"25th Degree - Night of the Brazen Serpent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

"The Egyptians," says Diodorus Siculus, "acknowledged two great gods, the Sun and Moon, or Osiris and Isis, who govern the world and regulate its administration by the dispensation of the seasons.

Such is the nature of these two great Divinities, that they impress an active and fecundating force, by which the generation of beings in effected; the Sun, by heat and that spiritual principle that forms the breath of the winds; the Moon by humidity and dryness; and both by
the forces of the air which they share in common. By this beneficial influence everything is born, grows, and vegetates. Wherefore this whole huge body, in which nature resides, is maintained by the combined action of the Sun and Moon, and their five qualities, the principles spiritual, fiery, dry, humid, and airy."

So five primitive powers, elements, or elementary qualities, are united with the Sun and Moon in the Indian theology, air, spirit, fire, water, and earth: and the same five elements are recognized by the Chinese.

The PhЬnicians, like the Egyptians, regarded the Sun and Moon and Stars as sole causes of generation and destruction here below. The Moon, like the Sun, changed continually the track in which she crossed the Heavens, moving ever to and fro between the upper and lower limits of the Zodiac; and her different places, phases, and aspects there, and her relations with the Sun and the constellations, have been a fruitful source of mythological fables.

All the planets had what astrology termed their houses, in the Zodiac. The House of the Sun was in Leo, and that of the Moon in Cancer. Each other planet had two, signs; Mercury had Gemini and Virgo; Venus, Taurus and Libra; Mars, Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter, Pisces and Sagittarius; and Saturn, Aquarius and Capricornus. From this distribution of the signs also came many mythological emblems and fables; as also many came from the places of exaltation of the
planets. Diana of Ephesus, the Moon, wore the image of a crab on her bosom, because in that sign was the Moon's domicile; and lions bore up the throne of Horus, the Egyptian Apollo, the Sun personified, for a like reason: while the Egyptians consecrated the tauriforn scarabцs to
the Moon, because she had her place of exaltation in Taurus; and for the same reason Mercury is said to have presented Isis with a helmet like a bull's head.

A further division of the Zodiac was of each sign into three parts of 10║ each, called Decans, or, in the whole Zodiac, 36 parts, among which the seven planets were apportioned anew, each planet having an equal number of Decans, except the first, which, opening and closing the series of planets five times repeated, necessarily had one Decan more than the others. This subdivision was not invented until after Aries opened the Vernal Equinox; and accordingly Mars, having his
house in Aries, opens the series of decans and closes it; the planets following each other, five times in succession, in the following order, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc; so that to each sign are assigned three planets, each occupying 10 degrees. To each Decan a God or Genius was assigned, making thirty-six in all, one of whom, the Chaldeans said, came down upon earth every ten days, remained so many days, and re-ascended to Heaven.

This division is found on the Indian sphere, the Persian, and that Barbaric one which Aben Ezra describes. Each genius of the Decans had a name and special characteristics. They concur and aid in the effects produced by the Sun, Moon, and other planets charged with the administration of the world: and the doctrine in regard to them, secret and august as it was held, was considered of the gravest importance; and its principles, Firmicus says, were not entrusted by the ancients, inspired as they were by the Deity, to any but the Initiates, and to them only with great reserve, and a kind of fear, and when cautiously enveloped with an obscure veil, that they might not come to be known by the profane.

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 fortyeight 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 Fast 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 Fast, 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
passes 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 paranatelIons 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, achronicany, 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, Titans, 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 God KNEPH; known in the Grecian Mysteries as the Orphic Egg; from which issued the God CHUMONG of the Coresians, and the Egyptian OSIRISS, and PHANES, God and Principle of Light; from which, broken by the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, 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 of 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 god
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 God 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 furnishing 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 worship 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 Gods, 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 Gods, 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 assigned 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.