Sixty of the sixty five million years of domination of the earth by mammals elapsed before the intelligent model went into the prototype stage, but then in only about five million years technological society evolved.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Mystery Religions II.2

Rituals
Isis
The Meaning of Resurrection
Dionysos and Orpheus
Orpheus

Abstract

“I am the Resurrection and the Life” is essentially what the Egyptians chanted about their god Osiris. The resurrection of Osiris was the basis of the Egyptian’s firm hope of eternal life. Every year Egyptians mourned for days over the slaying of Osiris and then rejoiced exceedingly over his resurrection. The resurrection of Osiris was the basis of the Egyptian’s firm hope of eternal life.

Rituals

As the judge of the dead, Osiris was a stern moral judge, and personal immortality, prefigured by the resurrection of Osiris, was the firmest of beliefs for Egyptians. The Pyramid Texts—inscriptions on the inner walls of the oldest pyramid tombs—show that this was common Egyptian doctrine three thousand years before Christ, and must go back to the dawn of civilization. Egyptian priests mimicked the resurrection of Osiris over the corpse as a pledge of a glorious resurrection in the kingdom of Osiris. The priests of Isis shaved their heads and bodies and wore white linen garments in token of the purity which the religion of Isis demanded. They never ate flesh meat, or even vegetables that had been in contact with manure, and no wine was admitted into their houses. Salt even was eschewed, since it led to an increase of the appetite for food and drink. The cult of purity was dominant in later Egypt.

The national festival of Osiris lasted eighteen days and included a most elaborate ritual in the temple. At Sais, one of the centers of the Osiris cult, this myth was annually celebrated in November, the period of sowing the corn in Egypt, in a sacred and solemn ceremony. Inscriptions and bas-reliefs in the temples show that the image of Osiris was buried, and in the end he was shown rising from his bier under the spreading wings of Isis. The death of Osiris caused the Nile to flood and the land to become fertile.

There were four days of mourning and lamentation over the dead god, whose sufferings were represented as a sacred drama on a lake at night, while the people lit lamps to illuminate their houses and allowed them to burn all night in honour of the god in particular and the deceased in general. This is reminiscent of the Christian festival of All Souls held at the beginning of November when candles are burnt all night in honour of the dead. Though the Church only recognised this ceremony in 998 AD, Sir James Frazer has shown that it was simply incorporating the ancient Pagan custom. The festival of All Saints held one day earlier was recognised in 835 AD and undoubtedly has the same origin.

Three days later the priests bore to the river a golden casket into which they poured water, and at that moment the worshippers raised the cry that Osiris had been found. A gold figure of a cow with a black cover represented Isis during the sacred drama, and the shaven priests and the worshipers beat their breasts and lashed their shoulders to let blood flow. Firmicus Maternus wrote a valuable book, The Errors of the Profane Religions, which records many Pagan beliefs and ceremonies which the Church Christianized. Firmicus believed that the devil had given the world these legends in advance to spoil the chances of Christianity when it came. He says of the Egyptians:

They have in a temple an image of Osiris buried, and this they honor with an annual lamentation. They shave their heads… they beat their breasts. And when they have done this for a few days, they pretend that they have found the fragments of the torn body, and they lay aside their grief and rejoice.

In other places where the passion-play was given, a boy impersonated Osiris, and was found by the priests. The boy playing the god is wrapped in a shroud and is led back from hell carrying a napkin by two priests, a tradition which seems to be echoed in the John’s story (Jn 20:6-12) of the tomb empty save for two shining figures, a shroud and napkin.

A great feature of the festival, all over Egypt, was the making of images of Osiris with grains of corn planted inside them and gradually growing out of them, a symbol of new life, of the resurrection of the corn-spirit from what was left of the dead plant. All Egypt was from time immemorial familiar with a story of a suffering, slain, and risen god, the greatest benefactor of mankind.

