LITMIR.BIZ

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your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”{16} Several translations of this poem have been made, both by CICERO and others, into Latin, and in recent times into English by E. Poste, J. Lamb, and others. The following is the opening from the translation of Robert Brown, jun.:—

      “From Zeus we lead the strain; he whom mankind

      Ne’er leave unhymned: of Zeus all public ways,

      All haunts of men, are full; and full the sea,

      And harbours; and of Zeus all stand in need.

      We are his offspring:{17} and he, ever good and mild to man,

      Gives favouring signs, and rouses us to toil.

      Calling to mind life’s wants: when clods are best

      For plough and mattock: when the time is ripe

      For planting vines and sowing seeds, he tells,

      Since he himself hath fixed in heaven these Signs,

      The stars dividing: and throughout the year

      Stars he provides to indicate to man

      The seasons’ course, that all things duly grow,” etc., etc.

      Then ARATUS proceeds to describe and explain all the Signs and Constellations as the Greeks in his day understood, or rather misunderstood, them, after their true meaning and testimony had been forgotten.

      Moreover, ARATUS describes them, not as they were seen in his day, but as they were seen some 4,000 years before. The stars were not seen from Tarsus as he describes them, and he must therefore have written from a then ancient Zodiac. For notwithstanding that we speak of “fixed stars,” there is a constant, though slow, change taking place amongst them. There is also another change taking place owing to the slow recession of the pole of the heavens (about 50" in the year); so that while Alpha in the constellation of Draco was the Polar Star when the Zodiac was first formed, the Polar Star is now Alpha in what is called Ursa Minor. This change alone carries us back at least 5,000 years. The same movement which has changed the relative position of these two stars has also caused the constellation of the Southern Cross to become invisible in northern latitudes. When the constellations were formed the Southern Cross was visible in N. latitude 40°, and was included in their number. But, though known by tradition, it had not been seen in that latitude for some twenty centuries, until the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered. Then was seen again The Southern Cross depicted by the Patriarchs. Here is another indisputable proof as to the antiquity of the formation of the Zodiac.

      PTOLEMY (150 A.D.) transmits them from HÏPPARCHUS (130 B.C.) “as of unquestioned authority, unknown origin, and unsearchable antiquity.”

      Sir William Drummond says that “the traditions of the Chaldean Astronomy seem the fragments of a mighty system fallen into ruins.”

      The word Zodiac itself is from the Greek Ζωδιακός, which is not from Ζάω, to live, but from a primitive root through the Hebrew Sodi, which in Sanscrit means a way. Its etymology has no connection with living creatures, but denotes a way, or step, and is used of the way or path in which the sun appears to move amongst the stars in the course of the year.

      To an observer on the earth the whole firmament, together with the sun, appears to revolve in a circle once in twenty-four hours. But the time occupied by the stars in going round, differs from the time occupied by the sun. This difference amounts to about one-twelfth part of the whole circle in each month, so that when the circle of the heavens is divided up into twelve parts, the sun appears to move each month through one of them. This path which the sun thus makes amongst the stars is called the Ecliptic.{18}

      Each of these twelve parts (consisting each of about 30 degrees) is distinguished, not by numbers or by letters, but by pictures and names, and this, as we have seen, from the very earliest times. They are preserved to the present day in our almanacs, and we are taught their order in the familiar rhymes:—

      “The RAM, the BULL, the heavenly TWINS,

      And next the CRAB, the LION shines,

      The VIRGIN and the SCALES;

      The SCORPION, ARCHER, and SEA-GOAT,

      The MAN that carries the Water-pot,

      And FISH with glittering scales.”

      These signs have always and everywhere been preserved in this order, and have begun with ARIES. They have been known amongst all nations, and in all ages, thus proving their common origin from one source.

      The figures themselves are perfectly arbitrary. There is nothing in the groups of stars to even suggest the figures. This is the first thing which is noticed by every one who looks at the constellations. Take for example the sign of VIRGO, and look at the stars. There is nothing whatever to suggest a human form; still less is there anything to show whether that form is a man or a woman. And so with all the others.

      The picture, therefore, is the original, and must have been drawn around or connected with certain stars, simply in order that it might be identified and associated with them; and that it might thus be remembered and handed down to posterity.

      There can be no doubt, as the learned Authoress of Mazzaroth conclusively proves, that these signs were afterwards identified with the twelve sons of Jacob. Joseph sees the sun and moon and eleven stars bowing down to him, he himself being the twelfth (Gen. xxxvii. 9). The blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.) both bear witness to the existence of these signs in their day. And it is more than probable that each of the Twelve Tribes bore one of them on its standard. We read in Num. ii. 2, “Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own STANDARD, with the ENSIGN of their father’s house” (R.V. “with the ensigns of their fathers’ houses”). This “Standard” was the Degel (דֶגֶל) on which the “Sign” (אוֹת, Oth) was depicted. Hence it was called the “En-sign.” Ancient Jewish authorities declare that each tribe had one of the signs as its own, and it is highly probable, even from Scripture, that four of the tribes carried its “Sign”; and that these four were placed at the four sides of the camp.

      If the Lion were appropriated to Judah, then the other three would be thus fixed, and would be the same four that equally divide the Zodiac at its four cardinal points. According to Num. ii. the camp was thus formed:—

      If the reader compares the above with the blessings of Israel and Moses, and compares the meanings and descriptions given below with those blessings, the connection will be clearly seen. Levi, for example, had no standard, and he needed none, for he kept “the balance of the Sanctuary,” and had the charge of that brazen altar on which the atoning blood outweighed the nation’s sins.

      The four great signs which thus marked the four sides of the camp, and the four quarters of the Zodiac, are the same four which form the Cherubim (the Eagle, the Scorpion’s enemy, being substituted for the Scorpion). The Cherubim thus form a compendious expression of the hope of Creation, which, from the very first, has been bound up with the Coming One, who alone should cause its groanings to cease.

      But this brings us to the Signs themselves and their interpretation.

      These pictures were designed to preserve, expound, and perpetuate the one first great promise and prophecy of Gen. iii. 15, that all hope for Man, all hope for Creation, was bound up in a coming Redeemer; One who should be born of a woman; who should first suffer, and afterwards gloriously triumph; One who should first be wounded by that great enemy who was the cause of all sin and sorrow and death, but who should finally crush the head of “that Old Serpent the Devil.”

      These ancient star-pictures reveal this Coming One. They set forth “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.” Altogether there are forty-eight of them, made up of twelve SIGNS, each sign containing three CONSTELLATIONS.

      These may be divided into three great books, each book containing four chapters

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