Part 43 (1/2)
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 10 of each sign. As there were anciently only forty-eight 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 East 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 East, 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 pa.s.ses 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 paranatellons 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, achronically, 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, t.i.tans, 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 G.o.d KNEPH; known in the Grecian Mysteries as the Orphic Egg; from which issued the G.o.d CHUMONG of the Coresians, and the Egyptian OSIRIS, and PHANES, G.o.d and Principle of Light; from which, broken by the Sacred Bull of the j.a.panese, 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 or 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds, 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 a.s.signed 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 pa.s.sions 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 re-united 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 storms, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d, 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 gra.s.sy 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, G.o.d 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 Phnicians. 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds.
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 pa.s.sions 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, Martia.n.u.s 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 G.o.d 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.