Chiromancy

“ He was not less skilled in the kindred, though more trivial art of Chiromancy, Palmistry, or Manual Divination, for the divine origin of which a verse in the Book of Job was adduced as scriptural proof; “He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know his work.” ”

“ And Chiron laughed, and said, “Sit here by me till sundown, when your playfellows will come home, and you shall learn like them to be a king, worthy to rule over gallant men.”
Then he turned to Æson, and said, “Go back in peace, and bend before the storm like a prudent man. This boy shall not cross the Anauros again, till he has become a glory to you and to the house of Æolus.” ”

“ The haunted, land of song; and by the wells
Where most the gods frequent. There Chiron old,
In a vast mountain antre, taught thee lore:
The plants he taught, and by the shining stars
In forests dim to steer. ”

“ About 1185 B. C. we find among the Grecians some traces of what was termed the healing art. But fact and fable, history and mythology, are so mixed and blended, that it is impossible to gain any reliable information so far back.
Chiron is made mention of as having acquired much celebrity as a physician. It is claimed that he was learned in the arts and sciences, that he taught astronomy to Hercules, music to Apollo, and medicine to Æsculapius, who came from Egypt. ”

“ Chiron, a centaur, half a man and half a horse, son of Philyra and Saturn, who had changed himself into a horse, to escape the inquiries of his wife Rhea. Chiron was famous for his knowledge of music, medicine, and shooting. He taught mankind the use of plants and medicinal herbs: and he instructed in all the polite arts the greatest heroes of his age; such as Achilles, Æsculapius, Hercules, Jason, Peleus, Æneas, &c. He was wounded on the knee by a poisoned arrow, by Hercules, in his pursuit of the centaurs. ”

“ Chiromancers generally teach that the first joints near the mount of the finger indicate the early age, the second, the flourishing state of manhood, and the last old age. But our opinion is that the planets shown by the nativity of the persons do, in their proper order, manifest their marks and characters whether for good or bad. ”

“ The Golden Age therefore falls in with the Reign of Asterius, and the Silver Age with that of Minos; and to make these Ages much longer than ordinary generations, is to make Chiron live much longer than according to the course of nature. ”

“ That there, in the heart of all the worlds, Cherubim and Seraphim continually adore him, crying day and night, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth: Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory!’ before his throne from which goes forth light, and power, and life, to all worlds and all created things. ”

“ They may have meant the uncanny Something which was believed to have its abode there, or they may have been trying to keep out unauthorised intrusion by the fiction of a [49] palpable chirombo with claws and teeth. Whether or not they consciously think of the dead as little shadowy figures, a few inches high [8] (like the representation of the soul as it issues from the body, on some Greek vases) , such was evidently the thought that suggested the erection of these miniature dwellings. ”

“ The whole world in which he lives and moves and has his being, in so far as it is not a mere illusion of the senses, is for him an emanation of the omnipresent deity that he worships in a thousand different shapes, from the grotesque to the sublime. ”

“ Only one walked apart and silent, Æsculapius, the too-wise child, with his bosom full of herbs and flowers, and round his wrist a spotted snake; he came with downcast eyes to Chiron, and whispered how he had watched the snake cast its old skin, and grow young again before his eyes, and how he had gone down into a village in the vale, and cured a dying man with a herb which he had seen a sick goat eat.
And Chiron smiled, and said, "To each Athené and Apollo give some gift, and each is worthy in his place; but to this child they have given an honor beyond all honors, to cure while others kill." ”

“ The education of Hercules was intrusted to Chiron, the most renowned of the centaurs, who had himself been instructed by Apollo and Diana in hunting, medicine, music, and the art of prophecy. The idea of a creature half man and half horse was not repulsive to the ancients,213 who were too fond of a horse to consider man's union with him degrading. When Hercules left the kindly tutelage of Chiron, he set out on his own adventures, and before he had traveled far he met two beautiful women, each of whom offered to guide him on his journey. ”

“ We said a little before in this lesson, that the throne of the Almighty was among the host which are called throni: but who may be happy, unless he have his Creator's dwelling in himself? Seraphim the spirits are called who are burning with love of the Lord, and yet all the heavenly power together is inflamed with his love. Cherubim is interpreted fullness of knowledge or understanding, and yet what angel is there in God's presence who knows not all things? ”

“ XXII. The vanity (says the famous Magdalen Scudery, in the fourth volume of her Cyrus) which is derived only from our progenitors, is not well founded; but for all this, this illustrious chimera, which so sooths and flatters the hearts of all mankind, is so universally established throughout the world, that it cannot fail to obtain veneration and regard. ”

“ Alone! you will leave me alone in a sandy desert, in nothing but sand, sand in the night, with a single tree and a handful of water! Alone! O Chimera, you cannot do that . . . .! For I love you; I adore you with all my soul, and shall die of grief and tears, Chimera, if you fly away from me! I love you; I worship your golden eyes, your voice of bronze, your steaming breath, your panting flanks, your mane, to which I bound myself, your flaming wings, which carried me far, farther and farther . . . . to this place . . . .! O Chimera, lay down your smoking limbs in the shadow of the night ”

“ These cherubic forms represent, not merely material or earthly perfections, but human nature spiritualized and sanctified. They are “living creatures” and their life is a holy life of obedience to the divine will (Ez. 1:12—“whither the spirit was to go, they went”) . 5. They symbolize a human nature exalted to be the dwelling-place of God. Hence the inner curtains of the tabernacle were inwoven with cherubic figures, and God's glory was manifested on the mercy-seat between the cherubim (Ex. 37:6-9) . ”

