When Herodotus visited Egypt and recognized the African originals of the Greek deities, he makes the sage remark that his countrymen, in their ignorance of the beginnings, counted the birth of their gods from the time when they first acquired a knowledge of them[1]. So was it with the 'primitive Christians,' in their ignorance of the natural genesis and past history of Christolatry.
They consisted of the knowing and the simple. The knowing ones kept back the esoteric explanation of the mythos, to let the untutored belief in the real history take root. The simple ones, like Bunyan, 'fell suddenly into an allegory about the journey and the way to glory,'[2] which allegory they were led to believe was purely matter of fact.
The writer of the Ignatian Epistle to the Philadelphians represents their position. He observes: 'I have heard some say, "Unless I find it in the ancient writings (the originals or archives) I will not believe it to be written in the gospel." And when I said to them: "It is written!" they replied to me "It is found written before;"' in what they called the uncorrupted originals, which Ignatius denounces as corrupt copies of his original gospel. 'To me,' he says, 'Jesus Christ stands instead of all the uncorrupted monuments in the world, together with those untouched (or incorruptible) monuments, his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith which is in him.'[3] The same standpoint was occupied by Professor Jowett, when he wrote: 'To us the preaching of the gospel is a New Beginning, from which we date all things, beyond which we neither desire nor are able to inquire.'[4]
Nevertheless, the fact remains to be faced that the gospel of equinoctial Christolatry was written before, with a totally different rendering, and that the sayings, dogmas, doctrines, types, and symbols, including both the cross and the Christ, did not originate [p.379] where we may have first made acquaintance with them. It was written before in books of the secret wisdom, now searchable according to the recovered gnosis. It was written before in the types which are here traced from the lowest root to the highest branch. It was written before in the incorruptible records of the past, inscribed on the starry heavens. The truth is that the real origins of the cult, here called 'Equinoctial Christolatry,' rather than Christianity, have never yet been reached, however suspected, because of the supposed new beginning in human history, which was taken for granted by those who knew no farther, and who had no desire to know. The evidence, however, could not have been adduced before the mythology, typology, and Christology of Kam were discovered in the keeping of the mummies, and disinterred from the mausoleums of the dead.
The lost language of the celestial allegory can now be restored, chiefly through the resurrection of ancient Egypt; the scriptures can be read as they were originally written, according to the secret wisdom, and we now know how the history was first written as mythology.
The Book of Revelation, for example, contains the oldest matter in the New Testament. This matter is fundamental, and as such lies at the foundations of the human history.
No Christolator doubts that the Jesus, or Α Ω, of this scripture, is one with the Jesus of the gospels. Those who adopted it as one of the natural bases for the new beginning were too ignorant to know the origin and significance of the subject-matter. The Revelation assigned to John the Divine is the Christian form of the Mithraic revelation. In the Parsee sacred books the original scriptures are always quoted and referred to as the Revelation. 'It says in Revelation,' is the oft-repeated formula of authority. And the Bahman Yasht contains the same drama of mystery that is drawn out and magnified in the Book of Revelation. An application of the comparative method will prove this; and without such an application all the works ever written on the Book of Revelation are as worthless as waste paper. The personages, scenes, circumstances, and transactions are identical in both. Each revelation relates to the Kronian allegory, and in both the prophecy is solely astronomical.
Zaratusht enters the state of trance to see the future; he remains in that condition during seven days and nights. John was in trance (in the Isle called Patmos), or in the spirit, on the Lord's (the seventh) day. Zaratusht is entranced by swallowing some (mesmerized?) water, by which the omniscient wisdom is communicated to him. John swallows a little book which he is commanded to eat and then to prophesy[5]. The vision of Zaratusht relates to the seven regions of the world founded on the heaven of the heptanomis; John's to the [p.380] seven churches of Asia. These seven divisions in space and time are also typified by the tree of seven metals and seven branches. In John's vision the tree is represented by the seven candlesticks. In both, seven ages or passing periods of time are portrayed. In both, the world is described as being choked with its unburied dead. The people 'perish in the northern quarter,' i.e., in the celestial Egypt, the domain of death and hades in both, the beast from the pit appears, all the more furious because his time is growing short. In the one revelation the Azi-Dahaka or destroying serpent is said to swallow down 'one-third of mankind, cattle, sheep, and other creatures of Ahura-Mazda'; in the other the great red dragon appeared as a wonder in heaven, 'and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.'[6]*
* In explanation of this description it may be pointed out that if the seven stars of the Lesser Bear be taken to represent the seven heads of the dragon as previously suggested, then the tail of the dragon sweeping round to the star Etanin describes exactly one-third of the circle of precession, including the ancient polestars from Etanin, which was the polestar 11,051 BC, to a Draconis (say) 2,500 BC.
The old Satan and the great harlot are to be cast out—the Persian whore being identified as Venus. It is said, 'When the star Jupiter comes up to its culminating point, and casts Venus down, the sovereignty comes to the Prince.'[7] The ancient genetrix is to be superseded by another 'woman who becomes ruler,' and who appears in Revelation as the mother of the child, 'a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.'[8] At the coming of her child, the promised prince, born of a virgin, the signal is to be given by a star. 'That a sign may come to the earth, the night when that prince is born, a star falls from the sky; when that prince is born, the star shows a signal.' A star falls from heaven in both visions. The prince of thirty years is identical with the Horus or Christ who manifests at thirty years of age. The 'two witnesses' of the one revelation are 'the two angels,' the two especial messengers of Ahura-Mazda to mankind, called 'Neryosang, the angel or friend,' and 'Sarosh the righteous,' in the other. The apostate of the one revelation is the apostate dragon of the other.
In both the Persian scriptures and in Revelation the astronomical prophecies are fulfilled; the millennium arrives; the old heaven of the seven (or seventy) divisions passes away. The tree of the heptanomis or primary heaven of seven divisions which are figured by the seven branches of the tree, not only seen by Zaratusht but also represented on the Assyrian monuments as well as in the Kamite planisphere, is superseded in the New Heaven of the twelve signs and seventy-two decans by the Tree of Healing for all nations. 'Hushedar, son of Zaratusht, is born from lake Frazdan,' and 'the creatures become more progressing; he utterly destroys the fiend of serpent origin.' The last of the prophets, Soshyans, is born; he [p.381] who is the latest to be 'uplifted among the corporeal' (astvat-ereta), or incarnated, arises from the 'water of Kansuya,' in the 'eastern quarter,' for the restoration of the world[9]; so John preceded the Christ as last of the prophets. The saviour came. The resurrection of the dead occurred. The drama of redemption was represented there and then at the end of the age, cycle, or world[10].
In the Revelation of John this drama is dated; and the stellar scenery belongs to the time when the solar birthplace was in the sign of Aries which was symbolized by the Mithraic lamb of the Persians as the type of the manifestor, called the Messiah. This dates the time of the last polestar in the dragon; of the end; the resurrection the judgment; the new heaven and renewed earth of the 'coming one,' by the year 2,410 BC.
So in the Book of Enoch the Son of Man takes the seat of the Ancient of Days at the end of the great year, and is the manifestor or messiah of the cycle of 25,868 years. For this was the book of the revolutions of the celestial luminaries according to every year of the world, until the new work should he effected which will be eternal[11]. Hence it is said that in the new heaven they shall not 'enter upon the enumeration of time.'[12] Here likewise the manifestor, the Kronian Christ, assumed the likeness of the eternal in a psychotheistic phase.
No competent scholar has ventured to date the Book of Enoch later than the century previous to the present era, and the subject matter is very ancient, yet in that the Messiah had already come as the Son of Man or of God the Father, to supersede the son of the woman—just as it is in both books of Revelation.
Enoch the stellar and lunar logos, was superseded by the solar god. 'The name of the Son of Man, living with the Lord of spirits, was exalted in the chariots of the spirit. From that time I was not drawn in the midst of them.'[13] The end of the great year had come, the heavens were renewed; all the prophecy there ever was, according to the gnosis, had been realized; the drama of redemption was played out and the drop-scene let down, without any false claim that the mythos had been fulfilled in a human history.
The aeonian coming of the kronian Christ, the promised redeemer, is not only prophesied by Esdras, in one of the Books of Wisdom, but is likewise dated 'Behold the time shall come that these tokens which I have told thee shall come to pass, and the bride shall appear, and she coming forth shall be seen, that now is withdrawn from the earth. For my son Jesus shall be revealed with those that be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice within 400 years. After these years shall my son Christ die, and all men that have life. And the world shall be turned into the old silence [p.382] seven days, like as in the former judgments: so that no man shall remain. And after seven days the world that yet awaketh not shall be raised up, and that shall die which is corrupt. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell in silence, and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and misery shall pass away, and the long-suffering shall have an end.'[14] The 'day of doom' was the 'end of this time.' Here it is possible to identify the bride, whose starry image or soul was probably Sothis.
The New Jerusalem was portrayed as the bride coming down from heaven adorned for her husband; the bride that was the wife of the lamb[15]. In the next sign she would be the bride of Ichthys, the fish. This would date the prophecy (255 + 400) by the year 655 BC.
Surely if the prophetical and historical were combined anywhere, it must be here, where the subject-matter is explained according to the gnosis. Also the principles of the apocryphal tradition are undoubtedly identical in all the books of wisdom. Yet these books of Esdras are not even included among the canonical scriptures, but are held to be apocryphal in the modern sense of spurious.
How is it that the scriptures which contain the hidden wisdom and show that the gnosis relates to the fall of Adam, the loss of paradise and the coming of Jesus the Christ, as restorer, within 400 years, should be rejected in this manner?
Because they prove too much, and are historical in the wrong sense. They are historical solely in support of the allegory that was kronian, and the Christ who manifested periodically and was for ever aeonian. They show too plainly the way in which the records of equinoctial Christolatry had been written before.
The last act in the drama of redemption is likewise performed in the Gospel of Nicodemus or the Acts of Pilate[16], and called the 'descent of Christ in the underworld.' In this we find the astronomical prophecy is fulfilled on the scale of the great year, the cycle of precession being completed by the Christ meeting and clasping hands with Adam.
It is related that the dead were lying in the dark places of Hades; all those who had fallen asleep from the first—when a great light suddenly shone in on them, and they awoke and saw one another. It was the coming of the Christ who was heralded by John, the last of the prophets.
The legend of the tree is repeated. It is said that when Adam was sick unto death he sent his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to pray for a little oil from the tree of life to heal him. But the tree had vanished with the lost Eden.
This tree of life and knowledge is represented as being restored in [p.383] the shape of the cross, and the solar god who entered Amenti once a year is now depicted as doing the same thing at the end of the great cycle, as it was written in the 'first book of the seventy' in a certain sacred volume said to have been preserved by the Jews.
The seventy were the princes and rulers in the heaven of seventy divisions, preceding that of the twelve signs and seventy-two duodecans in which the lost tree of seven branches was replaced by the cross of the four corners, or the tree of twelve branches[17].
