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Updated: May 24, 2025
He moves through the Atlantic as if it was his own realm, but is seldom seen beyond the solstitial point, preferring the latitude within the tropics; he is also found in the Mediterranean sea, and also in the gulf of Lyons, where he is peculiarly savage.
We cannot well suppose, however, that the astronomer priests were oblivious to the true state of things. Upon them devolved the duty of predicting the time of the Nile flood; a duty they were enabled to perform without difficulty through observation of the rising of the solstitial sun and its Sothic messenger.
It is very probable that the Chaldeans may have made spheres, like the armillary sphere, for representing the poles of the heavens; and with rings to show the ecliptic and zodiac, as well as the equinoctial and solstitial colures; but we have no record. We only know that the tower of Belus, on an eminence, was their observatory.
We have seen that the old Aryans perhaps kindled the solstitial and other ceremonial fires in part as sun-charms, that is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire; and as these fires were usually made by the friction or combustion of oak-wood, it may have appeared to the ancient Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which resided in the sacred oak.
Perched on a hollow rock above the slope was a rude little church, over a cave where a hermit had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity that, his day happening to coincide with that of St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Freidmund had acquired the credit of the lion's share both of the saint's honours and of the old solstitial feast of Midsummer.
One of these contrivances, found at Chapultepec, is described as follows: “On the horizontal plane of a large, carefully-worked stone, three arrows were cut in relief, so that the shaft ends came together and made equal angles in the centre. The points were directed eastward, the two outside showing the two solstitial points, and that in the centre the equinoctial.
Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her young master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen Would the gracious Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being lighted in the fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being propelled down the hill figuring, only that no one present knew it, the sun's declension from his solstitial height?
The solstitial heats being now over, during which European garden flowers cease to bloom for a season, they were again in gayest livery to welcome the long second spring of autumn, lasting from February to May. At the farther end of this wilderness of flowers and fruit trees was an aloe hedge, covering a width of twenty to thirty yards with its enormous, disorderly, stave-like leaves.
But while the two solstitial celebrations were both festivals of fire, the necessity or desirability of holding the winter celebration within doors lent it the character of a private or domestic festivity, which contrasts strongly with the publicity of the summer celebration, at which the people gathered on some open space or conspicuous height, kindled a huge bonfire in common, and danced and made merry round it together.
Soon after their conquest by the Babylonians, they established priestly caste in the state and assumed the worship, laws, and manners of their conquerors. They were devoted to the science of the stars, and determined the equinoctial and solstitial points, divided the ecliptic into twelve parts and the day into hours.
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