The story of Adonis being separated from his darling Venus for six months, and being afterwards re-united to her in love for another six months, was fabricated from the same source; as also were the legends of Osiris and Horus, Vishnu and Krishna, Ormuzd and Mithras, Jupiter and Apollo, Jupiter and Bacchus, and Jupiter and Hercules. The cult of Bacchus, indeed, was almost a _fac simile_ of those of Jesus and Adonis, the three being but representations in different countries of the very same drama. The twelve labours of Hercules were no more than the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, just as the twelve patriarchs, the twelve tribes, the twelve stones, and the twelve apostles were the twelve signs themselves. In my “Popular Faith Unveiled” I have pointed out the reasons for thinking the twelve sons of Jacob and the twelve apostles to be the twelve zodiacal signs; but I may here state that, on re-consideration, I am inclined to modify the order maintained there in regard to the twelve sons of Jacob (p. 122) by changing the places of Benjamin and Zebulun, the former being, in my present opinion, the sign _Gemini_, and the latter _Capricornus_; and as to the twelve apostles, I may here supply an omission made in the same work, by stating that Andrew (p. 198) represents _Aries_, of March, being always depicted with a ×, which forms the angle made by the crossing of the equator and ecliptic on March 21st. The mystic number seven was derived from the summer signs of the zodiac, including the two equinoxial signs, which were called the pillars of the temple, the vault of the summer heavens being the temple itself. Thus arose the allusions to the seven trumpets, the seven candlesticks, the seven churches, and the seven seals in the Apocalypse, each of which was a summer zodiacal sign; and here I may again supply an omission in my “Popular Faith Unveiled” (p. 246) by stating that the church of Smyrna represented _Virgo_, of August, in which month bundles of myrrh were always offered to the sun, the word Σμυρνα signifying “myrrh.”