Note 234:1 — Chapter VII

But the fact that Napoleon's name was thus coupled with this constellation does not warrant us in asserting that Napoleon had no historical existence, and that his long contest with the great sea-power (England), with its capital on the river Thames (? tehom), was only a stellar myth, arising from the nearness of Orion to the Sea-monster in the sky—a variant, in fact, of the great Babylonian myth of Marduk and Tiamat, the dragon of the deep.

It seems necessary to make this remark, since the process of astrologizing history, whether derived from the Bible or from secular writers, has been carried very far. Thus Dr. H. Winckler writes down the account of the first three Persian kings, given us by Herodotus, as myths of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini; David and Goliath, too, are but Marduk and Tiamat, or Orion and Cetus, but David has become the Giant, and Goliath the Dragon, for "Goliath" is claimed as a word-play on the Babylonian galittu, "ocean." Examining an Arabic globe of date 1279 a.d.—that is to say some 4,000 years after the constellations were devised,—Dr. Winckler found that Orion was represented as left-handed. He therefore used this left-handed Orion as the link of identification between Ehud, the left-handed judge of Israel, and Tyr, the left-handed Mars of the Scandinavian pantheon. Dr. Winckler seems to have been unaware of the elementary fact that a celestial globe necessarily shows its figures "inside out." We look up to the sky, to see the actual constellations from within the sphere; we look down upon a celestial globe from without, and hence see the designs upon it as in the looking-glass.