Pagan and Christian Creeds: III. The Symbolism Of The Zodiac

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC

THE Vernal Equinox has all over the ancient world, and from the earliest times, been a period of rejoicing and of festivals in honor of the Sungod. It is needless to labor a point which is so well known. Everyone understands and appreciates the joy of finding that the long darkness is giving way, that the Sun is growing in strength, and that the days are winning a victory over the nights. The birds and flowers reappear, and the promise of Spring is in the air. But it may be worth while to give an elementary explanation of the astronomical meaning of this period, because this is not always understood, and yet it is very important in its bearing on the rites and creeds of the early religions. The priests who were, as I have said, the early students and inquirers, had worked out this astronomical side, and in that way were able to fix dates and to frame for the benefit of the populace myths and legends, which were in a certain sense explanations of the order of Nature, and a kind of "popular science."

The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line or circle girdling the Earth half-way between the North and South poles. If you imagine a transparent Earth with a light at its very centre, and also imagine the shadow of this equatorial line to be thrown on the vast concave of the Sky, this shadow would in astronomical parlance

In the above illustration the signs of the Zodiac are represented by a belt which must be imagined at a practically infinite distance among the stars. The Sun is in the centre, and the dotted circle indicates the Earth's orbit--the numerals 1,2,3, etc., standing for the places of the Earth in the corresponding months of the year. Thus in January, to the observer at (1) the sun would appear to be in Aquarius; in February he would appear in Pisces; in March in Aries; and so forth. The diagram shows these relative positions fairly accurately as they were 3,000 years ago. Now, owing to

he-Lamb. The triumph of the Sungod was therefore, and quite naturally, ascribed to the influence of Aries. The lamb became the symbol of the risen savior, and of his passage from the underworld into the height of heaven. At first such an explanation sounds hazardous; but a thousand texts and references confirm it; and it is only by the accumulation of evidence in these cases that the student becomes convinced of a theory's correctness. It must also be remembered (what I have mentioned before) that these myths and legends were com only adopted not only for one strict reason but because they represented in a general way the convergence of various symbols and inferences.

Let me enumerate a few points with regard to the Vernal Equinox. In the Bible the festival is called the Passover,

1 The lamb slain was called the Paschal Lamb. But what was that lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb--(though certainly the earthly lambs on the hillsides were just then ready to be killed and eaten)--but the heavenly Lamb, which was slain or sacrificed when the Lord "passed over" the equator and obliterated the constellation Aries. This was the Lamb of God which was slain each year, and "Slain since the foundation of the world." This period of the Passover (about the 25th March) was to be 2 the beginning of a new year. The sacrifice of the Lamb, and its blood, were to be the promise of redemption. The door-frames of the houses--symbols of the entrance into a new life--were to be sprinkled with blood. 3 Later, the imagery of the saving power of the blood of the Lamb became more popular, more highly colored. (See St. Paul's epistles, and the early Fathers.) And we have the expression "washed in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian Church.

In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression and its origin we must turn for a moment to the worship

1 The bull therefore became the symbol of the triumphant God, and the sacrifice of the bull a holy mystery. (Nor must we

Scorpion--which of course is the autumnal sign of the Zodiac and herald of winter. One such Mithraic group was found at Ostia, where there was a large subterranean Temple "to the invincible god Mithras."

In the worship of Attis there were (as I have already indicated) many points of resemblance to the Christian cult. On the 22nd March (the Vernal Equinox) a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the Temple of Cybele. It was treated almost as a divinity, was decked with violets, and the effigy of a young man tied to the stem (cf. the Crucifixion). The 24th was called the "Day of Blood"; the High Priest first drew blood from his own arms; and then the others gashed and slashed themselves, and spattered the altar and the sacred tree with blood; while novices made themselves eunuchs "for the kingdom of heaven's sake." The effigy was afterwards laid in a tomb. But when night fell, says Dr. Frazer, 1 sorrow was turned to joy. A light was brought, and the tomb was found to be empty. The next day, the 25th, was the festival of the Resurrection; and ended in carnival and license (the Hilaria). Further, says Dr. Frazer, these mysteries "seem

