By Water & Blood

Chapter 21: Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and the Zodiac

That Adonis too is the sun will not be doubted when the religion of the Assyrians is examined, among whom the greatest veneration of Venus Aphacitida and of Adonis once flourished, which the Phoenicians now hold. For the natural philosophers worshipped under the name of Venus the upper hemisphere of the earth, of which we inhabit a part, but called the lower hemisphere of the earth Proserpina. Therefore among the Assyrians or Phoenicians the goddess is introduced mourning, because the sun, proceeding in its yearly course through the order of the twelve signs, enters also the part of the lower hemisphere, since of the twelve signs of the zodiac six are reckoned upper, six lower. And when it is in the lower and therefore makes the days shorter, the goddess is believed to mourn, as if the sun had been lost by a seizure of temporary death and held by Proserpina, whom we have said is the divinity of the lower circle of the earth and of the antipodes. And again they wish Adonis to be believed restored to Venus when the sun, having overcome the six signs of the lower order, begins to traverse the hemisphere of our circle with increase of light and of days. But they relate that Adonis was slain by a boar, fashioning in this animal an image of winter, because the boar, bristly and rough, delights in damp muddy places covered with frost and feeds properly on the acorn, the fruit of winter. Therefore winter is as it were a wound of the sun, which both diminishes its light for us and its heat — both of which befall living beings in death.

An image of this goddess is fashioned on Mount Lebanon with head veiled, of sad appearance, supporting her face with the left hand within her mantle; tears are believed to flow at the sight of those who look on. Which image, besides being of the mourning goddess as we have said, is also of the winter earth, at which time, veiled in clouds and widowed of the sun, it stands stunned, and springs, as it were the eyes of the earth, flow more abundantly, and the fields meanwhile, widowed of their tillage, show their mournful face. But when the sun has emerged from the lower parts of the earth and crosses the bounds of the spring equinox, lengthening the day, then Venus is glad and fair: the fields are green with crops, the meadows with grasses, the trees with leaves. Therefore our ancestors dedicated the month of April to Venus.

In like manner the Phrygians, with fables and administrations of rites changed, make the same things to be understood concerning the Mother of the Gods and Attis. For who would doubt that the Mother of the Gods is held to be the earth? This goddess is carried by lions, animals strong in rush and fervor, which is the nature of heaven, by whose circuit the air is contained that carries the earth. But under the name of Attis they adorn the sun with a pipe and a wand. The pipe shows the order of unequal breath, because the winds, in which there is no equality, take their proper substance from the sun; the wand asserts the power of the sun who moderates all things. But that the chief reason of the sun turns in these ceremonies can also be gathered from this: that when their rite of the descent is finished and the simulation of mourning performed, the beginning of gladness is celebrated on the eighth day before the Kalends of April. Which day they call the Hilaria, at which time first the sun stretches the day longer than the night.

The same effect under diverse names of religion is among the Egyptians when Isis mourns Osiris. Nor is it hidden, nor is Osiris anything other than the sun, nor Isis anything other than the earth (as we have said) or the nature of things; and the same reason which turns about Adonis and Attis also in the Egyptian religion alternates mourning and gladness by the turns of yearly administration. That the Egyptians may assert this Osiris to be the sun, whenever they wish to express him in their hieroglyphic letters they engrave a scepter and on it express the form of an eye, and by this sign they show Osiris, signifying that this god is the sun and, sublime with kingly power, looks down on all things, because antiquity calls the sun the eye of Jupiter. Among the same people Apollo, who is the sun, is called Horus, from which both the twenty-four hours by which day and night are completed have taken their name, and the four seasons by which the yearly circle is filled are called horai.

