date would signalize the reappearance
of the constellation or the Birth of the Virgin. The Church of Notre
Dame at Paris is supposed to be on the original site of a Temple of
Isis; and it is said (but I have not been able to verify this myself)
that one of the side entrances--that, namely, on the left in entering
from the North (cloister) side--is figured with the signs of the Zodiac
EXCEPT that the sign Virgo is replaced by the figure of the Madonna and
Child.

So strange is the scripture of the sky! Innumerable legends and customs
connect the rebirth of the Sun with a Virgin parturition. Dr. J. G.
Frazer in his Part IV of The Golden Bough (1) says: "If we may trust the
evidence of an obscure scholiast the Greeks (in the worship of Mithras
at Rome) used to celebrate the birth of the luminary by a midnight
service, coming out of the inner shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has
brought forth! The light is waxing!' ([gr 'H parhenos tetoken, auzei
pws].)" In Elie Reclus' little book Primitive Folk (2) it is said of the
Esquimaux that "On the longest night of the year two angakout (priests),
of whom one is disguised as a WOMAN, go from hut to hut extinguishing
all the lights, rekindling them from a vestal flame, and crying out,
'From the new sun cometh a new light!'"

(1) Book II, ch. vi.

(2) In the Contemporary Science Series, I. 92.

All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins of the myths
does not of course imply that the Vegetational origins must be denied
or ignored. These latter were doubtless the earliest, but there is no
reason--as said in the Introduction (ch. i)--why the two elements should
not to some extent have run side by side, or been fused with each other.
In fact it is quite clear that they must have done so; and to separate
them out too rigidly, or treat them as antagonistic, is a mistake. The
Cave or Underworld in which the New Year is born is not only the place
of the Sun's winter retirement, but also the hidden chamber beneath the
Earth to which the dying Vegetation goes, and from which it re-arises
in Spring. The amours of Adonis with Venus and Proserpine, the lovely
goddesses of the upper and under worlds, or of Attis with Cybele, the
blooming Earth-mother, are obvious vegetation-symbols; but they do not
exclude the interpretation that Adonis (Adonai) may also figure as a
Sun-god. The Zodiacal constellations of Aries and Taurus (to which I
shall return presently) rule in heaven j