by C. F. Volney
"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris; and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan of the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection, because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the soul passed to heaven."
* "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner." Jeremiah speaks also of this custom. The tuft of hair which the Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having but a single hair upon his head... .
The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus, from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them... .
Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East has been universal from time immemorial... .
The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris. (See plate.)
All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone, which was an emblem of the sun.
At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator proceeded:
"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas: First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of mistakes.
"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished, twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them, fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical life of Hercules.*
* See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the Constellations, before cited.
"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations, ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried into heaven, etc.
* These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of Isis and Osiris. The Hebrews say, in speaking of the generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam. From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds every mistake.
"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves, by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which made its appearance at that period; to describe the winter, they painted a hog or a serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination of these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of these figures and their combinations became excessive, and overburdened the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion and false interpretations. Genius afterwards having invented the more simple art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is limited, and painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical writing thus threw into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its signification, falling daily into oblivion, gave rise to a multitude of illusions, ambiguities, and errors.
* The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples of ancient hieroglyphics.
"The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the figures of the sun and moon. They designate the world by the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the Chinese Dragon). If they were desirous of expressing the year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first constellations, by the rising of which the year commences; its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the constellation of the Dog.
"They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this tree to produce a branch every month. They farther represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land." The whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period of four years. The abbreviation of this figure of a field in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.--"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the inundation. Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet--They represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing from their mouths.-- They express the idea of God and destiny by a star. They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure. All white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of the moon. Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ. Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 98.
"Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
"A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant lives in the water without any communication with clay, exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts, like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos. (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing, like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.) A man at the helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun which governs all. And Porphyry tells us that the sun is also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
"At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds. Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
"The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions of the air where light abounds.
A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of violence, because it is said to kill its father and to ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5. Injustice. See Isis an
d Osiris.
"The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus, because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its own.
"They represent the world also by the number five, being that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth, water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus. The Indians have the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all things terrestrial. Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
"The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because like that animal he is of a reddish color. Now Typhon signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be formed from the same root hamr. Jamblicus has farther told us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds, that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable, liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good and evil of the ancients."
"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization of ancient states. When the people began to apply themselves to agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued series of astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint certain individuals charged with the functions of watching the appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of the inundation, of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time to sow every kind of grain. These men, on account of their service, were exempt from common labor, and the society provided for their maintenance. With this provision, and wholly employed in their observations, they soon became acquainted with the great phenomena of nature, and even learned to penetrate the secret of many of her operations. They discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the coincidence of their phases and returns with the productions of the earth and the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive properties of plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other method of communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction were confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves as an exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a corporation spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued succession of the same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is true, the progress of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it, the people were daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more superstitious and more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce certain phenomena, announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with celestial powers; and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which they expected from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians, naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction, which to this day have ruined every nation... ."
Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to cut short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only an exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be easily refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been free, and without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the orator proceeded:
"Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals, and in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars, the characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies, their aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile; the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the god Serpent; and the deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious being, whose idea deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals and his reason.
"Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every nation, took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the affections or antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its sectaries; and the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the god Wolf;* those who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who ate him; and religion became the source of hatred and hostility,--the senseless cause of frenzy and superstition.
* These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these kings had been taken from the cast of priests. See Isis and Osiris.
"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture of geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded all traditions.
"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent, sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and perverted the principles of government.
IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences, and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects, which became so many theological systems.
"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having remarked that all the operations of nature during the annual period were reducible to two principal ones, that of producing and that of destroying; that on the greater part of the globe these two operations were performed in the intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to say, during the six months of summer every thing was procreating and multiplying, and that during winter everything languished and almost died; they supposed in Nature two contrary powers, which were in a continual state of contention and exertion; and considering the celestial sphere in this view, they divided the images which they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so that the constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct and superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that of fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light, fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity and virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction, of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin and vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains, two factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field to the errors of imagination; but the mi
stake and the illusion were determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe plate Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in circular order, presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary, opposed to it. By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral sense; and the adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.** From that moment all the astronomical history of the constellations was changed into a political history ; the heavens became a human state, where things happened as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the greater part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for king an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good. And as every rebel faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose character was applied by different people to the constellation which to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at first the Scorpion, first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time chief of the winter signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the earth during the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.