The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

XII MUSIC OF THE SPHERES 441
called the " Music of the Spheres," a term very often used
without the slightest knowledge of its true meaning. It
was an ancient belief that each of the vowels of the
alphabet represented the sound uttered in its revolution
by one particular planet ; these all combined form one
eternal harmony to the glory of the great Creator of the
Universe. This is the meaning of the lines in Addison's
well-known hymn :
—
For ever singing, as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine."
India, again, seems to have been the birthplace of this
beautiful idea, which even in Plato's day was quite
familiar, for he makes the seven notes proceed from a
siren seated upon the several spheres, set in motion by
the Fates.'^'-'^
Another interpretation of the seven vowels is that they
represent the ineffable name of the Creator, the mystic
Jehovah, the great " I Am." This explanation is supported
by the fact that " these combinations of the vowels often
appear purposely to include and veil from the profane
sense the sacred triliteral I AH."
The same author tells us ^^^ that " talisman is but the
corruption in the Arabian mouth of ^ATroreXeo-fMa, the
influence of a planet upon the native ; hence astrology is
called 77
ATToreXecr/jiaTiKT]."
From astrology we are naturally led on to other
practices, by which men in all ages have sought to solve
the insoluble and to know the unknowable.
Magical arts, by which we mean all the various forms
of divination and enchantment practised by the ancients,
were said by the Greeks to have been invented in Persia,
or, as we have it, Chaldea. The MdyoL originally were
wise men, philosophers, given to the study of nature and
the contemplation of the stars and heavenly bodies. From
these higher pursuits they gradually declined, and following
the bent of their natural humanity, which makes fear the
•591 King, Gnostics, p. 93.
"92 j^^^ p, u^^