UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

» ...exercised its power through the action of
» its parts: the sun, the moon, the
» planets, and the fixed stars; by the suc-
» cessive revolution of the seasons; and by
» the combined action of the heaven and the
» earth. Thus they went astray, says this
» spiritualist, by equating the work
» with its author. Abraham was raised in
» the principles of this doctrine, and
» was for a long time of the opi-
» nion of the Chaldæans, until fi-
» nally, having opened his eyes, he saw the
» light and recognized in the Universe
» a sovereign moderator whom he had
» not previously suspected. « (1) Mai-
monides confirms the testimony of
Philo concerning the Sabaism star-worship of this Ibrahim
or Abraham, famous among the Orien-
tals, (2) and Mr. Hyde adds that this is
the common opinion of all the East, and
that his descendants long preserved
traces of the religion of their
ancestors. Since metaphysical abstractions
are necessarily later than
physical opinions, the worship of the
visible cause must have been the oldest; and the
spiritualists must have been few in
number, while Sabaism extended
its empire everywhere. It was said to go
back as far as Seth, that is, to the time when
the origin of things was fixed (3). The au-
thor of this tradition tells us that the grea-
test feast of the Sabians was at the entry of the
sun into the ram or the equinoctial lamb original: "bélier ou à l'agneau équinoxial".
They had five other feasts fixed at
the entry of each of the planets
into the sign where they have their exaltation. They
called themselves sons or descendants of Sâbi,
son of Idris Idris is often identified with the prophet Enoch or the god Hermes, buried in Egypt under the
third pyramid (4). They added
that their religion was the oldest
and the most widespread formerly in the Uni-
verse (5), until the time of the spiritualist
Abraham, who brought new ideas.

(1) Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed original: "More. Nevock.", Part 3, chapter 26.
(2) On the Ancient Religion of the Persians original: "De Vet. Pers. Relig.", pages 60 and 86.
(3) Ibn Shahna, cited in Hyde, On the Ancient Religion of the Persians, page 127.
(4) Ibid., page 128.

This tradition of the Sabians concerning the au-
thor of their worship buried in Egypt
leads us naturally to seek
the cradle of this religion in that country.
There we find astrology exercising
an empire as powerful as in Chaldæa;
we must therefore also find there the
same doctrine on the divinity of the stars,
which is the basis of all astrology. One
recalls the passage of Eusebius on the
Egyptians, whom he associates with the Phoenicians
regarding religious opinions on the
universal cause, and on the divinity of the
sun and the stars, the sole moderators of the
world. His testimony is supported by
Diodorus Siculus (6), who tells us:

» that the oldest inhabitants of Egypt
» recognized two great divini-
» ties, primary and eternal, namely
» the sun and the moon.... they thought
» that these two divinities governed
» the world, and that everything that receives
» nourishment and
» growth, received it from them; that upon them
» depended the entire great work of
» generation, and the perfection of
» all effects produced in Na-
» ture. «

It is known indeed that the
two greatest divinities of Egypt
were Osiris and Isis (7); and that all
authors agree in recognizing in them
the greatest agents of Nature (8);
some, the active and passive principle of
generations, the heaven and the earth;
others, the sun and the moon; and all
some of the powers or parts
of the universal visible cause. One of
the most learned priests of Egypt, Chaere-
mon, depository and interpreter of
sacred science, gives us something
more positive still on the nature
of Egyptian worship. Chaeremon,
Porphyry tells us, and a host of other
learned Egyptians, are persuaded that one...

(5) See above, page 4.
(6) Diodorus Siculus, book 1, chapters 10 and 11.
(7) Theodoret, Sermon 3.
(8) Diogenes Laertius in the Proem; Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris; Diodorus Siculus.

UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

...must admit nothing outside the
world or outside the visible cause, and they rely
on the opinion of the ancient Egyp-
tians (1).

» They recognize as Gods
» only the planets, the stars that com-
» pose the Zodiac, and all those which,
» by their rising or their setting,
» mark the divisions, the sub-divi-
» sions of the signs into decans, the horos-
» cope, and the stars that preside there,
» and which are called powerful chiefs
» of heaven; stars whose names are
» contained in our books of astrology,
» and of astrological medicine (2);
» with their risings, their settings,
» their influences on diseases, and
» the prognostics drawn from them for the
» future. They observe indeed that
» the Egyptians, making the sun the
» great God, architect and modera-
» tor of the world, explained not
» only the fable of Osiris and Isis,
» but all their sacred fables gene-
» rally, by the stars, by their
» appearance or their disappearance, by
» their ascension, by the phases of the
» moon and the increases or the dimi-
» nution of its light; by the path
» of the sun, by the two divisions of
» time and heaven into two parts;
» one assigned to night, the other to
» light, by the Nile; finally by the play
» of physical causes, and made
» no mention in their expla-
» nations of incorporeal beings and living
» substances... It is these Gods,
» sovereign arbiters of fate,
» whom they honor with sacrifices, and to
» whom they have raised images. «

Indeed we learn from Lucian
that the entire Egyptian worship, even that
of animals, was relative to the stars, and
founded entirely on astrology (3).
Lucian, explaining the diversity of worship
observed in different...

(1) Porphyry, Letter to Anebo original: "Epist. ad Anneb.", prefixed to the works of Iamblichus, On the Egyptian Mysteries original: "de Myster. Ægyptiac.". Oxford, 1678, folio.

...cities of Egypt, due to the dif-
ferent animals honored there, draws the reasons
for this diversity from the diversity of
celestial aspects, and the signs to whose in-
fluences the astro-
logical distribution had submitted them. It appears,
from what he tells us, that it was with the
Egyptians as with the Arabs, their
neighbors, among whom each tribe was under
the protection of a star, with this
difference that the Egyptians, who lo-
ved symbols and animated images,
represented their tutelary divinity, or
the celestial animal, by a living animal
consecrated to it and receiving its
influences. The Arabs on the contrary
had only Teraphim household idols, a kind of
small idol, and metal talismans
subject to the influence of the stars, as
were the sacred animals of Egypt,
which can be regarded as living talis-
mans, animated by the primary fire
which forms the substance of the stars. More-
over, these animals bore sym-
bolical and astrological characters,
like the Arab talismans; such was the
bull Apis, a talisman consecrated to the moon,
subject to the influence of that planet, and
to that of the celestial Taurus, where the
seat of its exaltation was located, and marked
with all the characters of generative strength,
of which the moon was made the deposi-
tary. Thus these characters were found
on the body of Apis joined to the cres-
cent of the moon, and to the figure of the
bull-shaped scarab original: "scarabée tauriforme" which we are told was
consecrated to the moon, because astro-
logy had fixed the place of the exaltation
of this goddess in the celestial Taurus (4).
One can therefore judge, by this example,
that the worship of animals in Egypt
was linked to astrology, and that it re-
ferred to the stars. Indeed Lucian (5)
tells us that the bull Apis, a
sacred animal for which the Egyptians had
the greatest veneration, was...

(2) See our final chapter on the Archangels and the celestial powers.
(3) Lucian, On Astrology original: "de Astrol.", page 986.
(4) Horapollo, book 1, chapter 10.