Astral Worship | Page 7

and driving Ursa
Major, or the Great Bear, around the north pole, thus showing that the
original occupation of the celestial foster father of the young God Sol
was that of a bear driver, and that his sons, referred to in job xxxviii.,
32, are the dogs Asterion and Chara. It will be observed that Virgo is
represented in our illustration with a child in her arms, for the reason
that she is so represented in the ancient Zodiacs, and the fact will be
readily conceded that she is the only Virgin who could give birth to a
child and be a virgin still.
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THE ANCIENT COSMOGONY.
Speculating relative to the order in which chaos had been organized,
the ancient Astrologers constructed a Cosmogony, which divided the
labors of God the Son, or second person in the Trinity, into six periods
of a thousand years each; and which, answering to the six divisions of
the 12,000 year cycle corresponding to the reproductive months of
Spring and Summer, taught that in the first period he made the earth; in
the second, the firmament; in the third, vegetation; in the fourth, the
Sun and Moon and "the stars also;" in the fifth, the animals, fishes,
birds, etc., and in the sixth, Man.
That vegetation was made before the Sun was not an inconsistent idea
to the originators of the ancient Cosmogony. They imagined that the
heat and light, emanating from the elementary fire, were sufficient to
stimulate its growth, after which God the Son gathered it together and
made the Celestial luminaries. In the solar fables this imaginary
element is called the fire-ether, or sacred fire of the stars.

FALL AND REDEMPTION OF MAN.
Religion having been based upon the worship of personified nature, it

is evident that its founders fabricated its dogmatic element from their
conceptions of her destructive and reproductive processes as
manifested in the rotation and diversity of the seasons. The apparent
retreat of the sun from the earth, in winter, and his return in the spring,
suggesting the idea of a figurative death and resurrection of the genius
of that luminary, they applied these phenomena of the year to man, and
composed the allegories relative to his fall and redemption, as
inculcated in the Exoteric Creed. In the allegory relating to the fall, it
was taught that, after making the first human pair, the Lord of Good or
the Lord God placed them in a beautiful garden--corresponding to the
seasons of fruits and flowers or months of Spring and Summer, with
the injunction, under a, penalty, not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree.
When the Lord of Evil, or Devil, symbolized by the serpent and
represented by the constellation "Serpens" placed in conjunction with
the Autumnal Equinox, meeting them on the confines of his dominion,
and tempting the woman, and she the man, they ate of the forbidden
fruit; thus, falling from their first estate, and committing the original sin,
they involved the whole human race in the consequences of their
disobedience. Then the Lord God, pronouncing a curse against the
serpent, clothed the man and woman with skins to protect them against
the inclemency of his, dominion as Lord of Evil, and drove them from
the garden; after which they were necessitated to earn their bread by
tilling the ground.
In, reference to the plan of redemption, the ancient Astrologers divided
the 6,000 years appropriated to man, as the duration of his race on earth,
into ten equal cycles, and taught that at the conclusion of each God Sol,
as Lord of Good, would manifest himself in the flesh, to destroy his
works as Lord of Evil, and through suffering and death make an
atonement for sin. Thus having originated the doctrines of original sin,
incarnation and vicarious atonement, as parts of the plan of redemption,
and making its finale correspond, in point of time, to the conclusion of
the 12,000 year cycle, their successors in the priestly office ultimately
inculcated the additional dogmas of the general judgment and future
rewards and punishments, as we have shown in our introduction.
Having based the fables of the fall and redemption of man upon the

idea that he was impelled, without his volition, to pass from the
dominion of God to that of the Devil, or in other words, upon his
subjection to the inexorable necessity which makes the inclement
seasons of Autumn and Winter succeed the beneficent ones of Spring
and Summer, its authors composed the original of the text which, found
in Romans viii., 20, reads that "The creature was made subject to vanity
(Evil), not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same
in hope."
But for the popular teaching in favor of its being literal history, no