Abstract

Sun Gods as Atoning Saviours 2

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, May 07, 2001

More Saviours Punished in Hell

Tityus was another god punished by crucifixion, with vultures pecking at his liver in Tartarus, but this time he was spreadeagled and pinned on the ground, the oldest form of the punishment. This was for trying to have illicit sex with Leto—the liver was thought of as the centre of sexual power. He was a giant and a son of Gaia, so must have been a Titan, as his name might imply. Stealing a sexual pleasure from a goddess or revealing sexual indiscretions of a god seem to be euphemistic ways of hiding the revelation of divine secrets to humanity. In other words, he sounds like a disguised or older version of Prometheus.

Another suffering god was Tantalus, who was supposed to have been a king of Lydia and therefore extremely rich, blessed by his mother, the Titaness, Pluto (wealth). Tantalus, being so favoured by the gods, became immortal by dining with them on nectar and ambrosia, and one story of his punishment is that he served up to the gods in return the boiled corpse of his son Pelops. The Gods detected the nature of the meal and he was punished for it. Only Demeter anguishing over the fate of Kore, absentmindedly chewed a shoulder. The shoulders of sacrifices were always reserved for the king or the priests as they were in the Jewish religion (Lev 7:32;11:21). Those who dine with gods are gods, so Tantalus was really a non-native Greek god popular enough to have been once acceptable to the Greeks. Sacrifices were offered as broth, not roast, in countries influenced by the Persian religion, or perhaps in ancient Indo-European tradition.

There are other, more “tantalizing” myths however. Some place him in Corinth not Lydia, suggesting he might be associated with the legends of Sisyphus with whom he is punished in Tartarus. Like Prometheus, he stole from the gods to give to mortals. He betrayed to humanity certain divine secrets that he heard at the dinner table with them, and also stole nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, which confers immortality. There is a strong hint here of a eucharistic type of meal believed to confer immortality on to its partakers. When the gods found out he intended to benefit mortals he was punished for it. The Greek gods reserved immortality to themselves.

Because his secrets came from dining with the gods, he was forbidden to eat or drink, even though food and drink were tantalisingly available. This saviour of humanity was obviously crucified! He is hung on the branch of a fruit tree! It is perhaps a tree of life because it has multiple fruits growing in it—the tree of life has twelve—and is suspended over a lake. He is depicted peering through the greenery in abject terror. The level of the lake slowly rose up to his chin such that he could bend his head for a gulp of water, but each time he did, the water level fell away to expose the muddy bottom. Each time he bent his head to bite a fruit, a gust of wind bounced it from his mouth. So, he suffered everlasting torments of hunger and thirst. Jesus was, of course, tormented with gall to drink when he thirsted.

In another myth, Tantalus is punished by having a large rock suspended above his head threatening to fall upon him at every moment, so he suffers an eternity of immediate fear. The rock, like that of Sisyphus is the solar disc, showing that Tantalus was a sun god. Scholiast on Pindar’s Odes declares this to be the case.

A sacrificial victim to the sun god will have been put in a cage decorated with the fruit of the earth and dropped into a lake as the canonical myth suggests, or burnt on a pyre as was Tantalus’s son, whence the real reason for his fear. In fact, the folk custom of the Jack in the Green (Green George) in which an effigy is first ducked and then burnt will be the relic of the custom. In Medieval times, at May Day, the victim was encased in a wooden cage decorated with holly, ivy, spring flowers and fluttering ribbons. The tradition was maintained by chimney sweeps which suggests the fate of the original victim. The fearful image of the green man sprouting leaves will be the same. The man was not originally sprouting leaves but looking through them in terror.

