in every 71 years, or thirty degrees in 2,160 years (an arc of racial development, as referred to in the preceding paper); so

that the sign Aries now corresponds with the constellation Pisces as marked on the celestial maps. A double view of the matter would but confuse the mind of the reader, and any important difference made by this displacement, in relation to such fixed stars as I shall have occasion to refer to, will be duly noted. Besides, we are now dealing with the cosmical as an immutable law in which unchangeable values attach to the twelve distinct arcs of the solar circle. The influence of Aries in the spiritual circle of Being still denotes a change of vibra

tion identical in significance with the equinoctial change of polarity in the magnetic influx of the solar ray at this point of the celestial zodiac, just as it did when the Bible stories were written; the guide-posts have shifted somewhat in their relative positions, but the principle remains the same.

This zodiacal belt incloses the cosmical territory through which the Sun-god makes his annual pilgimage: an itinerary so replete with interest that the literature of the ages—in fable, in parable, in song, in allegory-has not exhausted its wealth of incident nor attained the full charm of its realities. The nearest approach to such is beyond doubt to be found in the evangelical riddles we are now setting out to solve-mysteries across which the allegorical veil has remained obdurately drawn, impervious alike to the querulous methods of ecclesiastical phantasy and the whimsical ones of intellectual sophistry. Thus has the Shekinah of the true wisdom been excluded, and all because the two most generally accredited forces in the march of humanity-Religion and Science-became “uppish” with each other and refused to work in joint harness. While the one has groveled along the highways of cant and fanaticism, counting beads or supplicating a supposedly indulgent God to make a few arbitrary changes in His eternal law, the other, with unseemly arrogance and a grotesque tumidity has sought to belittle the importance of the problem it had neither the temperament to understand nor the spiritual energy to attempt to solve. Is it any wonder that each has been wandering in the very midst of truth without its being revealed to either?

But of all vocations one would by natural inference suppose that of the astronomer to be best entitled to familiarity with the concepts to be hereinafter set forth; but, alas! his is to-day the most useless and the least utilitarian of all the sciences. He notes the gigantic symbols as they swing into place with an appreciation of their majestic import of a degree similar to the sad felicity with which the chess-player regards

his pieces of wooden royalty. He no longer makes his celestial journeys with that true feeling of ecstacy over the Divine in Nature which his forebears experienced by reason of their deeper knowledge of the unseen forces, and without which he must remain as unconscious of the full glory of the field he explores as does the savage who gazes with lack-luster eyes upon the prismatic hues of the rainbow.

But all this is not to our purpose, and pleasanter emotions await us in the survey of the elements involved in our diagram. It is not well, however, to invade a strange territory without first acquainting ourselves with the name or names by which it is specified. Therefore, let us examine some of the terms with which Holy Writ has seen fit to describe this celestial kingdom.

First, we may take Israel as perhaps the most apt and comprehensive in its etymology. This word is essentially astrological, compounded of the Egyptian Ra, Sun, deified as Osiris, and the Arabic el, star; whence Osiris-el (Israel), meaning a belt or land of the heavens, the twelve tribes of which compare to the number of constellations that environ the ecliptic, and through which the Sun makes his annual circuit. In support of Israel as the land of the Sun and stars, may be cited Exodus xxxiv. 23: "Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord GOD [Adonis, Sun], the God of Israel." In Phenicia the Sun was known as Adonis, and is shown by Knight in "Ancient Art and Mythology" to be identical with IAO, or, according to the Chinese faith, Yao (Jehovah), the Sun, who makes his appearance in the world "at midnight of the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month." The world as having reference to the Zodiac may be found in John i. 29: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" i. e., the Sun, entering the first point of Aries (the Ram), which is the vernal equinox, taketh away the inequality of the day and night. This is the point of crossification, or crucifixion, and it may be of interest to know that it

was not until the Sixth Constantinopolitan Council, under a decree ratified by Pope Adrian VI., that a lamb was deemed incongruous with the interpretation sought to be established in connection with the cross, and the figure of a man substituted in its place. This was in the 680th year of our era.

That a Bible Israel should be accepted as a community of Jews, of which Jesus was denominated King, is anachronistic, for no such nation ever existed. Jews had significance only as a body learned in the Mysteries-as the Eleusinians, Freemasons, the Dyonisia, or Mysteries of Bacchus; and the terms Christians, Jews, Hebrews, Israelites, etc., were but gradational degrees of initiation in the mystic crafts.* By metonymy the name Israel is applied to the Apostles, the Saints (signs, suns), and the Prophets of the heavens. "In Jewry is God known; His name is great in Israel.”

There is, however, another and equally significant interpretation to be put upon the word Israel. Sanchoniathon, a Phenician priest who wrote 1,300 years before our era, states that the ancient name of the planet Saturn was Israel, a name also applied to him by the Arabians and the Persians. This planet as then observed occupied the outpost of our sidereal system; therefore, all the celestial bodies of an inferior magnitude were regarded as his children, or, as expressed in the Hebrew, Beny Israile, the children or sons (suns) of Heaven. This word beny is allied to the "bennu" found in certain Egyptian texts, and notably in the "Book of the Dead." The bird "bennu" was a sacred symbol in the worship of Heliopolis, and, on the authority of Wiedemann, it symbolized the rising sun, or the "soul of Ra," who reigns in Issa-ra-el, the kingdom of the moon (Isis), Sun (Ra), and stars (El). Furthermore, it is amply confirmed that the Egyptian "bennu" is identical with

*"As you see, in the 18th of the Acts of the Apostles, that Apollos was a Jew, though born at Alexandria, in Egypt, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures. But Paul, who was a Jew, though born at Tarsus, a city in Celicia, was a Hebrew as well as a Jew-the higher dignity always including the lower. And Paul, the Hebrew, therefore took Apollos, the Jew, and expounded to him the way of God more perfectly."-Taylor.

the Greek "phoenix," whose element of periodicity was analogous to certain of the solar epochs.

And thus does Israel partake of a meaning more comprehensive than any that could by any stretch of the imagination attach to a geographical domain; and, though we find its import variously depicted according to the significance of the allegory to which it applies, it continues as the zodiacal sphere of radiance and a repository of celestial wisdom that will ultimately be regained by its posterity.

The field of the constellations is again represented as Babylon—from the Ethiopic On, fire, and Babel=Baal, the Hebrew god Bol in the form of a heifer, by which was commemorated the passover of the Sun by precession of the equinoxes from Gemini into Taurus, the sign of the Bull, B.C. 4275. This was the pentecostal season of tongues of fire; hence, the babel of the tongues related only to a certain confusion of astronomical facts in the zodiacal scheme, and spiritually to the coexistent processes in cosmic ideation.

The "Holy City" is likewise a term essentially solar, being the same as the Phenician word hely, and having its root in the Greek helios, Sun; whence Heliopolis, the city of the Sun. The Holy Temple, Solomon's Temple, and the Temple of the Lord are all expressive of the celestial fabric that revolves around us, the altar in which is the constellation Aries, the eastern sign. This is why our church organizations, following the custom of the pagan ages in their pagodas and temples of the Sun, endeavor to place their altars in the east quarter of their edifices: Sun-worshipers all, though doubtless as unconscious of the allegiance as they are of the inner meanings that lie behind and beyond the whole ritualistic scheme so sedulously observed.

The pagan nations, who so worshipfully attitudinized 'neath the star spaces crowded with the scintillance of Deity, have been called impious. But they were gods in the majesty of their concepts as compared with the creedalists who have