About the year 800 B.C. the sun, the heavenly Agni, which had hitherto been at the commencement of spring in the constellation of the Bull, entered (as a consequence of the advance of equality between day and night) that of the Ram. Thus it became, according to astrological modes of thought, itself a ram. [251] While it had formerly, in the shape of a bull, opened the spring and released the world from the power of winter--an image which was still retained in the Mithras Cult--these functions were now transferred to the ram, and this became a symbol of the God and the beast offered in expiatory sacrifices. Now the constellation of the Ram was described by the Persians in a word which could also mean lamb. In other cases also the lamb often took the place of the ram in the sacrificial worship of Nearer Asia; for example, among the Jews, who were accustomed to consume the Paschal lamb at the beginning of the year in spring. This is the explanation of the mystical lamb in the Revelation of John (which is scarcely an original Christian work, but shows signs of a pre-Christian Cult of Jesus [252]), being depicted by seven horns or rays in a way which rather implies the idea of a ram. The fifth chapter of Revelation describes the lamb in its quality of heavenly victim of expiation. No one can open the book with the seven seals, which God holds in his right hand, in which the fate of the world appears to be written, but the lamb alone succeeds in so doing--"In the midst of the four-and-twenty elders who, clad in white garments and with crowns on their heads, sit around the divine throne, and in the midst of the four beasts who sit around it, the lamb, suddenly and without anything happening, stands as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth. And when he had taken the book the four living creatures and the four-and-twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song saying, Worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth." [253]