All the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were chiefly astronomical. Royal tombs and funereal rituals are so many tables of constellations and of their influences for all the hours of every month.
Thus the genethliac tables themselves prove that they are far older than the period assigned to their origin; all the Zodiacs of the sarcophagi of later epochs [pg 341]being simple reminiscences of the Zodiacs belonging to the mythological [archaic] period.
Primitive Astrology was as far above modern judiciary Astrology, so-called, as the guides (the Planets and Zodiacal signs) are above the lamp-posts. Berosus shows the sidereal sovereignty of Bel and Mylitta (Sun and Moon), and only “the twelve lords of the Zodiacal Gods,” the “thirty-six Gods Counsellors” and the “twenty-four Stars, judges of this world,” which support and guide the Universe (our solar system), watch over mortals and reveal to mankind its fate and their own decrees. Judiciary Astrology as it is now known, is correctly denominated by the Latin Church the
Materialistic and pantheistic prophesying by the objective planet itself, independently of its Rector [the Mlac of the Jews, the ministers of the Eternal commissioned by him to announce his will to mortals]; the ascension or conjunction of the planet at the moment of the birth of an individual deciding his fortune and the moment and mode of his death.[627]
Every student of Occultism knows that the heavenly bodies are closely related during each Manvantara with the mankind of that special cycle; and there are some who believe that each great character born during that period has—as every other mortal has, only in a far stronger degree—his destiny outlined within his proper constellation or star, traced as a self-prophecy, an anticipated autobiography, by the indwelling Spirit of that particular star. The human Monad in its first beginning is that Spirit, or the Soul of that star (Planet) itself. As our Sun radiates its light and beams on every body in space within the boundaries of its system, so the Regent of every Planet-star, the Parent-monad, shoots out from itself the Monad of every “pilgrim” Soul born under its house within its own group. The Regents are esoterically seven, whether in the Sephiroth, the “Angels of the Presence,” the Rishis, or the Amshaspends. “The One is no number” is said in all the esoteric works.
From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers) the noble primitive science passed to the Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians) and the Hakamim (or scientists, the Magicians of the lower class), and from these to the Jews during their captivity. The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for centuries, and when re-discovered by Hilkiah had lost their true sense for the people of Israel. Primitive Occult Astrology was on the decline when Daniel, the last of the Jewish Initiates of the old school, became the chief of the Magi and Astrologers of Chaldæa. In those days even Egypt, who had her wisdom from the same source as Babylon, had degenerated from her former grandeur, and her glory had begun to fade out. Still, the science of old had left her eternal imprint on the world, and the seven great Primitive Gods reigned for ever in the Astrology and in the division of time of every nation upon the face of the earth. The names of the days of our (Christian) week are those of the Gods of the Chaldæans, who translated them from those of the Âryans; the uniformity of these antediluvian names in every nation, from the Goths back to the Indians, would remain inexplicable, as Sir W. Jones thought, had not the riddle been explained to us by the invitation made by the Chaldæan oracles, recorded by Porphyry and quoted by Eusebius:
To carry those names first to the Egyptian and Phœnician colonies, then to the Greeks, with the express recommendation that each God should be invoked only on that day that had been called by his name....
Thus Apollo says in those oracles: “I must be invoked on the day of the sun; Mercury after his directions, then Chronos [Saturn], then Venus, and do not fail to call seven times each of those gods.”[628]
This is slightly erroneous. Greece did not get her astrological instruction from Egypt or from Chaldæa, but direct from Orpheus, as Lucian tells us.[629] It was Orpheus, as he says, who imparted the Indian Sciences to nearly all the great monarchs of antiquity; and it was they, the ancient kings favoured by the Planetary Gods, who recorded the principles of Astrology—as did Ptolemus, for instance. Thus Lucian writes:
The Bœotian Tiresias acquired the greatest reputation in the art of predicting futurity.... In those days divination was not as slightly treated as it is now; and nothing was ever undertaken without previous consultation with diviners, whose oracles were all directed by astrology.... At Delphos the virgin commissioned [pg 343]to announce futurity was the symbol of the Heavenly Virgin, ... and Our Lady.