Pagan and Christian creeds Part 2

(1) Carefully described and mapped by Dupuis, see op. cit.

(2) For the harvest-festival of Diana, the Virgin, and her parallelism with the Virgin Mary, see The Golden Bough, vol. i, 14 and ii, 121.

(3) See F. Nork, Der Mystagog (Leipzig, 1838).

A curious confirmation of the same astronomical connection is afforded by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted it will be found that the festival of the a.s.sumption of the Virgin is placed on the 15th August, while the festival of the Birth of the Virgin is dated the 8th September. I have already pointed out that the stars, [gr a], [gr b] and [gr g] of Virgo are almost exactly on the Ecliptic, or Sun's path through the sky; and a brief reference to the Zodiacal signs and the star-maps will show that the Sun each year enters the sign of Virgo about the first-mentioned date, and leaves it about the second date. At the present day the Zodiacal signs (owing to precession) have shifted some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time when the Zodiac was const.i.tuted and these names were given, the first date obviously would signalize the actual disappearance of the cl.u.s.ter Virgo in the Sun's rays--i. e. the a.s.sumption of the Virgin into the glory of the G.o.d--while the second date would signalize the reappearance of the constellation or the Birth of the Virgin. The Church of Notre Dame at Paris is supposed to be on the original site of a Temple of Isis; and it is said (but I have not been able to verify this myself) that one of the side entrances--that, namely, on the left in entering from the North (cloister) side--is figured with the signs of the Zodiac EXCEPT that the sign Virgo is replaced by the figure of the Madonna and Child.

So strange is the scripture of the sky! Innumerable legends and customs connect the rebirth of the Sun with a Virgin parturition. Dr. J. G.

Frazer in his Part IV of The Golden Bough (1) says: "If we may trust the evidence of an obscure scholiast the Greeks (in the worship of Mithras at Rome) used to celebrate the birth of the luminary by a midnight service, coming out of the inner shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!' ([gr 'H parhenos tetoken, auzei pws].)" In Elie Reclus' little book Primitive Folk (2) it is said of the Esquimaux that "On the longest night of the year two angakout (priests), of whom one is disguised as a WOMAN, go from hut to hut extinguishing all the lights, rekindling them from a vestal flame, and crying out, 'From the new sun cometh a new light!'"

(1) Book II, ch. vi.

(2) In the Contemporary Science Series, I. 92.

All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins of the myths does not of course imply that the Vegetational origins must be denied or ignored. These latter were doubtless the earliest, but there is no reason--as said in the Introduction (ch. i)--why the two elements should not to some extent have run side by side, or been fused with each other.

In fact it is quite clear that they must have done so; and to separate them out too rigidly, or treat them as antagonistic, is a mistake. The Cave or Underworld in which the New Year is born is not only the place of the Sun's winter retirement, but also the hidden chamber beneath the Earth to which the dying Vegetation goes, and from which it re-arises in Spring. The amours of Adonis with Venus and Proserpine, the lovely G.o.ddesses of the upper and under worlds, or of Attis with Cybele, the blooming Earth-mother, are obvious vegetation-symbols; but they do not exclude the interpretation that Adonis (Adonai) may also figure as a Sun-G.o.d. The Zodiacal constellations of Aries and Taurus (to which I shall return presently) rule in heaven just when the Lamb and the Bull are in evidence on the earth; and the yearly sacrifice of those two animals and of the growing Corn for the good of mankind runs parallel with the drama of the sky, as it affects not only the said constellations but also Virgo (the Earth-mother who bears the sheaf of corn in her hand).

I shall therefore continue (in the next chapter) to point out these astronomical references--which are full of significance and poetry; but with a recommendation at the same time to the reader not to forget the poetry and significance of the terrestrial interpretations.

Between Christmas Day and Easter there are several minor festivals or holy days--such as the 28th December (the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents), the 6th January (the Epiphany), the 2nd February (Candlemas (1) Day), the period of Lent (German Lenz, the Spring), the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, and so forth--which have been commonly celebrated in the pagan cults before Christianity, and in which elements of Star and Nature worship can be traced; but to dwell on all these would take too long; so let us pa.s.s at once to the period of Easter itself.

(1) This festival of the Purification of the Virgin corresponds with the old Roman festival of Juno Februata (i. e. purified) which was held in the last month (February) of the Roman year, and which included a candle procession of Ceres, searching for Proserpine. (F. Nork, Der Mystagog.)

III. 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 SunG.o.d. 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 coincide with the Equator of the Sky--forming an imaginary circle half-way between the North and South celestial poles.

The Equator, then, may be pictured as cutting across the sky either by day or by night, and always at the same elevation--that is, as seen from any one place. But the Ecliptic (the other important great circle of the heavens) can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations as they are seen at NIGHT. It is in fact the Sun's path among the fixed stars. For (really owing to the Earth's motion in its...o...b..t) the Sun appears to move round the heavens once a year--travelling, always to the left, from constellation to constellation. The exact path of the sun is called the Ecliptic; and the band of sky on either side of the Ecliptic which may be supposed to include the said constellations is called the Zodiac. How then--it will of course be asked--seeing that the Sun and the Stars can never be seen together--were the Priests ABLE to map out the path of the former among the latter? Into that question we need not go. Sufficient to say that they succeeded; and their success--even with the very primitive instruments they had--shows that their astronomical knowledge and acuteness of reasoning were of no mean order.