"In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the worshiper on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows--as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull." 1 And Frazer continuing says: "That the bath of blood derived from slaughter of the bull (tauro-bolium) was believed to regenerate the devotee for eternity is proved by an inscription found at Rome, which records that a certain Sextilius Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and the mother of the gods (Cybele) was taurobolio criobolio que in aeternum renatus." 2 "In the procedure of the Taurobolia and Criobolia," says Mr. J. M. Robertson, 3 "which grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the literal and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of the lamb'; the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the actual blood of a sacrificial bull or ram." For the popularity of the rite we may quote Franz Cumont, who says 4:--"Cette douche sacrée (taurobolium) paraît avoir été administrée en Cappadoce dans un grand nombre de sanctuaires,

Whether Mr. Robertson is right in ascribing to the priests (as he appears to do) so materialistic a view of the potency of the actual blood is, I should say, doubtful. I do not myself see that there is any reason for supposing that the priests of Mithra or Attis regarded baptism by blood very differently from the way in which the Christian Church has generally regarded baptism by water--namely, as a symbol of some inner regeneration. There may certainly have been a little more of the magical view and a little less of the symbolic, in the older religions; but the difference was probably on the whole more one of degree than of essential disparity. But however that may be, we cannot but be struck by the extraordinary analogy between the tombstone inscriptions of that period "born again into eternity by the blood of the Bull or the Ram," and the corresponding texts in our graveyards to-day. F. Cumont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (2 vols., Brussels, 1899) gives a great number of texts and epitaphs of the same character as that above-quoted, 1 and they are well worth studying by those interested in the subject. Cumont, it may be noted (vol. i, p. 305), thinks that the story of Mithra and the slaying of the Bull must have originated among some pastoral people to whom the bull was the source of all life. The Bull in heaven--the symbol of the triumphant Sungod--and the earthly bull, sacrificed for the good of humanity were one and the same; the god, in fact, sacrificed himself or his representative. And Mithra was the hero who first won this conception of divinity for mankind--though of course it is in essence quite similar to the conception put forward by the Christian Church.

As illustrating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer

1 who says that for some time after the ceremony the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting the devotee on milk, like a new-born babe. And it is interesting in that connection to find that even in the present day a diet of absolutely nothing but milk for six or eight weeks is by many doctors recommended as the only means of getting rid of deep-seated illnesses and enabling a patient's organism to make a completely new start in life.

"At Rome," he further says (p. 230), "the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood appear to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian Goddess (Cybele) on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From the Vatican as a centre," he continues, "this barbarous system of superstition seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican."

It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early days of the Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials of Mithra and Cybele, probably much intermingled and blended, were exceedingly popular. Both religions had been recognized by the Roman State, and the Christians, persecuted and despised as they were, found it hard to make any headway against them--the more so perhaps because the Christian doctrines appeared in many respects to be merely faint replicas and copies of the older creeds. Robertson maintains 2 that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying 3 that "a place near the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he

Many people think that the association of the Lamb-god with the Cross arose from the fact that the constellation Aries at that time was on the heavenly cross (the crossways of the Ecliptic and Equator--see diagram, ch. iii, p. 39 supra), and in the very place through which the Sungod had to pass just before his final triumph. And it is curious to find that Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho 1 (a Jew) alludes to an old Jewish practice of roasting a Lamb on spits arranged in the form of a Cross. "The lamb," he says, meaning apparently the Paschal lamb, "is roasted and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed right through the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs [forelegs] of the lamb."

To-day in Morocco at the festival of Eid-el-Kebir, corresponding to the Christian Easter, the Mohammedans sacrifice a young ram and hurry it still bleeding to the precincts of the Mosque, while at the same time every household slays a lamb, as in the Biblical institution, for its family feast.

