B.C. 300.
Vern. Eq. Aries from Pisces.
Summer Sols. Cancer from Gemini.
Autumn Eq. Libra from Virgo.
Winter Sols. Capricornus from Sagittarius.
1872.
Vern. Eq. Pisces from Aquarius.
Sum. Sols. Gemini from Taurus.
Aut. Eq. Virgo from Leo.
Winter Sols. Sagittarius from Scorpio.
From confounding signs with causes came the worship of the sun and stars. "If," says Job, "I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon progressive in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this were an iniquity to be punished by the Judge; for I should have denied the God that is above."
Perhaps we are not, on the whole, much wiser than those simple men of the old time. For what do we know of effect and cause, except that one thing regularly or habitually follows another?
So, because the heliacal rising of Sirius preceded the rising of the Nile, it was deemed to cause it; and other stars were in like manner held to cause extreme heat, bitter cold, and watery storm.
A religious reverence for the zodiacal Bull [TAURUS] appears, from a very early period, to have been pretty general,—perhaps it was universal, throughout Asia; from that chain or region of Caucasus to which it gave name; and which is still known under the appellation of Mount Taurus, to the Southern extremities of the Indian Peninsula; extending itself also into Europe, and through the Eastern parts of Africa.
This evidently originated during those remote ages of the world, when the colure of the vernal equinox passed across the stars in the head of the sign Taurus [among which was Aldebarán]; a period when, as the most ancient monuments of all the oriental nations attest, the light of arts and letters first shone forth.
The Arabian word AL-DE-BARÁN, means the foremost, or leading, star: and it could only have been so named, when it did precede, or lead, all others. The year then opened with the sun in Taurus; and the multitude of ancient sculptures, both in Assyria and Egypt, wherein the bull appears with lunette or crescent horns, and the disk of the sun between them, are direct allusions to the important festival of the first new moon of the year: and there was everywhere an annual celebration of the festival of the first new moon, when the year opened with Sol and Luna in Taurus.