Zodiac

“ For when the sun is midway on his course Between the blasts of northwind and of south, Heaven keeps his two goals parted equally, By virtue of the fixed position old Of the whole starry Zodiac, through which That sun, in winding onward, takes a year, Illumining the sky and all the lands With oblique light—as men declare to us Who by their diagrams have charted well Those regions of the sky which be adorned With the arranged signs of Zodiac. ”

“ CHAP. III. Since, however, every part of the heavens, every sign of the zodiac, [2] all the motion of the heavens, every period of time according to which the world is moved, and all things contained in the wholes of the universe, receive the powers which descend from the sun, some of which are complicated with these wholes, but others transcend a commixture with them, the symbolical mode of signification represents these also, indicating "that the sun is diversified according to the signs of the zodiac, and that every hour he changes his form." ”

“ If the sun, driving through the circles and passing along the signs of the Zodiac in his annual periods, accomplishes the changes and turnings of the seasons, how did those who were born before the signs of the Zodiac were placed among the stars, and the heaven was adorned with them, continue to exist, when summer, autumn, winter, and spring, were not as yet separated from each other, by means of which the body is increased and strengthened? ”

“ The zodiac is of great antiquity; the ancient Egyptians and Hindoos made use of it, and there are allusions to it in the earliest astronomical records. The twelve constellations of the zodiac bear the following names:—
In close association with the Sun’s annual journey are the seasons, upon the regular sequence of which mankind depend for the various products of the soil essential for the maintenance and enjoyment of life. ”

“ Because of the revolution of the earth upon its axis a new degree of the zodiac rises every four minutes and thus even the horoscopes of twins may differ considerably. ”

“ The "burning fiery furnace" was nothing else than an emblem of that region of the great circle which the sun enters at midsummer, or the sign Cancer. Each of the twelve signs of the zodiac had a presiding genius, or imaginary personification, and these were the twelve greater gods of Paganism. ”

“ The mundane factor as distinguished from the zodiacal, that is to say, the positions of the planets in the prime vertical as distinguished from their positions in the zodiac, is that which makes for individual expression. Three hundred and sixty persons could be born in a single day in any one locality and each of these could have a horoscope that is distinct and individual. The highest record does not reach this number. ”

“ The sun enters Aries at the spring equinox and Libra at the autumnal equinox, while the first point of Cancer marks the summer solstice, and that of Capricorn the winter. The name Zodiac is derived from the Greek zoon, an animal, and has been given to the belt because the majority of the signs are named after animals. ”

“ Astronomers distinguish between a fixed and intellectual zodiac; and the movable and visible zodiac. According to the former, Aries still stands as the first of the signs; that is to say, the first thirty degrees of the zodiacal circle, reckoning from the equinoctial point in spring, are allotted to Aries in the intellectual zodiac.... Astronomers generally choose to reckon by the fixed and intellectual zodiac.— (Drummond's "Oedipus Judaicus.") ”

“ If I wished to know what particular part of the Zodiac one is subject to in any particular year of life—that is to say, what part of the Zodiac is rising—I add 1 degree for every year to the Midheaven at birth and thus obtain a new Midheaven, under which, in the Tables of Houses, I find the Ascendant which rules the year. ”

“ By a knowledge of the signature given by the signs of the zodiac, when rising at birth, we may sometimes ascertain the hour of nativity, or, at any rate, go near enough to it to be able to work out the horoscope after a fashion, supposing the exact date to be impossible of attainment. ”

“ Zodiac, the name given to a belt of the heavens extending 8° on each side of the ecliptic, composed of twelve constellations called signs of the zodiac, which the sun traverses in the course of a year. ”

“ The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From one point of view they represent the different stages of creation up to the time the present material universe with the five elements came into phenomenal existence. ”

“ Thus, the significance of the combined situation of all these bodies received its decisive character from the striking actions of one or more propitious or unpropitious planets, which stood in those positions of increased influence. The so-called horoscope, however, with its derived prognostications concerning the entire future life of the individual, was deduced from that point of the zodiac which appeared in view at the hour of birth. ”

“ As the part of the zodiac that we can see best at night is that opposite where the sun is, so in summer, when the sun is high, we see best the part of the zodiac which is low in the southern skies in the evening; and in the winter, when the sun is in the southern half of his journey, the part of the zodiac best seen by us is high in the heavens. No part of it, however, is ever as high as the zenith, or directly overhead, and no planet is ever seen as far north as the zenith in any place whose latitude is more than twenty-three and one-half degrees from the equator. ”

“ Astrologers 172everywhere recognize the fact that the signs of the zodiac are alternately active and passive, or positive and negative, male and female, and the Houses or twelve divisions of the visible heavens are said to have the same polarity as the signs with which they are associated, as Aries with the 1st House, Taurus with the 2nd House, and so on. ”

“ The sign of the zodiac, too, under which a child comes into the world, possesses a power to produce a particular form of body and mental inclination, always, however, subject to the influence of the seven planets. ”

“ By these very simple words “let them be for signs,” they understand neither the variations of the weather, nor the change of seasons; they only see in them, at the will of their imagination, the distribution of human destinies. What do they say in reality? When the planets cross in the signs of the Zodiac, certain figures formed by their meeting give birth to certain destinies, and others produce different destinies. ”

“ It has been poetically said that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental supremacy. ”

“ It would therefore be necessary that an account first be given how one might, by natural and consistent reasoning, discover the degree of the zodiac which should be rising, given the degree of the known hour nearest the event, which is discovered by the method of ascensions. ”

“ Zodiacal ingresses are those that are made by the planets into the signs of the zodiac successively, and it is held that a change in the trend of affairs will take place in that department of the life ruled by the House wherein that sign is placed at birth. ”