But it will perhaps be said, "You are going too fast and proving too much. In the anxiety to show that the Lamb-god and the sacrifice of the Lamb were honored by the devotees of Mithra and Cybele in the Rome of the Christian era, you are forgetting that the sacrifice of the Bull and the baptism in bull's blood were the salient features of the Persian and Phrygian ceremonials, some centuries earlier. How can you reconcile the existence side by side of divinities belonging to such different periods, or ascribe them both to an astronomical origin?" The answer is simple enough. As I have explained before, the Precession

1 So that both

1--the stable of course being an underground chamber--and the myth was that there, in this lowest tract and backwater of the Ecliptic all the malarious and evil influences of the sky were collected, and the Sungod came to wash them away (December was the height of the rainy season in Judæa) and cleanse the year towards its rebirth.

It should not be forgotten too that even as a child in the cradle Hercules slew two serpents sent for his destruction--the serpent and the scorpion as autumnal constellations figuring always as enemies of the Sungod--to which

1 "to tread on serpents and scorpions." Hercules also as a Sungod compares curiously with Samson (mentioned above, ii), but we need not dwell on all the elaborate analogies that have been traced 2 between these two heroes.

The Jesus-story, it will now be seen, has a great number of correspondences with the stories of former Sungods and with the actual career of the Sun through the heavens--so many indeed that they cannot well be attributed to mere coincidence or even to the blasphemous wiles of the Devil! Let us enumerate some of these. There are (1) the birth from a Virgin mother; (2) the birth in a stable (cave or underground chamber); and (3) on the 25th December (just after the winter solstice). There is (4) the Star in the East (Sirius) and (5) the arrival of the Magi (the "Three Kings"); there is (6) the threatened Massacre of the Innocents, and the consequent flight into a distant country (told also of Krishna and other Sungods). There are the Church festivals of (7) Candlemas (2nd February), with processions of candles to symbolize the growing light; of (8) Lent, or the arrival of Spring; of (9) Easter Day (normally on the 25th March) to celebrate the crossing of the Equator by the Sun; and (10) simultaneously the outburst of lights at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There is (11) the Crucifixion and death of the Lamb-God, on Good Friday, three days before Easter; there are (12) the nailing to a tree, (13) the empty grave, (14) the glad Resurrection (as in the cases of Osiris, Attis and others); there are (15) the twelve disciples (the Zodiacal signs); and (16) the betrayal by one of the twelve. Then later there is (17) Midsummer Day, the 24th June, dedicated to the Nativity of John the Baptist, and corresponding

1 I propose, however, at the close of this chapter, to dwell now for a moment on the Christian festival of the Eucharist, partly on account of its connection with the derivation from the astronomical rites and Nature-celebrations already alluded to, and partly on account of the light which the festival generally, whether Christian or Pagan, throws on the origins of Religious Magic--a subject I shall have to deal with in the next chapter.

I have already (Ch. II, p. 25) mentioned the Eucharistic rite held in commemoration of Mithra, and the indignant ascription of this by Justin Martyr to the wiles of the Devil. Justin Martyr clearly had no doubt about the resemblance of the Mithraic to the Christian ceremony. A Sacramental meal, as mentioned a few pages back, seems to have been held by the worshipers of Attis 2 in commemoration of their god; and the 'mysteries' of the

1 He travelled far and wide; and brought the great gift of wine to mankind. 2 He was called Liberator, and Saviour. His grave "was shown at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo. Secret offerings were brought thither, while the women who were celebrating the feast woke up the new-born god. . . . Festivals of this kind in celebration of the extinction and resurrection of the deity were held (by women and girls only) amid the mountains at night, every third year, about the time of the shortest day. The rites, intended to express the excess of grief and joy at the death and reappearance of the god, were wild even to savagery, and the women who performed them were hence known by the expressive names of Bacchae, Maenads, and Thyiades. They wandered through woods and mountains, their flying locks crowned with ivy or snakes, brandishing wands and torches, to the hollow sounds of the drum, or the shrill notes of the flute, with wild dances and insane cries and jubilation. The victims of the sacrifice,

1--who it was supposed had torn the god in pieces when a child.

