was the sole employment of the ancients,
they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
blessings of the seasons were at their disposal. Thus the
whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
were to drive away locusts, flies, etc. See Maimonides,
More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.

The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
at their pleasure. They threatened the sun and moon, if
they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
shake the skies, etc., etc. Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.

"Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of
all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
ceremonies.

"Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil
of mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand
emblems of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish,
the boar, the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are
only the metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the
twelve animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures,
and perform their astronomical functions.*

* These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7. The sun was the grand Proteus,
the universal metamorphist.

"People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age
of creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt
adored, and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the
golden calf. This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which,
sacrificed in the symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood
which fertilized the earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the
Apocalypse, with his wings, symbol of the air, has no other origin; and
your lamb of God, sacrificed, like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation
of the world, is only the same sun, in the sign of the celestial ram,
which, in a later age, opening the equinox in his turn, was supposed to
deliver the world fr