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The character of Osiris as a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus. A pine-tree having been cut down, the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was made, which was then buried like a corpse in the hollow of the tree.
APOLLONIUS. A ring-plain, 30 miles in diameter, standing in the mountainous region S. of the Mare Crisium. There is a large crater on the S.W. wall, and another, somewhat smaller, adjoining it on the N. There are many brilliant craters in the vicinity. FIRMICUS. A somewhat larger, more regular, but, in other respects, very similar ring-plain, N.W. of the last.
In fact, not only did pious and excellent people share the delusion, but they actually came forward to profess it publicly. One of these was Maestro Pagolo of Florence, in whom we can detect the same desire to bring astrology to moral account which meets us in the late Roman Firmicus Maternus. His life was that of a saintly ascetic.
The scene thus corresponds closely both to the myth and to the ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus. It accords with the character of Osiris as a tree-spirit that his worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and with his character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for the irrigation of hot southern lands.
Julius Firmicus, in describing the mysteries of the resurrection of Osiris, says that when the worshipers had satiated themselves with lamentations over the death of the god then the priest would go round anointing them with oil and whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the new-arisen God, for to us too from our pains shall come salvation."
Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius, and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8. That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of the ram born again into eternity." Pagan Christs, p. 315. Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153. Whether Mr.
After glancing at the crater-shaped mountains on the western and southern border of the Mare Crisium, Alhazen, Hansen, Condorcet, Firmicus, etc., we pass southward into the area covered in Lunar Chart No. 2. The long dark plain south of the Mare Crisium is the Mare Fecunditatis, though why it should have been supposed to be particularly fecund, or fertile, is by no means clear.
Gioviano Pontano, for example, in his book on Fate, had recognized the science, and in a great work of his had expounded the whole theory of it in the style of the old Firmicus, ascribing to the stars the growth of every bodily and spiritual quality. Astrology remained more or less in fashion, but seems not to have governed human life in the way it formerly had done.
For a time he evaded their assaults by turning himself into various shapes, assuming the likeness successively of Zeus and Cronus, of a young man, of a lion, a horse, and a serpent. Finally, in the form of a bull, he was cut to pieces by the murderous knives of his enemies. His Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus Maternus, ran thus.
It is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image of Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by Plutarch.
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