possess. In the forms of the constellations, the most beautiful, and,
in imaginative quality, the finest, mythology that the world has ever
known has been perpetuated. Yet, in a broad sense, this scroll of
human thought imprinted on the heavens is as evanescent as the summer
clouds. Although more enduring than parchment, tombs, pyramids, and
temples, it is as far as they from truly eternizing the memory of what
man has fancied and done.
Before studying the effects that the motions of the stars have had and
will have upon the constellations, it is worth while to consider a
little further the importance of the stellar pictures as archives of
history. To emphasize the importance of these effects it is only
necessary to recall that the constellations register the oldest
traditions of our race. In the history of primeval religions they are
the most valuable of documents. Leaving out of account for the moment
the more familiar mythology of the Greeks, based on something older
yet, we may refer for illustration to that of the mysterious Maya race
of America. At Izamal, in Yucatan, says Mr Stansbury Hagar, is a group
of ruins perched, after the Mexican and Central-American plan, on the
summits of pyramidal mounds which mark the site of an ancient
theogonic center of the Mayas. Here the temples all evidently refer to
a cult based upon the constellations as symbols. The figures and the
names, of course, were not the same as those that we have derived from
our Aryan ancestors, but the star groups were the same or nearly so.
For instance, the loftiest of the temples at Izamal was connected with
the sign of the constellation known to us as Cancer, marking the place
of the sun at the summer solstice, at which period the sun was
supposed to descend at noon like a great bird of fire and consume the
offerings left upon the altar. Our Scorpio was known to the Mayas as a
sign of the ``Death God.'' Our Libra, the ``Balance,'' with which the
idea of a divine weighing out of justice has always been connected,
seems to be identical with the Mayan constellation Teoyaotlatohua,
with which was associated a temple where dwelt the priests whose
special business it was to administer justice and to foretell the
future by means of information obtained from the spirits of the dead.
Orion, the ``Hunter'' of our celestial mythology, was among the Mayas
a ``Warrior,'' while Sagittarius and others of our constellations were
known to them (under different names, of course), and all were endowed
with a religious symbolism. And the same star figures, having the same
significance, were familiar to the Peruvians, as shown by the temples
at Cuzco. Thus the imagination of ancient America sought in the
constellations symbols of the unchanging gods.
But, in fact, there is no nation and no people that has not recognized
the constellations, and at one period or another in its history
employed them in some symbolic or representative capacity. As handled
by the Greeks from prehistoric times, the constellation myths became
the very soul of poetry. The imagination of that wonderful race
idealized the principal star groups so effectively that the figures
and traditions thus attached to them have, for civilized mankind,
displaced all others, just as Greek art in its highest forms stands
without parallel and eclipses every rival. The Romans translated no
heroes and heroines of the mythical period of their history to the
sky, and the deified Cæsars never entered that lofty company, but the
heavens are filled with the early myths of the Greeks. Herakles
nightly resumes his mighty labors in the stars; Zeus, in the form of
the white ``Bull,'' Taurus, bears the fair Europa on his back through
the celestial waves; Andromeda stretches forth her shackled arms in
the star-gemmed ether, beseeching aid; and Perseus, in a blaze of