Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens" — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"
John Stuart Mill · en
The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a
series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point
of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number
of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the
Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his
head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes;
or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double
star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of
the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the
zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones).
In later times, under the Caesars, in the villa of Borghese, is found a
calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin.
The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are
represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a
correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the
zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of
art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical
worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western
nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical
ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar
description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the
signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the
dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements,
the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies
were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible
phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving
principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the
attributes of their supreme deities.
[Illustration: THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.
The Lyre--Cassiopeia--The Little Bear--The Dragon--Andromeda--The Great
Bear--Capella--Algol, or Medusa's Head.]
CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.