Yet another benefactor of humanity punished in hell was Sisyphus, who was condemned to rolling a large stone up a hill in Tartarus, but each time it rolled back again. Sisyphus who is supposed to have founded Corinth and the Isthmian games, revealed one of Zeus’s amorous affairs, but this will be another derogation of the original in which he aimed to pass divine secrets to mortals. Zeus sent Thanatos (death) to embrace him. Sisyphus however, tricked and overpowered Thanatos, and chained him up, so that he could not embrace people, and human beings became immortal like gods. Here again is a strong hint of the god promising eternal life to his devotees. Mars, who had a vested interest in people killing each other, set Thanatos free again and despatched Sisyphus to Tartarus, probably signifying that the religion was forcibly suppressed. A saviour of the human race, actually saving them from death, is punished by a jealous patriarchal god. Sisyphus was read by the Greeks as including the word “sophos,” “wisdom,” and they took it to mean “crafty,” in the sense of “cunning” but originally will have meant “clever” or “thoughtful” like Prometheus. Curiously Jesus is often identified with Wisdom, though Wisdom was a goddess, Sophia.

The punishment of Sisyphus reflects his original nature as a sun god, presumably of Corinth, where there was a temple to Helios. The time spent by Paul at Corinth might not have been purely fortuitous. The cult was based upon the Hittite sun god, Tesup, and will have been brought into Corinth by traders from Rhodes where Tesup was worshipped. The boulder Sisyphus rolls up the hill stands for the disc of the sun, and Sisyphus was the god who rolled the solar disc across the vault of the heavens, having to begin his endless task anew each morning because overnight the sun has returned to the east. Sisyphus and Ixion (another, sun god—see below) were put next to each other in Hades, suggesting an association.

In his myth, Sisyphus was a cattle owner, another characteristic of some sun gods, who were often represented as bulls (compare Mithras). He is the parallel of Laban in Genesis (29-30) from whom Jacob tricked cattle. Laban means white, a colour associated with the sun.

The end of the story of Sisyphus is even more revealing. Being so wise, he tells his wife not to bury his body when he dies. This is a mythical explanation of the corpses of crucified victims being left to hang. Arriving in Hades, he complains to Persephone, the queen of the underworld, that he had suffered an injustice by not being buried and asked for a three days respite to correct it. Persephone agreed but Sisyphus had no intention of keeping his three day promise. It could not work. Omniscient gods could not be tricked so simply, and Hermes was quickly sent to inflict permanent death on Sisyphus. Paul addresses the Greeks (Acts 17:2-34) referring to an altar inscribed “To an Unknown God.” Luke puts this speech in the Areopagus in Athens immediately before Paul departs to Corinth. Perhaps Luke was misinformed or has used poetic license and the altar was to Sisyphus, whose name was unmentionable and whose tomb was unknown—in Corinth.

What is interesting is the reversal of myths like that of Jesus where the god dies for three days. Here the god is reprieved from death for three days. It might be simply an expression of the ancient belief that the soul does not finally leave the corpse until after three days, or it might be part of the denigration of the Corinthian god by inverting what was a resurrection after three days. The Hellenes will have denigrated the Corinthian god for racial reasons, they disliked the importation of a foreign god into the heart of the Greek peninsular, and so had him punished by their own gods.

The Greeks eventually accepted foreign gods—including gods who died for three days—and some aspired to Olympus, but these sinning gods punished by Zeus in Tartarus were pre-Olympian, or gods of rebellious nations seen as rivals to the Olympians, or perhaps the Greeks were suppressing mysteries except their favoured ones of Eleusis, and a few other privileged places. Only Tantalus and Ixion of these saviours of humanity are still seen as crucified, but the common themes among them imply that it, and a communion meal conferring immortality, are likely to have been in the original myths, now suppressed. Aesculapius was a sun god as his parents prove. He was born of Apollo and Coronis. Zeus raised Aesculapius from the dead and restored him as a god. Before that Zeus slew him with a bolt lest the whole race of mortals should escape death. Aesculapius had raised so many from the dead that Pluto thought he waould have no dead people to rule. Here is the same myth of immortality, first suppressed then admitted as legitimate.