Bishop Cyril of Alexandria highlights the antiquity of the Osiris myth compared with Christianity. Writing his Commentary on Isaiah, he had arrived at this obscure passage:

Woe to the land shadowing with wings which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying: Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled…
Isa 18:1-2

Modern translators do not understand it, but Cyril of Alexandria did, and he explains what it means. Properly translated, the passage reads:

Woe to the land of the fluttering of the wings of birds, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That sendeth hostages by the sea and letters of papyrus upon the waters, saying: Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled…
Isa 18:1-2

The women sent letters on rafts to some people abroad, and Cyril, living on the coast of Egypt had seen them. In the myth of Osiris, the body of Osiris floated to Byblos and Isis went there to recover it. To explain the “letters of papyrus” in Isaiah, Cyril notes that every year the “friends of Venus”, meaning priestesses of the Phœnician Astarte, mourned at Byblos. The divine lover whose death the priestesses mourned was the Phœnician Adonis, the Lord Tammuz of Babylonia.

The women of the land “beyond the rivers of Ethiopia”, Egypt where flocks of birds lived amongst the reeds of the Delta, wrote a letter on papyrus, put it on a raft, and sent it out to sea to float like the coffin of the god to Byblos, and inform the friends of Venus that Osiris’s body had been found, and so their mourning turned into the joy of the resurrection. In short, every year the Egyptian devotees of Osiris and Isis floated a message in the sea to the devotees or priestesses of Astarte at Byblos. Christians will accept that Isaiah wrote this reference to the Osiris ritual seven centuries before Jesus was born.

Alexandria had at least three slain and resurrected gods, for the worship of the Persian god Mithras flourished there, as everywhere else after the Persian conquests. Firmicus describes the Mithraist celebration in Rome. Every year the Mithraists laid a statue of Mithras on a bier, mourned his death, and then, in a blaze of candles, rejoiced at his resurrection. Alexandria did not differ from other cosmopolitan cities of the time.

Isis

Apuleius in the Golden Ass is coy about revealing the secrets of the mysteries of Isis, teasing the reader that he cannot say and the reader should not ask. Agreeing eventually to say something about it, he tells the reader to “believe it is the truth”, as if it might not be after all. The reader is left just as unsure as he was at first! Doubtless, this is the writer’s way of defending himself from the accusation of revealing ineffable secrets. Whether strictly true or not of any particular cult, Apuleius succeeds in giving us a good impression of the rituals, which was probably his aim. He says he is taken to the frontiers of death but, at the darkest hour, he saw the sun shining brightly, and then he returned through the four elements, coming face to face with the gods of heaven and earth. It seems that lighting, mirrors and some unknown method of illuminating suddenly were involved. Apuleius’s hero, Lucius, seemed not too noble and some Christian wag remarked that the mystery divinities were not fussy about who they accepted as initiates. It was projection!

The followers of Isis liked two of her aspects in particular, the bereaved wife weeping for her dead husband and the heavenly mother of the child Horus. Her grieving role likened her to Demeter who mourned her daughter, Persephone, in the Eleusinian mysteries, to Astarte who mourned her dead son, Adonis, and to Cybele who mourned her dead son, Attis. In her second role, Isis had a pronounced effect on the Christian perception of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Isis was endlessly depicted holding the divine child Horus, so there was no break in continuity when the Christian image of the Madonna and Child took over. Looking at old figurines, it is often quite impossible to tell which was which.

Mary was first called the “Mother of God” in Alexandria, the Egyptian centre of Isis worship, in the third century. Just after 400 AD Epiphanius denounced women who worshipped Mary as a goddess. Yet by 430 AD Proclus hailed her as the Mother of God and an intermediary between God and man. Nestorius objected to this. But a decisive sermon was preached in 431 AD at Ephesus which led to Nestorius being discredited and Mary elevated to the Queen of Heaven. In another of those pointed coincidences, Diana or Artemis, whose day was 13 August, had been the goddess of the Ephesians and represented an aspect of Isis. In the sixth century, a popular myth that Mary had been miraculously carried to Heaven by Jesus and his angels was officially recognised by the Church as “The Assumption”. Now it is a great Roman Catholic festival held on… 13 August!

There are several other strange coincidences.