“ Let the soul restrain the provocations of the flesh; let it bridle the impulses of the body. For it has received this power, that the limbs should be subservient to its command; and as a lawful and accomplished charioteer, it should turn about the fleshly impulses when they lift themselves above the allowed limits of the body, by the reins of the heavenly precepts, lest that chariot of the body, carried away beyond its limits, should hurry into its own peril the charioteer himself as well as it. ”

“ Vague, terrible, a mockery, a menace, it has the vertigo of the gulf in its eyes, and it draws men toward those "new perfumes, those larger flowers, those unfelt pleasures," which are not to be found in the world. In another design the Chimera, spitting fire from its nostrils, light glittering and leaping on wings and tail, turns on itself, distending its jaws in a vast ironic bark: la chimère aux yeux verts, tournoie, aboie. ”

“ Each chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosper
In pleasant talk at easy hours with men
So fashioned if it might be — and his eyes
Would pass again to those dead gods that grew
In spreading evil round the temple walls;
And, one dead pressure made, the carvers moved
Along the wall to mould and mould again
The self-same god, their chisels on the stone
Tapping in dull precision as before,
And he would turn, back to his lonely truth. ”

“ Then Chiron put the lyre into his hands, and taught him how to play it, till the sun sank low behind the cliff, and a shout was heard outside. And then in came the sons of the heroes,—Æneas, and Hercules, and Peleus, and many another mighty name.{16}
And great Chiron leaped up joyfully, and his hoofs made the cave resound, as they shouted, “Come out, Father Chiron; come out and see our game.” And one cried, “I have killed two deer,” and another, “I took a wild cat among the crags.” And Hercules dragged a wild goat after him by its horns ”

“ Of the mythic age I suppose almost every circumstance to have been imported, and adopted; or else to be a fable. I imagine, that Chiron, so celebrated for his knowledge, was a mere personage formed from a tower, or temple, of that name. It stood in Thessaly; and was inhabited by a set of priests, called Centauri. They were so denominated from the Deity they worshipped, who was represented under a particular form. They styled him Cahen-Taur: and he was the same as the Minotaur of Crete, and the Tauromen of Sicilia ”

“ Why do you fall into the destruction of the devil, by his means and in his company? Keep the lofty estate in which you were born. Continue such as you were made by God. To the posture of your countenance and of your body, conform your soul. ”

“ Like the European wild men of the woods they were covered with long shaggy hair. Chiron, the most friendly of them, was skilled in the use of simples and in the hidden powers of nature. Lastly, their presence was assumed in the whirlwind and other violent atmospheric phenomena. All these features class the archaic centaurs with the undoubted wood-spirits of a later mythology. ”

“ Now, of this ruling authority and of this goodness, being two distinct powers, the cherubim were the symbols, but of reason the flaming sword was the symbol. For reason is a thing capable of rapid motion and impetuous, and especially the reason of the Creator of all things is so, inasmuch as it was before everything and passed by everything, and was conceived before everything, and appears in everything. ”

“ Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto thee, and paint me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as I am, and in the weeds of this time; only with eyes which seek out labour, and with a faith, not learned, yet jealous of prayer. ”

“ The famous Hercules was one, and so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and Aesculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education, in which the lads of those days used to be instructed, instead of writing and arithmetic. ”

“ Forth with those missives, Chiron, to the Invader!
Hence, and make speed: they scathe mine eyes like fire:
Pompeius, thou hast conquered! What remains?
Vengeance! Man's race has never dreamed of such ”

“ In most of the images, the human form predominates; around which the serpent often appears entwined. The cherubic wings are indifferently attached to the human and the leading animal forms, and to the serpent. The combinations, especially of heads, in these representative images, strikingly suggest that the example of the cherubic faces was perverted to be the basis of the system, and that the serpent, when not exhibited as a distinct and sole object of homage, was foisted in and superadded to the figures which were familiar in the original system of revealed religion. ”

“ For there is indeed, unless I am mistaken, even in the very power of conscience, a marvellous fear which at once disturbs and inflames us; whose power, the more closely you look into, the more the dreadful sense of its obligation is gathered from its very aspect of venerable majesty. ”

“ For this reason we may perceive in the inception of the Crusades the poetry of chivalry, as we see in the legends that followed them its romance; unhappily, when we come to study the grim story of the actual events, poetry and romance vanish in horrors of carnage. ”

“ The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds
The other day on a stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I climbed up upon one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards from which the dead seem to look down upon all the living. It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus was a mountain of gods. In that church lay the bones of great Puritan lords, of a time when most of the power of England was Puritan, even of the Established Church. ”

“ Good Heavens! in what an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk—a veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage to flounder himself, no human hand can pull him. ”

“ Heaven lies open to our blood; the dwelling-place of Gehenna gives way to our blood; and among all the attainments of glory, the title of blood is sealed as the fairest, and its crown is designated as most complete. ”

“ But God very appropriately assigns to the cherubim and to the flaming sword a city or abode in front of Paradise, not as to enemies about to oppose and to fight him, but rather as to near connections and friends, in order that in consequence of a continued sight and contemplation of one another, the two powers might conceive an affection for one another, the all-bounteous God inspiring them with a winged and heavenly love. ”

“ Cyrus, inclining to the idolatry of the Phoenicians, had worshipped the sun and moon, and had built temples and done sacrifice to them and to a multitude of deities. Cambyses had converted the temples of his father into places of fire-worship, and had burnt thousands of human victims ”

“ Monastic legend and the rubric of martyrology claimed more than a legitimate share from the labours of the pencil and the chisel, made nudity the exclusive property of emaciated hermits or decrepit age, and if the breast of manhood was allowed to bare its vigour, or beauty to expand her bosom, the antidotes of terrour and of horrour were ready at their side to check the apprehended infection of their charms. ”