of
December, when the sign Virgo is rising above the horizon; born as this
sign is rising, he is born always of a virgin, and she remains a virgin
after she has given birth to her Sun-Child, as the celestial Virgo
remains unchanged and unsullied when the Sun comes forth from her in the
heavens. Weak, feeble as an infant is he, born when the days are
shortest and the nights are longest--we are on the north of the
equatorial line--surrounded with perils in his infancy, and the reign of
the darkness far longer than his in his early days. But he lives
through all the threatening dangers, and the day lengthens towards the
spring equinox, till the time comes for the crossing over, the
crucifixion, the date varying with each year. The Sun-God is sometimes
found sculptured within the circle of the horizon, with the head and
feet touching the circle at north and south, and the outstretched hands
at east and west--"He was crucified." After this he rises triumphantly
and ascends into heaven, and ripens the corn and the grape, giving his
very life to them to make their substance and through them to his
worshippers. The God who is born at the dawning of December 25th is ever
crucified at the spring equinox, and ever gives his life as food to his
worshippers--these are among the most salient marks of the Sun-God. The
fixity of the birth-date and the variableness of the death-date are full
of significance, when we remember that the one is a fixed and the other
a variable solar position. "Easter" is a movable event, calculated by
the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year
by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and
indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing
dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the Hero of a solar
myth.

These events are reproduced in the lives of the various Solar Gods, and
antiquity teems with illustrations of them. Isis of Egypt like Mary of
Bethlehem was our Immaculate Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven,
Mother of God. We see her in pictures standing on the crescent moon,
star-crowned; she nurses her child Horus, and the cross appears on the
back of the seat in which he sits on his mother's knee. The Virgo of the
Zodiac is represented in ancient drawings as a woman suckling a
child--the type of all future Madonnas with their divine Babes, showing
the origin of the symbol. Devaki is likewise figured with the divine