The Teraphim of Abram's father Terah, the “maker of images,” and the Kabiri Gods are directly connected with ancient Sabæan worship or Astrolatry. Kiyun, or the God Kivan, worshipped by the Jews in the wilderness, is Saturn and Shiva, later on called Jehovah. Astrology existed before astronomy, and Astronomus was the title of the highest hierophant in Egypt.[604] One of the names of the Jewish Jehovah, “Sabaoth,” or the “Lord of Hosts” (tsabaoth), belongs to the Chaldæan Sabæans (or Tsabæans), and has for its root the word tsab, meaning a “car,” a “ship,” and “an army”; sabaoth thus meaning literally the army of the ship, the crew, or a naval host, the sky being metaphorically referred to as the “upper ocean” in the doctrine.
In his interesting volumes, The God of Moses, Lacour explains that all such words as
The celestial armies or the hosts of heaven, signify not only the totality of the heavenly constellations, but also the Aleim on whom they are dependent; the aleitzbaout are the forces or souls of the constellations, the potencies that maintain and guide the planets in this order and procession; ... the Jae-va-Tzbaout signifies Him, the supreme chief of those celestial bodies.
In his collectivity, as the chief “Order of Spirits,” not a chief Spirit.
The Sabæans having worshipped in the graven images only the celestial hosts—angels and gods whose habitations were the planets, never in truth worshipped the stars. For on Plato's authority, we know that among the stars and constellations, the [pg 326] planets alone had a right to the title of theoi (Gods), as that name was derived from the verb θεῖν, to run or to circulate. Seldenus also tells us that they were likewise called
θεοὶ βουλαιοὶ (God-Councillors) and ῥαβδοφόροι (lictors) as they (the planets) were present at the sun's consistory, solis consistoris adstantes.
Says the learned Kircher:
The sceptres the seven presiding angels were armed with, explain these names of Rhabdophores and lictors given to them.
Reduced to its simplest expression and popular meaning, this is of course fetish worship. Yet esoteric astrolatry was not at all the worship of idols, since under the names of “Councillors” and “Lictors,” present at the “Sun's consistory,” it was not the planets in their material bodies that were meant, but their Regents or “Souls” (Spirits). If the prayer “Our Father in heaven,” or “Saint” so-and-so in “Heaven” is not an idolatrous invocation, then “Our Father in Mercury,” or “Our Lady in Venus,” “Queen of Heaven,” etc., is no more so; for it is precisely the same thing, the name making no difference in the act. The word used in the Christian prayers, “in heaven” cannot mean anything abstract. A dwelling—whether of Gods, angels or Saints (every one of these being anthropomorphic individualities and beings)—must necessarily mean a locality, some defined spot in that “heaven”; hence it is quite immaterial for purposes of worship whether that spot be considered as “heaven” in general, meaning nowhere in particular, or in the Sun, Moon or Jupiter.
The argument is futile that there were