Horus, or the Astrognostic Final Judgment

X Preface.

...speeches are in all cases nonsensical, abominable, stupid, and evil. How many people has the mystery of the Trinity the Christian doctrine of God as three persons in one being already made into fools? How many have had their heads turned by the Whore of Babylon, the beast with seven heads, and the one with two horns? These are apocalyptic images from the Book of Revelation, often used in the 18th century for political and religious polemics How often have rulers, and how often have great cities, been compared to those beasts, dragons, and whores? If one searches carefully in the asylums original: "Tollhäusern", literally 'madhouses', one will find that almost as many have lost their minds because of the Bible as because of unrequited love. Of course, it is never said: "The Bible robbed these people of their senses"; rather, it is merely said: "These people have over-studied." But if one studies only the sciences original: "Wissenschaften", referring here to systematic, rational knowledge, and not mysteries or astrological fancies original: "Wahrsagergrillen"—of which the Bible contains very many—one will never over-study, because sciences do not darken the mind, but rather enlighten it.

Should one not, therefore, be allowed to say how those ancient soothsaying-tales originated and how they attained the dignity of divine truths?

On page 78, I asked tentatively whether the four ages of the world referring to the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages described by ancient poets like Hesiod and Ovid of the ancients might have originated not merely from the precession of the equinoxes the slow, cyclic shift of the Earth's rotational axis that changes the positions of constellations over thousands of years, but also from the four seasons? However, this conjecture is likely not to be doubted at all. The four ages of the world were created sometimes from the four seasons, and sometimes from the movement of the equinoxes through the four ancient primary constellations of the Zodiac original: "Thierkreiß",