Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarion's "History of the Heavens."

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Macmillan and Company, 1877 - Astronomy - 431 pages
 

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Page 6 - I remember, I remember Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow. I remember, I remember...
Page 382 - ... we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars : as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves and treachers, by spherical predominance ; drunkards, liars and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on...
Page 430 - Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim, Lights of the world, and demi-gods of Fame ? Is this your triumph — this your proud applause, Children of Truth, and champions of her cause ? For this hath Science...
Page 54 - The ram, the bull, the heavenly twins, And next the crab the lion shines, The virgin and the scales, The scorpion, archer, and sea-goat, The man that holds the watering-pot, And fish with glittering tails.
Page 382 - My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa major ; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar — Enter Edgar. And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy : my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o
Page 272 - The earth is an element placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the middle of an egg; around it is the water, like the white surrounding the yolk ; outside that is the air, like the membrane of the egg; and round all is the fire, which closes it in as the shell does.
Page 135 - Seventy-two divine ages are one manwantara. * * * The aggregate of four ages they call a divine age, and believe that in every thousand such ages, or in every day of Brahma, fourteen Menus are successively invested with the sovereignty of the earth. Each Menu they suppose transmits his authority to his sons and grandsons during a period of seventy-two divine ages, and such a period they call a manwantara. Thirty such days (of the Creator), or calpas, constitute a month of Brahma; twelve such months...
Page 54 - Sunt Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer. Leo, Virgo, Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.
Page 69 - to show me in the heavens the constellation Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to Upa/nachatras...
Page 180 - The universe is composed of nine circles, or rather of nine moving globes. The outermost sphere is that of the heavens which surrounds all the others, and on which are fixed the stars. Beneath this revolve seven other globes, carried round by a motion in a direction contrary to that of the heavens. On the first circle revolves the star which men call Saturn ; on the second Jupiter shines, that beneficent and propitious star to human eyes ; then follows Mars, ruddy and awful. Below, and occupying...

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