Message #190052

[Demiurge]

and attend at man's birth--the Daimon (his genius), Fortune, Love, and Necessity. By the two first of these they hold that the Sun and the Moon are meant; because the Sun, as the author of spirit, heat, and light, is the producer and guardian of human life, and therefore is esteemed the Daimon that is the god of the person born. The Moon is the Fortune, because she is the president over our bodies which are the sport of a variety of accidents. Love is signified by the kissing of the serpents; Necessity, by the knot in which they are tied. The reason for adding the wings has been fully discussed above. For a symbol of this nature the convolution of the serpents has been selected in preference to anything else, because of the flexuosity of the course of both these luminaries. From this cause it comes, that the serpent is attached to the figures both of Aesculapius and of Hygiea, because these deities are explained as expressing the nature of the Sun and the Moon. For Aesculapius is the health-giving influence proceeding out of the substance of the

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