Celtic Moon Signs: How the Mystical Power of the Druid Zodiac Can Transform Your Life. Helena Paterson
but around 5000 BC his son, the hawk-headed god Horus arrived in Egypt from the south to avenge his father. Horus killed Set and the northern people were defeated, but the southern people by then had become Sun worshippers, in that Osiris became both a Sun and Moon god.
The cult of Set was retained, with Anubis (Anu) the son of Osiris in charge of the Underworld Kingdom. Set is known as the dark twin or brother of Osiris, and their wives, Nepthys and Isis, are also twin sisters, representing the dark and light phases of the Moon. Anubis is the son of Osiris and Nepthys, and Horus is the son of Osiris and Isis. This appears to be an incestuous relationship, but as a divine family they each represent various aspects and cycles of the waxing (increasing) and waning (decreasing) light of the Sun and Moon. The Winter Solstice and the northern star Capella came to mark the rebirth of Osiris as a Sun god.
The astronomically based myth of Osiris and Isis is a prime myth which has many parallels around the world. In Celtic myths, the original legend of King Arthur and Guinevere was also based upon the same astronomical principles. Arthur was primarily a Sun king who was identified with Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and the powers of darkness which he battled against were identified with Draco, the Dragon constellation. Capella marks the northern and southern horizons and it held a special place in Egyptian and druidic starlore because it marked the return or rebirth of the Sun at the Winter Solstice and its death or descent at the Summer Solstice.
Egyptian astronomy and its associated religious beliefs continued to evolve and another invasion from Babylon took place in around 3700 BC. The Babylonian priests worshipped a Sun god as well as Anu, and the axis of their temples determined the Sun’s place at the vernal or Spring Equinox, and the start of the New Year. This period coincides with the building of pyramids, which are orientated east to west. Temple building began on a much larger scale as the blending of southern and northern cults was reconciled at Thebes, or modern-day Luxor. Osiris was identified with the Spring Equinox as a Sun god and Isis with the Autumnal Equinox as a Moon goddess. King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were also associated with the same astronomical positions and archetypal gods.
The year 3200 BC marks the rise and worship of Amon-Ra, King of the gods, whose name means ‘The Hidden One’, for he concealed his name and soul. The Celtic god Celi, whose name means ‘concealing’, closely resembles Amon-Ra, who was associated with the golden realm of Amenti, the land of the Dead, which the druids referred to as Annwn. Both of these realms were aligned to the western horizon, the place of the setting Sun. From this time onwards temples built in Egypt were aligned to all four points of the orbital relationship of the Sun with earth; the solstices and the equinoxes.
There were also galleries orientated to both southern and northern constellations as well as adjacent temples to the Moon. The Egyptians retained their lunar calendar of 360 days that was divided into twelve months of thirty days each with five extra days now added for religious festivals and agricultural rites. Their New Year now began at the Summer Solstice, which coincided with the heliacal or rising of the Sun with Sirius (Sothos) and the seasonal rising of the Nile.
This lunar calendar of 365 days, however, did not take into account the extra quarter day, which meant it lost one whole day every four years. Though this defect was eventually corrected over a period of time it did cause havoc regarding their chronological record of the early dynasties. Nevertheless, their lunar calendar was imported into pre-Hellenic Greece and then Rome where it was mathematically adjusted to the exact duration of the solar year and it became a Sun calendar and Sun zodiac, which is still in use today.
Druidic Eight-fold Year and Lunar Zodiac
The people who introduced the Anu priesthood into Egypt are believed to have come either from north Babylon or from the race who invaded this area at the same time. Archaeologists have no explanation regarding the meteoric rise of culture among the indigenous population and it appears that this phenomenon cannot be traced to another civilization at that time. This has led some writers of ancient mysteries to believe the Anu priests were survivors of the lost world of Atlantis, but it remains a fascinating though controversial theory. However, the Sumerian civilization was the first to emerge around 4000 BC and a record of the Anu priesthood, which had found its way to Egypt, is referred to in a much earlier Sumerian creation myth.
This myth was eventually inscribed in cuneiform symbols on clay tablets and dated around 3500 BC. It refers to the arrival of great sages, ‘the Great Sons of Anu’ who had descended from the sky and instructed the Sumerians in all the arts and sciences, in agriculture, medicine and law. Sumerian omen tablets known as the ‘Enuma Anu Enlil’, dated around 1646 BC, refer to this golden age and to the god Anu and the planet Venus. They were preserved in the library of an Assyrian king and are the oldest astrological records known to exist anywhere in the world.
Druidic Eight-fold Year
The planet Venus was also associated with the Babylonian Love goddess Ishtar who overshadowed all other goddesses in the process of time as did Isis in Egypt. Ishtar was also referred to as Anu, the daughter of the sky and Nannar, the daughter of the Moon. Her eight-pointed star emblem referring to the eight-year cycle of Venus was found carved on an ancient Babylonian boundary stone and, though dated about 1120 BC, it is believed to represent a much earlier period in Babylonian history.
As an astral symbol it represents harmony and balance relating to eight points of the year that correspond to the four seasons, two equinoxes and two solstices, and it is the origin of the eight-fold year of the druids. During the Celts’ many travels around the ancient world it becomes increasingly apparent that they had absorbed a great deal of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek knowledge of astronomy with its associated starlore myths. The Celts had always used a lunar calendar and zodiac similar to the early Egyptian one, but it was based on thirteen lunar months of twenty-eight days with one extra intercalary day known as ‘the Nameless Day’, making 365 days. They also knew about the extra quarter day that meant adding an extra day every four years, which they were able to accurately calculate by using the numerous old stone circles they discovered on arriving in Britain and Ireland.
Druidism, the religion of all Celtic people, began to rapidly evolve in Britain with Stonehenge representing a central crossroads of Sun and Moon worship in the northern hemisphere. Its early structure of about 3200 BC was built around the same time as the new temple buildings at Thebes in Egypt, which represented a blending of their Sun and Moon cults. Stonehenge also evolved as a solar/lunar astronomical temple for both worship and cultural reconciliation. It was known to the druids as ‘Cathoir Ghall’ or ‘Cor-Gawr’, the root word Cor being synonymous with Gorsedd or a throne, and Awr signifying a time-circle or recorder. The first priesthood associated with Stonehenge were worshippers of the ‘Cult of the Dead’, which closely resembles the ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris and Set. When the Celts arrived, while familiar with the ritual lunar year which records the birth and death of Sun kings and gods, they were perhaps somewhat in awe of this ancient priesthood.
In the Celtic myths of Pwyll and King Arawn, the newcomer Pwyll has to undergo the initiation rites of Arawn in order to become the supreme ruler of both kingdoms – the living and the dead, or the upper and lower realms. It is a parallel account of the joining of the upper and lower kingdoms situated north and south of the Nile in Egypt. As Pwyll successfully completes his initiation it would appear to suggest that the druids were accepted into the ancient megalithic priesthood, whose belief in life after death was a more primitive form of reincarnation, which formed the foundation stone in druidic beliefs.
The eight-fold druidic year was based on the two solstices and two equinoxes and the four seasons represented by four fire festivals marking the four quarter days of the Moon. The fire festivals of Brigantia, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain were celebrated on the first day of the months of February, May, August and November. The first three were identified with their triple-aspected great Mother goddess. She was the Bride or Maiden known as Brigantia or Brighid in February marking spring and the Mother Dana or Ceridwen at Beltane marking summer.