darkness:  that Oromaze made six gods as good as himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones:  that Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also twenty-four other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).  But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.

“Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time, but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise again).  Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast no shade.  The God who mediates all these things reclines at present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to execute them.”  See Isis and Osiris.

There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this passage.  The egg is the fixed sphere, the world:  the six Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of Ahrimanes the six signs of winter.  The forty-eight other Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the origin of these ideas was Egyptian:  finally, the expression that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the equator was considered as their true paradise.

** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets and the heavens.  The initiated took the name of constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.  One was a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.  Hence the use of masks in the first representation of the drama.  See Ant.  Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  “In the mysteries of Ceres the chief in the procession called himself the creator; the bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon, Mercury.  In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the different parts of the day, and they walked in precession after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave of Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob’s vision, which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was formed.  There is in the French king’s library a superb volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder is represented with the souls of men mounting it.”

VI.  Sixth System.  The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under diverse Emblems.