“ Some reliance in the influence of the moon, and a small degree of attention to the aspect of the sign of the zodiac according to the time-honored frontispiece in the almanac, both materially lacking in the important requisite of full and trusting faith, are very nearly the only mysteries which can be regarded as having acquired a practical adoption in any appreciable degree. ”

“ The twelve constellations or signs of the zodiac, and two other bands of constellations are mentioned, just as two sets of twelve stars each are mentioned by the Greeks, one north and one south of the zodiac. ”

“ Of the signs of the zodiac in general, then, the solstitial signs produce souls fitted for deaIing with the people, fond of turbulence and political activity, glory-seeking, moreover, and attentive to the gods, noble, mobile, inquisitive, inventive, good at conjecture, and fitted for astrology and divination. The bicorporeal signs make souls complex, changeable, hard to apprehend, light, unstable, fickle, amorous, versatile, fond of music, lazy, easily acquisitive, prone to change their minds. ”

“ The zodiac promises us a good star, and the figures representing it are not the common emblems, but each deeply significant. The Twins, for instance, are the mariner’s divinities, Castor and Pollux; Hercules stands by the Lion whom he has subdued; and the Fishes are dolphins, which love music. ”

“ The heavens, the sun, great seat of generative power, the signs, the stars, and the planets act only with the activity of the soul of the Universe. From that soul, through them, come all the variations and changes of sublunary nature, of which the heavens and celestial bodies are but the secondary causes. The zodiac, with its signs, is an existence, immortal and divine, organized by the universal soul, and producing, or gathering in itself, all the varied emanations of the different powers that make up the nature of the Divinity. ”

“ In inquiries regarding matters of importance we must observe the places in both nativities which have the greatest authority, that is, those of the sun, the moon, the horoscope, and the Lot of Fortune; for if they chance to fall in the same signs of the zodiac, or if they exchange places, either all or most of them, and particularly if the horoscopic regions are about 17° apart, they bring about secure and indissoluble sympathy, unbroken by any quarrel. ”

“ but when viewed in its inexhaustible extent, the sun, moon, stars, and constellations of the zodiac, are suspended in it, and all things are overspread by it. The earth before us is but a handful of soil; ”

“ His own favorite theory, set forth three times in the aforesaid three works, was that when the heads of the equinoctial and tropical signs of the mobile zodiac come directly under the heads of the same signs of the immobile zodiac in the heaven of the fixed stars, then virtue from the First Cause passes in a more perfect manner through the mediate causes or heavens and men live longer and are stronger. ”

“ In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. ”

“ The other constellations of the two hemispheres are not unconsidered in astrology, but those of the zodiac are more important, because they form the pathway of the sun, the moon, and the planets, and are supposed to receive from these bodies, as they roll through their spaces, extraordinary energy. ”

“ The students of sublime wisdom now say that the Zodiac, the greatest of all the circles in Heaven, is studded with twelve animals from which it has derived its name. And that the Sun and the Moon are always revolving around it and go through each of the animals, not indeed with equal rapidity, but in unequal numbers and periods, the one doing so in 30 days and the other in as near as may be a twelfth part of that time. ”

“ Moreover, He created twelve signs of the Zodiac, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces and appointed them of four [several] humours, three, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, fiery, Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, earthy, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, airy, and Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, watery.’ With this, the astronomer rose, and saying, ‘Bear witness against me that she is more learned than I,’ went away beaten. ”

“ They do not attend to the circumstance that, in this sort of argument, there is a complication of three suppositions equally uncertain: the country in which the zodiac is presumed to have been invented, the signification which is supposed to have been given to the constellations which occupy it, and the position in which the colures were with relation to each constellation, when this signification was attributed to it. ”

“ Now besides those whom I have mentioned, there is in the heavens a great multitude of gods who have been recognised as such by those who survey the heavens, not casually, nor like cattle. For as he divides the three spheres by four through the zodiac,724 which is associated with every one of the three, so he divides the zodiac also into twelve divine powers ”

“ The features in all are not the same, nor, however, remarkably different: they are such as those of sisters ought to be. The Earth has upon it men and cities, and woods, and wild beasts, and rivers, and Nymphs, and other Deities of the country. Over these is placed the figure of the shining Heaven, and there are six Signs of the Zodiac on the right door, and as many on the left. ”

“ This word is derived from the Greek Zodiakos, which signifies "animal," and this etymology arose because most of the figures traced [Pg 43] on this belt of stars represent animals. The belt is divided into twelve parts that are called the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, also named by the ancients the "Houses of the Sun," since the Sun visits one of them in each month. ”

“ Astrological Systems.—The refined system of astrological prediction based upon the solar zodiac was invented in Chaldaea, obtained a second home and added elaborations in Egypt, and spread irresistibly westward about the beginning of the Christian era. For genethliacal purposes the signs were divided into six solar and six lunar, the former counted onward from Leo, the “house” of the sun, the latter backward from the moon’s domicile in Cancer. Each planet had two houses—a solar and a lunar—distributed according to the order of their revolutions. ”

“ In modern works we find the terms “useless,” “fanciful,” and “inconvenient,” applied to the Zodiac and its constellations; and for regulating a tropical year the constellations are “useless” and “inconvenient,” but the theory that the reckoning of the year and all its religious festivals depended on the observance of the Zodiacal star-groups, would help to account for the widely spread veneration in which they were held throughout so many ages and by so many nations. ”

“ An astrological calculation is often made with the view of determining by what sign of the zodiac the two persons are influenced who contemplate becoming man and wife, and thence ascertaining whether they will agree. ”