Part 49

The body of Osiris, enclosed in a chest or coffin, was cast into the Nile. Pan and the Satyrs, near Chemmis, first discovered his death, announced it by their cries, and everywhere created sorrow and alarm. Taurus, with the full Moon, then entered into the cone of shadow, and under him was the Celestial River, most properly called the Nile, and below, Perseus, the God of Chemmis, and Auriga, leading a she-goat, himself identical with Pan, whose wife Aiga the she-goat was styled.

Then Isis went in search of the body. She first met certain children who had seen it, received from them their information, and gave them in return the gift of divination. The second full Moon occurred in Gemini, the Twins, who presided over the oracles of Didymus, and one of whom was Apollo, the God of Divination.

She learned that Osiris had, through mistake, had connection with her sister Nephte, which she discovered by a crown of leaves of the melilot, which he had left behind him. Of this connection a child was born, whom Isis, aided by her dogs, sought for, found, reared, and attached to herself, by the name of Anubis, her faithful guardian. The third full Moon occurs in Cancer, domicile of the Moon. The paranatellons of that sign are, the crown of Ariadne or Proserpine, made of leaves of the melilot, Procyon and Canis Major, one star of which was called the Star of Isis, while Sirius himself was honored in Egypt under the name of Anubis.

Isis repaired to Byblos, and seated herself near a fountain, where she was found by the women of the Court of a King. She was induced to visit his Court, and became the nurse of his son. The fourth full Moon was in Leo, domicile of the Sun, or of Adonis, King of Byblos. The paranatellons of this sign are the flowing water of Aquarius, and Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, called Regulus, or simply The King. Behind him rise Cassiopeia his wife, Queen of Ethiopia, Andromeda his daughter, and Perseus his son-in-law, all paranatellons in part of this sign, and in part of Virgo.

Isis suckled the child, not at her breast, but with the end of her finger, at night. She burned all the mortal parts of its body, and then, taking the shape of a swallow, she flew to the great column of the palace, made of the tamarisk-tree that grew up round the coffin containing the body of Osiris, and within which it was still enclosed. The fifth full Moon occurred in Virgo, the true image of Isis, and which Eratosthenes calls by that name. It pictured a woman suckling an infant, the son of Isis, born near the Winter Solstice. This sign has for paranatellons the mast of the Celestial Ship, and the swallow-tailed fish or swallow above it, and a portion of Perseus, son-in-law of the King of Ethiopia.

Isis, having recovered the sacred coffer, sailed from Byblos in a vessel with the eldest son of the King, toward Boutos, where Anubis was, having charge of her son Horus; and in the morning dried up a river, whence arose a strong wind. Landing, she hid the coffer in a forest. Typhon, hunting a wild boar by moonlight discovered it, recognized the body of his rival, and cut it into fourteen pieces, the number of days between the full and new Moon, and in every one of which days the Moon loses a portion of the light that at the commencement filled her whole disk. The sixth full Moon occurred in Libra, over the divisions separating which from Virgo are the Celestial Ship, Perseus, son of the King of Ethiopia and Boötes, said to have nursed Horus. The river of Orion that sets in the morning is also a paranatellon of Libra, as are Ursa Major, the Great Bear or Wild Boar of Erymanthus, and the Dragon of the North Pole, or the celebrated Python from which the attributes of Typhon were borrowed. All these surround the full Moon of Libra, last of the Superior Signs, and the one that precedes the new Moon of Spring, about to be reproduced in Taurus, and there be once more in conjunction with the Sun.

Isis collects the scattered fragments of the body of Osiris, buries them, and consecrates the phallus, carried in pomp at the _Pamylia_, or feasts of the Vernal Equinox, at which time the congress of Osiris and the Moon was celebrated. Then Osiris had returned from the shades, to aid Horus his son and Isis his wife against the forces of Typhon. He thus reappeared, say some, under the form of a wolf, or, others say, under that of a horse. The Moon, fourteen days after she is full in Libra, arrives at Taurus and unites herself to the Sun, whose fires she thereafter for fourteen days continues to accumulate on her disk from new Moon to full. Then she unites with herself all the months in that superior portion of the world where light always reigns, with harmony and order, and she borrows from him the force which is to destroy the germs of evil that Typhon had, during the winter, planted everywhere in nature. This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked by the rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by the heliacal setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which thenceforward is in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in his triumph over the darkness or Typhon.