Dupuis, one of the earliest writers (at the beginning of last century) on this subject, says, describing the mystic rites of Dionysus: 2 "The sacred doors of the Temple in which the initiation took place were opened only once a year, and no stranger might ever enter. Night lent to these august mysteries a veil which was forbidden to be drawn aside--for whoever it might be. 3 It was the sole occasion for the representation of the passion of Bacchus [Dionysus] dead, descended into hell, and rearisen--in imitation of the representation of the sufferings of Osiris which, according to Herodotus, were commemorated at Sais in Egypt. It was in that place that the partition took place of the body of the god, 4 which was then eaten--the ceremony, in fact, of which our Eucharist is only a reflection; whereas in the mysteries of Bacchus actual raw flesh was distributed, which each of those present had to consume in commemoration of the death of Bacchus dismembered by the Titans, and whose passion, in Chios and Tenedos, was renewed each year by the sacrifice of a man who represented the god. 5 Possibly it is this last fact which made people believe that the Christians (whose hoc est corpus meum and sharing of an Eucharistic meal were no more than a shadow of a more ancient rite) did really sacrifice a child and devour its limbs."

That Eucharistic rites were very very ancient is plain from the Totem-sacraments of savages; and to this subject we shall now turn.

Footnotes

40:1 It is said that pasach sometimes means not so much to pass over, as to hover over and so protect. Possibly both meanings enter in here. See Isaiah xxxi. 5.

40:2 See Exodus xii. 1.

40:3 It is even said (see The Golden Bough, vol. iii, 185) that the doorways of houses and temples in Peru were at the Spring festival daubed with blood of the first-born children--commuted afterwards to the blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that it was a custom of the people there to "smear the outside of their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest" (Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).

41:1 With regard to this point, see an article in the Nineteenth Century for September 1900, by E. W. Maunder of the Greenwich Observatory on "The Oldest Picture Book" (the Zodiac). Mr. Maunder calculates that the Vernal Equinox was in the centre of the Sign of the Bull 5,000 years ago. [It would therefore be in the centre of Aries 2,845 years ago--allowing 2,155 years for the time occupied in passing from one Sign to another.] At the earlier period the Summer solstice was in the centre of Leo, the Autumnal equinox in the centre of Scorpio, and the Winter solstice in the centre of Aquarius--corresponding roughly, Mr. Maunder points out, to the positions of the four "Royal Stars," Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut.

42:1 See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Part IV of The Golden Bough, by J. G. Frazer, p. 229.

43:1 Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius, and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8.

43:2 That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of the ram born again into eternity."

43:3 Pagan Christs, p. 315.

43:4 Mystères de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153.

44:1 See vol. i, pp. 334 ff.

45:1 Sallustius philosophus. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, note, p. 229.

45:2 Pagan Christs, p. 336.

45:3 De Antro, xxiv.

46:1 Ch. xl.

47:1 Tacitus (Hist. v. 4) speaks of ram-sacrifice by the Jews in honor of Jupiter Ammon. See also Herodotus (ii. 42) on the same in Egypt.

49:1 See diagram of Zodiac, supra, p. 37.

50:1 Luke x. 19.

50:2 See Doane's Bible Myths, ch. viii, (New York, 1882.)

51:1 See Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, Part II, pp. 129-302; also Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xxviii, p. 278.

51:2 See Frazer's Golden Bough, Part IV, p. 229.

52:1 The Golden Bough, Part II, Book II, p. 164.

52:2 "I am the true Vine," says the Jesus of the fourth gospel, perhaps with an implicit and hostile reference to the cult of Dionysus--in which Robertson suggests (Christianity and Mythology, p. 357) there was a ritual miracle of turning water into wine.)

53:1 See art. Dionysus. Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Nettleship and Sandys 3rd edn., London, 1898).

53:2 See Charles F. Dupuis, "Traité des Mystères," ch. i.

53:3 Pausan, Corinth, ch. 37.

53:4 Clem, Prot. Eur. Bacch.

53:5 See Porphyry, De Abstinentia, lii, § 56.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: III. The Symbolism Of The Zodiac

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC

Footnotes

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