In accordance with the nature of the whole subject, the Christ who joined hands with Adam could only be kronian, and the cross that typified the returning tree of the lost paradise could be no other than the cross of the equinox.*
* THE ACTS OF PILATE
The great judge of the dead in Amenti was designated the rhat (Eg.), whence the Greek rhadamanthus. The rhat with the letter l instead of r is the Lot, and with the masculine article pi, becomes Pilate, for the judge in Amenti. Now as Pilate is found to be one of the saints canonized by the Abyssinian church, his day being that of the summer solstice, it is possible that this Pilate was the great judge in Amenti. The Christian theory of the 'Acts of Pilate' is that there once existed an official report of the trial, condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus, which was made by Pontius Pilate and forwarded by him to Tiberius in Rome. Justin and Tertullian appeal to such a document[18]. This is supposed to have perished and to have been replaced by the apocryphal gospel that has come down to us. But the extant 'Acts of Pilate' are related to the Amenti, or underworld, into which the crucified descends to conquer death and Hades, and effect the resurrection of the dead; and my suggestion is that the extant 'Acts' were derived from the mythical original which supplied the supposed history.
Virgil knew the nature, if not the date, of the great cyclic renovation when he sang of the final period of fulfilment which the sibyl had foretold; and of the grand series of ages that began afresh in the renewal of the great year; also when he asserted that 'there shall be another Ark, steered by another pilot, bearing the chosen heroes; there shall be other wars, and great AchilIes shall be sent once more to Troy.'[19]
But those who continued the cult of equinoctial Christolatry in its final phase were the men who did not know; they were agnostics. They believed that at some indefinite period, afterwards dated, the Christ of chronology, the true word, that founded the heavens on the periods of time, the word that manifested from the first, had taken flesh at last and manifested once for all in human form. The belief was false, but such is the foundation of the faith.
The sign of the cross has been sufficiently identified as a figure of the equinox, and the Christ with the sun of the crossing. Upon this rests the cult of equinoctial Christolatry. When the colure of the cross was in the sign of the Bull, the Apis, or the god Serapis, was the Christ that suffered and rose again as the typical messiah. When, in the [p.384] course of precession, the vernal equinox passed into the sign of Aries, the Ram of Sebek-Ra, and of Num-Ra, or the Lamb of Mithras typified the Christ that was sacrificed as saviour of the world, at which time the crossing and the place or time of sacrifice were identified with the visible Southern Cross.
These forms of the solar victim who died and rose again were but very slowly superseded. Hence the Ram remained the Christ of the equinox until the seventh century of our era, at which time it was finally replaced by a Christ on the cross, who was figured in the human likeness.
When the Persian astrologer announces that the parturient virgin bears the Messiah, the future mother of Zaratusht asks, 'How hast thou found out the circumstance and exact period of my pregnancy?' and his answer is that he discovered it 'through the power of knowledge of the stars and the perusal of those ancient records which give an account of his auspicious existence.'[20] So the incarnations of Buddha were dated astronomically. His coming was indicated by the messianic star of announcement or prophetic star of an incarnation, and the birthplace is known by astronomical signs. It belongs to the cycles of time the ends of which were foreknown and prophesied from the beginning. The last of the Buddhas, who is designated 'all the Buddhas,' because, like the gnostic Christ called 'all things' or totum, he was the final flower of the whole pleroma perfected, is described as having advanced hitherward by making seven steps toward each of the four cardinal points of the zodiac. Therefore he had traversed the circle measured by the twenty-eight lunar asterisms.
We have seen that this was the course of the seven Rishis, the seven manus (who are also known as the seven Buddhas), in fulfilling the cycle and following the path of precession: and Buddha is the manifestor of the pleroma of seven primary forces, faculties, spirits, or gods, which is shown by his symbol of the eight-rayed star, the sign of Assur in Assyria and of the Christ in Rome. Agni also had been the manifestor of the seven ever since the entrance of the vernal equinox into the sign of the Ram. This is shown by the god being portrayed upon his Ram with the sign of the Ram on a banner borne in front of him, which identifies him with Aries in the zodiac. Agni likewise embodied the seven powers; these are typified by his figure with seven arms. In an address to the god it is said, 'Agni! seven are thy fuels; seven thy tongues; seven thy holy sages; seven thy beloved abodes; seven ways do seven sacrificers worship thee; thy sources are seven.'[21] These are the seven that began as elementaries in external nature and afterwards became planetary and eschatological.
The Ram is an Egyptian ideograph of a soul, and seven rams are equivalent to the seven souls of the solar god, or the seven spirits in [p.385] the pleroma of gods now localized in the sign of Aries. The old Samaritans at Nablous still sacrifice seven lambs at their Passover or festival of the vernal equinox. These are identified with the cross by being spitted upon it[22], and also with the cross erected in the zodiacal sign of the Ram or Lamb. This type of the seven souls or spirits is continued in the seven lambs of the Christian iconography grouped about the mount or throne upon which stands the Christ, even as the seven stand as spirits round the throne of the Lamb in Revelation[23]. The seven sacrificial lambs took the place of the seven bullocks offered upon the seven altars of Balak that point back to the time when the vernal colure was in the sign of the Bull. Moreover, the eye is an emblem of reproduction. As such it was figured as a constellation in the place of rebirth; and the Lamb with seven eyes in Revelation is a sevenfold type of the birthplace in the sign of Aries and the station of the seven powers, the pleroma whose manifestor was the Lamb, the Horus, Buddha, Mithras, Sebek, IAO, or the Christ.
In typology nothing can be more important than the types. The cult of equinoctial Christolatry is founded on the mythical types, however interpreted; and this typical seven with its eight-rayed star of the manifestor is all-important in proving the identity and continuity of the mythical Christ, in conjunction with the seven powers in their final psychotheistic phase.
The birthplace of the 'coming one' as it passed from sign to sign was indicated by the typical 'star in the east' and the star in the East will afford undeniable data for showing the mythical and celestial origin of the gospel history. When the divine child is born, the wise men or magi declare that they have seen his star in the east. The wise men are identified as the Three Kings of other legends who are not to be derived from the canonical gospels. The three kings or three solar representatives are as ancient as the male triad that was first typified when the three regions were established as heaven, earth, and nether world, from which the triad bring their gifts; and the three rulers were impersonated for example in the red Atum, the black Kâ, and white Hu who accompany the god Har-khuti in the scenes of the hades. When the birthplace was in the sign of the Bull, the star in the East that arose to announce the birth of the babe was Orion, which is therefore called the star of Horus. That was once the star of the three kings; for the 'three kings' is still a name of the three stars in Orion's belt[24]; and in the hieroglyphics a three-looped string is a symbol of Sahu, i.e., the constellation Orion[25]. Orion was the star of the Three Kings which rose to show the time and place of birth in heaven some 6,000 years ago, when the vernal equinox was in the sign of the Bull. When the colure passed into [p.386] the sign of the Ram, 2,410 BC, the triangle or pyramid of Har-khuti became the star in the East that rose in the decans of Aries to show the solar birthplace during 2,155 yearsi. Here it might be argued that the Great Pyramid built in Egypt with power to demonstrate the ending of the great year and the final overthrow of the dragon was set in the planisphere to mark the point of recommencement in the circle of precession. The name of the Great Pyramid is khuti, or the lights. The lights, whether as constellations or planets, are seven in number, and the pyramid is a figure of 7 which unites the square and triangle in one. Horus of the triangle is Horus of the pyramid, Har Sapti or Sebti (i.e., seb = 5; ti = 2). Sut-Anup is called 'Lord of Sapt in Neran;'[26] and sapt is the place of the seven; the place of the pleroma and its manifestor, which shifted according to the colure of the equinox. Har-khuti is Lord of the lights that were seven in number, the perfect star of the gnostic pleroma; soul of the seven spirits, breather of the seven breaths, word of the seven vowel-sounds, bull of the seven cows, stone of the seven eyes, ram of the seven horns, player of the seven pipes, on the planetary scale of seven tones. He is portrayed in the decans of the Ram holding the pyramid or triangle as his star in the East. This god was a survival of the ancient Sut-Horus. Those Egyptologists who have been unable to follow the development of the astronomical mythology have looked upon the cult of Har-khuti as a later importation into Egypt whereas it belonged to a continuation of the mythos by those who wrote history in the stars of heaven. Horus of the pyramid above was the Horus of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Horus of the Shus-enHar; and this lord of the seven lights is identical with the IAO-heptaktis of the Chaldeans, the IAO-Chnubis or Panaugria of the Gnostics, and ar, the all, in Revelation.
The 'Mystery of the Seven Stars' relates to the new heaven established when the vernal equinox entered the sign of the Ram or Lamb, and the pyramid or triangle of Horus became the Star in the East that beckoned the wise men, magi, or gnostics to the birthplace of the messianic babe.*
* Triangle. This figure in a dual character also forms the six-pointed star or figure of space in six directions, the hexagram of the heaven that followed the heptanomis; a change that was likewise indicated by the dragon losing one of its seven heads.
Here the god of the seven lights, rays, powers, or planets is the Α Ω of the seven eyes, seven lamps of fire, seven golden candlesticks, who has seven stars in his right hand, just as Har-khuti holds the stars of the pyramid, the figure of 7, in his right hand, and the sign of rule in his lefti. This then is the Jesus of equinoctial Christolatry in the Book of Revelation, who was [p.387] the lord of the seven lights in the astronomical allegory from the year 2410 BC.*
* In Egypt the seven spirits are also described in a more abstract phase, as—
1. Khuti, the brilliant triangle (or pyramid) in the shining place.
2. The mysterious spirit from the mysterious place.
3. The blessed spirit from the blessed place.
4. The destructive spirit from the place of destruction.
5. The revealing spirit from the opening.
6. The elevated spirit from the high place.
7. The hidden spirit from the Ament.[27]
The seven spirits were also continued in the seven doves of the Christian iconography, supposed to symbolise the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit[28].
The elementary spirits, whether in external or in human nature, did not rise beyond the number seven. As human constituents, the sixth was creative spirit, the ruach of puberty, and the seventh attained a summit in the soul. Lastly, divinity or godhead was reached by the eighth, the repeater of or to the rest. In the Ritual the seventh elementary can be identified as the soul of Sevekh. The deceased exclaims, 'Shu causes me to shine as a living lord, and be made the seventh when he comes forth;' 'I am the one born of Sevekh the Lord,'[29] Sevekh signifies the number seven. The seventh was the highest elementary force. Sevekh the seventh was the crocodile type; he attained the dignity of the first god as Sevekh-Kronus, the dragon. In the Kaffir dialects the crocodile and a soul are synonymous, as they were in Sevekh on account of his superior intelligence.
It should be observed that the soul of Seb, the ithyphallic father of the fifth creation, is identical with the Buddhist 'fifth principle' or element, as the animal soul; that of Putah, the sixth, is one with the Buddhi, as the sixth principle; whilst Atma, the seventh, is the same by name and nature as Atumn, of the seventh creation in whose keeping is the 'reserved soul,' as the seventh in the series.
