In Central Australia every
stone, rock, or tree has its myth of the half-bestial ancestors.[1478]
In Greece, as Pausanias relates, there was hardly a place that did not
have its story of the origin of some sacred spot or thing due to a
god.[1479] In the earlier books of the Old Testament the sacred places,
which were Arabian or Canaanite shrines adopted by the Hebrews, are
generally connected with the presence of the patriarchs or other great
men. The magical qualities of springs, pools, and other bodies of water
are explained by stories in which a god or other divine person descends
into them, or in some other way communicates power.[1480]

+849+. _Myths of heavenly bodies, winds, and vegetation._ As the sun,
the moon, and other objects of nature were regarded as anthropomorphic
persons and naturally came into relation with men, their imagined
adventures have produced a great mass of stories in all parts of the
world. These stories are partly attempts to account for phenomena and
partly are simply products of fancy; the myth-maker is very often a mere
story-teller. The sun, conceived of usually as an old man, is supposed
to live in a house up in the sky, to have his wife and children, to
receive visitors, and to interfere to some extent in human affairs. An
eclipse was obviously to be regarded as the work of an enemy of the sun,
usually a dragon (so in many low tribes, and in India). A great excess
of heat on the earth might be explained by the supposition that the
chariot of the sun had been driven too near the surface.[1481] The
waning of the moon was supposed to be due to her sorrow at the loss of
her children, the stars, which were devoured by the sun. The moon might
be a fair woman who becomes enamored of a human being. At a later time
in the progress of astronomical knowledge the planets and certain of the
stars were individualized--they became actors in human history or, still
later, the abode of supernatural beings.[1482]

+850+. The beginnings of astrological theory are probably to be
recognized at a very early period. The height of the sky above the
earth, the persistence with which the stars seem to look down on men,
the invariability of their courses, the mysteriousness of their origin
would naturally lead to the belief that they had some control over human
affairs. Meteors, regarded as falling stars, have always been objects of
dread. The development of astrology has been due to the increase of
astronomic