“We read in Genesis 1:27 that, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” If we are to consider “The Image of God” in man, as the physical expression or form of man, then we must consider the creative form as manifested in nature. As we have stated in a former chapter, that all nature is His body and “God the soul” of all, it is evident that we have before us a vast field of thought.
In the childhood of our race, we were satisfied to believe that as man was made in the image of God, God must be in the image of man. While this statement is in itself correct, yet it comes so far short of the great truth involved, that the early church was caused to draw a sharp distinction between what is called the work of God and the work of nature. It is a sad commentary on the advancement of our race that even now, we hear professed scientists say that God has nothing to do with some great convulsion of nature, because it can be traced to some natural cause. It is just at this point that infidelity is growing most rank. But when we accept the fact that God is the Soul and Creative-Power active in all that is, we have laid a foundation for reasonable, orderly thought.
Starting then from this, the fundamental truth, to search for the image of man in the great universal whole, we are led back to a line of thought that because of the prevailing materialism and ignorance, has been for the last century, in great disrepute. We refer to the recognition of the influence of the heavenly bodies over our earth and over man.
Sometime in the long-forgotten past, someone discovered what the Greeks denominated the “circle of animals” – the zodiac. The term “circle of animals”, although displaying a partial ignorance of the real nature of the thing named yet indicates a great truth – a truth discerned by seers and sages of all past ages down to our own time; notably among whose names stand those of Plato and Swedenborg, who saw what they called the “Grand Man of the Heavens.”
In 1887, the author of the present volume published a work entitled Solar Biology. The special object of this work is to delineate character from the date of birth of a person. In this work it is proved, as accurately as any scientific fact can be proved, that a person is dominated and characterized by that function of the human body represented by the particular sign of the zodiac, in which the earth was at the time of his birth. The Apostle Paul seemed to have a conception of this fact when he said:
“The body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; for the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not, therefore, not of the body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; it is not therefore, not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now they are many members, but one body. …And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members, each in his part.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-27.)”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 