Alcestis

A less usual atoning god was Alcestis, who was female, the only example of a feminine god atoning for the sins of the world by self-sacrifice, unless the Danaids are considered in the same light. Her husband, Admetus, who wins her in marriage by riding a chariot pulled by a lion and a boar, forgets to sacrifice to Artemis on his wedding day and, entering the bedchamber, sees a coil of snakes. This will be a polite way of saying snakes copulating, which is considered a bad omen in India still, and plainly relates to the bridal chamber.

It signifies his early death, but the sun god Apollo, whom he had done a favour for, arranges for him to escape death if someone would die in his place. His elderly parents refuse telling him to accept his fate, and only Alcestis is willing to die for him. She takes poison in the canonical myth, and dies but Persephone in Hades refuses to accept her because of her devotion and sends her back. So the saviour goddess dies and is resurrected.

The chariot of Admetus pulled by a boar and a lion suggests the full year, since these are the symbols of the two half years. The implication is that Admetus was another sun god, whose chariot was the half year of winter represented by a boar and the summer represented by a lion. The sun often is depicted as riding a chariot or as a charioteer. Admetus has the same form as Prometheus and Epimetheus, so might stand for the full year.

Mithras of Persia atoned for mankind, and prepared for the salvation of mankind through slaying the primaeval bull—the first sacrifice. He was born on the twenty-fifth day of December, and his celebrations at the spring and autumn equinoxes were associated with crucifixion on a tree. These were the Persian New Year festivities described in the scriptural book of Esther, and involved the crucifixion of the old year, considered wicked, so that a new and uncorrupted year could take its place. This was seen as an annual rehearsal of the eschaton when the wicked world is finally replaced by the purity of the original creation of Ahuramazda. Christian writers, like Tertullian, imply that Mithras was slain, and yet do not say how. It has been suppressed. The Romans saw a great deal in common between Mithras and Christ, probably because they both originated in Persian mythology.

Ixion

Ixion, a mythical king of Thessaly, was crucified on a wheel, the rim representing the world, and the spokes constituting the cross. Ancient kings were often the god of the tribe, because unsophisticated people saw themselves as ruled by the god, not by the man who acted for him on earth. He is said to have carried the burden of the world on his back while suspended on the cross. He was therefore called the crucified spirit of the world. Ixion was another sun god, a Thessalian sun god.

He was married to Dia, meaning the sky, but had intercourse with a cloud, but the cloud was the wife of the sky god, Zeus, who therefore punished the headstrong sun god. This signifies a victory of the Greeks (God = Zeus) over the Thessalians (God = Ixion). The sky God Zeus condemned him to be crucified on the solar wheel as it traversed the sky forever. A man tied to a wheel is crucified because his body forms a cross. This myth seems to be a Hellenic version of a non-Hellenic sun god where the god is considered ignoble for ravaging the wife of Zeus, and so is punished.

Like most ancient myths, there are competing versions. In one version the punishment was an eternal crucifixion in Tartarus but in another the eternal crucifixion was in the sky. The latter was probably the original one, but the Greeks would not allow such a glorious crucifixion and placed it in the pits of hell. The cause of the punishment might have been historic—an ambush of Ionians (Eioneus) who were trapped and burnt in a fiery pit—but even this might have been part of a solar myth, the victims being sacrificed to the sun.

It is curious that Christian writers will recount a long list of miracles and remarkable incidents in the life of Apollonius of Tyana, the Cappadocian saviour, forming a parallel to those of the Christian saviour, yet say not a word about his crucifixion, even though they can—and do when forced to consider it—attribute it to syncretism to Christianity.

Christian writers find it necessary to omit the crucifixion of these saviours fearing the telling would lessen the spiritual force of the crucifixion of Christ, which has to be unique. They thus exalted the tradition of the crucifixion into the most important dogma of the Christian faith. Hence, their efforts to conceal from the public the fact that it is of pagan origin. They had full control and power over publishing for a millennium, a much longer time than was needed to expunge all referemnces to the crucifixion of earlier gods. Even icons were destroyed and the few that remain can and are always questioned by Christians, either as not authentic or misinterpreted.

