"Zodiac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Egypt in the first age of Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting, are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... year ago had given his blessing to Jurgen, for speaking civilly of the powers of darkness. To-night the black gentleman wore a black dressing-gown that was embroidered with all the signs of the Zodiac. He sat at a table, the top of which was curiously inlaid with thirty pieces of silver: and he was copying entries from one big book into another. He looked up from his writing pleasantly enough, and very much as though he were ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... however, from any imputation of Greek influence. Not so with astronomy. Aryabhata, the elder, who described the motion of the earth very accurately, he considers to have had no predecessors; and also cites other Indian authors who described the twelve signs of the zodiac with Greek names or their equivalents, and assigned each to a region in the body of the Creator, as we now see it marked out in our almanacs. In this matter he ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to add an extra month—an intercalary month, as the scientific term is—every six years, to start even with the sun again, for ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... necessity of morality, and a life after death, investing initiates with signs and passwords by which they could know each other in the dark as well as in the light. The Mithraic or Persian Mysteries celebrated the eclipse of the Sun-god, using the signs of the zodiac, the processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of the sun," the name which they gave to the sextant. He was on this occasion conducted further into the interior of his residence, than on his two former visits. Clapperton first exhibited a planisphere of the heavenly bodies. The sultan knew all the signs of the zodiac, some of the constellations, and many of the stars by their Arabic names. The looking glass of the sun was then brought forward, and occasioned much surprise. Clapperton had to explain all its appendages. The inverting telescope was an object of intense astonishment, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... to the whole structure. However, ere she could tarry to reflect, the nature of the vision changed as if her eye had been turned suddenly from the lense of a Microscope to that of an immense Telescope. Before her view stretched the starry Zodiac, in outline, the same as its prototype, the human body—the Grand Temple. The Sun and its solar system corresponding to various vital functions in the human organism, but the crowning wonder of all came ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... astronomy and his results coincide with those on antiquity to make the American systems quite different from the oriental, Hindu, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Celtic systems of days, months, zodiac, and cycles; while they are more like those of Thibet, China, Japan, Lybia, Etruria, &c. At any rate the American systems were anterior to the admission of the week of seven days, being the fourth of a lunation, each day dedicated to a planet, and the Sabatical[TN-17] observance of ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... figure of the earth to be a sphere. Astronomy is fully discussed. The planets are "moving stars." Mercury is "the star"; Venus, "splendor"; Mars, "redness"; Jupiter, "rightness"; Saturn, "the Sabbath star." The signs of the Zodiac have the same names as are now used. The Galaxy is "the river of light." Comets are "burning arrows." And it is said that when a comet passes through Orion it will destroy the world. A certain Ishmaelite merchant is related to have invited Rabba to come ...
— Hebrew Literature
... most magnificent king of Dilli, of the race of Taimur, Sahib Kiran was one of his titles, and means, Prince of the Happy Conjunction; i.e. the conjunction of two or more auspicious planets in one of the signs of the Zodiac at the hour of birth. Such was the case at the birth of Taimur, who was the first we read of as Sahib-Kiran. As a contradistinction, Shahjahan is generally called Sahib Kirani Sani, or the second Sahib Kiran. It never waw applied, as Ferdinand ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... baldric: the white band supposed by the ancients to circle the earth and called the zodiac. He may here mean the Milky Way as ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Babylonian god Ea and the Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian "sea-goat" or Makara was in fact intimately associated both with Varuna and with Indra. This monster ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by the passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden in his body."—-Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions. The archaic verses alluded ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... honour of my profession, and not much beneath the dignity of a philosopher, to stand bawling before his own door?—— Alive! Alive ho! The famous Dr. Partridge! No counterfeit, but all alive!—— As if I had the twelve celestial monsters of the zodiac to shew within, or was forced for a livelihood to turn retailer to May and Bartholomew Fairs. Therefore, if Her Majesty would but graciously be pleased to think a hardship of this nature worthy her royal consideration, and the next parliament, in their great wisdom cast but ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... him, with a nervous laugh, "No, no, I beseech you!" for she is afraid of being tickled. But the best time of all is the return through the country at night, the exquisite odor of new-mown hay, the road lighted by a summer sky where the whole zodiac twinkles, and through which, like a silent stream, the Chemin de St. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... opinion—he must walk with a train of self-conceit following him—he must not strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac—he must seem any thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st August. Spica, {a} Virginis, is a star of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... for the tranquillity of a great number of husbands, to be omitted. It would have been cruel to leave men, who are possessed with the passion for learning the hour of the day, without a compass whereby to estimate the last variations in the matrimonial zodiac, and to calculate the precise moment when the sign of the Minotaur appears on the horizon. The knowledge of conjugal time would require a whole book for its exposition, so fine and delicate are the observations required by the task. The master admits that ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac |
