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STAR NAMES
Their Lore and Meaning
By Richard Hinckley Allen Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1963 Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-13766-7
CHAPTER 1
The Solar Zodiac.
Many theories have been propounded for the birthplace and time of formation of this; but there now seems to be general agreement of opinion that it originated, mainly as we have it, in archaic Euphratean astronomy, possibly with only the six alternate signs, Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricornus, and Pisces, and later divided because of the annual occurrence of twelve full moons in successive parts of it. Yet Servius, about A. D. 400, said that for a long time it consisted of but eleven constellations, Scorpio and its claws being a double sign, this characteristic feature descending to Greece and Rome.
Riccioli, about 1650, cited as a "Chaldean" title Hadronitho Demalusche, or Circle of the Signs; but this must be taken with much allowance, for in his day Babylonian study had not begun, while modern scholars think that it was known to the Akkadians as Innum, and as Pidnu-sha-Shame, the Furrow of Heaven, ploughed by the heavenly Directing Bull, our Taurus, which from about 3880 to about 1730 B. C. was first of the twelve.
Although our knowledge of that country's astronomy is as yet limited, it is certain that the Akkadian names of the months were intimately connected with the divisions of this great circle; the calendar probably being taken from the stars about 2000 B. C., according to Professor Archibald Henry Sayce, of Oxford. Thence it passed to the Jews through Assyria and Aramaea, as the identity of its titles in those countries indicates; and the eleven, or twelve, signs for a time became with that people objects of idolatrous worship, as is evident from their history detailed in the 2d Book of the Kings, xxiii, 5.
In the Babylonian Creation Legend, or Epic of Creation, discovered by George Smith in 1872, the signs were Mizrata,—a very similar word appears for the Milky Way,—generally supposed to be the original of the biblical Mazzaroth; Mazzaloth being the form used in the Targums and later Hebrew writings. This word, although of uncertain derivation, may come from a root meaning "to watch," the constellations thus marking the watches of the night by coming successively to the meridian; but Doctor Thomas Hyde, the learned translator at Oxford in 1665 of the Zij, or Tables, of Ulug Beg, and of Al Tizini's work, derived them from Ezor, a Girdle; while the more recent Dillmann referred them to Zahir, from Zuhrah, a Glittering Star, and so signifying something specially luminous. Still this Bible word has been variously rendered, appearing for the Greater Bear, Sirius, the planets, or even for the constellations in general; indeed it has been thought to signify the Lunar Mansions.
Another name with the Jews for the zodiac was Galgal Hammazaloth, the Circle of the Signs; and Bayer said that they fancifully designated it as Opus Phrygionarum, the Work of the Phrygians, i. e., of the embroiderers in gold.
The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, followed by Saint Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 200, surmised that the twelve stones in the breastplate of the high priest might refer to the twelve zodiacal constellations. Philo Judaeus, of about the same time, associated the latter with the stars of Joseph's dream; the modern poet Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, in Die Piccolomini, thus alluding to the ancient opinion as to its sacred character:
Twelve! twelve signs hath the zodiac, five and seven, The holy numbers include themselves in twelve;
while Smyth wrote:
The allegorical images of Jacob's blessing have been identified by several writers with the signs of the Via Solis, whence God, as bow-man, becomes Sagittarius. Hebrew antiquaries have long recognized Enoch as inventor of the Dodecatemory divisions ; and both Berosus [Berossos as now written,—the Chaldaean historian of about 260 B. C.] and Josephus declare that Abraham was famous for his celestial observations,
and even taught the Egyptians.
As to this last people, while our twelve figures appear on the Denderah planisphere doubtless from Greek or Roman influence, we have little knowledge as to what was the zodiac of their native astronomy, although it perhaps represented their twelve chief divinities; and Saint Clement tells us that the White, or Sacred, Ibis, Ibis aethiopica or religiosa, was its emblem. The Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher, 1602-1680, has left to us its separate Coptic-Egyptian titles in the Greek text, with their supposed significations in Latin; but these, presumably translations from the originals, are not lexicon words. Among them, for the zodiac itself, is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], whatever that may be. But Miss Agnes M. Clerke says that when Egypt adopted the Greek figures it was with various changes that effaced its character as "a circle of living things."
In Arabia the zodiac was Al Mintakah al Buruj, the Girdle of the Signs, that Bayer quoted as AlmanticaseuNitac; and, more indefinitely, it was Al Falak, the Expanse of the Sky.
