ogy the word Stoicheion, Element,
gets to mean a Daemon--as Megathos, Greatness, means an Angel.[142:2]
But behold a mystery! The word _Stoicheia_, 'elementa', had long been
used for the Greek A B C, and in particular for the seven vowels +a e e
i o u o+. That is no chance, no mere coincidence. The vowels are the
mystic signs of the Planets; they have control over the planets. Hence
strange prayers and magic formulae innumerable.

Even the way of reckoning time changed under the influence of the
Planets. Instead of the old division of the month into three periods of
nine days, we find gradually establishing itself the week of seven days
with each day named after its planet, Sun, Moon, Ares, Hermes, Zeus,
Aphrodite, Kronos. The history of the Planet week is given by Dio
Cassius, xxxvii. 18, in his account of the Jewish campaign of Pompeius.
But it was not the Jewish week. The Jews scorned such idolatrous and
polytheistic proceedings. It was the old week of Babylon, the original
home of astronomy and planet-worship.[143:1]

For here again a great foreign religion came like water in the desert to
minds reluctantly and superficially enlightened, but secretly longing
for the old terrors and raptures from which they had been set free. Even
in the old days Aeschylus had called the planets 'bright potentates,
shining in the fire of heaven', and Euripides had spoken of the 'shaft
hurled from a star'.[143:2] But we are told that the first teaching of
astrology in Hellenic lands was in the time of Alexander, when Berossos
the Chaldaean set up a school in Cos and, according to Seneca, _Belum
interpretatus est_. This must mean that he translated into Greek the
'_Eye of Bel_', a treatise in seventy tablets found in the library of
Assur-bani-pal (686-626 B. C.) but composed for Sargon I in the third
millennium B. C. Even the philosopher Theophrastus is reported by
Proclus[143:3] as saying that 'the most extraordinary thing of his age
was the lore of the Chaldaeans, who foretold not only events of public
interest but even the lives and deaths of individuals'. One wonders
slightly whether Theophrastus spoke with as much implicit faith as
Proclus suggests. But the chief account is given by Diodorus, ii. 30
(perhaps from Hecataeus).

'Other nations despise the philosophy of Greece. It is so
recent and so constantly changing. They have traditions which
come from vast antiquity and never change. Notably the
Chaldaeans