Most experts are not gracious enough to admit it though they know they are wrong.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Christmas—Addition

Addition by Larry Wright

Abstract

Christians never think it strange that the birth date of Jesus is the birth date of many of the incarnated gods of antiquity. That Pagans venerated the birthday of Christ as the birthday of their gods is beyond coincidence. At the winter solstice, the sun seemed to stop declining in the sky for three days. Its was at crisis point. It might die! Then it began to rise on the 25 December, the sun’s rebirth. Both the year and the day of Christ’s birth are unknown. There is no reason to suppose that Jesus the Nazarene was born on Christmas Day. The importance of 25 December to Pagans made Christians think it must have been the birthday of their messiah. When Constantine made Jesus a god, 25 December, the birthday of the sun gods and particularly that of the chief rival to Christianity, Mithras, was selected as his birthday. By celebrating at the same time as Pagan religions, the bishops accaepted Christ as a sun god, hoping to pull in Pagans worshippers. What are the origins of the various ingredients of the now traditional nativity scene?

Addition by Larry Wright

Addition by Larry Wright who has written a monograph on Jesus as a sun god but it has been out of print for some time. He has sent us this summary…

The worship of the Virgin Mary is, in all relevant details, the same as the worship of all the other Goddesses that were prevalent in the ancient world. Mary is Isis, or Venus, or Aphrodite, or Semiramis, et al… She is the “Queen of Heaven” or the “Mother of God”, or the “Star of the Sea”, or the “Immaculate Virgin”. The Mother and Child were worshipped in Babylon, as were Isis and Horus in Egypt. In Greece there was Ceres as the Great Mother with a babe at her breast, or Irene with Plutus, and even in China there was Shing Moo, also with a babe. The ancient Etruscans and Italians worshipped the goddess Nutria, who also had a son in her arms, and the Virgin mother Devaki suckled the divine Krishna. Minerva was honoured by the title “Virgin Queen”, as was Juno who was called the “Virgin queen of Heaven”.

The Virgin Mary, the Grecian Venus, and the Egyptian Isis et al… are all Queens of the starry heavens, for they are all personifications of Virgo, the eternal virgin of the zodiac. The constellation Virgo is a Y shaped group, which the star at the foot is the well known Spica, a star of the first magnitude. The whole resembles more a cup than the human figure, but when we remember the symbolic meaning of the “cup”, that seems to be an obvious explanation of the name Virgo, which the constellation has borne since the earliest times. Virgo lies very nearly on the ecliptic, that is the imagined path of the sun.

In Egypt 3000 years ago, the birthday of the sun god was celebrated on the 25 December, the first day to noticeably lengthen after the day of the winter solstice—the 21 December. At the midnight hour on the first minutes of the 25 December the birthday of the sun was celebrated. The sun was then in the zodiacal sign of Capricorn, then known as the Stable of Augeus, so the infant sun god was said to have been born in a stable.

Brightly shining on the meridian was Sirius—the “Star from the East”, while rising in the east was Virgo the Virgin of the zodiac, with the horizon passing through the centre of the constellation. It is this astronomical fact that is the basis of the many legends of virgin born world saviours. To the right of Sirius was the constellation Orion, “The Great Hunter”, with three stars in his belt. These stars, in a straight line, point at Sirius and were anciently known as “The Three Kings”. Depicted in the Zodiac of the temple Denderah, the constellation Virgo was pictured as a woman with a spike of corn in one hand, and on the adjacent margin the Virgin was denoted by a figure of Isis with Horus in her arms. Carpenter remarks:

But it is well known as a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant saviour, and so passed into the European ceremonial. We have therefore the Virgin Mary connected by linear succession and descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the sky! A curious confirmation of the same astrological connection is afforded by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted, it will be found that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the 15 August, while the festival of the birth of the Virgin is dated the 8 September… At the present day, the Zodiacal signs— owing to the precession of the Equinoxes—have shifted some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time when the Zodiac was constituted and these names were given, the first date obviously would signalise the actual disappearance of the cluster Virgo in the sun’s rays, i.e. the Assumption of the Virgin into the glory of the god, while the second date would signalise the reappearance of the constellation—or the birth of the Virgin.