The same Egyptians, wishing to dedicate an image in the name of the sun itself, fashioned it with shaved head but with hair remaining on the right side. The hair kept shows that the sun of the nature of things is never in hiding; but the hair removed, with the root remaining, shows that this star, even at the time when it is not seen by us, again has substance for emerging, as hair does. By the same argument is also signified the time when light is narrow, when, with the increases as it were shaved away and a narrow projection remaining, the sun comes to the least space of the day, which the ancients called the brumal solstice, naming bruma from the shortness of the days, that is brachu hemar. Emerging again from these hiding-places or narrows, it stretches into increases toward the summer hemisphere as if being born, and then is already believed to have come to its kingdom.

Therefore the Egyptians consecrated an animal in the zodiac in that part of heaven where most of all in its yearly course the sun burns with strong heat, and they call the sign of the Lion there the domicile of the sun, because that animal seems to draw its substance from the nature of the sun: first because in rush and heat it surpasses animals as the sun surpasses the stars, and the lion is strong in breast and the fore part of the body and degenerates in the hinder members, just as the sun's force increases in the first part of the day toward noon, or in the first part of the year from spring into summer, then growing faint is led either to setting, which is of the day, or to winter, which seems the later part of the year. And he is always seen with open and fiery eyes, as the sun with open and fiery eye surveys the earth with perpetual and untiring gaze.

Nor the Lion alone, but all the signs of the zodiac too are rightly referred to the nature of the sun. And to begin from the Ram: there is great concord with it: for through the six winter months it lies on its left side, from the spring equinox on its right side, just as the sun from that same time traverses the right hemisphere and the rest the left. Therefore they also fashion Ammon, whom the Libyans hold to be the setting sun-god, with ram's horns, by which that animal is strongest as the sun is by rays. For among the Greeks too he is called krios from the head (apo tou kara). But that the Bull is referred to the sun Egyptian cult shows by manifold reason: either because at Heliopolis they especially worship a bull consecrated to the sun, whom they surname Mneuis; or because the ox Apis in the city of Memphis is received as the image of the sun; or because in the town of Hermunthis, at the magnificent temple of Apollo, they worship a bull consecrated to the sun, surnaming it Buchis, marked with wonders agreeing with the nature of the sun. For it is affirmed to change colors through each hour, and it is said to be shaggy with bristles growing backward against the nature of all animals. Whence it is held as an image of the sun pressing toward the opposite part of the world. But the Twins, who are believed to live by alternate deaths, what else do they signify but one and the same sun, now descending into the depths of the world, now rising again into the highest height of the world? The Crab by its oblique gait — what else does it show but the path of the sun, which has been allotted never to go a straight way but always through that, oblique, by which the order of the signs turns? And most of all in that sign the sun begins from its upper course to seek the lower regions already oblique. Of the Lion enough has been said above. But the Virgin, who bears an ear of corn in her hand — what else than the solar power (dynamis heliake) that cares for fruits? And therefore she is believed Justice, who alone makes the fruits that are born come to the uses of men. The whole Scorpion, in which is Libra, images the nature of the sun, which grows numb in winter and, when this is past, again raises its sting by its own force, having suffered no natural harm from winter numbness. The Archer, who is the lowest and last of all the domiciles of the zodiac, therefore degenerates from man into beast through the hinder members, as if thrust down by his last parts from the upper into the lower regions; yet he shoots an arrow, which indicates that even then the life of all things stands by the ray of the sun even coming from the lowest part. Capricorn, bringing the sun back from the lower parts to the upper, seems to imitate the nature of the she-goat, which while feeding always demands the heights of projecting cliffs from the lowest parts. Does not Aquarius show the very force of the sun? For whence would rain fall upon the lands if the sun's heat did not draw moisture upward, whose pouring back is the abundance of rain? In the last order of the zodiac the Fishes are placed, whom not some imagination of their own nature consecrated to the sun as the rest, but a display of the star's power, by which life is given not only to creatures of air and earth but also to those whose dwelling, sunk in waters, is as it were exiled from the sun's sight. So great is the force of the sun that by penetrating it also quickens things hidden away.