Justin Martyr admits that the cross was already a well known and used symbol to the Romans. Addressing the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, he wrote:

And the power of this form (the cross) is shown by your own symbols on what are called “vexilla” (standards) and trophies, with which all your state possessions are made, using these as the insignia of your power and government, even though you do so unwittingly. And with this form you consecrate the images of your emperors when they die, and you name them gods by inscriptions.

Justin was pleading for his life but was so inept that he repeatedly insulted the emperor and the Romans. That is why he is now called “Martyr.” Minucius Felix, one of the most popular Christian writers of the second century, confirms this not long afterwards, charging Pagan Romans with displaying “gilded and adorned crosses” sometimes hung with the image of a man, but denied that crosses were significant to Christians. Addressing the people of Rome, he says:

Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it.

And this man Christians denoted a god. Mackey’s Lexicon of Freemasonry says that Freemasons secretly taught that the doctrine of the crucifixion, atonement and resurrection preceded the Christian era, and that similar doctrines were taught in all the ancient mysteries. These coincidences are evidence that the tradition of the crucifixion of gods has been long prevalent among Pagans.

To those who say the ancient crucifixions of gods were mere myths or fables, having no foundation in fact, but added to their histories as mere romance, the reply is that there is the same ground for suspecting it as being true of Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians and contemporary Jews and gentiles doubted it, and some openly disputed its ever having taken place. Others bestowed upon it a mere spiritual significance, and not a few considered it symbolical of a holy life.

Quirinus (Romulus) of Rome

The association of the crucifixion of Christ with a violent convulsion of nature, and the resurrection of the long-buried saints, events not supported by anyone in contemporary history, can only discredit the whole story. To appeal to Romans, Jesus was partly given a parallel history to Romulus (Quirinus). The death of this Roman saviour is remarkable for the parallel features to that of the Judaean saviour, not only in the circumstances of his crucifixion, but also in much of his antecedent life.

• Romulus and Remus were of royal blood, their mother, Rhea Silvia, being of kingly descent from Aeneas,
• Romulus and Remus were conceived and born of a virgin because Rhea Silvia was made a Vestal Virgin by the usurping king Amulius, so that she could not bear a son,
• Romulus and Remus were sought by the reigning king, Amulius, to be put to death, but were saved in the fashion of Moses and Sargon of Assyria by being floated down a river (another ancient legend),
• Romulus and Remus were watched over by shepherds as children,
• Remus was put to death by his brother, perhaps crucified,
• Romulus was put to death by wicked hands, and the whole earth was covered in darkness,
• Romulus finally was resurrected, and ascended to heaven.

In the canonical narrative, Romulus dies as an old man by disappearing during a thunder storm whereupon he was deified, but there are many variations in which he is murdered. Romulus was supposed to be favoured by Jupiter (Zeus), the sky god, to whom he dedicated a temple in his myth, and Rome was founded at the spring equinox.

In the myth, the twin who dies is Remus, killed by Romulus, and the reason is that he stepped across the boundary of Rome before the wall was built, an obvious parallel of the sun crossing the celestial equator. But it is Romulus who goes on to ascend to the godhead as Quirinus. Remus is the Roman Haman, who dies to permit the city of the sun to rise. The two brothers, Romulus and Remus, have echoes of Prometheus and Epimetheus, and could be distant variants of them. Mitra had his dark twin Varuna (perhaps evolved into Ahuramazda in Persia). Krishna had his twin Balarama. And sure enough, we find in the Christian myth that Jesus was a twin too, his brother being “doubting” Thomas Didymus (the twin)—not that we hear anything of it in the birth narratives!

Jesus as a Sun God

The idea of a Son of God is amongst the oldest cults of the patriarchal god worshippers. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The firmament is personified as the Father on High and the sun becomes the Son of God. Then, because no wrongdoing is missed by the sun in its travels around the heavens, it becomes the Son of Righteousness. The sun in its annual course around the zodiac and its regular daily periodicity typified the ever present, everlasting, ever faithful qualities that reassured people.

