Astronomical Myths. Camille Flammarion
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is seen the symbol of the year between the south (represented by the sun ☉) and the north (represented by the Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year) between the sun ☉ and the moon ☾. Time the Sun, and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the heavenly bodies.
On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.
These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from the Phenicians.
We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners, language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.
M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Guéret, who has studied these coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following general statements.
The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.
On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are representative of them.
On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which, according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the astronomical worlds with which it is filled.
Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the heavens.
Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.
The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac. There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological subjects which were more to his taste.
The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the ∿, and its multiple combinations, the centred circles, grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused to be struck.
This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a Grecian origin.
In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided, among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types, one in bronze of Janus Bifrons with the palus; the other in silver, the Dioscures with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.
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 Cæsars, in the villa of Borghèse, 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.
The Lyre—Cassiopeia—The Little Bear—The Dragon—Andromeda—The Great Bear—Capella—Algol, or Medusa's Head.
CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN