50 The Week 



I have alluded to the curious order in which the days of 

 the week succeed each other, which is found consistently 

 the same wherever the weekly cycle is known, and which 

 does not correspond at all to the real or supposed astro- 

 nomical order of the planets after which the days are named. 

 Dio Cassius says that the order of the days had relation, 

 1st, to the musical intervals ; or 2nd, to the astrological 

 allotment of the planets to the hours of the day ; or 3rd, to 

 their distribution among the signs of the Zodiac. It is a 

 curious fact, that the astrological appropriation of the hours 

 of the day, as well as of the days themselves, to the seven 

 bodies of our then known solar system — as being peculiarly 

 under their influence — should furnish the method of con- 

 nection between the universal order of the days, and the 

 order of the planets in the Ptolemaic solar system. For 

 the astrological order was of ancient date in Ptolemy's 

 time, and his solar system was therefore scarcely his, but 

 was based upon that of the Astrologers. In the absence of 

 any other known or probable basis for the connection of the 

 order of the week days with that of the planets, I conceive 

 that it had its origin in the pernicious esoteric system, by 

 which everything was rendered enigmatical and obscure to 

 all but the initiated. 



I am not aware of any particular probable site of the high 

 civilisation thus inferred by Bailly, Drummond, and Proctor, 

 as the common source of its various posthumous offshoots in 

 different directions. According to Mr. Proctor, it should be 

 five degrees farther north than Samarcand (39°56), and it 

 seems to me that the most moderate guess at its date must 

 be at least 6,000 years ago, and that it is probably much 

 further back. Bunsen* reckons the immigration of the 

 Aryans into India at from 80 to 100 centuries B.C., and 

 Laplace mentions two epochs, 2,000 and 15,000 years ago, at 

 which the significance of the signs of the Zodiac in the 

 position of the heavens was so marked as to suggest their 

 introduction then. He saysf — referring to the greater period 

 — "Capricorn, or the constellation of the Goat, appears to be 

 more properly placed at the highest than at the lowest point 

 of the sun's course." I know not whether he included in 

 his scheme the fact of Canopus (in Arabic the south star) 

 having actually been about that time a south pole star,J or 



* Brande's Dictionary (Aryan). 



t Laplace's Systeme du Monde, p. 316. 



X Dupuis' Origines des tons les Cultes, vol. iii. p. 426. 