For Christian clergy who are always scared that one of these days their flocks will catch on and be outraged at the confidence trick they have been subject to, the Jesus of the New Testament bears an uncomfortable resemblance to other mythical figures. Many of the patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings of the bible are sun gods allegoricized as men by ancient poets. They can be recognized because there is negligible historical evidence for them. Many scholars agree that the patriarchs of the bible and even Saul, David, Solomon and Samson are ancient gods whose myths have been ludicrously accepted as history even by the most scholarly of men.

The ancients saw in the sun’s annual course round the heavens an image of human experience—conception, birth, growth, victory, death and resurrection. In the dramas of the mystery religions the central character was the initiate in the role of the sun god.

Christians have confounded pre-Christian Persian and Hellenistic cosmic principles with Jesus, a historical human being, a national hero of the Jewish nation fighting repression. The Jesus of the gospels was given the characteristics of a solar god. The Jews too then connived in the deception by rejecting their hero as a Pagan sun god and nothing more!

When the cruel summer sun of the ancient near east died at the autumn equinox, by a miracle the sun rose in the constellation of Virgo—the sun was born of a Virgin. When the bounteous winter sun was crucified at the spring equinox, the sun rose in the constellation of the lamb, and the crucified god was the sacrificed lamb of god. Light imagery is widespread in descriptions of Jesus. He is the “Light of the World” (Jn 8:12) but the only proper “Light of the World” is the sun.

Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.

Revelation 1:7

is a description of the sun as the god, Tammuz. The sun, in the form of its reflexion as it rises and sets, walks on water. Jesus is the saviour of mankind, but truly the proper saviour of mankind and all life on earth is the sun—without it we should be unable to survive.

The sun’s corona is traditionally depicted by a halo, a sunburst or a crown of thorns, and indeed the halo can be taken as an indication of a sun god in pre-Christian art. Sun gods such as Horus, Buddha and Krishna are shown with haloes before it became a Christian convention. Often Jesus is depicted surrounded by a sunburst of rays. The horns of the older deities and the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods show that gods were often given the attributes of the sun. The halo, that originally indicated a solar god, was transferred to other divine people in Christian art. The halo became the symbol of a god and then a holy person because it is a characteristic of the holy sun.

The sun has 12 aspects being the 12 signs of the zodiac or constellations, through which it must pass in its yearly journey. It is born in the sign of the goat, the Augean stable of the Greeks, then has an adventure as it enters each different sign during the course of a year. Finally it dies and is reborn or resurrected after three days on the twenty-fifth of December in the same sign of the celestial goat. From ancient times the year was partitioned into the 12 segments based on the constellation that the sun was in at the time, and from this the sun itself was given the aspects of the imagined signs in the heavens or friends or foes were given these imagined characteristics.

The magic number 12 is usually derived from this source and so it is with the twelve Labours of Hercules and the tribes of Israel. The rationalisation of the number twelve of the apostles is that they were to rule over the twelve tribes, but the origin of the twelve is then still solar. In fact, there were not twelve tribes and the number is only chosen to meet the requirements of a sun god.

People in agrarian societies appreciated the importance of the sun in agriculture. Farmers noted that the sun descended in altitude in the sky as it moved southwards until 21 or 22 December, the winter solstice, when it stopped declining for three days and thereafter started to ascend and move north again. The sun seemed to die for three days on 22 December when it ceased its heavenly motion and was born again on December 25th, when it resumes its heavenly motion. The punter worried that the sun might really die and not begin its annual ascent again, just as primitive peoples worried that the night might not end when the sun had set.

