Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/446

326 connected, and they are so arranged that whichever way we view the heavens, facing the meridian, we see a giant treading on a serpent.

The Serpent-Bearer presses down the head of the Scorpion at the point where the colure, the equator, and the ecliptic intersected. This is significant, and the arrangement of these constellations was unquestionably the result of a deliberate plan.

For some reason the equator, the colures, the zenith, and the Poles were all marked out by serpentine or draconic forms. In this case the Scorpion is clearly depicted as curling his sting upwards to wound the giant's heel. We see again a seeming illustration of the Biblical utterances: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Scorpio is one of the most ancient of the constellations, originally much extended in the direction of Virgo, the claws of the Scorpion occupying the region of the sky where we now see the constellation Libra. In early times this sign was represented by various symbols, sometimes by a snake or crocodile, but most commonly as a Scorpion.

Brown tells us that the Scorpion, like the Crab, was originally a symbol of darkness, and the original strife between the Orion-Sun and the Scorpion Darkness. This is astronomically reduplicated in the constellations Orion and Scorpio, where the stars in the former group appear to be routed by the rising stars of the Scorpion. This symbolism seems to be the foundation for the Greek legends concerning the death of Orion occasioned by the Scorpion's sting.

As the Scorpion rises in the eastern sky, Orion, as if in fear, disappears from view in the west. The Scorpion had much to answer for, as, besides slaying the mighty hunter, he is said to have stung the horses Phaēton drove on his disastrous ride in the chariot of the sun.

On the early Euphratean monuments is found the