Amongst other philological fallacies is the current assumption that the Greek name of Ιησυς was derived from the Hebrew Jehoshua. Philology is indefinite in such matters without the typology, and the natural genesis in phenomena. 'Ie' or 'Iu' in Egyptian means the Coming One, the duplicator who is of a plural nature. Har-iu, the reduplicative Horus, was a title of Osiris in this sense, Iu-emhept, the second Atum, called the Son, the word, or logos of God the Father, was the coming one, he who came with (or as) peace, and brought good luck and happiness. The calf-headed god Au, whose name denotes the past, present, and future of being; the Hebrew Iaho (והי), the Phoenician, Chaldean, and gnostic Ιαω, the British Iau, Manx Ie, Delphian Apollo, designated Ie, were forms of this Iu, the ever-coming one, who was personified as the divine child, that is the su (Eg.), whence Iusu (Gr. Jesus) is the coming child whose mother's name in one cult is Iusaas. Jehoshua and Jesus are two names derived on two different lines from one original root; and the name has to be determined by the nature of the type. The Kamite Iu and Chaldean Iao-heptaktis, gods of the seven rays or lights, were continued as the All who is Jesus in the Book of Revelation. As already shown the one god called Iu or Iao became the solar representative of the pleroma of seven powers, lights, or spirits, that were expressed by this divinity in the human image of the Trinity, composed of the mother, child, and virile male in unity. Thus the divine hebdomad and the human triad were combined in a tenfold [p.388] totality, and the Iu or Α Ω is a personal equivalent of the 10 (ten) in numbers.
This god of the seven spirits or breaths was represented by the ineffable name which consisted of the sevenfold vowel as the summit of all previous attainment in sound, and both are co-products traceable to conscious evolution; seven elements of the consummated deity being expressed by the seven vowels in one sound, like A, I, O, or a diphthong.
Amongst other mysteries declared by Marcus he taught that the restitution of all things occurred when all the numbers of the ineffable name mixing in one letter should utter one and the same sound. Irenaeus[30], says Marcus, 'imagined that the emblem of this utterance was found in "Amen" which we pronounce in concert.' Marcus did not imagine—he knew, being a Gnostic. 'Amen' in Revelation is a title of the God Α Ω; and in Egyptian both Amen and Iu mean 'come,' 'to come,' the 'coming one.' Iu (Eg.) or êê was originally written aa, and the pyramid or triangle i is aa by name. As a triangle this sign is threefold, as a pyramid it unites the square and triangle and is sevenfold, therefore it could be a sign of the ten-total, which was also figured thus:
n
n n
n n n
n n n n
as a pyramidal ten by the Pythagoreans, an image of the All composed of seven elementary forces expressed in threefold human form.
The name could be uttered by a single sound or sign as it was by the Hebrew yod י = 10, or two hands; the Egyptian pyramid i, the Chinese r, the British Cyfriu /|\, (A, 1, still, at Lloyds) or the Coptic Ī with inherent U, which has the numeral value of Ia.
This was a mode of expressing the representative of divine unity (comprising the seven elementary powers, together with the human trinity, in a ten-total) by one sign and a single sound; and this Ī, י, A, Iu, or Α Ω, is a symbol of the name of Iusu (i.e., Iu the duplicative or dual one), the Greek Iesous, as the Α Ω in Revelation.
The pyramid (triangula) is the letter a in stellar form; and the divinity Har-khuti, Har-Sebti, the Iu, Α Ω, or Iao is the primary one—answering to the A at the head of the alphabet—who as the child or son, su (Eg.), is Iusu, Iesous, Iso, or Jesus. The name of Horus (Har, Eg.) also has the meaning of no. 10, and Har-khuti of the seven lights is the god One = ten, of the triangle (trinity) and pyramid (hebdomad), the symbol of the three and the seven. Lastly, this god One = three = seven = ten, whose title was at length expressed by the first and final letters of the Greek alphabet, Α Ω, is the pubescent male who was born of the virgin mother without the fatherhood, third in advent, but placed first in series, as the representative of all the powers, whose natural genesis has been traced to [p.389] lunar phenomena[31], and who in the solar mythos was the opponent and vanquisher of the Beast with ten horns, which represented the total of the opposing typhonian powers.
The seven breaths are assigned to the Holy Spirit, by Justin[32]. Macrobius also affirms that the soul of the world is of a sevenfold origin[33]; the seven continued from the elementaries of chaos.
The Hindu Agni was at times portrayed with two faces, three legs and seven arms, as a form of this one total god of a duplicative nature, twin in sex, triadic in form, and manifestor of the seven primary powers.
Thus the name of Jesus can be traced to Iu the coming one, and su the child of either sex who grows up with the attributes of both into the Deus trinus unus, the typical manifestor, under various names, of the seven elementaries, seven kronotypes, seven spirits, planets, lamps, or lights, which constituted the pleroma of powers from the first; and such is the mystery of the seven stars.
According to the Syriac version quoted by Bunsen[34], in the concluding passage of the Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, 'Three Shouting Mysteries' were connected with the star of annunciation in heaven. The passage reads, 'From the moment that the star appeared, and thus the son was manifested upon the spot, the reign of darkness, of magic, of death, ceased; and the earthly development of God's own eternal kingdom began.'
The three shouting mysteries are so ancient in the celestial allegory that they are also extant as the Chinese sign of the 'Three Shouts,' denoting the supernatural, mystery, and revelation; also as the 'Three Shouts' of the British Barddas which are symbolized by the triple sign of their triune being named Iau the younger, as they were also represented by the three stars of the constellation Triangula in the decans of the Ram, which was the typical star in the east after the year 2410 BC.
About 255 BC the sun, or, more correctly, the colure of the vernal equinox, entered the sign of the Fishes. Thenceforth for 2155 years that asterism became the station of the cross and the birthplace of the solar Christ. Here we find the pleroma of seven powers as the seven great gods of Assyria. That is, the month associated with this sign is dedicated to the pleroma of seven gods of which Assur was manifestor. It is of course impossible for this to have commenced as such for the first time with the year 255 BC!
It is sufficient however for the present purpose to know that with the re-entrance of the vernal equinox into the sign of Pisces, the solar birthplace was once more in the quarter of the beginning, that of the waters and of the great fish, hippopotamus, or other type of this mouth, or uterus, the piscina of creation, the place of emanation [p.390] and point of re-emergence from the waters of the abyss, out of which issues the river of the Waterman, the fish from the river, and the manifestor born from the fish.
This was in the Egyptian Annu or celestial Heliopolis, which had retained the name of the Fish, An (Eg.), originally represented by the Great Fish, the ketos, the water-horse or dragon of the deep. The star Fomalhaut, for example, is still the 'mouth of the fish,' that marks the place of emanating from the waters which was continued as the piscina, or vesica piscis, the Roman emblem of Mary; the ru (¨) of the mother who was Ma or Mu (Eg.) by name. Thus, when the solar birthplace (at the time of the vernal equinox) passed once more into the zodiacal sign of Pisces, it had come round to the primordial point of emanation from the quarter of the Waters in the beginning. The genetrix, under the fish-type as Hathor, Atergatis, or Semiramis, was at last figured in the sign of the Fishes, where she brought forth her divine child as her fish. Hence the fish-goddess and her young one were portrayed as the two zodiacal Fishes, instead of the earlier one, who had represented the sign 5,868 years earlier. The messiah who manifested in this sign was foreordained to come as Ichthys the fisherman, or, doctrinally, the fisher of men. In the backward cycle of precession Pisces is the first of the three water-signs. Hence, it was foretold that the Christ, under various names, was to ascend from the waters. The earliest mode or form of emanation being from the waters, the great mother first brought to birth as the water-element or under some water-type. The primordial manifestor in Chaldea was the Oan or fish-man.
In one account there are four of these fish-men or Annedoti, and there are seven altogether; these two groups are identical with the four genii, and the total family of seven in the Egyptian Ritual. The fish of Horus and Sevekh is the crocodile—the fish itself being an earlier type than the fish-man. The fish is an in Egyptian; the fish—region, Annu, is the solar birthplace, and Ichthys, the fish, had been continued from this beginning. Hence, the manifestor was the one who was born of the waters; who came forth from the celestial deep; who crossed the waters as the fish, or inside of it; who was personified as the oar (as was Horus), and the steersman, the Lord of the Boat or Ark that saved souls from the abyss and the deluge. 'Rising from the great water is my name,'[35] says the Osirified in this character. This is the manifestor who is foreseen by Esdras coming up out of the sea as the 'same whom God the highest hath kept a great season, which by his own self shall deliver his creature;'[36] the character assigned to the Christ of the gospels.
The fish-man Oannes only came up out of the Erythraean Sea (the pool of Pant in the Ritual) to converse with men and teach them in the daytime. When the sun set, says Berosus, it was the custom of [p.391] this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep; for he was amphibious[37]. In like manner the man who comes up out of the sea is visible only by day. 'Even so can no man upon earth see my son or those that be with him but in the daytime.'[38] This is parodied or fulfilled in the account of Ichthys, the Christ, who instructs men by day, but retires to the lake of Galilee where he demonstrates his solar nature by walking the waters at night. The Son of Man who 'hath not where to lay his head' goes on board the boat to sleep[39], which is also a parallel to the Oan going down into the sea for the night[40]. We are told that the disciples being on board ship 'when even was come,' 'in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them walking upon the sea.'[41]*
* 'Farther still, the aquatic in divine natures indicates a providential inspection and government inseparable from water. Hence also the oracle calls these gods water-walkers.'[42]
Now, the fourth watch began at three o'clock, and ended at six o'clock. Therefore this was about the proper time for a solar god to appear walking upon the waters, or coming up out of them as the Oannes.
Oannes is said to have taken no food whilst he was with men. 'In the daytime he used to converse with men; but took no food at that season.' So Jesus, when 'his disciples prayed him saying, "Master, eat," said unto them, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me."'[43] This is the perfect replica of the character of Oannes, who took no food, but whose time was wholly spent in teaching men. Moreover, the fish-man is made to identify himself. When the Pharisees sought a 'sign front heaven,' Jesus said, 'there shall no situ be given but the sign of Jonas.'[44] 'For as Jonas became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man be to this generation.'[45] The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or fish-man of Nineveh, whether we take it direct from the monuments or from the Hebrew history of Jonah who was inside the fish during three days and nights; it is equally the fish-man or the man emaned as Vishnu is from the fish in the Hindu drawings, and as the man-child is brought forth in the sign of the Fish by the fish-goddess in the year 255 BC. Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the sun reborn in Pisces. The voice of the secret wisdom says, those who are looking for signs can have no other than that of the returning fish-man, Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas—who could not be made flesh.
The Valentinians maintained that the dispensational Jesus was identical with Pan (Pan in the Greek version being Christus in the Latin text) because he included the names of all those who had produced hint[46]. And Pan, as manifestor, may be seen in the decans [p.392] of the Bull sign[47]. He was portrayed with a face of fire, holding seven circles in his left hand. But the extant evidence shows that the great starting-point for modern equinoctial Christolatry was with the sign of the Ram, and the next stage with the Fishes. This fact is patent in the iconography of the Roman catacombs. The two signs are 2,155 years apart in time, yet they are connected by indissoluble links, the Christ having been both a ram and a fish before he was depicted in the human likeness.
