Fishes of Fancy; Their Place in Myth, Fable, Fairy-Tale and Folk-Lore - With Notices of the Fishes of Legendary Art, Astronomy and Heraldry (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ...in omen it is happy--"The dream's good, The Crab is in conjunction with the Sun." Under the influence of a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, which took place in the year 1604, Kepler was led to think that he had discovered means for determining the true year of our Saviour's birth. He made his calculations, and found that Jupiter and Saturn And it is by the Gate of Cancer, Mercury standing at the starry portals, that souls descend to take possession of the bodies of men. Not that the reasons of the crustacean's exaltation commend it to popularity; for when Hercules was fighting with the Hydra, Juno meanly sent Cancer to bite the hero's heel; but Hercules merely stopped for a moment in his job, killed the crab, and then went on with the Hydra. The goddess, however, translated the smashed crustacean to the skies, the crabs thus rising "On stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things." In astrology, fish forms were in great request, the mystery attaching to sea-things commending them to the special service of the necromancer. But besides the strange fish with which the man of dark science made his studio dreadful, and which in his computations played such high pranks as might have made Herschel weep, he professed a knowledge of occult influences in fishy products that opened up vast possibilities. Coral and amber, nacre and ambergris, were potentially dreadful. From the heads of fishes he took you the dread cimedia, that, properly handled, worked Darwinism backwards; and from the tortoise the gem chelonia, which, smeared with honey and laid upon the tongue, bestowed the gift of divination, provided the stars were in auspicious conjunction. This precious thing bore the tortoise shape, and the Magi told...