FLORAL SYMBOLS. 
223 
symbol in the mysterious solemnities and divinations of 
the mythologies of Egypt and Hindostan. Mr. Crau- 
ford 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 nature; while there w r ere some which were 
held in abhorrence from possessing opposite symbolic 
meanings. Thus the onion, as a symbol of the spheres, 
was held sacred to Osiris—the soul of the material 
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 
* “ Alexander ab Alexandro,” lib. vi. cap. 26. 
