This form of worship was more general among pagan nations than any other. It was natural for those primitive people, leading pastoral lives in the open air, to fix their attention upon the sun and to notice his relations to other celestial orbs. It was natural for the contemplative and devout to come to regard the sun as the best emblem of the creating, animating, fecundating spirit of the universe, while the ignorant multitude may never have looked beyond the material object. Those who have read the history of the sun-worshippers of Mexico and Peru, detailed in the great works of Prescott, must have been impressed by the fact that these nations enjoyed a higher prosperity and a purer public morality when they were worshippers of the sun than they have ever enjoyed since under the Roman Catholic religion called Christian.
To fully understand how the astronomical element came to be extensively incorporated into the Jewish and Christian religions, it is absolutely necessary to familiarize ourselves with that ancient pictorial device known as the solar zodiac.
Zodiac-1
Zodiac-2
This is nothing more than an imaginary belt covering that region of the starry heavens within the bounds of which the apparent motions of the sun, moon, and many other large planets are observed. It is divided into twelve equal parts of thirty degrees each, called “signs,” known as “constellations” and designated as follows:
Aries, the Ram or Lamb; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-carrier; Pisces, the Fishes.
These constellations are filled up with imaginary forms of men, women, animals, monsters, and many fantastic figures, each including a group of stars. In the ancient astronomy these groups numbered thirty-six, to which many modern additions have been made. Through these constellations passes a wavy line called the Ecliptic, apparently marking the path of the sun, but really indicating the path of our own earth around the sun. The sun seems to move thirty degrees a month, and at the end of the year appears at the point from which he started. We thus have a natural belt or way about sixteen degrees wide extending around the entire heavens, one half the year north, and the other half south, of the equator. But the sun does not cross the equator at the same point each year, so that in crossing he is not always in the same sign. The sun seems to recede, and as the apparent recession of the sun is caused by the real movement of the earth, the phenomenal result is the precession of the equinoxes; and as the equinoctial point recedes in a fixed ratio, this point will go back through the whole circle of the constellations in about twenty-five thousand years, requiring about twenty-one hundred and sixty years to pass through each sign. According to the ancient astrology, the sun assumed at different times the character of the particular sign through which it passed, and as such was symbolically worshipped. Four thousand years ago the sign Taurus gave rise to the worship of the Bull (the Egyptian Apis); and when the sun passed into the sign of Aries the Lamb, this emblem dominated the worship of Persians and other sun-worshippers, and so became the paschal or passover lamb of the ancient Hebrews.
You will now begin to see what this zodiacal device has to do with our interpretations of the Bible. The Jewish Scriptures also contain it, and, as will soon be made to appear, it is impossible to make sense of large portions of the Bible without it.