186.

[485:5] See Calmet's Fragments, vol. ii. pp. 21, 22.

[486:1] Nimrod: vol. i. p. 278, in Anac., i. p. 503.

[486:2] At Miletus was the crucified Apollo--Apollo, who overcome the
Serpent or evil principle. Thus Callimachus, celebrating this
achievement, in his hymn to Apollo, has these remarkable words:

"Thee thy blest _mother_ bore, and pleased assign'd
The willing SAVIOUR of distressed mankind."

[486:3] These words apply to _Christ_ Jesus, as well as Semiramis,
according to the Christian Father Ignatius. In his Epistle to the Church
at Ephesus, he says: "Now the virginity of Mary, and he who was born of
her, was kept in secret from the prince of this world, as was also the
death of our Lord: _three of the mysteries the most spoken of throughout
the world, yet done in secret by God_."

[487:1] The Rosicrucians, p. 260.

[487:2] Ibid.

[488:1] The Sun-gods Apollo, Indra, Wittoba or Crishna, and Christ
Jesus, are represented as having their feet pierced with nails (See Cox:
Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. p. 23, and Moor's Hindu Pantheon.)

[489:1] Knight: Anct. Art and Mytho., pp. 87, 88.

[489:2] Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 32.

[489:3] "This notion is quite consistent with the ideas entertained by
the Phenicians as to the Serpent, which they supposed to have the
quality of putting off its old age, and assuming a second youth."
Sanchoniathon: (Quoted by Wake: Phallism, &c., p. 43.)

[489:4] Une serpent qui tient sa queue dans sa gueule et dans le circle
qu'il decrit, ces trois lettres Greques {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}, qui sont le nombre 365. Le
Serpent, qui est d'ordinaire un embleme de l'eternete est ici celui de
_Soleil_ et des ses revolutions. (Beausobre: Hist. de Manich. tom. ii.
p. 55. Quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 379.)

"This idea existed even in _America_. The great century of the Aztecs
was encircled by _a serpent grasping its own tail_, and the great
_calendar stone_ is entwined by serpents bearing human heads in their
distended jaws."

"The annual passage of the Sun, through the signs of the zodiac, being
in an oblique path, resembles, or at least the ancients thought so, the
tortuous movements of the Serpent, and the facility possessed by this
reptile of casting off his skin and producing out of itself a new
covering every year, bore some analogy to the termination of the old
year and the commencement of the new one.