Many paintings of the Virgin Mary contain a crescent moon. Isis and Artemis were associated with Selene, the moon goddess.
The Pagan Queen of Heaven was Astarte, the Ashtaroth of the Bible. In Paphos in Cyprus, women made offerings to the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven in the ruins of the ancient temple of Astarte!
In many countries, Mary is the Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. Isis was the goddess of the sea, a role she had assumed from Venus (Astarte) who was born of the foam of the sea, mourned Adonis just as Isis mourned Osiris, and of course was the Morning Star.
The festival of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin is held on 25 March because it is precisely nine months before the official birth date of Jesus on 25 December. It is no coincidence that the birth of Jesus was set on the same day as the birth of the sun god who was identified with Horus (Ra), the son of Isis and Osiris. 25 March is thus also the date of the Annunciation of Isis.

The Meaning of Resurrection

Christians like to quibble here about the meaning of words, believing that they have a trade mark on some of them, and because they are quite incapable of realising that the story of the raising of Jesus is no less mythical than that of Osiris. Christians admit that Osiris is the only god for whom there is clear and early evidence of a “sort of resurrection”. Nevertheless, we are warned by the Christian scholars, the Egyptian view of the afterlife cannot be considered in the same breathe as the “resurrection” of Judaeo-Christian traditions. They say, really Osiris was not resurrected because he remains in the underworld as its king, and the use of “resurrection” is an unwarranted application of a Christian word to an unsuitable context. Father Roland de Vaux, the Catholic archaeologist of Qumran, notes:

What is meant of Osiris being “raised to life”? Simply that, thanks to the ministrations of Isis, he is able to lead a life beyond the tomb which is an almost perfect replica of earthly existence. But he will never again come among the living and will reign only over the dead. This revived god is in reality a “mummy” god.

Resurrection is indeed a raising from the dead and Osiris was sufficiently raised from the dead in his legend to father the child Horus, albeit with a synthetic privvy member. What is more, when did Jesus ever come “among the living” other than in his myth? As to ruling in the underworld, we are to understand that Jesus, in his legend, sits in heaven on the right hand of God. Whether you rule heaven or hell you are dead to this world and alive somewhere else, so what is the difference between the resurrection of Jesus and Osiris? Christians are utterly incapable of seeing the incongruity of their arguments.

Dionysos and Orpheus

Dionysos seems to mean Son of God from Dio—god, and Nyos—something born. The Mysteries of Dionysos rivaled those of Demeter at Eleusis but were more active. Dionysos was a god of the lower regions including the earth and the regions below. Thus he was in charge of the fate of men and of their souls and was considered an important god to stay on good terms with. Dionysos was the only begotten son of Zeus (Jupiter, in Rome) and Persephone (Roman Propserpina) and was called “Zagreus” as their heir. But the Titans tore him to pieces, roasted him and completely devoured him except for his heart which Athena saved. Zeus punished the Titans by firing a thunderbolt to turn them to ashes. From the ashes he made mankind. A mortal woman, Semele, took a love potion made from the heart and mated with Zeus. But she forced Zeus to reveal himself and shriveled up, as mortals who see the face of a god do. Her baby however was saved and, sewn into Zeus’s thigh, was protected until he was reborn—another interpretation of the name Dionysos is “twice born”. The god Dionysos then saved his mother from Hades and elevated her to Olympus.

After he had arisen he said to mankind:

It is I who guide you. It is I who protect you, and who save you. I am Alpha and Omega.

He was slain for redeeming humanity and was called “the slain one”, “the sin bearer” and “the redeemer”. The rest of his career he spent wandering the world giving mankind arts, crafts and agriculture, particularly cultivation of the vine and wine making. He was named the god of wine and revelry. His disciple, Acoetes, was, like Peter, a boatman and in one adventure, like Peter, he was freed from jail when the doors miraculously flew open. Dionysos is the intelligence of the world. Because he is part of everyone he provides us with perception, understanding and creativity—he was the god of poets.

Dionysian initiation is to awaken the higher mind, to comprehend its participation in the whole. Nightly celebrations were held in which the votaries would observe the “sparagmos”—the tearing apart of a live animal, the eating of its flesh, and the drinking of its blood, symbolic of the Titans’ eating the body of Dionysos. Participants believed they were in fact partaking of the god’s body and blood. Since the flesh represented the god the worshippers absorbed part of the god giving them communion with him.

