FLORAL SYMBOLS. 101 



ing rase that crowns its lofty stem, the capital of the most beautiful 

 columns."* 



The onion was held in similar esteem as a religious symbol in the 

 mysterious solemnities and divinations of the mythologies of Egypt 

 and Hindostan. Mr. Crauford has imagined that the delicate red 

 veins and fibres of the onion rendered it an object of veneration, as 

 symbolizing the blood, at the shedding of which the Hindoo shudders. 

 But astronomy has stamped celebrity on the onion ; for, on cutting 

 through it, there appears, beneath the external coat, a succession of 

 orbs, one within the other, in regular order, after the manner of the 

 revolving spheres. We have the authority of Alexander,* that the 

 onion was worshipped as a symbol of the planetary universe by the 

 astronomers of Chaldea, before it was adopted by either Egypt or 

 India. The Egyptian veneration for plants and animals arose from 

 their symbolical representations of the benevolent operations of na- 

 ture ; while there were some which were held in abhorrence from 

 possessing opposite symbolic meanings. Thus the onion, as a sym- 

 bol of the spheres, was held sacred to Osiris, — the soul of the mate- 

 rial universe, the energy that generates and nourishes all things ; and 

 to his consort Isis, — the nurse and mother of the world, the goddess 

 of a thousand names, — the Infinite Myrionyma. 



Notwithstanding the extreme veneration for the onion as a noble 

 astronomical symbol, yet when a more minute attention to its growth 

 and cultivation had taught that it flourished with the greatest vigour 

 when the moon was in the wane, the priests of Osiris began to relax 

 in their worship, and by the priests of Diana, at Bubastio, it was 

 held in abhorrence and detestation. These floral symbols of the an- 

 cient nations have elucidated some of the most difficult questions 

 concerning their history, and have made it certain, that most of the 

 Indian, and Egyptian customs originated in Chaldea, — that land of 

 serene and tranquil skies, where the observation of nature first grew 

 into a science, and was cradled and cherished in the earliest ages of 

 the world. 



* Maurice's Indian Antiquities, p. 527. 

 t Alexander ab Alexandre, lib. vi. cap. 26. 