In Greece it was [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Twelve Parts, and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]; but Aristotle, the Humboldt of the 4th century before our era, called it [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Circle of Little Animals, the signs before Libra was introduced being all of living creatures. The German Thierkreis has the same signification. Proclus of our 5th century called it [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Oblique Circle, that originally was for the ecliptic; but with Aratos, who regarded the claws as distinct from Scorpio, it was [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Twelve Images. As Homer and Hesiod made no allusion to it, we may consider as in some degree correct the statement that another poet, Cleostratos of Tenedos, made it known in Greece about 500 B. C., from his observations on Mount Ida.
In Rome it commonly was Zodiacus; the Orbisqui Graece [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] dicitur of Cicero's De Divinatione ; and the Orbis signiferus, or Circulus signifer, of Cicero and Vitruvius, the Sign-bearing Circle, that became Signiportant in the Livre de Creatures, the 12th-century Anglo-Norman poem of Philippe de Thaun. Poetically it was Media Via Solis and Orbita Solis; the Balteus stellatus of Manilius, the Starry Belt; and the varii Mutator Circulus anni of Lucan.
Bayer's Sigillarius probably is a Low Latin word for the Little Images; and he quoted Limbus textilis, the Woven Girdle, and Fascia, the Band, that Ptolemy used for the Milky Way.
Chaucer's line in Troilus and Criseyde—
and Signifer his candeles shewed brighte—
was borrowed from Claudian's In Rufinum, and referred to the sky; but the Astrolabe had
This forseide hevenish zodiak is cleped the cercle of the signes.
Elsewhere he called the zodiac figures Eyrish bestes and the Cerole of the Bestes, for
zodia in langage of Greek sowneth bestes in Latin tonge;
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the original word in The Revelation, iv, 6, being translated "beasts" in our Authorized Version and "living creatures" in the Revised. Chaucer's terms may have been taken from Ovid's Formasque ferarum.
In manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxons it is Mielan circul zodiacum, the Great Zodiacal Circle, and Twelf Tacna, the Twelve Signs; but their descendants, our English ancestry of four or five centuries ago, knew it as the Bestiary, Our Ladye's Waye, and as the Girdle of the Sky; while the ecliptic was the Yoke of the Sky, or Thwart Circle, and the prime meridian, the Noonsteede, or Noonstead, Circle.
Milton, in Paradise Lost, thus accounts for the obliquity of the earth's axis, as if by direct interposition of the Creator:
Some say, he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees or more
From the sun's axle; they with labour push'd
Oblique the centric globe: some say, the sun
Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road
Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime.
Pope, in his Essay on Man, called it the Solar Walk, and, before his day, its various divisions were the Houses of the Sun, and the Monthly Abodes of Apollo.
Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321, designated it
The oblique circle which conveys the planets,.
and called it Rubecchio, the Tuscan word for a Mill-wheel whose various cogs were represented by the various signs, an image often made use of by the great poet. Longfellow translated this the Zodiac's Jagged Wheel. But many centuries, perhaps millenniums, before Dante the Rig Veda of India had
The twelve-spoked wheel revolves around the heavens;
720 children in pairs [= 360 days + 360 nights] abide in it.
And again,
The fellies are twelve; the wheel is one; within it are collected 360 [spokes].
A common title for it in India was Rasi chakra.
In the neighboring Persia, the Bundehesh, or Cosmogony, in the Pahlavi dialect, of about the 8th or 9th century, a queerly mixed farrago of Persian and Semitic words, mentions our zodiacal divisions as the Twelve Akhtars that lead the army of Ormuzd, while the seven Asvahtars, or planets (including a meteor and a comet), fight for Aryaman.
But the twelve signs of that country, as also those of China and India, were gathered into four great groups marking the four quarters of the heavens, each with a Royal Star or Guardian; and the Avesta, or Divine Law, of Zoroaster is thought to mention a heavenly circle of figures equivalent to our zodiac.
Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., says that in China the Kung, or
zodiacal signs, are the Tiger (Sagittarius); the Hare (Scorpio); the Dragon (Libra); the Serpent (Virgo); the Horse (Leo); the Ram (Cancer); the Ape (Gemini); the Cock (Taurus); the Dog (Aries); the Boar (Pisces); the Rat (Aquarius); the Ox (Capricornus). This is a zodiac indeed; but although the latest research [notably by the late Doctor Terrien de Lacouperie] points to a more western origin of Chinese civilization [as of about 4000 years ago], and even (a most interesting fact) to the original identity of the Chinese pictorial writing with the Akkadian Cuneiform, as both springing from one prior source, yet the Chinese Zodiac is evidently independent, and none the less so because it happens to include the Ram and the Bull, which, however, are not Aries and Taurus.
