ation of the Northern
hemisphere of the sky and the Zodiac. (1) Here Virgo the constellation
is represented, as in our star-maps, by a woman with a spike of corn in
her hand (Spica). But on the margin close by there is an annotating and
explicatory figure--a figure of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms,
and quite resembling in style the Christian Madonna and Child, except
that she is sitting and the child is on her knee. This seems to show
that--whatever other nations may have done in associating Virgo with
Demeter, Ceres, Diana (2) etc.--the Egyptians made no doubt of the
constellation's connection with Isis and Horus. But it is well known as
a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the
early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the
worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant Savior, and so passed into
the European ceremonial. We have therefore the Virgin Mary connected by
linear succession and descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the
sky! Also it may be mentioned that on the Arabian and Persian globes of
Abenezra and Abuazar a Virgin and Child are figured in connection with
the same constellation. (3)

(1) Carefully described and mapped by Dupuis, see op. cit.

(2) For the harvest-festival of Diana, the Virgin, and her
parallelism with the Virgin Mary, see The Golden Bough, vol. i, 14 and
ii, 121.

(3) See F. Nork, Der Mystagog (Leipzig, 1838).

A curious confirmation of the same astronomical connection is afforded
by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted it will be
found that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the
15th August, while the festival of the Birth of the Virgin is dated the
8th September. I have already pointed out that the stars, [gr a], [gr
b] and [gr g] of Virgo are almost exactly on the Ecliptic, or Sun's path
through the sky; and a brief reference to the Zodiacal signs and the
star-maps will show that the Sun each year enters the sign of Virgo
about the first-mentioned date, and leaves it about the second date. At
the present day the Zodiacal signs (owing to precession) have shifted
some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time
when the Zodiac was constituted and these names were given, the first
date obviously would signalize the actual disappearance of the cluster
Virgo in the Sun's rays--i. e. the Assumption of the Virgin into the
glory of the God--while the second