Ancient astronomer-priests knew of the annual cycles of the sun and told the punters that they could influence it in its journeys—if they were rewarded for their skills. Priests always were frauds—modern ones are no different in claiming they can help people get eternal life—and pretended they had rituals to revive the sun each winter. Each year on 25 December, when it was born again, people celebrated its birthday. Sons of god are born on December 25th because the sun is. Jesus has no known birthdate but he was given the birthdate of the Unconquerable Sun because he was perceived by the Romans and the Greeks as a sun god.

Early Christians, like Minucius Felix, repudiated the cross because it was Pagan. The first images of Jesus show him as an androgynous youth, the Good Shepherd, carrying a lamb. The original occupant of the cross was this lamb. A man was not shown hanging on a cross until long after the invasions of the barbarian whose traditional sun symbol was the cross.

That Christians worship on Sunday shows the origins of their god. The sun has been viewed consistently throughout history as the saviour of mankind for reasons that are obvious. Without the sun, life on the planet would die. The Eucharistic host, meant to be the body of Christ is kept and displayed for worship in a monstrance, having the shape of a radiating sun!

The ancients had no “only-begotten” son of the Christian type because the term they used was in Greek “monogenes,” and in Latin “unigenitus,” and did not mean “only-begotten,” but “that which was begotten of one parent,” the father, alone. The ancients meant by the term to designate the projection into matter by God of the force of life, not the sole and unique product of the union of spirit and matter, or a male god and a female human.

What can the Christian honestly make of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? It is a stolen legend. The Indian chief Red Jacket is reported to have replied to the Christian missionaries:

Brethren, if you white men murdered the son of the Great Spirit, we Indians have nothing to do with it, and it is none of our affair. If he had come among us, we would not have killed him. We would have treated him well. You must make amends for that crime yourselves.

This view of the crucifixion, from the viewpoint of a people regarded as savage, is more sensible and rational than that of Christians, who make it meritorious and a moral necessity. If the act were a moral necessity then Judas as well as Jesus was a saviour, because, without him in the Christian story, the act which saved the world could not have happened. If it was necessary for Christ to suffer death upon the cross as an atonement for sin, then the act of crucifixion was right, and a monument should be erected to the memory of Judas for bringing it about. Only Christian logic can find a flaw in this argument. They say that even though it was God’s fore-ordained plan, Judas could only have played his part because he was wicked! So the Christians finish up believing that the means justify the end, because their own Father would use a wicked man to achieve the salvation of the world. It is hardly any surprise that the Christian world remains so wicked despite being saved.

If the inhabitants of this planet required the murderous death of a god as an atonement, we must presume that all other inhabited worlds need a divine atonement. If there are millions of world inhabited by intelligent beings in the universe then they all need a saviour. Presumably, there is only one Most High and it is He who has to be incarnated in each case. He begins to look a bit like a fetishist getting a kick out of slumming it in the worlds of the mortals. Or rather, it begins to make the whole concept look ludicrous.

The idea of gods coming down from heaven, being born of virgins and dying a violent death for the moral blunders of the people originated in an age of the world when mankind was savage and blood was the requisition for every offence. In those days no one had any idea of other possible worlds besides our own and the realms of the gods themselves. So the idea of the supreme god playing his tricks seemed reasonable. Today it does not, to anyone with a remaining brain cell.

Sixteen Crucified Saviours

Kersey Graves, in a well known book written over a century ago, gives examples of sixteen crucified gods or saviours. Most are very ancient and the evidence he presents arguable, depending upon the interpretation of pictures or sculptures, since no original written sources now exist, often victims of Christians determined to preserve the memory of only one crucified god. Some have already been considered. Others are doubtful. Any evidence of these doubtful cases—or indeed others—particularly pictures would be welcomed.

Kersey Graves cites the god Wittoba of the Telingonesic (500 BC), woshipped apparently in the Travancore and other southern states of India in the region of Madura, who is depicted with nail-holes in his hands and the soles of his feet. Nails, hammers and pincers are constantly seen represented on his crucifixes and are objects of adoration among his followers, just as the iron crown of Lombardy has within it a nail claimed to be of his true original cross, and is much admired and venerated for that reason. The chance of Christian syncretism has to be discounted, but references to Wittoba are impossible to find in accessible books.

