Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/139



, in spite of the fact that it is the most inconspicuous of all the zodiacal constellations, is very ancient, and has won almost universal recognition in all ages. Because of its dim appearance it has sometimes been called "the Dark Sign," and described as "black and without eyes," and it has been said that among all the constellations not one has been the subject of more idle opinions and more romantic suppositions than Cancer.

Macrobius states that the Chaldeans named the constellation "Cancer" because the crab is an animal that walks backward or obliquely. The sun likewise arriving at this sign begins his apparent retrograde motion and again descends obliquely.

According to Chaldean and Platonic philosophy, "the gate of men," by which souls were supposed to descend into human bodies, was located in this constellation. Plunket tells us that in Babylonia it seems to be established that a tortoise, not a crab, represents the constellation Cancer. It was so figured there and in Egypt in 4000

In Egypt, as we learn from the zodiacs of Denderah and Esne, it was the scarabæus, the beetle, emblematic of immortality, that held the place given to the crab in the Grecian Sphere. Burritt thinks that as the Hindus in all probability derived their knowledge of the stars from the Chaldeans, the figure of the crab in this place is more ancient than the beetle.