In a grotto or grave of the ancient necropolis at Cyrene there is a fresco in which the Good Shepherd or Christ is portrayed. He is accompanied by seven lambs, and seven fishes are arranged in a semicircle over his head[48]. This figure is supposed to represent the Christ in the two characters of the Good Shepherd and the fisherman. What it does signify is the solar messiah, the manifestor of the seven powers who is identified with the sign of Aries by the seven lambs, and with the sign of Pisces by the seven fishes, the two types having been combined in one representation through the course of precession, and blended in the consequent imagery.
The passage of the cross from the sign of the Lamb into that of the Fishes, together with the change in the type of sacrifice, is very palpably portrayed in a symbolical scene discovered in the catacombs and copied by De Rossi[49]. In this seven persons are seated in a semicircle with two fishes and eight baskets of bread set out in front of them. According to Lundy, the 'seven persons obviously denote the complete number of God's elect in the communion of saints,' whatever that may mean![50] But according to the present view, if the scene represents a sacramental feast, the seven figures would typify the seven spirits or gods of the pleroma now localized in the sign of tile Fishes. The scene is evidently zodiacal, because the sacrifice of the lamb—now superseded by the fish—is portrayed on the left and inferior hand the crossing being denoted by a human figure making the sign of the cross. On the other hand, the sacrifice of the fish is being performed, and here the sign of the cross is made by a female figure, the Orante or bride of Christ, who has now transferred her affections from the Lamb in Revelation to Ichthys the Fish; or in other words, the mother of Messiah now brings forth the divine child in the sign of the Fish and the House of Bread instead of the previous sign of the Ram.
The fish, in a long, upright form, with a forked tail, is also carved on an Irish cross at Kells, in the county of Meath, with seven figures bowed before it as if in adoration[51].
When the spring equinox passed into Pisces, the fish which is [p.393] carried over the head of Horus was not only a zodiacal sign of the Christ, but was made eucharistic; it is not merely portrayed with the bread, but a living fish is represented as the bearer of the bread and wine of the sacramental rite[52].
Ichthys, the fish, was the child of Atergatis, the fish-tailed goddess of Syria, whose portrait may be seen in the zodiacal sign of Pisces, where she brought forth her child at the epoch of 255 BC from the waters represented by the lake at Ascalon[53]. This sign in the Hermean zodiac is called Ichthon; and the mother is depicted in the act of holding up the child in her left hand; he who bears the rod of iron in his hand. Ichthon is identified by Iamblichus with the god Emphe[54], that is with Iu-em-hept (the Greek Imothes or Aesculapius), whose father is Atum, and whose mother's name is Hathor-Iusaas, she who was great with Iusa, Iusu, or Jesus, the coming son (from iu, to come, sa, the son, and as, to be great, a name of Isis), who was born or incarnated for the last time when the equinox entered the sign of the Fishes, 255 BC, from which time 'Ichthys' became the sign of salutation for the equinoctial Christolaters, who were called Pisciculi.
This imagery is too late for the Egypt of the pharaohs, but the gnosis survived, and it was continued by the Greco-Egyptian gnostics; hence we find Iu-em-hept (i.e., Iu the Su, or Iusu) reborn as Ichthon in Pisces; he who had been the aeonian bringer of peace, the 'divinity' whom Iamblichus calls the 'One God,'[55] who must have been a most ancient form of the 'coming one' in the Kamite mythology, as, in the pedigree of architects traced by Brugsch Pasha, Imhotep (i.e., Iu-em-hept) is the name of an ancestor of Khnum-ab-Ra, who lived in the time of the third dynasty[56].
Bishop Münter, in his Sinnbilder, remarks that in the Talmud the [p.394] Messiah is called dag (גד), the fish. 'The Jews connected him with the astronomical sign of the Fishes, and the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in this constellation—which indicated the land of Judea—was to announce his birth. Arbanel, in his commentary on the prophet Daniel, positively says that this is derived from ancient sources of authority, as in the highest degree probable. And the learned John Frischmuth, in his work on the Christian religion, as against the Jews, remarks on the madness and infatuation and obstinacy of that people that they themselves have concluded that the time of the Messiah's advent was indicated by the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of the Fishes, and yet when that conjunction actually took place at Christ's birth, the Jews rejected him.'[57] This shows the Jews were not only in possession of the astronomical allegory, but also of the tradition by which alone it could be truly interpreted. There is a reference to the Kronian manifestor in the Gemara, which states that the war of the Thaninim or the fishes shall precede him and announce his coming. The supposed prophecy relates to the entrance of the vernal equinox into the sign of Pisces, 255 BC, and not to any planetary conjunction at a period more suitable to the later reckoning.
It has been shown how the celestial scenery was localized and represented on earth. Khnum-hept speaks of 'setting up landmarks like the heaven.'[58] Thebes was called the 'Heaven on Earth,' the 'august Staircase of the Beginning of Tune.'[59] The mount of seven steps, the four quarters (and lastly the twelve signs), was the still earlier type. Such imagery was localized in all lands where the mythos is to be found. For example, Meru, the mount of the birthplace in the north, is still extant at Meru, a town in Picardy, i.e., in the north of France, with a castle seated near the source of a brook that runs into the river Oise. Hence the birthplace of the messiah in the sign of the Ram or the Fishes already belonged to the geography of various countries. In the astronomical prophecy of Micah, the aeonian manifestor, who, according to the Chaldee paraphrast, is the messiah, was to be born in Bethlehem-Ephratah; and it was through this announcement that the chief priests and scribes were enabled to tell Herod where the child should be born[60]. Bethlehem means the house of bread-corn, grain, or wheat[61]. In the houses of the zodiac that of Virgo is the place of the seed for sowing, and the opposite sign, Pisces, is the house of the gestator who brings forth the corn, as Siton. These two are the signs of the Virgin and Matrona. Aphrathah (התרפא) signifies fruitfulness of the wife or of the genetrix[62], who was Aphrodite, Hathor, Atergatis, [p.395] Semiramis, Parmuti, or Venus-Pisces, each of whom was a form of the bringer-forth in the house of bread-corn, fish, and fruit, first set in heaven in accordance with the seasons of Egypt. The Hebrew messiah was to be born in Bethlehem-Ephratah because the birthplace above was localized in that city of Judea, the land of the solar birthplace in the sign of the Fishes. And so the Christ that was born in heaven was landed on earth as the fish in place of the Lamb. The fathers of the church held the fish to be the Christ. Prosper Africanus calls Christ that 'great Fish who fed from himself the disciples on the shore, and offered himself as a fish to the whole world.'[63] In the last chapter of the gospel according to John, where we are told that, if all which Jesus did should be written, 'even the world itself could not contain the books,' the Christ appears to the seven and feeds them on the broiled fish. 'The broiled fish is Christ,' says Augustine[64]. It was so after the equinox had entered the sign of Pisces, 255 BC.
The actual birthplace of the carnalized Christ was neither Bethlehem nor Nazareth, but Rome. It was there that the cult of equinoctial Christolatry was continued by conversion. Rome was the re-foundry of the ancient religion. And according to astronomical prophecy Rome was another of the localities in which the messiah was expected to appear. That is, Rome on earth, Rome of the seven hills, represented a Rome in heaven, just as Jerusalem below was the replica of Jerusalem above, or Bethlehem had been named from the celestial House of Bread-corn. In the Jerusalem Targum[65] the coming out of Egypt is identified with the advent of Messiah. It is affirmed that Moses shall go forth from the midst of the desert, and 'king Messiah from the midst of Rome. The one shall speak on the top of the cloud, and the other shall speak on the top of the cloud, and the Word of the Lord shall speak between them.' 'Coming out of Egypt' is a Kamite expression for ascending from the lower to the upper heavens, which were divided in the equinoctial signs[66].
The birthplace in Rome is likewise found in the Babylonian Talmud, where the manifestor is represented as sitting amongst the sick and destitute poor[67]. Rabbi Jehoshua Ben-Levi asked Elijah, 'When does Messiah come?' He replied, 'Go and ask himself.' 'But where does he wait?' 'At the Gate of the City' (i.e., Rome). The sibyl was also credited with a prophecy to the effect that the messiah was to come when Rome should be the ruler of Egypt. 'When Rome shall rule Egypt, then shall dawn upon men the supremely great kingdom of the immortal king, and a pure sovereign will come to conquer the sceptres of the whole earth unto all ages.'[68] This was the Egypt of the allegory; 'Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.'[69]
[p.396] The Rome signified was celestial. The prophecies were astronomical. The Gate of Rome was the sign of the Fish, and Rome became the ruler of this Egypt when the equinox entered Pisces, 255 BC.
Annu (Eg.), the typical Heliopolis, is the region of the Fish. Another Egyptian name of the fish is Rum or Rema, which is identical with the name of Roma the goddess, the river, the city of Rome. Rama was a form of the genetrix as the fish, like Semi-ramis, or Semuramat; and the emaning mouth of the fish (os tincae) is still preserved in the mitre of the Pope of Rome. Also, the ring of investiture placed on the pope's finger at the time of his election, which is afterwards used as his letter-seal, is the sign of the fish. It is pretended that this was the ring of Peter the fisherman. It is called Annulus Piscatorius, but the symbolism over the head of the fisher points to the two fishes of the zodiac[70]. Thus when the Roma (or Judea Pisces) was the birthplace above for the messiah, 255 BC, the mythos had its localization in Rome of the seven hills[71], as well as in Annu, Mat, or Maturea, Judea, Bethlehem, or Nazareth (from natzer (רצנ) the branch, the offspring, descendant, or child).
We learn from the writer of the Clementine Homilies[72], that as late as the reign of Tiberius there was a rumour current concerning the 'vernal equinox,' connected with the prophecy that at the same season a king would arise in Judea, who was to work miracles—make the blind to see, the lame to walk, heal every disease, including leprosy, and raise the dead. He also limits the ministry of this kurios to one year. Now a king whose advent depended on the shifting of the vernal equinox, and whose time was limited to one year, called his ministry, could be no other than the solar god; could be no other than the mythical messiah, whose birth was due in Rome as in Bethlehem in the year 255 BC.
One of the most perfect representations of the end of an old cycle at the birth of the new messiah that has come down to us is contained in the Gospel of James[73]. This scripture belongs to the 'Apocrypha,' which are looked upon as spurious history; but they contain the history according to the gospel of the mythos, or preserve somewhat of the secret gnosis midway between the true mythos and a fabulous history. The attendant circumstances connect the new advent with the birth of the other manus, messiahs, and repas, that have personated the eternal in time at the end and re-beginning of a great cycle.
