4. The death of the great King (e.g. Frederick II of Prussia) will transport his 'living spirit' (or the memory of him) to the starry sky of the night. He is 'catasterized', tranformed into a star (or constellation). This idea has a long history, and before the Lizard constellation was formed (by Hevelius in 1687) another great King had been sent to heaven: "Before the Lizard was formed, Royer introduced here, in 1679, the Sceptre and Hand of Justice, commemorating his king, Louis XIV; but Lacerta has held its place, while Royer's figure has been entirely forgotten, and Bode's nearly so." (Allen) The survival of the fittest applies also to ideas, for instance such in myths (and also in this investigation of the meaning of the rongorongo signs).
Lacerta occupies a space in time which belongs in the old year, to the time of King Cepheus above. I suggest the 'staff' of the King (e.g. Frederick II of Prussia or Louis XIV) had a special fate after his death. We have early testimony for this: ... Set, one night hunting the boar by the light of the full moon, discovered the sarcophagus and tore the body into fourteen pieces, which he scattered abroad; so that, once again, the goddess had a difficult task before her. She was assisted, this time, however, by her little son Horus, who had the head of a hawk, by the son of her sister Nephtys, little Anubis, who had the head of a jackal, and by Nephtys herself, the sister-bride of their wicked brother Set. Anubis, the elder of the two boys, had been conceived one very dark, we are told, when Osiris mistook Nephtys for Isis; so that by some it is argued that the malice of Set must have been inspired not by the public virtue and good name of the noble culture hero, but by this domestic inadventure. The younger, but true son, Horus, on the other hand, had been more fortunately conceived - according to some, when Isis lay upon her dead brother in the boat, or, according to others, as she fluttered about the palace pillar in the form of a bird. The four bereaved and searching divinities, the two mothers and their two sons, were joined by a fifth, the moon-god Thoth (who appears sometimes in the form of an ibis-headed scribe, at other times in the form of a baboon), and together they found all of Osiris save his genital member, which had been swallowed by a fish ... |
