XIII. What They Intimate When They Depict a Star

Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, tr. Alexander Turner Cory, [1840], at sacred-texts.com

p. 30

XIII. WHAT THEY INTIMATE WHEN THEY DEPICT A STAR.

 ¹

When they would symbolise the Mundane God, or fate, or the number 5, they depict a STAR. And they use it to denote God, because the providence of God maintains the order by which the motion of the stars and the whole universe is subjected to his government, for it appears to them that without a god nothing whatsoever could endure. And they symbolise by it fate, because even this is regulated by the dispositions

p. 31

of the stars:—and also the number 5, because, though there are multitudes of stars in the heavens, five of them only by their motion perfect the natural order of the world.

Footnotes

30:1

I. A figure denoting Prayer or Glorifying.

II. The number 5.

III. From the architraves of the Ramesseion.