When the pains of her travail came upon Mary, Joseph is described as finding shelter for her in the cave and going forth in search of a midwife. Then follows the arrest and standstill of all things by which the event was represented in mythology, sometimes as the petrifying [p.397] of living forms into stones whilst in the act of dancing or making the circle. 'And I, Joseph, walked, and I walked not; and I looked up into the air, and saw the air violently agitated; and I looked up at the pole of heaven and saw it stationary, and the fowls of heaven still. And I looked at the earth and saw a vessel lying, and workmen reclining by it, and their hands in the vessel, and those who handled did not handle it, and those who took did not lift, and those who presented it to their month did not present it, but the faces of all were looking up. And I saw the sheep scattered, and the sheep stood, and the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike them, and his hand remained up; and I looked at the stream of the river, and I saw the mouths of the kids were down and not drinking, and everything which was impelled forward in its course was arrested.'[74] All things were caught at this culminating point which marked the end of a cycle in the heavens, as though the universal motion were catalepsed into the solidity and stillness of stone. It is a description fit to have been carved by the pyramid builders.
The sign given by the angels for the shepherds to know that the saviour, Christ the Lord, was born at Bethlehem, was, 'Ye shall find the babe lying in a manger.'[75] The manger is also celestial, zodiacal, and the actual birthplace of the messiah in Egyptian mythology. The typical birthplace was designated Apt or Aptu, whence the name of Abydos. Ap (Eg.) means to manifest and expose to view, also to guide; apt is the place or person. Apt, as person, was the most ancient genetrix who first brought forth from the waters as the fish, crocodile dragon or hippopotamus, hence Abtu 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, crib, are all types of the birthplace named apt, and the apt (Eg.), is also a manger. The manger, apt, is a sign of the birthplace in Thebes, as in Aptu (Abydos). Thus the hieroglyphics will explain why the divine child as Ichthys was born in a manger[76]. One position of the 'manger' can be identified by the asterism called Praesepe, in the sign of Cancer, which was at one time the place of birth at the summer solstice. The manger at Bethlehem had been the birthplace of the divine babe in a far earlier cult. Hieronymus describes the Syrian Adonia, extant in his time (AD 331-420) 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[77], as it assuredly had been in the pre-Christian period. According to the Chronicle of Alexandria[78], the Egyptians not only consecrated the nativity of the babe born of the virgin mother, they likewise had the symbolical custom of exposing a child in a crib to the adoration of the people. When king Ptolemy asked why this was [p.398] done, he was told that it was an ancient mystery. The crib or apt being identical with the manger, this was the same babe in the manger that was born in the apt above. 'The loss of the manger of Bethlehem,' says Dean Stanley, 'is a witness to the universal significance of the incarnation.'[79] On the contrary, we claim that the discovery of the manger (apt) in the solar birthplace is a testimony to its never having been other than celestial or mythical, and therefore it is universal.
We shall find that the gospel history was 'written before' from beginning to end. The story of the divine annunciation, the miraculous conception (or incarnation), the birth, and the adoration of the messianic child, had already been engraved in hieroglyphics and represented in four consecutive scenes upon the innermost walls of the holy of holies in the temple of Luxor which was built by Amenhept III, a pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty. In these the maiden queen Mut-em-Ua, the mother of Amenhept, her future child, impersonates the virgin mother who bore without the fatherhood, the mother as the solar boat, the mother of the Only One.
The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the lunar Mercury, the divine word or logos, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming son. In the next scene the god Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes conception Kneph being the spirit. Impregnation and conception are made apparent in the virgin's fuller form. Next the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right three men are kneeling and offering gifts with the right hand and life with the left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped was the pharaonic representative of the Aten sun, the Adon of Syria, and [p.399] Hebrew Adonai, the child-Christ of the Aten cult, the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother personated by Mut-em-Ua.
The moon at full with the solar child of light was the great determinative of the equinoxes. In the planispherei of Denderah the child Horus is portrayed within the disk of the full moon just over the sign of the Scales at the autumn equinox. In the same map of heaven the luni-solar god, Khunsu, is depicted in the disk of the full moon of the vernal equinox. But instead of this being in the decans of the Ram and vis-à-vis with the full moon of the autumn equinox it appears in the sign of the Fishes, and is another witness to the bringing on of the reckonings which proves that in repeating this zodiac the place of the vernal equinox was shifted into the sign of Pisces, whilst the place of the autumn equinox was left unadjusted in the Scales. Khunsu will supply one of our most perfect types of the Kronian messiah and announcer in the sign of the Fishes. He is mentioned here, however, to point out that he stands in the disk of the full moon of the vernal equinox holding a pig in his hand, which may be called the pig of Easter; and Khunsu with the pig in the full moon is the manifestor and announcer of the equinox in the sign of the Fishes, just as Har-khuti with his pyramid had been in the sign of the Ram, and Orion or Pan in the sign of the Bull. The pig is still a well-known type of Easter. The Egyptian origins of the Christ in relation to Khunsu are betrayed in a remarkable manner. The festival of Khunsu, or his birthday, at the vernal equinox, was at one time celebrated on the twenty-fifth day of the month named after him Pa-khunsu. And Clement Alexander, the Egyptian, asserts that 'our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year (of the era of the battle of Actium, Aug. BC 31, 32) when first the census was ordered to be taken in the reign of Augustus; and there are those who have determined not only the year of the Lord's birth but also the day, and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, and on the 25th day of Pachons.'[80] Dr. Lauth has observed with much simplicity that this date of Pachons 25 for the lunar fête of the (σεληνείηα) moon-worshippers is very remarkable. 'The Egyptians,' he says, 'could not have chosen another date in their whole calendar (than the 25th Pachons) if they intended to make the Lord's birthday coincide with the most striking lunar festivity.'[81] Thus have those Egyptologists, who are above all things bibliolaters, added their support to prop the reversed pyramid and keep it from toppling over. But the month of Pachons began on the 26th of April in the Alexandrian year (introduced BC 25) consequently the 25th corresponded to our May 21st. In the sacred year Pachons commenced March 17th when the 25th corresponded to our April the 11th, and this is [p.400] the only year which brings the date near enough to the vernal equinox to identify the 25th of Pachons with the festival of the full moon at Easter, or with the festival of the second Horus, whom Plutarch calls the afterbirth of Isis, which was celebrated just after the vernal equinox[82]. It is impossible for the equinox and Easter festival to have fallen on the 25th Pachons since the calendar was changed in the year 25 BC!
In the old Egyptian and Coptic calendar the 8th of Pachons is marked as the day on which 'our Lord Jesus Christ went up on high into the heavens.'[83] As the month began on March 17th in the sacred year, the 8th of Pachons was our March the 25th, the day of the equinox upon which the sun crossed the line, came out of Egypt, or went up into heaven[84]. The day of the equinox was the fact of facts fixed for ever in relation to the solar resurrection, whilst in the celestial allegory or mythical representation, the birth, rebirth, resurrection, and ascension were four forms of one and the same event. When the Alexandrian year or new style was introduced during the reign of Augustus Caesar, in the year 25 BC, this date of Pachons 8th = March 25th, sacred year, had already receded to the 4th of May. From Pachons the 8th (our March 25th) to May the 4th is exactly forty days, so that the ascension into heaven that was celebrated by the Coptic church according to the later calendar was the day of the equinox in the calendar of the sacred year. Thus the two different days of the resurrection and ascension, which are some three thousand years of tropical time apart, resolve into one and the same day of the equinox, and the ascent of the solar Christ or luni-solar Khunsu, whose birthday had been celebrated according to the ancient calendar some 3,000 years before it was readjusted by Augustus Caesar 25 BC when March 25th old style was represented by May 4th new style. This means that nearly 5,000 years since 'our Lord' ascended into heaven on the day of the vernal equinox; and this date had been continued by the Coptic Christians without change. The fact is further shown by the entry for Pachons 14th (May 23rd, 1878) stating that 'the sun enters Gemini'—instead of the Bull—that being one whole sign behind time in consequence of non-readjustment. The difference of forty days between the calendar of the sacred year and that of the Alexandrian year is shown by September 18 = October 28; November 17 = December 27; February 15 = March 27; June 15 = July 25. These forty days may now be compared with those in the Acts of the Apostles. In this book it is declared that the risen Christ 'showed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days,'[85] at the end of which 'he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.' Here the difference of forty days between the resurrection and ascension, which are one in the solar mythos, is [p.401] identical with that in the two Egyptian calendars. Further, it appears possible that the change in the reckoning from old style to new may have a bearing on the impossible history recorded by Luke, who says, 'It came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed,' or enrolled, and it was at the time when Joseph and Mary were on their way to be taxed that Mary brought forth the child. The writer continues, 'This was the first enrolment made when Quirinus was governor of Syria.'[86] Justin Martyr in his First Apology tells the Romans, with all the impudence of ignorance, that they may assure themselves of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, by means of the census made in the time of Quirinus the first procurator in Judea![87] Whereas history proves that Quirinus was not governor until some years after the date given for the birth of Jesus.
It was not until the 37th year from the battle of Actium, or 6 AD, that Quirinus was sent by Caesar to look after the Hebrew contribution to the imperial revenue and take an account of the substance of the Syrians, in which year the taxings were made[88]. But there had been a decree issued by Augustus Caesar, if not to all the world, yet to a portion of it most important for the present purpose. It was in the year 25 BC, in his reign, that the Alexandrian year was introduced into Egypt and the calendar corrected; the vague year was then converted by Augustus into an exact year, which the Copts have handed down to our own times. This was the date of a half-phoenix period, a phoenix having appeared in the year 275 BC, and the previous half-phoenix fallen in the year 525 BC[89]. A fresh census of the population, or enrolment of those who paid taxes, was probably taken at this time. Be this as it may, there was a change of forty days in the date for collecting the taxes. According to the Coptic church and the old Egyptian calendar the 28th of Kyhak is the end of Saumel-Milâd the Christmas fast, and the next day, Eedel-Milâd is the 'birthday of our Lord Christ,' the 29th of Kyhak being our Christmas day. The Christian fathers identified the birth of Christ both with the time of the vernal equinox and the winter solstice.
