seduced the
man.*

* In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
attract, to draw after us.

"And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman
after her.

"That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.

"And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.

* See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.

That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.

"And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in
his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and
dominion of fruits and flowers.

* Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
They took such constellations as they found at the same time
on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
hieroglyphic characters. Such is the secret of all their
pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
monsters. The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).

That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child,
who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from
sin.

"This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year,
was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, o