THE MYTHIC CHRIST.
We have already seen the use that is made of Comparative Mythology
against Religion, and some of its most destructive attacks have been
levelled against the Christ. His birth of a Virgin at "Christmas," the
slaughter of the Innocents, His wonder-working and His teachings, His
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension--all these events in the story
of His life are pointed to in the stories of other lives, and His
historical existence is challenged on the strength of these identities.
So far as the wonder-working and the teachings are concerned, we may
briefly dismiss these first with the acknowledgment that most great
Teachers have wrought works which, on the physical plane, appear as
miracles in the sight of their contemporaries, but are known by
occultists to be done by the exercise of powers possessed by all
Initiates above a certain grade. The teachings He gave may also be
acknowledged to be non-original; but where the student of Comparative
Mythology thinks that he has proved that none is divinely inspired, when
he shows that similar moral teachings fell from the lips of Manu, from
the lips of the Buddha, from the lips of Jesus, the occultist says that
certainly Jesus must have repeated the teachings of His predecessors,
since He was a messenger from the same Lodge. The profound verities
touching the divine and the human Spirit were as much truths twenty
thousand years before Jesus was born in Palestine as after He was born;
and to say that the world was left without such teaching, and that man
was left in moral darkness from his beginnings to twenty centuries ago,
is to say that there was a humanity without a Teacher, children without
a Father, human souls crying for light into a darkness that gave them no
answer--a conception as blasphemous of God as it is desperate for man, a
conception contradicted by the appearance of every Sage, by the mighty
literature, by the noble lives, in the thousands of ages ere the Christ
came forth.
Recognising then in Jesus the great Master of the West, the leading
Messenger of the Lodge to the western world, we must face the difficulty
which has made havoc of this belief in the minds of many: Why are the
festivals that commemorate events in the life of Jesus found in
pre-Christian religions, and in them commemorate identical events in the
lives of other Teachers?
Comparative Mythology, which has drawn public attention to this question
in modern times, may be said to be about a century old, dating from the
appearance of Dulaure's _Histoire Abregee de differens Cultes_, of
Dupuis' _Origine de tous les Cultes_, of Moor's _Hindu Pantheon_, and of
Godfrey Higgins' _Anacalypsis_. These works were followed by a shoal of
others, growing more scientific and rigid in their collection and
comparison of facts, until it has become impossible for any educated
person to even challenge the identities and similarities existing in
every direction. Christians are not to be found, in these days, who are
prepared to contend that Christian symbols, rites, and ceremonies are
unique--except, indeed, among the ignorant. There we still behold
simplicity of belief hand-in-hand with ignorance of facts; but outside
this class we do not find even the most devout Christians alleging that
Christianity has not very much in common with faiths older than itself.
But it is well known that in the first centuries "after Christ" these
likenesses were on all hands admitted, and that modern Comparative
Mythology is only repeating with great precision that which was
universally recognised in the Early Church. Justin Martyr, for instance,
crowds his pages with references to the religions of his time, and if a
modern assailant of Christianity would cite a number of cases in which
Christian teachings are identical with those of elder religions, he can
find no better guides than the apologists of the second century. They
quote Pagan teachings, stories, and symbols, pleading that the very
identity of the Christian with these should prevent the off-hand
rejection of the latter as in themselves incredible. A curious reason
is, indeed, given for this identity, one that will scarcely find many
adherents in modern days. Says Justin Martyr: "Those who hand down the
myths which the poets have made adduce no proof to the youths who learn
them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the
influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human
race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the
Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished
by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the
impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the
things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales,
like the things which were said by the poets." "And the devils, indeed,
having heard this washing published by the prophet, instigated those who
enter their temples, and are about to approach them with libations and
burnt offerings, also to sprinkle themselves; and they cause them also
to wash themselves entirely as they depart." "Which [the Lord's Supper]
the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding
the same thing to be done."[175] "For I myself, when I discovered the
wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine
doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them,
laughed."[176]
These identities were thus regarded as the work of devils, copies of the
Christian originals, largely circulated in the pre-Christian world with
the object of prejudicing the reception of the truth when it came. There
is a certain difficulty in accepting the earlier statements as copies
and the later as originals, but without disputing with Justin Martyr
whether the copies preceded the original or the original the copies, we
may be content to accept his testimony as to the existence of these
identities between the faith flourishing in the Roman empire of his
time and the new religion he was engaged in defending.
Tertullian speaks equally plainly, stating the objection made in his
days also to Christianity, that "the nations who are strangers to all
understanding of spiritual powers, ascribe to their idols the imbuing of
waters with the self-same efficacy." "So they do," he answers quite
frankly, "but these cheat themselves with waters that are widowed. For
washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred
rites of some notorious Isis or Mithra; and the Gods themselves they
honour by washings.... At the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they
are baptised; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is
the regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their
perjuries. Which fact, being acknowledged, we recognise here also the
zeal of the devil rivalling the things of God, while we find him too
practising baptism in his subjects."[177]
To solve the difficulty of these identities we must study the Mythic
Christ, the Christ of the solar myths or legends, these myths being the
pictorial forms in which certain profound truths were given to the
world.
Now a "myth" is by no means what most people imagine it to be--a mere
fanciful story erected on a basis of fact, or even altogether apart from
fact. A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a
story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances
that cast the shadows. As above so below; and _first_ above and _then_
below. There are certain great principles according to which our system
is built; there are certain laws by which these principles are worked
out in detail; there are certain Beings who embody the principles and
whose activities are the laws; there are hosts of inferior beings who
act as vehicles for these activities, as agents, as instruments; there
are the Egos of men intermingled with all these, performing their share
of the great kosmic drama. These multifarious workers in the invisible
worlds cast their shadows on physical matter, and these shadows are
"things"--the bodies, the objects, that make up the physical universe.
