Religion having been based upon the worship of personified nature, it
is evident that its founders fabricated its dogmatic element from their
conceptions of her destructive and reproductive processes as manifested
in the rotation and diversity of the seasons. The apparent retreat of
the sun from the earth, in winter, and his return in the spring,
suggesting the idea of a figurative death and resurrection of the
genius of that luminary, they applied these phenomena of the year to
man, and composed the allegories relative to his fall and redemption,
as inculcated in the Exoteric Creed. In the allegory relating to the
fall, it was taught that, after making the first human pair, the Lord
of Good or the Lord God placed them in a beautiful garden--corresponding
to the seasons of fruits and flowers or months of Spring and Summer,
with the injunction, under a penalty, not to eat of the fruit of a
certain tree. When the Lord of Evil, or Devil, symbolized by the serpent
and represented by the constellation "Serpens" placed in conjunction
with the Autumnal Equinox, meeting them on the confines of his dominion,
and tempting the woman, and she the man, they ate of the forbidden
fruit; thus, falling from their first estate, and committing the
original sin, they involved the whole human race in the consequences
of their disobedience. Then the Lord God, pronouncing a curse against
the serpent, clothed the man and woman with skins to protect them
against the inclemency of his, dominion as Lord of Evil, and drove them
from the garden; after which they were necessitated to earn their bread
by tilling the ground.
In, reference to the plan of redemption, the ancient Astrologers
divided the 6,000 years appropriated to man, as the duration of his
race on earth, into ten equal cycles, and taught that at the conclusion
of each God Sol, as Lord of Good, would manifest himself in the flesh,
to destroy his works as Lord of Evil, and through suffering and death
make an atonement for sin. Thus having originated the doctrines of
original sin, incarnation and vicarious atonement, as parts of the plan
of redemption, and making its finale correspond, in point of time, to
the conclusion of the 12,000 year cycle, their successors in the
priestly office ultimately inculcated the additional dogmas of the
general judgment and future rewards and punishments, as we have shown
in our introduction.
Having based the fables of the fall and redemption of man upon the idea
that he was impelled, without his volition, to pass from the dominion
of God to that of the Devil, or in other words, upon his subjection to
the inexorable necessity which makes the inclement seasons of Autumn
and Winter succeed the beneficent ones of Spring and Summer, its
authors composed the original of the text which, found in Romans viii.,
20, reads that "The creature was made subject to vanity (Evil), not
willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope."
But for the popular teaching in favor of its being literal history, no
one could read the account of the fall of man, as recorded in the third
chapter of Genesis, without recognizing it as simply an allegory; or
fail to realize, the force of the argument of no fall, no redemption,
and if no redemption, no God to reward or Devil to punish; no hell to
suffer, or heaven to enjoy. The fact is that these are but antithetical
ideas which came in together, and must survive or perish together. They
cannot be separated without destroying the whole theological fabric.