Having temporarily received his powers they abandoned themselves to frenzied dancing becoming ecstatic. Because Dionysos was the god of the vine, worshippers practised ritual intoxication and, because he was the god of fertility and the regenerative power of sex, they practised ritual intercourse. The cult survived well into the Christian era despite persecution by the Christians. His life and death cycle however was unusual in being celebrated in alternate years, one for his death then the next for his resurrection as “the Light of the East”.

By the second century BC, the rites of Dionysos had become popular, not only in Thrace, Macedon, Greece and Asia Minor, but also in Magna Graecia, Sicily, Etruria and Rome, where Dionysos was identified with Liber. In 186 BC, the republican senate took severe measures to suppress this cult. It survived and became a major religious institution. In Imperial Rome, it consisted both of a serious religion and a conglomerate of supporters’ clubs, a variety of eating and drinking societies held under the auspices of the god.

Terracotta statuettes, coins, vase paintings, tomb and sarcophagi carvings, and frescoes all testify to the worship of Dionysos being popular in Southern Italy, Campania and Etruria in the fourth and third centuries BC. The Romans too were familiar enough with Bacchus, as the plays of Plautus show, the author treating the rites scornfully. A subterranean Bacchic chamber was discovered at Volsinii, dated in the third century. An Etruscan haruspex about 200 BC who was also a priest of Bacchus, left an epitaph that shows the sect was well established and accepted in Etruria. Liber and the Bacchanals are central to Naevius’s tragedy, Lycurgus, from the fragments that remain. The poets showed Bacchanalia as ecstatic, irrational, violent, and even lunatic. Despite this neither the people nor the nobility had shown any previous inclinations to persecute it.

The religion was accepted until 186 BC, when suddenly, in response to a scandal, the worship of Bacchus was declared illegal, and the full power of the Roman state was used to repress it. Its meetings were broken up, its leaders arrested, worshippers hunted, and severe punishments disbursed, more than half of them capital. Livy gives the official line. The religion had been a cover for outrageous and illegal practices, sexual licence, forgery and even murder, and its meetings had been held clandestinely because they involved alarming initiation ceremonies that corrupted youth.

The cult had spread like a contagion while the authorities were apparently quite in the dark about it, so says Livy. Then a former slave and courtesan, Hispala spilled the beans and stood witness against the cult when her paramour, a young noble, complained of a plot to steal his inheritance. Hispala described the Bacchanals as a cover for orgies, homosexuality, pederasty during initiatiation of boys, human sacrifice, and so on. These charges have stuck ever since. The woman and her young customer had to be held in protective custody while the purge of the sect took place. The charges then seem to have been extended, and the fear became one of a seditious conspiracy to assume power in the state.

A senatus consultum banned the religion forever except in special cases when such as no more than two men and three women met. The ancient altars and sacred images were also to be preserved (confirming that the religion had been practised unmolested for a long time). People all over Italy had, until then, practised these rites perfectly legally, and it is hardly surprising that they were shocked and fled in horror at the prospect of losing their lives. Many even committed suicide, for Romans a noble duty, rather than embarrass your friends and family or invite divine wrath. Arrests were still being made in 181 BC. In the fashion typical of witch hunts, the Senate encouraged people to name names and made it a crime to hold back any information or conceal anyone. It was said to involve thousands, and eventually seven thousand were named, a majority of whom were sentenced to death.

The incident was uncharacteristic of the Romans who had been notably tolerant of foreign cults. Officials had introduced the Sibylline Books from abroad, and used them and the oracle of Delphi to obtain divine advice when it was needed. On their advice, they had introduced the cult of Æsculapius, then that of Dis Pater and Prosperpina, then the Venus Ericina, and latterly the Magna Mater. Yet here the Senate approved a quaestio extra ordinem, mandating both consuls to investigate and to take whatever urgent action they deemed necessary with no appeal or repeal—effectively dictatorship—the consuls having absolute power in this matter, placing them above the law, yet approved by the Senate.

Part of the fear might have been the cult’s organisation. The accusation constantly wheeled out in the inquisition was that of conspiracy called coniuratio, implying that the concerns were more political than religious or social. The cult was indeed well organised with priests and priestesses, and male and female officials with the titles sacerdotes and magistri. The authorities might have seen such a well organized body as potentially threatening, just after Hannibal had been rampaging all over Italy. The cult also had a common fund, swore oaths of allegiance, and met at cult centers. Of all this, it was suppressed except that the priestesses could retain their offices and meet in small groups only. There is no evidence of sedition anywhere in the affair, however, so, if there was any such threat from foreigners in Italy, it has been carefully hidden under the Bacchanalian cover.