The Jews held that the time of the messiah’s advent was to be astrologically indicated by the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, in the constellation of the Fishes. The prophecy related to the entrance of the vernal equinox into the zodiacal sign of Pisces the Fishes—due to the precession of the equinoxes—in approximately 255 BC. Bethlehem means the “The house of the bread corn”, in the mansions of the zodiac, Virgo is the place of the seed for sowing, and the opposite sign Pisces, is the mansion of the “Bringer forth in fruitfulness”, first set in heaven in accordance with the seasons of Egypt. The Hebrew messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, because the birthplace above was localised in the city of Judea, the land of the solar birthplace in the sign of the Fishes.

The ancient starry drama was played out yet again. At midnight on the 24th of December Virgo rose in the east and a new infant saviour was stable born. All the sins committed on earth gradually drifted down to Capricorn, hence the filthy condition of the stable, whose cleansing was one of the twelve zodiacal labours of Hercules, himself a sun god. The second-century church father Justin Martyr remarked that Christ was born when the sun had its birth in the Augean stable, Jesus coming as a second Hercules to cleanse the foul world. There is another stable in the constellation Auriga on either side of which are Taurus the bull and Ursa Major, known in Egypt as the “Ass of Typhon”. Here we have the ox and ass of the traditional nativity scene. It is also worth noting that the stars of the Great Bear were known to the Arabians as “Martha and Mary”, and also the “Coffin of Lazarus”.

“The Three Kings”—the stars of Orion— the Magi from the east mentioned in the gospels (Mt 2:11), at the birth of the sun god, came to pay homage, and bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The reason for presenting these particular gifts is explained by the fact that of the seven metals dedicated to the genie of the planets, gold was the one consecrated to the sun god, and frankincense and myrrh were the gums burnt in censers, at his worship.

Despite their astral origins, Christians later “discovered” the bodies of Melchior, Gaspar and Balthassar; and placed them in their new cathedral in Constantinople. From Constantinople the bones of the three kings were, as a special favour to Milan, allowed to be moved to that city. When Milan was captured by Frederick Barbarossa in 1162 AD, the Archbishop of Cologne persuaded the Emperor to transfer these relics to his cathedral; and there for the last eight centuries the bones have rested. The shrine of the “Three Kings” thereafter became one of the greatest treasures of Cologne cathedral.

The Egyptian astrological elements in the stable myth are provided by Massey:

The manger is the celestial, zodiacal and the actual birthplace of the messiah in Egyptian mythology. The typical birthplace was designated Apt or Aptu, whence came the name of Abydus. Ap means to manifest and expose to view, also to guide; Apt is the place or person. Apt, as person, was the most ancient genitrix who first brought forth from the waters as the fish, dragon or hippopotamus, hence Aptu is the mythical fish. Apt as place was also the pool of two truths, the piscina of the beginning, which was made zodiacal at last in the sign of Pisces. The pool, fish, uterus and crib, are all types of the birthplace named apt, and the “apt” is also a manger. The manger, apt, is a sign of the birthplace in Thebes, as in Aptu (Abydus). Thus the hieroglyphics will explain why the divine child, as Ichthyus, was born in a manger. One position of the manger can be identified by the asterism called Proesepe, in the sign of Cancer, which was at one time the place of birth of the god at summer solstice. The manger at Bethlehem had been the birthplace of the divine babe in a far earlier cult. Hieronymus describes the Syrian Adonis, extant in his time 331-420 AD and says that in the place where the redeemer cried in the manger, the lament of the women mourning for Adonis had been heard even in later times, as it assuredly had been in the pre-Christian period.

According to the Chronicle Of Alexandria, the Egyptians not only consecrated the nativity of the new-born babe and the virgin mother, they had the symbolic custom of exposing a child in a crib to the adoration of the people. When Ptolemy asked why this was done, he was informed that it was an ancient mystery—the crib or Apt being identical to the manger, thus being the same babe in the manger—that was born in the Apt above.

It is clear that the worship of the virgin mother was a common practice in the ancient world. In the sixth or seventh century the Roman Pagan festival of Diana celebrated by torch light on August 13th, was adopted by the Christian cult as the “Dormition” or “Falling asleep of the Mother of God”. This later became known as the “Assumption of the Blessed Virgin”, and was celebrated two days later than the Pagan festival—on August 15th.

The worship of the Virgin, the Queen of Heaven, became one of the grand features of the Christian religion. Mary the mother of Jesus, was pronounced Theotokus— “Mother of God”— by the Council of Ephesus 431 AD, and a church on the site was made sacred to her. Twenty years later in 451 AD at the council of Chalcedon Mary was further likened to the many virgin mothers that had preceded her by being pronounced a Virgin. Ephesus was chosen, because here had stood the great temple of Artemis, the great Virgin mother of Asia minor—of whom Isis was the prototype.