It is well shown on the Temple Money, a full set of which, of uncertain age, is in my possession.
This Chinese zodiac, however, progressed in reverse order from our own, opposed to the sun's annual course in the heavens, and began with the Rat. It was known as the Yellow Way, the date of formation being assigned to some time between the 27th and 7th centuries before our era, and the twelve symbols utilized to mark the twelve months of the year. It was borrowed, too, by the neighboring nations ages ago, some of its features being still current among them. After the establishment in China of the Jesuits in the 16th century our zodiac was adopted, its titles being closely translated and now in current use.
In England the Venerable Bede, 673-735, substituted the eleven apostles for eleven of the early signs, as the Corona sen Circulus sanctorum Apostolorum, John the Baptist fitly taking the place of Aquarius to complete the circle. Sir William Drummond, in the 17th century, turned its constellations into a dozen Bible patriarchs; the Reverend G. Townsend made of them the twelve Caesars; and there have been other fanciful changes of this same character. Indeed, the Tree of Life in the Apocalypse has been thought a type of the zodiac, as
bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month.
Probably every nation on earth has had a solar zodiac in some form, generally one of animals. Even in Rhodesia, the aboriginal Mashona Land of South Africa, there has recently been found a stone tablet thirty-eight inches in diameter, with the circle of the zodiacal signs on the edge; and early Mandaean tradition makes its figures children of their creative spirits Ur and Ruha.
The introduction of the twelve figures into the walls or pavements of early churches, cathedrals, and public edifices, as well as, sometimes, private houses, is often to be noticed in Europe, and still more frequently in the temples of the East; while all visitors to the New York State Building in the World's Columbian Exposition of Chicago in 1893 will recall the striking octagonal zodiac designed by Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White, and laid in brass in the floor of the entrance hall, which, although not astronomically correct, greatly added to the interior effect of that beautiful structure.
The zodiacal constellations being of unequal extent, Hipparchos more scientifically divided the ecliptic circle into twelve equal spaces of 30° each, the twelve signs still in almanac use; but these are not now coincident with the similarly named constellations, having retrograded about 33° on the sphere since their formation.
The constellation north or south of the one of the zodiac that rose or set synchronically with it in Greece was known, in later days, as its paranatellon.
Their number is, if you want to count them, Twenty stars, and a number 8 after them.
CHAPTER 2
The Lunar Mansions
once bore an important part in observational astronomy, especially in that of Arabia, China, and India, and of Khiva—the ancient Khorasmia—and Bokhara—the ancient Sogdiana; while recent research finds them well established in the Euphrates valley, Coptic Egypt and Persia, perhaps originating in the first.
They lay for the most part along the celestial equator or in the zodiac, varying in extent, although theoretically each was supposed to represent the length of the moon's daily motion in its orbit. They sometimes were twenty-seven, but usually twenty-eight in number, the lunar month being between twenty-seven and twenty-eight days, and possibly long antedated the general constellations, or even the solar zodiac. They seem to have been among the earliest attempts at stellar science; indeed with the Khorasmians, to whom Al Biruni attributed great knowledge of the stars, an astronomer was called Akhtar Wenik, Looking to the Lunar Stations; and they have largely been made use of in the astrology of all ages, as well as in early poetry and prose, even in Arabic doggerel.
Their astrological characters were various, eleven being considered fortunate, ten the reverse, and seven of uncertain influence; but each, at least in India, was associated with some occurrence of life. Their antiquity is proved by the fact that there, and probably elsewhere, the list began with the Pleiades, when those stars marked the vernal equinox, although this was changed about the beginning of our era, owing to precession, to stars in Aries, the 27th of the early series, and further from the fact that many of their titles occur in the most ancient books of China, and are positively claimed there as of at least 2500 B. C.
While these lunar asterisms in the main agree as to their component stars,—eighteen are coincident,—some of the Hindu and Chinese are located in our Andromeda, Aquila, Boötes, Crater, Delphinus, Hydra, Lyra, Orion, and Pegasus, outside of the moon's course. Nor are their titles similar, except in the 16th, 17th, and 28th of China and Arabia; but our great Sanskrit scholar Whitney thought that this can hardly be fortuitous, and claimed, from this and other points of resemblance, that they are "three derivative forms of the same original."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from STAR NAMES by Richard Hinckley Allen. Copyright © 1963 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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