That the threat was one of secret support for the Canaanites of Africa seems unlikely, unless Hannibal had left a secret guerilla army behind him. Hannibal had fled to Syria and tried to sell to Antiochus the Great the idea of taking the battle against Rome back into Italy, implying perhaps that he had a fifth column already there. Any Canaanite sympathisers willing to act as saboteurs must have been ready to support the Syrian king as a mutual enemy of Rome, but Antiochus was the king of the Canaanites of Canaan and Phœnicia, so the bond could have been there all right. After the peace of Apamea (188 BC), with Antiochus defeated and his plan rejected, Hannibal went to Bithynia, failed to get support, and committed suicide there in 183 BC.

Either the Senate was sorting out Hannibal’s secret army or its purpose was to make the most of the threat of insurrection for its own reasons! Like the present day “War on Terror”, it was used to justify a widening of legal jurisdiction.

By Blackening the cult and magnifying its threat to society, Roman leaders obtained the support needed to suspend normal judicial processes, to cross the legal boundaries between Roman and Italian jurisdiction, and to display their authority in Italy.
Erich S Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy

What were the allegations against young men? Possibly they were a right of passage initiation ceremony akin to circumcision, an introduction into manhood. Dionysos was believed to have been born again, and since circumcision is a symbolic human sacrifice, it might have been seen as signifying a death follwed by rebirth. Certainly, Bacchic matrons had the trick of plunging their torches into the Tiber and withdrawing them still lit, and in the myth of Brimo, a fire ceremony involving the apparent burning of a child seems to have been justified by the myth, as the basis of immortality. Such ceremonies, especially perhaps circumcision could have seemed barbarous to Romans, and they are easily misrepresented, just as tabloid writers misrepresent innocent or unimportant things today for their own purposes. If Carthaginians worshipped by rites seen by Romans as Bacchic, and these had entered Italy several centuries before, they might have attracted Canaanites and thus become a cover for saboteurs. Some classical writers thought Jewish ritual was Bacchic.

Why then? The Peace of Apamea left the Romans free to concentrate on the Italian peninsula where Hannibal had campaigned for so many years. More “Foundations”—Roman colonies—were set up to secure Italy. The Bacchanalian oppression was part of this campaign. By it, the patres took powers they did not have over the neighbours of Rome in Italy. Under the excuse of restricting the Bacchants, the authorities sent out a plethora of directives to magistrates all over Italy, had them inscribed on bronze plaques and erected everywhere, and were able to round up the people they suspected of being traitors, assassins, conspirators and poisoners. About thirty years later, Polybius could say blandly that all of these crimes throughout Italy were under the jurisdiction of the Roman Senate. The excuse of the Bacchants provided the chance for the Senate via its questio extra ordinem to set up legal norms subject to its legislature everywhere in Italy. Extraordinary powers became normal powers. None of the local authorities seem to have objected, and the Roman Senate thereafter was the legal ruler of all Italy. The Romans seemed to have had no aim of trying to control private belief which they knew was impossible. Their aim was to subject cults and collegia to public scrutiny and regulation via the Senate, and thus maintain control.

It was not the last time in history that adherents of a religion with a questionable public image was singled out as scapegoats to protect an alleged national interest.
Erich S Gruen

Dionysos was the product of a God’s union with a mortal woman—he was a Son of God—and was represented as a bearded young man of distinguished appearance. He taught men laws, gave them happiness and peace as well as the vine, and taught them how to be civilised. He suffered a violent death, descended into hell, was resurrected and ascended into heaven. Communion with the god was by a meal.

There was also a story that he had ridden on two asses which he then placed in the heavens as constellations. In the Babylonian calendar, the zodiacal sign cancer was the foal and the ass and marked the zenith of the sun’s power before it began to decline to winter. Jesus, of course, triumphantly entered Jerusalem on “an ass and a colt, the foal of an ass” curiously matching the Dionysian legend rather than Old Testament prophecy which meant only one animal. A Gnostic jewel shows a foal and an ass together with a crab and is inscribed: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God”.

