Pagan & Christian creeds : their origin and meaning / by Edward Carpenter.
- Edward Carpenter
- Date:
- [1920]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Pagan & Christian creeds : their origin and meaning / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
35/330 page 31
![the earliest times. [The three stars y and a, lie very nearly on the Ecliptic, that is, the Sun’s path—a fact to which we shall return presently.] At the moment then when Sirius, the star from the East, by coming to the Meridian at midnight signalled the Sun’s new birth, the Virgin was seen just rising on the Eastern sky—the horizon line passing through her centre. And many people think that this astronomical fact is the explan¬ ation of the very widespread legend of the Virgin-birth. I do not think that it is the sole explanation—for indeed in all or nearly all these cases the acceptance of a myth seems to depend not upon a single argument but upon the con¬ vergence of a number of meanings and reasons in the same symbol. But certainly the fact mentioned above is curious, and its importance is accentuated by the following con¬ siderations. In the Temple of Denderah in Egypt, and on the inside of the dome, there is or was an elaborate circular repre¬ sentation of the Northern hemisphere of the sky and the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29980161_0035.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