Cassini has demonstrated the fact that the date assigned to the birth of Christ is astronomical[90]. It is calculated, according to the tradition of the Roman church, by an astronomical epoch, in which, as shown by the modern tables, the middle conjunction of the moon with the sun happened on the 24th of March, according to the Julian form (re-established a little after by Augustus), at half past one o'clock in the morning, at the meridian of Jerusalem, the very day of the middle equinox. The day following the 25th was the day of the incarnation according to the tradition of the church as represented [p.402] by Augustine[91], but which was the time of birth according to Clement Alexander[92]. Here the incarnation coincides with the conjunction of sun and moon at the end and re-beginning of the equinoctial year. Nine months after this conjunction of the solar father and lunar mother, who are portrayed in the earliest known picture of the crucified, the divine child was born in the winter solstice, December the 25th, the date assigned to the birth of the young sun-god Mithras, and to Horus the child in Egypt. Plutarch tells us that the virgin mother Isis was delivered of Harpocrates[93] (i.e., Horus considered as the child of the mother alone) about the winter tropic, he being in the first shootings and sprouts very imperfect and tender. Which is the reason, as the Egyptians say, that when the lentils begin to spring up they offer him their tops for first fruits. They also observe the festival of her afterbirth (the Hebrew shiloh), or Horus, the son of the father, after the vernal equinox. These two astronomical dates were continued faute de mieux by the equinoctial Christolators, who could not account for them in the absence of the gnosis, hence the solstice and spring equinox are both assigned as the time of the one birth, which is impossible as human history, but is true to the mythos and the two Horuses. The birthday of Mithras, the invincible one, was celebrated as an ancient festival, on the 25th of December, the day of the solstice, our Christmas day. He was born in a cave, and wherever Mithras was worshipped the cave was consecrated to him; as the 'highly-mysterious cavern' was sacred to the sun-god in Egypt. In the Gospel of James the child Jesus was born in a cave[94]. The gospel of pseudo-Matthew says Mary entered the 'cave below a cavern in which there was never any light' to bring forth the light of the world, and on the third day she 'went out of the cave, and entering a stable, put her child in a manger.'[95] In the History of Joseph the Carpenter the Christ affirms that his mother gave birth to him in a cave[96]. According to the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy[97], the birth occurred in a cave. The cave of Mithras was that of the sun born in Abba Uddu, the Akkadian name of the tenth month, answering the winter solstice when this occurred in the sign of the Sea-goat. roughly to December, the month of Capricorn, denotes the Cave of Light. The cave, or winter solstice in Capricorn, was the birthplace of the Mithraic messiah from 2410 to 255 BC, and this was continued as the cave or birthplace of the Christ after it ceased to be applicable to the solar god. Justin says that Christ was born on the same day that the sun was reborn in stabulo Augice[98]; and the stable of Augias, cleansed by Heracles in his sixth labour, corresponds to the cave in the Sea-goat. Thus the cave and the stable are two types of the birthplace at the solstice. Justin, determined to include both, asserts [p.403] that Christ was born in the stable and afterwards took refuge in the cave[99]. No messiah, however, whether called Mithras, Horus or Christ could have been born in the stable of Augias or the cave of Abba Uddu on the 25th of December after the date of 255 BC, because the solstice had passed out of that sign into the asterism of the Archer.
The supposed historical Christ had no other birthday than that of the solar god, the birthday of the year, whether reckoned from the solstice or the equinox, and, as a specimen of the way in which the apostolic institutions were derived, take what Chrysostom says, who wrote on the nativity of Christ, in Antioch, about AD 380. He declares, 'It is not yet ten years since this day was made known to us.' He says, further, 'Among those inhabiting the west, it was known before from ancient and primitive times, and to the dwellers from Thrace to Cadiz (Gadeira) it was previously familiar and well known.' But this birthday of the Lord was not known in the east, at Antioch, where the name of Christian was said to have been first adopted, on the verge of the Holy Land itself![100] We also learn that as late as the fifth century Leo the Great was compelled to rebuke the 'pestiferous persuasion' of those Christians who were found to be celebrating Christmas day not for the birth of Jesus Christ, but for the resurrection of the sun. The actual origins of equinoctial Christolatry were not then superseded[101].
Now, at the time when the calendar was changed in Egypt by the decree of Augustus, the date of the solstice and the festival of the youthful sun-god was brought forward into the month Toubeh (Tebi), so that the general collection of taxes then coincided with the date assigned to the birthday of the Christ who is held to have fulfilled the law in being circumcised on the 6th day of the month Toubeh, or the eighth day after Christmas. The collection of taxes was an ancient institution, but it was newly associated with the month Toubeh in consequence of this decree of Caesar Augustus, which introduced a change of calendar into the Roman empire; and possibly this was the actual decree issued by Caesar Augustus to all the world, which was connected by tradition with the birth of Christ. Amongst other features in the common likeness between the stories of Krishna and the Christ there is one relating to the time of taxing. When Vasudeva is carrying away the newborn child from the clutches of Kansa, the Herod of the Puranas, who slays the children of Devaki in his endeavour to kill Krishna, he meets with Nanda and his companions the cowherds, who are coming to pay their taxes of a yearly tribute to Kansa (a toll paid to the Devil), which was just then due[102]. In both legends the time of taxing or paying tribute is like our [p.404] Christmas quarter-day, coincident with the birth of the solar god; and this date was changed by the decree of Augustus Caesar, which probably necessitated a new enrolment or census in Egypt, and thus a tradition relating primarily to the child Horus may have survived in connection with the child Christ in the gospel according to Luke.
The youthful messiah who was the manifestor of the seven powers in the sign of the solar birthplace was one in phenomena, but he had several personifications and names in the different cults. He was Horus in the Osirian mythos; Har-khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Iu-em-hept in the cult of Atum; and Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra. We shall find these several characters have been reproduced in the Christ of the canonical gospels.
The Christ is the Good Shepherd. So was Horus.
Christ is the Lamb of God. So was Horus.
Christ is the Bread of Life. So was Horus.
Christ is the Truth and the Life. So was Horus.
Christ is the Fan-bearer. So was Horus.
Christ is the Door of Life. Horus was the Path by which the dead travel out of the sepulchre; he is the god whose name is written as the Road.
The Jesus of the gospels is the coming one, 'He that should come,' 'He that cometh;' as was the Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-hept.
It is said of the future manifestor, 'Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads: because your redemption draweth nigh.'[103]
And of Osiris coming in the clouds of heaven we read: 'The Osiris passes through the clouds, turns back the opposers, gives life to the ministers of the sun. The face of the Osiris is rendered great by his crown. Lift up your heads! pay ye attention! make way for your Lord.'[104]
Jesus came in the name of the Lord. Horus was the Lord by name.
The Jesus of Paul is the second Adam. The Egyptian Jesus was the second Atum.
The Litany of Ra is addressed to the solar god in a variety of characters, many of which are assigned to the Christ of the gospels. Ra is the 'supreme power, the beetle that rests in the empyrean, who is born as his own son.'[105] This is the God in John's gospel, who says, 'I and my father are one,' and who is the father born as his own son; for he says in knowing and seeing the son 'from henceforth ye know him and have seen him,'[106] i.e., the father. Ra is the 'soul that speaks.'[107] Christ is the 'Word.' Ra as the god of earth, Tanen, makes his own members, is the only one who fashions his own body, [p.405] and is earthborn and self-embodied[108]. In like manner Jesus fashions his own body without human father. 'Ra calls his gods to life when he arrives in his hidden sphere,' 'he imparts the breath of life to the souls in their place.'[109] 'They receive it and develop.' Jesus 'came tin to his own, and as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.' Thus he 'calls his gods to life.' Khepra-Ra is twin-born. He is 'Khepra who becomes two children; his form is that of the two children.' These are the Sut-Horus or the double Horus. They reappear in the gospels as John and Jesus, who are announced by the same angel, and who are six months apart, like the Horus of the double equinox. The relationship of Jesus to John could not be more perfectly expressed than by the description of Ra as the 'Supreme power! He who always goes towards him who precedes him;' and 'he whose head shines more than he who is before him.'[110] The first action of Jesus in this gospel is to 'go towards him who precedes him,' that is, John; and then his 'head shines more than he who is before him,' with the Spirit descending on it from heaven like a dove, which abode upon him. This was in the scene of the baptism and Ra is called 'the brilliant one who shines in the waters.'[111] Ra is the 'Master of the Light, who reveals hidden things, the spirit who speaks to the gods in their spheres.'[112] Such is the claim of Jesus.
In one character Ra is the transformer[113]. Christ is the same on the mount of transfiguration. Ra is the destroyer of venom[114]. Jesus says, 'In my name they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them.'[115] Ra is also the god who 'makes the mummy come forth.' Jesus makes the mummy come forth in the shape of Lazarus; and in the Roman catacombs the risen Lazarus is not only represented as a mummy but is an Egyptian mummy which has been eviscerated and swathed for the eternal abode. Thus Lazarus is the typical mummy-figure which would be signified if the name were derived from laz (or ras, Eg), to be raised up, and aru (Eg), the mummy shape; which, with the Greek terminal s, would be Lazarus, the risen mummy. The supposed historic Christ who raises Lazarus in the Christian monuments[116] is identical with Horus (or Ra) who raises or bids the mummy to 'come forth.' Ra calls on the mummy to 'come forth.' Jesus cries 'Lazarus, come forth;' and in the monuments Lazarus does come forth a mummy. Moreover, Sut-Anup, the earliest Mercury, the attendant on the dead, who is often seen embracing the mummy, appears in the same picture in the Greek form of Mercury.
In the character of Aperto the god is said to be he 'who furnishes the inhabitants of the empyrean with funeral things.' The Christ [p.406] says Mary had kept the ointment of spikenard against the day of his funeral[117]. Aperto, or Aper, is Anubis, the god of things funereal, whose double holy house is in Annu; the house being the Beth, and Beth-Annu may be compared with Bethany. As Senekher, Ra is 'shining-face;' both the anointed and the anointer. 'The spirit who anoints the body, his form is that of shining-face.'[118] Christ is the anointed; his divinity rests on that; he is also represented as the shining-face, when 'his face did shine as the sun.' 'Shining-face' is the 'great walker who goes over the same course.' Jesus, in the character of 'shining-face,' went up into a mountain apart. Ra, the supreme power, is the master of souls 'who is in his obelisk'—the 'chief of the confined gods.'[119] Jesus is taken prisoner by Satan and carried to the top of the mount and the obelisk or pinnacle of the temple, where he shows his mastery. Ra is also associated with the 'double obelisk.'[120] This is apparently reproduced in the two elevations of the Christ on the high mountain and upon the pinnacle. Ra is 'the spirit who is raised upon the two mysterious horizons.' These two horizons appear perplexingly in the gospels as those of Judea and Galilee. The very works said by one writer to be done in the one region, another writer localizes in the opposite country. The 'mysteries of the two horizons,' and of the dual deity Har-Makhu, are greatly increased in the gospels. Origen confessed that the attempt to reconcile these opposite statements made him giddy[121]. Ra manifests as the weeper, Remi. The suffering god passes through 'Rem-Rem,' the place of weeping, and thus conquers on behalf of his followers. The Osirified in this character exclaims. 'I find no escape from weeping on the week in Abtu,' the place of the second birth[122], the Passion Week of Osiris. In the Ritual the god says, 'I have desolated the place of Rem-Rem.'[123] Jesus also sustains the character of Remi the weeper, the 'timid one who sheds tears in the form of the afflicted.' The words of John, 'Jesus wept,' are like a carven statue of Remi. Ra manifests as the 'timid one who sheds tears; his form is that of the afflicted;'[124] and Christ, the weeper, is the afflicted one born to suffer[125].
