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were originally instituted to celebrate the entrance of the sun into the zodiacal sign Taurus, at the vernal equinox, when the god Osiris was worshiped in Egypt under the form of a bull called Apis.
"The general devotion of the ancients to the worship of the BULL," says the Rev. Mr. Maurice in his learned work on the Antiquities of India, "I have had frequent occasion to remark, and more particularly in the Indian history, by their devotion to it at that period 'when the Bull with his horns opened the Vernal year.' I observed that all nations seem anciently to have vied with each other in celebrating that blissful epoch; and that the moment the sun entered the sign Taurus, were displayed the signals of triumph and the incentives to passion; that memorials of the universal festivity indulged at that season, are to be found in the records and customs of people otherwise the most opposite in manners and most remote in situation;... that the Apis, or Sacred Bull of Egypt, was only the symbol of the sun in the vigor of vernal youth; and that the Bull of Japan, breaking with his horn the mundane egg, was evidently connected with the same bovine species of superstition, founded on the mixture of astronomy and mythology."
"In many of the most ancient temples or India," says Godfrey Higgins in the Anacalypsis, "the Bull, as an object of adoration makes a most conspicuous figure. A gigantic image of one protrudes from the front of the temple of the Great Creator, called in the language of the country, Jaggernaut, in Orissa. This is the Bull of the Zodiac,—the emblem of the sun when the equinox took place in the first degree of the sign of the Zodiac, Taurus. In consequence of the precession of the equinoxes, the sun at the vernal equinox left Taurus, and took place in Aries, which it has left also for a great number of years, and it now takes place in Aquarius. Thus it keeps receding about one degree in seventy-two years, and about a whole sign in 2,160 years. M. Dupuis has demonstrated that the labors of Hercules are nothing but a history of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac; and that Hercules is the sun in Aries or the Ram, Bacchus the sun in Taurus or the Bull. The adoration of the Bull of the zodiac is to be met with everywhere throughout the world, in the most opposite climes. The examples of it are innumerable and incontrovertable; they admit of no dispute.
"It appears from the book or history of the Exod, that it was on the leaving of Egypt that Moses changed the object of adoration from Taurus to Aries. It appears that the change took place on the mountain of Sin, or Nisi, or Bacchus, which was evidently its old name before Moses arrived there. The Israelites were punished for adhering to the old worship, that of the Calf, in opposition to the paschal Lamb, which Moses had substituted—'the Lamb which taketh away the sins of the world,'—in place of the Bull or Calf which took away the sins of the world.
"The planets were in later times all called by names appropriated to the days of the week, which were dedicated by astrologers to the gods who were typified by the Bull: Monday to the horned Isis; Tuesday to Mercury, the same as Hermes and Osiris; Wednesday to Woden, Fo, Buddha, and Surya; Thursday or Thor-day, or Tur, or Taurus, or Bull-day, to Jove or Jupiter, who, as a Bull, stole Europa; Friday was dedicated to Venus, Ashteroth or beeve-horned Astarte; Saturday to Saturn, identified by Mr. Faber with Moloch and the Centaur Cronus or Taschter; Sunday to the Sun, everywhere typified by Taurus. All these, I think, must have taken their names after the entrance of the Sun into Taurus; and before this date all history and even mythology fails us.
"In ancient collections we often meet with a person in the prime of life killing a young bull. He is generally accompanied with a number of astrological emblems. This Bull was the mediatorial Mithra, slain to make atonement for, and to take away the sins of the world. This was the God Bull, to whom the prayers were addressed which we find in Bryant and Faber, and in which he is expressly called the Mediator. This is the Bull of Persia, which Sir. William Jones and Mr. Faber identify with Buddha or Mahabad. The sacrifice of the Bull, which taketh away the sins of the world, was succeeded by the sacrifice of the Agni or of Fire, by our Indians in, comparatively speaking, modern times; it was closely connected with the two principles spoken of above. While the sun was in Taurus, the Bull was slain as the vicarious sacrifice; when it got into Aries, the Ram or Lamb was substituted.
"M. Dupuis observes, that the lamb was a symbol or mark of initiation into the Christian mysteries, a sort of proof of admission into the societies of the initiated of the lamb, like the private sign of the free-masons. It follows, then, that the mysteries of Christ are the mysteries of the Lamb, and that the mysteries of the Lamb are mysteries of the same nature as those of the Mithraitic Bull to which they succeeded by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes, which substituted the slain lamb for the slain bull."—E.
THE WHITE BULL:
A Satirical Romance
CHAPTER I. HOW THE PRINCESS AMASIDIA MEETS A BULL.
CHAPTER III. HOW THE BEAUTIFUL AMASIDIA HAD A SECRET CONVERSATION WITH A BEAUTIFUL SERPENT.
CHAPTER IV. HOW THEY WANTED TO SACRIFICE THE BULL, AND EXORCISE THE PRINCESS.
CHAPTER V. HOW THE WISE MAMBRES CONDUCTED HIMSELF WISELY.
CHAPTER VI. HOW MAMBRES MET THREE PROPHETS, AND GAVE THEM A GOOD DINNER.
CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE SERPENT TOLD STORIES TO THE PRINCESS TO COMFORT HER.
CHAPTER IX. HOW THE SERPENT DID NOT COMFORT THE PRINCESS.
CHAPTER X. HOW THEY WANTED TO BEHEAD THE PRINCESS, AND DID NOT DO IT.
Apis. 1
CHAPTER I.
HOW THE PRINCESS AMASIDIA MEETS A BULL.
The princess Amasidia, daughter of Amasis, King of Tanis in Egypt, took a walk upon the highway of Peluaium with the ladies of her train. She was sunk in deep melancholy. Tears gushed from her beautiful eyes. The cause of her grief was known, as well as the fears she entertained lest that grief should displease the king, her father. The old man, Mambres, ancient magician and eunuch of the Pharoahs, was beside her, and seldom left her. He was present at her birth. He had educated her, and taught