Isis, during the absence of Osiris, and after she had hidden the coffer in the place where Typhon found it, had rejoined that malignant enemy; indignant at which, Horus her son deprived her of her ancient diadem, when she rejoined Osiris as he was about to attack Typhon: but Mercury gave her in its place a helmet shaped like the head of a bull. Then Horus, as a mighty warrior, such as Orion was described, fought with and defeated Typhon; who, in the shape of the Serpent or Dragon of the Pole, had assailed his father. So, in Ovid, Apollo destroys the same Python, when Io, fascinated by Jupiter, is metamorphosed into a cow, and placed in the sign of the Celestial Bull, where she becomes Isis. The equinoctial year ends at the moment when the Sun and Moon, at the Vernal Equinox, are united with Orion, the Star of Horus, placed in the Heavens under Taurus. The new Moon becomes young again in Taurus, and shows herself as a crescent, for the first time, in the next sign, Gemini, the domicile of Mercury. Then Orion, in conjunction with the Sun, with whom he rises, precipitates the Scorpion, his rival, into the shades of night, causing him to set whenever he himself re-appears on the eastern horizon, with the Sun. Day lengthens and the germs of evil are by degrees eradicated: and Horus (from _Aur_, Light) reigns triumphant, symbolizing, by his succession to the characteristics of Osiris, the eternal renewal of the Sun's youth and creative vigor at the Vernal Equinox.

Such are the coincidences of astronomical phenomena with the legend of Osiris and Isis; sufficing to show the origin of the legend, overloaded as it became at length with all the ornamentation natural to the poetical and figurative genius of the Orient.

Not only into this legend, but into those of all the ancient nations, enter the Bull, the Lamb, the Lion, and the Scorpion or the Serpent; and traces of the worship of the Sun yet linger in all religions. Everywhere, even in our Order, survive the equinoctial and solstitial feasts. Our ceilings still glitter with the greater and lesser luminaries of the Heavens, and our lights, in their number and arrangement, have astronomical references. In all churches and chapels, as in all Pagan temples and pagodas, the altar is in the East; and the ivy over the east windows of old churches is the Hedera Helix of Bacchus. Even the cross had an astronomical origin; and our Lodges are full of the ancient symbols.

The learned author of the Sabæan Researches, Landseer, advances another theory in regard to the legend of Osiris; in which he makes the constellation Boötes 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 Sabæsan astronomers by their observations of the stars, and of their heliacal and achronical risings and settings. There were many solar festivals among the Sabæans, 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, BOÖTES. 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 _Boötes._

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 Sabæan constellations seem to have been, an astronomical _Priest,_ a _King,_ a _Queen,_ a _Husbandman,_ and a _Warrior_; and these more frequently recur on the Sabæan cylinders than any other constellations whatever. The _King_ was _Cepheus_ or _Chepheus_ of Ethiopia: the _Husbandman, Osiris, Bacchus, Sabazeus, Noah_ or _Boötes_. 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 Sabæan were regularly offered up.

Landseer says that the stars in Boötes, 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 Sabæan 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 latitude 15° north. Axoum is nearly in 14°, and the Western Saba or Meroë 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 circumvolving 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 latitude, for the three or four days mentioned in some of the versions; while the _Zetesis_ or search was proceeding, and the women of Phœnicia 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 χ, ε˛ and δ, Boötes 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 latitude, 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 Boötes 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 altitude 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 Goddess of passive 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'Étoile 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, illustrate the 47th problem, and display the Grand Master's square upon the skies. Denebola in Leo, Arcturus in Boötes, 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 β 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 assailed 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 assassins 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 transmuted 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 aprons, 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 flashing starry hosts.

"Canst thou," asks Job, "bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?" And in the book of Amos we find these Stars connected with the victory of Light over Darkness: "Seek Him," says that Seer, "that maketh the Seven Stars (the familiar name of the Pleiades), and Orion, AND TURNETH THE SHADOW OF DEATH INTO MORNING."

An old legend in Masonry says that a dog led the Nine Elus to the cavern where Abiram was hid. Boötes was anciently called Caleb Anubach, a Barking Dog; and was personified in Anubis, who bore the head of a dog, and aided Isis in her search. Arcturus, one of his Stars, fiery red, as if fervent and zealous, is also connected by Job with the Pleiades and Orion. When Taurus opened the year, Arcturus rose after the Sun, at the time of the Winter Solstice, and seemed searching him through the darkness, until, sixty days afterward, he rose at the same hour. Orion then also, at the Winter Solstice, rose at noon, and at night seemed to be in search of the Sun.

So, referring again to the time when the Sun entered the Autumnal Equinox, there are nine remarkable Stars that come to the meridian nearly at the same time, rising as Libra sets, and so seeming to chase that Constellation. They are Capella and Menkalina in the Charioteer, Aldebaran in Taurus, Bellatrix, Betelgueux, the Three Kings, and Rigel in Orion. Aldebaran passes the meridian first, indicating his right to his peculiar title of _Leader_. Nowhere in the heavens are there, near the same meridian, so many splendid Stars. And close behind them, but further South, follows Sirius, the Dog-Star, who showed the nine Elus the way to the murderer's cave.