Under the form of Netert, Ra is 'the spirit that causes his disappearance.'[126] Jesus is caught up by the spirit that drives him into the wilderness and causes his disappearance[127]. Ra's 'form is that of the hidden body;' 'he who hides his body within himself' and who in the next line is 'more courageous than those who surround him.' Jesus, when surrounded by those who took up stones to cast at him, 'hid himself and passed invisibly through their midst;' his 'form is that of the god with the hidden body,' he too is the power who 'hides his body within himself'[128] Ra manifests as 'the burning one;' he who 'sends [p.407] destruction,' or 'sends his fire into the place of destruction;'[129] 'he sends fire upon the rebels,'[130] his form is that of the 'god of the furnace.'[131] Christ also comes in the person of the burning one and sender of destruction by fire. He is proclaimed by Matthew to be the baptizer with fire[132]. He says 'I am come to send fire on the earth.'[133] He is portrayed as 'god of the furnace' which shall 'burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.'[134] He is to cast the rebellious into 'a furnace of fire,'[135] and send the condemned ones into 'everlasting fire.'[136] Ra is the god who 'opens pathways in the sarcophagus, his form is that of the god who makes the roads.' He 'makes the roads in the empyrean.' The risen god 'causes the development of his body in the empyrean. His form is that of the inhabitant of the empyrean.'[137] 'His form is that of the eternal essence,' as penetrator of the empyrean[138]. In effecting this 'he shines and he sees his mysteries.' He is likewise named the splendid one who 'lights up the sarcophagus in the form of Shepi.'[139] He 'raises his soul and conceals his body' (as Herba; her, to rise up, ba, the soul) 'in its place.' So Jesus is the resurrection and the life, the door, the way, the tomb-breaker, road-maker, and establisher of a foothold in the empyrean. In the vanishing vision of the risen Christ, 'he was taken up, and a cloud had received him' as the inhabitant of the empyrean[140]. The litany collects the manifold characters that make up the total god (Teb-temt), and the gospels have gathered up the mythical remains; thus the result is in each case identical. It will be proved that the history of Christ in the gospels is a long and complete catalogue of likenesses to the mythical messiah.
In one version of the gospel according to John[141], instead of the 'only-begotten son' of God, the reading is the 'only-begotten God;' and it has been declared impossible for the 'sacred writer' to have employed the phrase 'only-begotten God.' It is said to be contrary to the genius of the gospel and opposed to the general teaching of the New Testament. These things, however, can only be determined by the doctrines and the gnosis that were preextant. Of course the current Christology knows nothing of any such possible variant as the 'only-begotten God,' because the Kamite origins have been left out of the reckoning. But the 'only-begotten God' was an especial type in Egyptian mythology, and the phrase recovers the divinity whose emblem is the beetle. This was Khepra-Ptah, who, like Atum, was reborn as his own son, Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus. 'To denote an only-begotten or a father,' says Horapollo[142], the Egyptians 'delineate a scarabaeus. And they symbolize by this an [p.408] only-begotten because the scarabaeus is a creature self-produced, being unconceived by a female.' This was in a cult which tried hard to dethrone the female, and exalt the male god as the only one. The 'only-begotten god' is a well-known type, then, of divinity worshipped in Egypt as Khepra-Ptah and Khepra-Atum, and in each cult the messiah-son and manifestor was the only-begotten god Iu-em-hept, and Iu the son (su), whether of Ptah or Atum, is Iusu or Jesus. This, according to the text, is the Christ, the Word, the manifestor in John's gospel. Of course the reading is totally opposed to the historic interpretation, and is therefore good evidence of its authority as an original reading. This god is the express image of the Christ of John's gospel, who begins in the first chapter, without father or mother, and is the word of the beginning, the opener and architect, the light of the world, the self-originated and only-begotten God. The very phraseology of John is common in the Egyptian texts, which tell of him who was 'the Beginner of Becoming, from the first,' 'who made all things, but was not made.'[143] There were Christian traditions which support this identification of the 'only-begotten god,' who is extant in this genuine reading of John's gospel, with Khepra-Ptah. Some of the Fathers, Ambrose, for instance, knew that the beetle was a symbol of the Christ[144]. Augustine also identifies the Christ with, or as, the good scarabaeus: 'Bonus ille scarabaeus meus, non eâ tantum de causâ quod unigenitus, quod ipsemet sui auctor mortalium speciem induerit sed quod in hâc nostra faece sese volutaverit et ex hâc ipsâ nasci voluerit.'[145]
In accordance with this continuation of the Kamite symbols, it was also maintained by some sectaries that Jesus was a potter, not a carpenter. The agnostics made the most of the fragments of the mythos which they had collected, but knew not how to interpret. The truth is that this 'only-begotten god,' Khepra-Ptah, was the potter personified, who is portrayed sitting at the potter's wheel, forming the egg or shaping the vase-symbol of creation.
When Osiris the saviour comes down to earth as the child Horus to cross it 'as a substitute,' he exclaims: 'The gates of earth open to me. Seb has opened the bolts, he has opened the chief or lower abode wide. The Osiris comes. He prevails over his heart, he prevails over his hand, he prevails over the meals, he prevails over the waters, he prevails over the streams, he prevails over the pools, he prevails over everything done against him in hades, he prevails over what he has been ordered to do on earth. The Osiris is born like, or as, a word. He lives!—then it is off the bread of Seb.'[146] Half the history of the Christ on earth is contained in this passage. He comes to earth as a substitute. He is born as the word. He is the great prevailer over the waters as the worker of miracles. He also prevails over the meals by working three different [p.409] miracles, and is very possibly born into the house of Seb, represented by Joseph. Seb is the god of earth, god the father on earth, therefore the especial father of the sun-god in the earth; and as he is also a god in time or Kronus in person, he is the divine father on earth of the messiah-son who manifests in time. Thus Seb is the father of Osiris or Horus on earth. 'My father is Seb, my mother is Nu, I am Horus,' i.e., as son of earth and heaven[147]. When on earth he is in the dwelling of Seb. He says, 'My bread on earth (is) that of Seb.' In the same way, house and food for the Christ are found by Joseph. Now the iconography of the catacombs continually furnishes a bridge from Egypt to Rome, by which we can pass over independently of the alleged history. In certain sculptures of the 'first ages of Christianity,' the Christ or Horus is depicted, without a nimbus, and with his feet resting on a scarf that is upheld by a naked female, who is identified by Didron and others as a personification of earth[148]. But, in other sculptures the supporter of the youthful Christ is an aged man with a beard who undoubtedly represents the earth-god Seb. In each case the head and shoulders only of the figure are shown; and the earth was called the 'back of Seb.' Seb's back sometimes opened female-fashion, as the bringer-forth on earth and in time, hence Seb was a mother as well as the father. Seb is the opener of the earth for the solar god. The consort of Seb is the mother heaven, named Nu; but Meri is also an Egyptian name for heaven as well as of the genetrix. Thus Seb and Meri (Nu) for earth and heaven would afford two mythic originals for Joseph and Mary as parents of the divine child. It is more likely, however, that the female figure is the mother heaven (Nu or Meri), and Seb the father earth. This typology was continued in Rome, and can be identified and explained by the Kamite mythology; but it cannot be pretended that these allegorical figures portray the human parents[149].
In another and following chapter there is a variant of Seb, written Aseb, given as a title to the father Osiris. It is said 'Osiris the good opener, is Aseb; Aseb is the brother of Isis.' Aseb, then, is a variant of Seb, the opener of earth, the father of Horus on earth, and there is nothing improbable in the suggestion that the name of Joseph renders the Egyptian Aseb. Aseb is the name of a typical seat or throne of rule, in accordance with the Hebrew iosheb (בשי), to sit, to be enthroned, and iazab (בצי), to set firmly in place. This seat or throne was personated by Seb, and is likewise portrayed by the bearded old man who supports the youthful Christ[150], as the god on earth. So Amenhept IV says he rises and appears on the throne of Seb (i.e., on earth) to assume the functions of Atum, the sun of the lower world. The Christ, as Horus or the Osiris in the Ritual, has four different places and kinds of birth in the course of [p.410] making his transformations[151]. In the mythical Abtu (Abydos) there are 'Four Places of New Birth' for the Osiris or the Osirified:—
(1) The Great Place of Birth.
(2) The Typical Place of New Birth.
(3) The Creative Place of New Birth.
(4) The Good Place of New Birth.
Thus the god or messiah has one place of birth and three of rebirth; and these four are repeated for the Christ in the gospels. Jesus is born in Bethlehem as the 'great place of birth' (this is glossed by Matthew 'thou Bethlehem art not the least'[152]). The 'typical place of new birth' is in the water of Jordan. The 'creative place of new birth' is on the mount of transfiguration, where the voice from heaven again said, 'This is my beloved son.' The fourth and final place, the good place of rebirth, is the grave from which he rose again. This the Egyptians called 'the good dwelling.'[153]
Considered as those of a human being, the character and teachings of the Christ in the gospels are composed of contradictions and opposites impossible to harmonize. In fact, the three hundred sects of Christians who are today engaged in formulating and defining the theology of their assumed founder and denying each other's interpretation, do but inevitably represent the organic disunity from the beginning, and reflect the fragmentary nature of the origins. Christ is the prince of peace. He is born to bring peace on earth. He says: 'Peace I leave with you: my peace I give you.' 'Peace unto you.'[154] But he also asserts that he is not the bringer of peace. 'Think not that I came to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.'[155] And not only can these two opposite characters be explained according to the mythos, they constitute the one being of a dual nature who is the bringer of peace by name in one character as Iu-em-hept, and a sword personified in the other. In this aspect the god says, 'I am the living image of Tum, proceeding from his body (or person), a sword.' And in the dual character he can affirm of himself, 'I am the first Child, the great disturber the great tranquillizer, whose name is the root of Osiris (compare the root of Jesse), by which he spares thy life.'[156] This is said by the elder Horus, the sun in the west, who was the warrior-god that had to descend and cut his way through a world of opposing powers, and who emerged on the horizon of the resurrection as the conqueror of death and darkness, the way-maker through the tomb, the bringer of that peace which is brought by the re-arisen Iusu or Jesus. 'The god Contention is then as the god Peace, with the great hold he has in his hand,' by which the Osiris lives and is at rest[157].
In one of the quotations from the Gospel According to the Egyptians, [p.411] made both by Clement of Alexandria and Clement of Rome we are told that the Lord having been asked by Salome when his kingdom would come replied, 'When you have trampled under foot the garment of shame (or modesty); when two shall be one, when that which is without shall be like that which is within, and when the male with the female shall be neither male nor female.'[158] This doctrine is virtually expressed in the 17th chapter of the Ritual, which is entitled the Egyptian Gospel or Faith[159]. Osiris is an androgynous being; the one god who includes the bi-unity of both sexes (or of the double Horus). During his 'bloody flux,' Osiris tesh-tesh suffers in his feminine phase, and is called the sun in linen; he maybe said to wear the 'garment of shame,' or modesty. But 'Osiris goes into Tattu and he finds the soul of the sun there.' Here his two halves or souls are united in one to form the perfect being. These two halves are otherwise represented by the two Horuses, the child (epicene) and the virile male; also by the soul of Shu and the soul of Tefnut, who are male and female. That which has to be trampled under foot is described in the Ritual as the failing which has to be cut clean away before the soul in its two halves is made one in Tattu, and the Osiris, as Horus, is no longer male nor female in the new kingdom of the coming one which came every year.
The more hidden the meaning in the history the more satisfactorily is it explained by the mythos; the more mystical the doctrine, the more obviously is it mythical. The two halves of Osiris are—Horus the child of the virgin only, the mystic word, and Horus Ma-Kheru, the word made truth or become law; the one who did what the other said. In like manner Khunsu is—(1) the 'Giver of Oracles,' and (2) Khunsu, the Good Peace or Comforter. These are the two characters of Christ and the Paraclete. Christ is the word made flesh (as the first Horus had the human form) the sayer solely, the speaker in parables only. In the second phase he will tell the disciples 'plainly of the father.'[160] In this he will send the comforter, Helper or Nefer-Hept,—also the 'spirit of truth'[161] (or Ma-Kheru)—as the god in the second character, in which he came to them after the resurrection, the bringer of peace.