To return to our Vernal Equinox. Let us suppose that the Equator and Ecliptic of the sky, at the Spring season, are represented by two lines Eq. and Ecl. crossing each other at the point P. The Sun, represented by the small circle, is moving slowly and in its annual course along the Ecliptic to the left. When it reaches the point P (the dotted circle) it stands on the Equator of the sky, and then for a day or two, being neither North nor South, it shines on the two terrestrial hemispheres alike, and day and night are equal. BEFORE that time, when the sun is low down in the heavens, night has the advantage, and the days are short; AFTERWARDS, when the Sun has travelled more to the left, the days triumph over the nights. It will be seen then that this point P where the Sun's path crosses the Equator is a very critical point. It is the astronomical location of the triumph of the SunG.o.d and of the arrival of Spring.

How was this location defined? Among what stars was the Sun moving at that critical moment? (For of course it was understood, or supposed, that the Sun was deeply influenced by the constellation through which it was, or appeared to be, moving.) It seems then that at the period when these questions were occupying men's minds--say about three thousand years ago--the point where the Ecliptic crossed the Equator was, as a matter of fact, in the region of the constellation Aries or the he-Lamb.

The triumph of the SunG.o.d was therefore, and quite naturally, ascribed to the influence of Aries. THE LAMB BECAME THE SYMBOL OF THE RISEN SAVIOR, AND OF HIS Pa.s.sAGE 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 acc.u.mulation 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 commonly 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 Pa.s.sover, and its supposed inst.i.tution by Moses is related in Exodus, ch. xii. In every house a he-lamb was to be slain, and its blood to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the house.

Then the Lord would pa.s.s over and not smite that house. The Hebrew word is pasach, to pa.s.s. (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 "pa.s.sed over" the equator and obliterated the constellation Aries.

This was the Lamb of G.o.d which was slain each year, and "Slain since the foundation of the world." This period of the Pa.s.sover (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.

(1) It is said that pasach sometimes means not so much to pa.s.s over, as to hover over and so protect. Possibly both meanings enter in here. See Isaiah x.x.xi. 5.

(2) See Exodus xii. i.

(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 G.o.d of Harvest" (Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).

In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression and its origin we must turn for a moment to the worship both of Mithra, the Persian SunG.o.d, and of Attis the Syrian G.o.d, as throwing great light on the Christian cult and ceremonies. It must be remembered that in the early centuries of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole Western world. It has left many monuments of itself here in Britain.

At Rome the worship was extremely popular, and it may almost be said to have been a matter of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity, or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in the face of the latter.

Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra cult the slaying of a Bull by the SunG.o.d occupies the same sort of place as the slaving of the Lamb in the Christian cult. It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the blood of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue. Mithraism was a greatly older religion than Christianity; but its genesis was similar.

In fact, owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of the Ecliptic and Equator was different at the time of the establishment of Mithra-worship from what it was in the Christian period; and the Sun instead of standing in the He-lamb, or Aries, at the Vernal Equinox stood, about two thousand years earlier (as indicated by the dotted line in the diagram), in this very constellation of the Bull. (1) The bull therefore became the symbol of the triumphant G.o.d, and the sacrifice of the bull a holy mystery. (Nor must we overlook here the agricultural appropriateness of the bull as the emblem of Spring-plowings and of service to man.)

(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 pa.s.sing 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.

The sacrifice of the Bull became the image of redemption. In a certain well-known Mithra-sculpture or group, the SunG.o.d is represented as plunging his dagger into a bull, while a scorpion, a serpent, and other animals are sucking the latter's blood. From one point of view this may be taken as symbolic of the Sun fertilizing the gross Earth by plunging his rays into it and so drawing forth its blood for the sustenance of all creatures; while from another more astronomical aspect it symbolizes the conquest of the Sun over winter in the moment of "pa.s.sing over" the sign of the Bull, and the depletion of the generative power of the Bull by the 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 G.o.d 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 pinetree 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 to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood."

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

"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 s.e.xtilius Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and the mother of the G.o.ds (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' (4); the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the actual blood of a sacrificial bull or ram." (5) For the POPULARITY of the rite we may quote Franz c.u.mont, who says:--"Cette douche sacree (taurobolium) pareit avoir ete administree en Cappadoce dans un grand nombre de sanctuaires, et en particulier dans ceux de Ma la grande divinite indigene, et dans ceux: de Anahita."

(1) See vol. i, pp. 334 ff.

(2) Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius, and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8.

(3) That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of the ram born again into eternity."

(4) Pagan Christs, p. 315.

(5) Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153.

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 a.n.a.logy 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. c.u.mont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra (2 vols., Brussels, 1899) gives a great number of texts and epitaphs of the same character as that above-quoted, and they are well worth studying by those interested in the subject. c.u.mont, 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 SunG.o.d--and the earthly bull, sacrificed for the good of humanity were one and the same; the G.o.d, 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 ill.u.s.trating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer quotes an ancient writer (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.

(1) Sall.u.s.tius philosophus. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, note, p. 229.

"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 G.o.ddess (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 superst.i.tion 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 (1) that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying (2) that "a place near the equinoctial circle was a.s.signed to Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he bears the sword of the Ram (Aries) which is a sign of Mars (Ares)." Similarly among the early Christians, it is said, a ram or lamb was sacrificed in the Paschal mystery.

(1) Pagan Christs, p. 336.