak-Rabi_ in the East, and _Zuben-El-Gubi_ in the South, the latter immediately below the Tropic of Capricorn, and so within the realm of Darkness. From these names, those of the murderers have perhaps been corrupted. In Zuben-Hak-Rabi we may see the original of Jubelum Akirop; and in Zuben-El-Gubi, that of Jubelo Gibs: and time and ignorance may even have trans.m.u.ted the words Es Chamali into one as little like them as Gravelot.
Isis, the Moon personified, sorrowing sought for her husband. Nine or twelve Fellow-Crafts (the Rites vary as to the number), in white ap.r.o.ns, were sent to search for Khir-Om, in the Legend of the Master's Degree; or, in this Rite, the Nine Knights Elu. Along the path that the Moon travels are nine conspicuous Stars, by which nautical men determine their longitude at Sea;--Arietis, Aldebaran, Pollux, Regulus, Spica Virginis, Antares, Altair, Fomalhaut, and Markab. These might well be said to accompany Isis in her search.
In the York Rite, _twelve_ Fellow-Crafts were sent to search for the body of Khir-Om and the murderers. Their number corresponds with that of the Pleiades and Hyades in Taurus, among which Stars the Sun was found when Light began to prevail over Darkness, and the Mysteries were held.
These Stars, we have shown, received early and particular attention from the astronomers and poets. The Pleiades were the Stars of the ocean to the benighted mariner; the Virgins of Spring, heralding the season of blossoms.
As six Pleiades only are now visible, the number twelve may have been obtained by them, with Aldebaran, and five far more brilliant Stars than any other of the Hyades, in the same region of the Heavens, and which were always spoken of in connection with the Pleiades; the Three Kings in the belt of Orion, and Bellatrix and Betelgueux on his shoulders; brightest of the flas.h.i.+ng starry hosts.