The 'spirit of truth' is identified with Ma-Kheru, the word that becomes law, as he who will be sent to 'convict the world in respect of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment.'[162]
The two halves of Horus were also continued in the Agia Psyche and Agion Pneuma of the Greeks, as two more abstract forms of the Holy Ghost. These had their followers in two different and opposed sects of Christians: the one being the ψυχικοί (Psychikoi), the worshippers of the Holy Spirit as άγια ψυχή; the other the [p.412] πνευματικοί, who held the Paraclete to be the more perfect form of the revealer.
The peculiar Egyptian doctrine of the word that makes, enacts, or does the truth is perfectly expressed in the passages: 'If we do not the truth,'[163] and 'he that doeth the truth cometh to light.'[164] So is it in the Apocrypha: 'In the Word of the Lord are his Works.'[165] The two characters of the sayer and doer in the mythos constitute the double foundation of the gospels. Papius tells us that Matthew first wrote the words of the sayer, and Mark added what Jesus did[166]; and this twin record of the sayer and doer is distinctly visible, as two or more collections of sayings and doings obviously unconnected in the gospels according to Matthew and Mark.
The first Horus was the child, who always remained a child. In Egypt the boy or girl wore the Horus-lock of childhood until twelve years of age. Thus childhood ended about the twelfth year. But although adultship was then entered upon by the sherau, and the transformation of the boy into manhood began, the full adultship was not attained until thirty years of age. The man of thirty years was the typical adult. The age of adultship was thirty years, as it was in Rome under the Lex Pappia. The homme fait is the man whose years are triaded by tens, and who is Khemt. As with the man so is it with the god, and the second Horus, the same god in his second character, is the Khemt or Khem-Horus, the typical adult of thirty years. The god up to twelve years was Horus the son of Isis, the mother's child. The virile Horus, the adult of thirty years, was representative of the fatherhood, and this Horus is the anointed son of Osiris. These two characters of Horus the child and Horus the adult of thirty years are reproduced in the two phases to which the life of Jesus is limited in the gospels.
John furnishes no historic dates for the time when the Word was incarnated and became flesh, nor for the childhood of Jesus, nor for the transformation into the messiah. But Luke tells us that the child of twelve years was the wonderful youth, and that he increased in wisdom and stature[167]. This is the length of years assigned to Horus the child; and this phase of the child-Christ's life is followed by the baptism and anointing, the descent of the pubescent spirit with the consecration of the messiah in Jordan, when Jesus 'began to be about thirty years of age.' It has been sufficiently explained that the earliest anointing was the consecration of puberty; and here at the full age of the typical adult, the Christ who was previously a child, the child of the virgin mother, is suddenly made into the messiah, the Lord's anointed. And just as the second Horus was regenerated and this time begotten by the father, so in the transformation scene of the baptism in Jordan the voice of the father authentic- [p.413] ates the change into full adultship with the voice from heaven, 'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased'[168]; the spirit of pubescence or the ruach being represented by the descending dove, called the Spirit of God. Thus from the time when the child-Christ was about twelve years of age until that of the typical homme fait of Egypt, which was the age assigned to Horus when he became the adult god, there is no history. This is in exact accordance with the Kamite allegory of the double Horus. And the mythos alone will account for the chasm which is wide and deep enough to engulf a supposed history of eighteen years. Childhood cannot be carried beyond the twelfth year, and the child-Horus always remained the child, just as the child-Christ does in Italy and in the German folktales. The mythical record, founded on nature, went no further, and there the history consequently halts within the prescribed limits, to re-begin with the anointed and regenerated Christ at the age of Khem-Horus, the adult of thirty years.
As we have seen, the Christian Father, Clement Alexander, identifies the birthday of Christ with the great luni-solar festival of the youthful god Khunsu[169], which was determined by the full moon of Easter and Khunsu appears to be the mythical prototype that is more particularly reproduced in the gospel according to Luke. In his description of the 'heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will toward men,"' various authorities read 'peace, good pleasure amongst men.' This conveys a perfect rendering of the title of Khunsu, the 'NeferHept,' or divine child. Nefer signifies good, and hept means peace, luck, happiness, and therefore good pleasure. The Nefer-hept, or Iu-em-hept, was the youthful manifestor who represented the peace and good luck, pleasure or felicity, promised to men at his advent, and he is portrayed as the coming youth, a slim and lissom figure, always in a marching attitude[170]. The double Horus or twin Sut-Horus type of deity was unified in the one god as Khunsu-nefer-hept who is the good peace in person. At times he is called Khunsu-Ra, and at others Khunsu-Taht, in consequence of being the child of both the sun and moon. He is said to unite the two lots of Horus, the son of Isis, in one, and is designated the Lord Horus at the centre of the double earth, which he unites in one and thus abolishes the mid-wall of partition as god of full moon at the Easter equinox[171]. Khunsu might have been the Kamite prototype of the Christ set forth by Paul. 'For he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition ... for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.'[172] Not only were the twin brothers blended in him, he is also the God of gods, who was [p.414] especially entitled to say, 'I and my father are one.' He is called the 'illustrious seed of the entire lord, the issue of Kamutf,'[173] the male-mother, a mystical title of his parent Amen-Ra. He is the registrar of the decrees of this god, whose name signifies the hidden.*
* Amen. In the Roman Litany of the Mass the worshippers are taught to pray in these words: 'God Hidden, and my Saviour, have mercy upon us.'[174]
He was also the soli-lunar reckoner of time by the year, who carries the stylus and palm-branch in his hands, and on his head the full-moon of Easter which determined the festival of the resurrection in Egypt, as it still does in the cult of equinoctial Christolatry. Khunsu is the calculator of the length of life. He is said to give years to whom he chooses, to increase the length of life for those who obey his will; he asks years for whomsoever he pleases. Life issues from him and health is in him. He was likewise the divine healer par excellence amongst other healers and saviours, especially as the opponent of obsessing demons, and the caster-out of evil spirits. In the inscription of the Possessed Princess he is expressly called the 'Great God, driver away of possessing.'[175] or of obsessing spirits that enter the body. He has two characters, the sayer and the doer, or the word and the word made truth, as the dual divinity was described in his two aspects which are represented in the gospel of Luke as the 'Word and the Power.'[176] He is denominated the 'Giver of oracles' in one phase, 'Expeller of obsessing spirits' in the other. In the Stele of the Possessed Princess the image of this god is sent for by the chief of Bakhten that the god in effigy may come and cast out an obsessing spirit from his young daughter, Bentrash, who has 'an evil movement in her limbs.' Then Khunsu, the giver of oracles and expeller of demons, described as Khunsu-nefer-hept, having imparted 'his divine virtue fourfold to Khunsu the giver of oracles'—his other self—the god sets out for the land of Bakhten. He exorcized the evil spirit and cured the maiden. The demon recognizes the deity and says to Khunsu the bringer of peace, 'Thou hast come in peace, great god! driver away of obsessors; I am thy slave, I will go to the place whence I came to give peace to thy heart on account of thy journey here!'[177]
This character of Khunsu the exorcizer of evil spirits is especially reproduced in the Christ of Luke's gospel. Following his investiture with the messiahship and the conflict with the devil in the wilderness, he begins to teach and utter forth the logia; and it is recorded that 'they were astonished at his doctrine, for his Word was with Power.'
The proof of this follows in the performance of the healer's first miracle. 'There was a man which had an unclean devil.' This devil [p.415] likewise recognizes the divinity as the holy one of God. 'And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.' The evil spirit being cast out, the amazed witnesses said, 'What a word is this!' or 'What word is this?' the rendering being difficult in the absence of the doctrine, which was known, for example, to Faustus the Manichean, who affirmed that the power of Christ dwelt in the sun and his wisdom in the moon[178], which identifies him with the solilunar Khunsu-nefer-hept it might mean, in oriental style, what work is this?
When the obsessing demon departs from Bentrash it is on condition that the god will cause the prince of Bakhten to 'make a great sacrifice before (or to) that spirit.' This was done. 'He made a great sacrifice before Khunsu and that spirit upon a good day for them.'[179] The sacrifice stipulated for is not described, but it can be ascertained elsewhere.
Khunsu was the divinity of the month Pachons or Pa-khuns, the month of Khunsu, which began March 17 in the sacred year, or April 26 in the Alexandrian year. In the zodiac of Denderahi, Khunsu is portrayed standing in the disk of the full moon of Easter, after the vernal equinox had passed into the sign of Pisces. Here he is represented in the act of offering the pig, which he holds out straight in his extended left hand. Once a year only did the Egyptians eat the pig, and then as a sacrifice offered up at the full moon of Easter. Herodotus declined to give the reason for this custom[180]. The pig, however, had been a type of Typhon as Rerit the sow, and was continued as the sacrifice offered up by Khunsu for a propitiation or devil's tax to Typhon. When the luni-solar god had won the annual triumph over the powers of darkness, the pig of Typhon was offered up and eaten as the typical sacrifice. This was the custom ages before the picture was set in the decans of Pisces, to coincide with the year 255 BC. The festival of the pig in the full moon was the one by which the Egyptians had long regulated the Apis period, there being a great lunar celebration every twenty-second year.*
* Not only does the full moon still rule at Easter, the pig also suffers, is sacrificed and eaten. Bacon is the prescribed accompaniment of the eggs of Easter; and a gammon of bacon, even with many of the poor, is still the correct sign of the season. In a sermon preached at Blandford Forum, Dorset, January 17, 1570, dedicated to Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, it is stated, on p. 18, by William Kethe, minister, that 'on Good Friday the Roman Catholics offered unto Christe egges and bacon, to be in favour till Easter day be past.'[181]
The pig of the equinox passed into the later boar of the solstice. Khunsu standing in the disk of the full moon of Easter offers the pig as a sacrifice when he has attained the horizon of the resurrection at the vernal equinox, the exact date of which is determined by the full moon. Thus the sacrifice to be offered to Khunsu and Typhon [p.416] on a good day, in the land of Bakhten, would naturally be that of the pig[182].
So when the exorcist of demons casts out 'legion' there is a great sacrifice of swine. The devils entreat Jesus not to bid them depart into the abyss, but as a herd of swine were feeding on the mountain they ask permission to enter into these. 'And he gave them leave.' Then the devils came out of the man and entered the swine, which ran down into the lake[183]—exactly as it is in the Egyptian scenes of the judgment, where condemned souls are ordered back into the abyss, and they make the return passage down to the lake of primordial matter by taking the shape of swine. Horus also in the Ritual causes the transformation into the pig. 'Says Horus to the gods, When I sent hint to his place, he went, and he has been transformed into a black pig!' 'Hateful is the pig of Horus, turning his shape into the abomination of a great pig.'[184] Such a transformation originated in the lunar