[1] Charles F. Dupuis (Origine de Tous les Cultes, Paris, 1822)
was one of the earliest modern writers on these subjects.


Immediately after Midnight then, on the 25th December,
the Beloved Son (or Sun-god) is born. If we go back in
thought to the period, some three thousand years ago, when
at that moment of the heavenly birth Sirius, coming from
the East, did actually stand on the Meridian, we shall
come into touch with another curious astronomical coincidence.
For at the same moment we shall see the Zodiacal
constellation of the Virgin in the act of rising, and becoming
visible in the East divided through the middle by the line
of the horizon.

The constellation Virgo is a Y-shaped group, of which ,
the star at the foot, is the well-known Spica, a star of
the first magnitude. The other principal stars, at the
centre, and and at the extremities, are of the
second magnitude. The whole resembles more a cup than the human
figure; but when we remember the symbolic meaning
of the cup, that seems to be an obvious explanation of
the name Virgo, which the constellation has borne since
the earliest times. [The three stars , and ,
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