In mythology a god becomes identified with the animal sacred to him. There is an image from the wall of the Domus Gelotiana on the Palatine showing Jesus on the cross but with the head of an ass. The ass is associated with the vine—Justin Martyr speaks of the ass tied to the vine—and Jesus is also associated with the vine. He says, “I am the true vine”. To the people of the time he might as well have said “I am Dionysos”. Furthermore, the Eucharist cup in the early Christian text, the Didache, is described as “the holy vine of David” so the wine was Jesus and Jesus the wine.

Orpheus

The cult of Orpheus remodelled the Dionysian cult. Orpheus was probably a real person, an early reformer of the Dionysian religion just as Jesus is supposed to have transformed Judaism, Zoroaster the Persian religion and Buddha Hinduism. Orpheus became the name of Thracian Priest-Kings who were thought of as the god Dionysos incarnate and originally might have been ritually slain.

In myth, Orpheus married Eurydice who was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus was heartbroken and determined to find her, eventually descending to hell to recover her. He charmed the nether gods with his music and got them to promise that Eurydice could return with him on condition that he did not look back as she followed him on the journey back to life. But, fearing that she was not behind him, he looked back and Eurydice fell back to the underworld. Orpheus was totally distraught and rejected the ministrations of the Thracian women who tried to console him. Enraged they tore him to pieces.

Orphism was an ascetic, more intellectual form of Dionysianism. From the myth of Dionysos the Orphics believed their god died and rose again. They also believed in a form of original sin. Zeus had killed, with a thunderbolt, the Titans who had eaten Zagreus, and mankind sprang from their ashes. Mankind is therefore partially good, from Zagreus, and partially bad, from the Titans. Orpheus worshippers had to rid themselves of the bad and this they did through living lives of ritual and moral purity through a series of incarnations. If they succeeded through all the levels they became free of the “circle of birth” or “cycles of becoming” gaining immortality through divinity. The rules of purity included absence from any kinds of animal foods, avoiding the pollution of death and birth, wearing white raiment and other ascetic practices.

Orphic mysteries re-enacted the death of Zagreus, and its ritual involved the sacrifice of the calf or kid of Dionysos. Small portions were eaten raw (omophagia) as a sacramental meal. When the initiates had fulfilled the “solemn rite of the banquet of raw flesh” they became permanent vegetarians, dressed in pure white garments and avoided the taint of childbirth and funerals. The votary adopted the name Bacchus (the Roman name of the god) to symbolise that he had become at one with his Lord. When Orphics died they were buried with small gold tablets inscribed with instructions for their conduct in the underworld.

Orpheus is a missionary for civilisation—a musician, polymath, mystic, astrologer, he travelled the world doing good works. Orphics actually made use of missionaries which was unusual among Western religions. Hitherto there had been no concerted attempts by them to recruit believers but thenceforth missionary zeal began to spread, culminating in the dominance of Christianity. Some scholars consider Saul of Tarsus to have been an initiate of Orpheus, and Orphism and Christianity seem to have coalesced in some places.

Orpheus and Jesus both performed miracles, descended to hell, suffered cruel deaths and were raised to heaven by divine fathers. But they offered their adepts different routes to salvation—Orpheus appealed to those who sought salvation through self-effort and knowledge, Jesus appealed to those who favoured divine love. Otherwise they were much the same type of religion. Orphism greatly influenced the philosophy of Pythagoras so that Pythagorean philosophy is essentially that of the Orphic religion. The Orphics and Pythagoreans had an ethical approach at least equal to that of Christianity and in Orpheus’s ability to charm the beasts extended spirituality to them too, an aspect not seen in Christianity until St Francis of Assisi, more than a thousand years after Christ.

At Delphi, Dionysos was received into the priesthood of Apollo, and he also has the title “Dendriticus” meaning “He of the Tree”. Sabazius is another name for Dionysos and some old writings suggest that the Jews at one time worshipped him. Orpheus was clearly connected with Jesus in the minds of the early Christians from his frequent depiction in the Roman Catacombs. Orphic figures represented King David or Jesus himself.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.