In the West, from South-West to North-West:
Ephraim and Manasseh, The Bull (the two horns of Taurus).
Benjamin (Gemini).
In the Center:
Levi, The Scales (Libra).
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 [pg 019] 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.