He also cites Bali of Orissa 725 BC. In Orissa, in India, they have the story of a crucified God, known by several names, including the above, all of which, we are told, signify “Lord Second,” his being the second person or second member of the trinity. Most of the crucified gods occupied that position in a trinity of gods, the Son, in all cases, being the atoning offering. This God Bali was also called Baliu, and sometimes Bel. Monuments of this crucified God, bearing great age, may be found amid the ruins of the magnificent city of Mahabalipore, partially buried amongst the figures of the temple.

Graves says Indra of Tibet is shown nailed to the cross and that the antiquity of the story is beyond dispute. There are five wounds, representing the nail-holes and the piercing of the side. Marvellous stories are told of the birth of this Divine Redeemer. His mother was a virgin of black complexion, and hence his complexion was of the ebony hue, as in the case of Christ and some other sin-atoning saviours. He descended from heaven on a mission of benevolence, and ascended back to the heavenly mansion after his crucifixion. He led a life of strict celibacy, which, he taught, was essential to true holiness. He inculcated great tenderness toward all living beings. He could walk upon the water or upon the air and he could foretell future events with great accuracy. He practised the most devout contemplation, severe discipline of the body and mind, and completely subdued his passions. He was worshiped as a god who had existed as a spirit from all eternity, and his followers were called Heavenly Teachers.

The Celtic Druids depict their god Esus (Hesus) of Gaul as having been crucified with a lamb on one side and an elephant on the other, and that this occurred long before the Christian era. The elephant, being the largest animal known, was chosen to represent the magnitude of the sins of the world, while the lamb, from its proverbial innocent nature, was chosen to represent the innocence of the victim, the god offered as a propitiatory sacrifice. We have the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world. The Lamb of God could therefore have been borrowed from the Druids. This legend was found in Gaul long before Jesus Christ was known to history.

Graves claims the historical basis of the crucifixion of the Mexican god Quezalcoatl is explicit, unequivocal, tangible, and ineffaceable, “being indelibly engraven upon metal plates.” One of these plates shows him as having been crucified on a mountain. Another shows him as having been crucified in the heavens, as S Justin tells us Christ was. Sometimes he is shown as having been nailed to a cross, sometimes with two thieves hanging with him, and sometimes as hanging with a cross in his hand. If these are unquestionably pictures of Quezalcoatl, the question has to be asked whether they are Christian syncretisms and therefore later than Cortez.

Today, Quetzalcoatl is said to have departed to the east saying he would one day return, but his manner of doing this seems to have been by throwing himself on to a funeral pyre, being cremated and then resurrected as the planet Venus. The ancient sun gods demanded human sacrifice to start the solar year and often rather than crucifixion, this was burning on a pyre, or in Europe in a wicker basket. Another myth is that he burnt in the heat of the sun. Birds flew out of his ashes which carried his heart up to the sky to become the planet Venus.

Quetzalcoatl again has characteristics of a sun god. The Aztecs seem to have been sun worshippers and Venus is the planet that heralds the sun. A picture that purports to illustrate the legend of Quetzalcoatl rising as Venus, shows a sun figure emerging from a fire with outstretched arms! There seems to be no heart or birds or planet Venus. Elsewhere in Aztec legend, Nanahuatzin self-immolates on a pyre to create the fifth sun. Are these myths being properly distinguished?

Iao of Nepal in 600 BC was crucified on a tree. The name of this incarnate god and oriental saviour occurs frequently in the holy bibles and sacred books of other countries. Some suppose that Iao is the root of the name of the Jewish God, Yehouah (Jehovah), often abbreviated to Yeho. Christian (Nestorian) influence must be discounted for several of these, to our mind, remote gods to be accepted as original. Devatat of Siam, and Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia are also reported to have died on the cross.

Thanks to suggestions made by David Braunsberg for improving this page.

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