he day and the night,
the twelve hours, all were personified and deified, as the authors of every
change in the universe. The allegorical figures contrived for these
abstractions by astrological paganism did not even perish with it.[37] The
symbolism it had disseminated outlived it, and until the Middle Ages these
pictures of fallen gods were reproduced indefinitely in sculpture, mosaics,
and in Christian miniatures.[38]

Thus astrology entered into all religious ideas, and the doctrines of the
destiny of the world and of man harmonized with its teachings. According to
Berosus, who is the interpreter of ancient Chaldean theories, the existence
of the universe consisted of a series of "big years," each having its
summer and its winter. Their summer took place when all the planets were in
{177} conjunction at the same point of Cancer, and brought with it a
general conflagration. On the other hand, their winter came when all the
planets were joined in Capricorn, and its result was a universal flood.
Each of these cosmic cycles, the duration of which was fixed at 432,000
years according to the most probable estimate, was an exact reproduction of
those that had preceded it. In fact, when the stars resumed exactly the
same position, they were forced to act in identically the same manner as
before. This Babylonian theory, an anticipation of that of the "eternal
return of things," which Nietzsche boasts of having discovered, enjoyed
lasting popularity during antiquity, and in various forms came down to the
Renaissance.[39] The belief that the world would be destroyed by fire, a
theory also spread abroad by the Stoics, found a new support in these
cosmic speculations.

Astrology, however, revealed the future not only of the universe, but also
of man. According to a Chaldeo-Persian doctrine, accepted by the pagan
mystics and previously pointed out by us,[40] a bitter necessity compelled
the souls that dwell in great numbers on the celestial heights, to descend
upon this earth and to animate certain bodies that are to hold them in
captivity. In descending to the earth they travel through the spheres of
the planets and receive some quality from each of these wandering stars,
according to its positions. Contrariwise, when death releases them from
their carnal prison, they return to their first habitation, providing they
have led a pious life, and if as they pass through the doors of the
superposed heavens they divest themselves of t