Artemis was to the Greeks what Diana was to the Romans (Acts 19:27). Her temple had been rebuilt for the fourth time under the patronage of the fabulously rich Croesus. It took 140 years to complete and was dedicated in 430 BC. It was destroyed by fire, but was rebuilt to even greater magnificence by about 356 BC, and became known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was finally destroyed by an edict of the Christian Emperor Theodosius in 381 AD. Her Assumption was decreed in 813 AD, her Immaculate Conception became dogma during the pontificate of Pope Pius IX in 1854. Although the former was not made official papal dogma until the pontificate of Pius XII in 1950 AD.

Regarding the elevation of Mary, Smith remarks:

Mary soon began to compete in popular affection with Isis, Cybele and Demeter. It required but slight and easy changes to transfer to her the stately ritual of the goddess Isis, with its shaven and tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music, its jewelled images of the mother of god; the ancient portrait of Isis and the child Horus was ultimately accepted not only in popular opinion, but by formal Episcopal sanction, as the portrait of the virgin and her child.

There can be little doubt that the Virgin Mary has been modelled directly upon the Egyptian Isis, for the two are virtually indistinguishable. The qualities which so endear Mary to the Catholics are the ones which made Isis so popular in Egypt. Both goddesses, gentle mothers that they were, could intercede with the all-powerful creator and stern judge far more effectively than their sons, and accordingly both have been styled Intercessor. Other titles of Isis include saviour of Souls and Immaculate Virgin, all appropriated by her Christian counterpart. Like Isis before her, Mary is portrayed standing on a crescent moon with an arch of stars above her head.

Certain images of Isis were celebrated for their miraculous movements, or the shedding of tears, and she was even said to have appeared to her worshippers on rare but special occasion. This miraculous work of “Our Lady” was naturally continued by the Christian church which gradually took over the cult of Isis. In fourth-century Alexandria, the Temple of Isis and the Church of Saint Mary stood side by side, the devotees of the mother goddesses indifferently frequenting either. The end came in the sixth century, when the last remaining Temple of Isis, on the Nile island of Philae, became a Christian church at the point of a sword under an edict of Justinian.

In the foregoing it has been argued that Mary the virgin mother of Jesus, like her counterparts in the many saviour cults of antiquity, had their origin in the starry heavens, patterned on Virgo the celestial world virgin of the zodiac. This symbolism of the birth of a new sun god, with its attendant message of hope and redemption at the winter solstice, originated in Egypt with the infant Horus and his mother Isis, the Egyptian Madonna. The doctrine of the Mother of God was brought in along with the worship of the Madonna by Bishop Cyril, and the monks of Alexandria, in the 5th century AD. Figures of Isis nursing the infant Horus were taken from the temples to serve as the Madonna and Child. The name Madonna is no more than a contraction of “Mater Domina” or Great or Lady Mother—in Roman times a title of mother goddesses in general.

As we have noted, Isis was also represented like Mary standing on the crescent moon with twelve stars surrounding her head, and with the infant saviour in her arms enclosed in a framework of the flowers of the Egyptian bean or lotus. The Virgin Mary was often depicted in this manner in medieval art; and she was represented in statuary as being black or dark skinned; black Madonnas exist today in many of the cathedrals of Europe. The most ancient pictures and statues in Italy and other parts of Europe, of what are supposed to be representations of the Christian Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus are black. The infant god, is depicted in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, but he is himself is perfectly black. The reason why these early representations of the Virgin Mary and Jesus are black, crowned, and covered with jewels, is that they are of pre-Christian origin; as Isis the Egyptian “Queen of Heaven” was worshipped in Europe for centuries before the Christian Era.

Temples and statues were erected to her at Bologna in Italy, and the church of Notre Dame in Paris is built on the original site of a Temple of Isis. On the entrance to the north cloister is figured the signs of the Zodiac, except that the sign Virgo is replaced by the figure of the Madonna and Child. Finally, in many parts of Italy can be seen pictures of the Virgin with her infant in her arms, inscribed with the words, “Deo Soli” (Sun God). This betrays their Pagan origin.

More information on Jesus as a sun god, links to other related sites and a book for purchase can be had at Acharya S’s the Truth Be Known website.

Page Tags: Christmas Origins, Jesus, Christmas, Christianity, Virgin, Mystery, Christ, Star, Saviour, Birthday, Christians, Christmas, Mithras, Pagan, Astronomical Origin, Sun God, God’s Names, Horus

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.