Part 41 (1/2)
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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s through Aries. The Chinese still have a temple, called ”The Palace of the horned Bull”; and the same symbol is wors.h.i.+pped in j.a.pan and all over Hindostan. The Cimbrians carried a brazen bull with them, as the image of their G.o.d, when they overran Spain and Gaul; and the representation of the Creation, by the Deity in the shape of a bull, breaking the sh.e.l.l of an egg with his horns, meant Taurus, opening the year, and bursting the symbolical sh.e.l.l 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 Sabaean priests were accustomed to see, in the lower lat.i.tudes of Egypt and Ethiopia, the first or chief stars of the Husbandman [BOoTES]
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, baccha.n.a.lian revelry became devotion.
Before the colure of the Vernal Equinox had pa.s.sed into Aries, and after it had left Aldebaran and the Hyades, the Pleiades were, for seven or eight centuries, the leading stars of the Sabaean 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 Sabaean 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 Bull 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 Aldebaran 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 circ.u.mspicit 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 _Vergili,_ or the Virgins of Spring; because the Sun entered this cl.u.s.ter 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, 11 southeast of the Pleiades. The Greeks counted them as seven. When the Vernal Equinox was in Taurus, Aldebaran led up the starry host; and as he rose in the East, Aries was about 27 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, Ca.s.siopeia, and Andromeda; while the Pleiades had just pa.s.sed the meridian.
ORION is visible to all the habitable world. The equinoctial line pa.s.ses through the centre of it. When Aldebaran 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 Bootes, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 (_Scarabus_), which thence became sacred, as an emblem of the gate through which souls descended from Heaven. In the crest of Cancer is a cl.u.s.ter of Stars formerly called _Prsepe,_ the Manger, on each side of which is a small Star, the two of which were called _Aselli_ little a.s.ses.