Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/447

Rh figure of a lamp, below which and almost touching it appears a scorpion with large claws. The stars in the claws form a circular figure, and some authorities claim they represent the waning sun.

Aratos speaks of "the fiery sting of the huge portent Scorpio in the south wind's bosom."

Sir Wm. Drummond asserted that in the zodiac which the patriarch Abraham knew, Scorpio was the Eagle. There is a claim made, and it seems not improbable, that the figure of the Cherubim in its fourfold character appears in the constellations. It was described by Ezekiel as the likeness of four living creatures, the lion, the calf, the third creature having the face as of a man, the fourth like a flying eagle. It is certainly significant and can hardly be a coincidence that we find such figures in the four most important positions in the sky. The constellations were originally so designed that the sun at the time of the summer solstice was in the middle of the constellation Leo, at the time of the spring equinox in the middle of Taurus, and at the time of the winter solstice in the middle of Aquarius. The fourth point, that held by the sun at the autumnal equinox, would appear to have been already assigned to the foot of the Serpent-Bearer as he crushes down the serpent's head. Here we find the Scorpion, the very constellation that, according to Drummond, Abraham knew as the Eagle.

Some authorities claim that Aquila is the flying eagle, the semblance of the fourth face of the Cherubim, but in view of the fact that Antares, the brilliant first magnitude star in the Scorpion, is always known as one of the so-called four "Royal Stars," known as such from remote antiquity, there seems to be some ground for the argument that the constellation Scorpio was originally considered to represent the eagle.

Allen tells us that the Akkadians called this constellation "the Seizer" or "Stinger," and "the Place where One Bows Down." The Arabs, Persians, and Turks all