Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/73

Rh In a Roman zodiac, Aquarius was represented by a peacock, the symbol of Juno, the Greek Herē, in whose month Gamelion (Jan.–Feb.) the sun was in this sign. Aquarius has also been represented as a goose, another bird sacred to the goddess.

In February, the Aquarius month, the sun entered the Peruvian sign known by the name "Mother of Waters" and "Eagle Bridge." The Water Mother was figured as a sacred lake located in the Southern Fish and the Crane. The month of February marks the height of the rainy season in the Andes, and the rivers are then in flood so that the powers of the Mother of Waters are at this season most conspicuously displayed.

Allen states that the New Testament Christians of the 16th and 17th centuries appropriately likened Aquarius to John the Baptist and to Judas Thaddaeus the Apostle. In Babylonia this constellation was associated with the 11th month (Jan.–Feb.), called "Shabatu," meaning "the Curse of Rain," and the Epic of Creation has an account of the Deluge in its 11th book, corresponding to this the 11th constellation, each of its other books numerically coinciding with the other zodiacal signs. In that country an urn seems to have been known as "Gu," meaning a water-jar overflowing. Plunket tells us that "Gu" is possibly an abbreviation of "Gula," the name of a goddess. This goddess under another name was a personification of the dark water or chaos, hence the identification of the goddess Gula with the constellation Aquarius.

In the cuneiform inscriptions of western Asia we read: "The planet Jupiter in the asterism of the Urn lingers." Considering the imagined aqueous nature of this region of the sky it is not difficult, as Plunket says, to understand how the Vedic Rishis, who appear to have combined the characteristics of poets, scientists, and observers of the heavens, should have in 3000, when the sun was in 3