BIRD AND BEAST IN ANCIENT SYMBOLISM. 191 



" Their Wise Men 

 Were strong in that old magic that can trace 

 The wandering of the stars." 



The Herald in the Agamemnon was not a solitary watcher of the skies, nor did Wise 

 Men in the East monopolise the adoration of the stars ; but generations of Hellenic 

 priests, like their fathers and their brethren in Egypt and Chaldea, had regarded the 

 strength of Mazzaroth and the bands of Orion and the sweet influences of Pleiades. 



These guardians of an esoteric knowledge divulged their store little by little, in myth 

 and allegory, in the sacred art of sculptor and of poet, and through the mystified lips of 

 the teller of tales and the singer of songs. The traditional belief that Perseus and Bootes, 

 Cepheus and Heracles, were earthly heroes translated to a restful seat in the stellar firma- 

 ment, is an inversion of the true order of things. The Heroes that were set in the sky had 

 been drawn thence in the beginning : the Gorgon's head was not the creation of a poet's 

 fancy nor the legend of an antique chronicler, before a place was found for it in the star 

 Algol ; but patient study and accurate knowledge of the Demon Star, with its mysterious 

 flashes and its rhythmical wax and wane, preceded the allegorical conception of Medusa's 

 snaky head. 



Let us, then, forsaking traditional acceptations, admit that the Chiruasra must be 

 carried at once to the land of Chimseras ; that Perseus and his Gorgon's head must not 

 be taken to Lycia, nor Amalthsea and the two Bears to Crete, but that all of them must 

 be raised to the sky. In all these cases earthly geography must be left aside. The 

 Bull, the Crab, the Goat, and the Ram on silver drachma and golden daric must not be 

 regarded as articles of trade, but must be placed in the zodiacal ring. The voyage in 

 quest of the Golden Fleece was not through the Dardanelles, towards Colchis or the 

 Caucasus. No dove out of a dove-cot was set free between the clashing Symplegades. 

 Further, if to these zoological illustrations we add the number of the Achaean chiefs at 

 Troy or of the champions on either side at the epic siege of Thebes : if we couple Helen, 

 Queen-Goddess of beauty (the moon-faced beauty of the East), with her twin stellar 

 brethren : if we think of the Phseacian King, whose sailors sailed from his far western 

 island to eastern Eubcea, saw there, on the triple judgment-seat, Rhadamanthus or Ra 

 Amenti and his brother-kings of the under-world, and returned in one day home 

 again, we catch more than a glimpse of that stellar symbolism which veiled from 

 vulgar eyes, even perhaps from the eyes of the tellers of the story, a splendid vista of 

 priestly lore. 



The stellar symbolism that I here advocate is, I maintain, a different thing from the sun- 

 myths, dawn-myths, and so forth, which are now to a large extent deservedly repudiated. 

 We cannot ascribe to the civilised nations of antiquity the puerile conceptions of nature 

 that are congruent with a stage of awakening intelligence and with the crude results of 

 untrained observation. Rather are we dealing with the elaborated gain of ages of 

 scientific knowledge, with the thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented 

 to particular stars or to critical points in the journey of the sun ; whose representations 



