"These mythological traditions recounted that, 'in the beginning, a woman and a man had, by their fall, introduced into the world sin and misery.' "By this was denoted the astronomical fact that the celestial virgin and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed, on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of evil (Ahrimanes), represented by the constellation of the serpent. "These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the man. "And, in fact, the virgin setting first seems to draw the herdsman after her. "That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight, and good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil. "And, in fact, the virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit which she seems to offer to the herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed in the picture of Mithra between winter and summer seems to open the door and give knowledge, the key to good and evil. "That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it. "And, in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the western horizon, Perseus rises on the other side; and this genius, with a sword in his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and dominion of fruits and flowers. "That of the virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child, who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from sin. "This denotes the sun, which, at the moment of the winter solstice, precisely when the Persian magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was placed on the bosom of the virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern horizon. On this account he was figured in their astrological pictures under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin, and became afterward, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or lamb, triumphant over the constellation of the serpent, which disappeared from the skies. "That, in his infancy, the restorer of divine and celestial nature would live abased, humble, obscure and indigent. "And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon and that this first period of his four ages or seasons is a time of obscurity, scarcity, fasting and want. "That being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever. "This is a sketch of the life of the sun, who, finishing his career at the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion, seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and rises into the vault of heaven, where he reigns." Count Volney's portraiture of the second member of the Christian godhead is, for the most part, accurate. Numerous other analogies between him and the ancient sun gods might be named.