These shadows give but a poor idea of the objects that cast them, just
as what we call shadows down here give but a poor idea of the objects
that cast them; they are mere outlines, with blank darkness in lieu of
details, and have only length and breadth, no depth.
History is an account, very imperfect and often distorted, of the dance
of these shadows in the shadow-world of physical matter. Anyone who has
seen a clever Shadow-Play, and has compared what goes on behind the
screen on which the shadows are cast with the movements of the shadows
on the screen, may have a vivid idea of the illusory nature of the
shadow-actions, and may draw therefrom several not misleading
analogies.[178]
Myth is an account of the movements of those who cast the shadows; and
the language in which the account is given is what is called the
language of symbols. Just as here we have words which stand for
things--as the word "table" is a symbol for a recognised article of a
certain kind--so do symbols stand for objects on higher planes. They are
a pictorial alphabet, used by all myth-writers, and each has its
recognised meaning. A symbol is used to signify a certain object just as
words are used down here to distinguish one thing from another, and so a
knowledge of symbols is necessary for the reading of a myth. For the
original tellers of great myths are ever Initiates, who are accustomed
to use the symbolic language, and who, of course, use symbols in their
fixed and accepted meanings.
A symbol has a chief meaning, and then various subsidiary meanings
related to that chief meaning. For instance, the Sun is the symbol of
the Logos; that is its chief or primary significance. But it stands also
for an incarnation of the Logos, or for any of the great Messengers who
represent Him for the time, as an ambassador represents his King. High
Initiates who are sent on special missions to incarnate among men and
live with them for a time as Rulers or Teachers, would be designated by
the symbol of the Sun; for though it is not their symbol in an
individual sense, it is theirs in virtue of their office.
All those who are signified by this symbol have certain characteristics,
pass through certain situations, perform certain activities, during
their lives on earth. The Sun is the physical shadow, or body, as it is
called, of the Logos; hence its yearly course in nature reflects His
activity, in the partial way in which a shadow represents the activity
of the object that casts it. The Logos, "the Son of God," descending
into matter, has as shadow the annual course of the Sun, and the
Sun-Myth tells it. Hence, again, an incarnation of the Logos, or one of
His high ambassadors, will also represent that activity, shadow-like, in
His body as a man. Thus will necessarily arise identities in the
life-histories of these ambassadors. In fact, the absence of such
identities would at once point out that the person concerned was not a
full ambassador, and that his mission was of a lower order.
The Solar Myth, then, is a story which primarily representing the
activity of the Logos, or Word, in the kosmos, secondarily embodies the
life of one who is an incarnation of the Logos, or is one of His
ambassadors. The Hero of the myth is usually represented as a God, or
Demi-God, and his life, as will be understood by what has been said
above, must be outlined by the course of the Sun, as the shadow of the
Logos. The part of the course lived out during the human life is that
which falls between the winter solstice and the reaching of the zenith
in summer. The Hero is born at the winter solstice, dies at the spring
equinox, and, conquering death, rises into mid-heaven.
The following remarks are interesting in this connection, though looking
at myth in a more general way, as an allegory, picturing inner truths:
"Alfred de Vigny has said that legend is frequently more true than
history, because legend recounts not acts which are often incomplete
and abortive, but the genius itself of great men and great nations. It
is pre-eminently to the Gospel that this beautiful thought is
applicable, for the Gospel is not merely the narration of what has been;
it is the sublime narration of what is and what always will be. Ever
will the Saviour of the world be adored by the kings of intelligence,
represented by the Magi; ever will He multiply the eucharistic bread, to
nourish and comfort our souls; ever, when we invoke Him in the night and
the tempest, will He come to us walking on the waters, ever will He
stretch forth His hand and make us pass over the crests of the billows;
ever will He cure our distempers and give back light to our eyes; ever
will He appear to His faithful, luminous and transfigured upon Tabor,
interpreting the law of Moses and moderating the zeal of Elias."[179]
We shall find that myths are very closely related to the Mysteries, for
part of the Mysteries consisted in showing living pictures of the
occurrences in the higher worlds that became embodied in myths. In fact
in the Pseudo-Mysteries, mutilated fragments of the living pictures of
the true Mysteries were represented by actors who acted out a drama, and
many secondary myths are these dramas put into words.
The broad outlines of the story of the Sun-God are very clear, the
eventful life of the Sun-God being spanned within the first six months
of the solar year, the other six being employed in the general
protecting and preserving. He is always born at the winter solstice,
after the shortest day in the year, at the midnight of the 24th of
December, when the sign Virgo is rising above the horizon; born as this
sign is rising, he is born always of a virgin, and she remains a virgin
after she has given birth to her Sun-Child, as the celestial Virgo
remains unchanged and unsullied when the Sun comes forth from her in the
heavens. Weak, feeble as an infant is he, born when the days are
shortest and the nights are longest--we are on the north of the
equatorial line--surrounded with perils in his infancy, and the reign of
the darkness far longer than his in his early days. But he lives
through all the threatening dangers, and the day lengthens towards the
spring equinox, till the time comes for the crossing over, the
crucifixion, the date varying with each year. The Sun-God is sometimes
found sculptured within the circle of the horizon, with the head and
feet touching the circle at north and south, and the outstretched hands
at east and west--"He was crucified." After this he rises triumphantly
and ascends into heaven, and ripens the corn and the grape, giving his
very life to them to make their substance and through them to his
worshippers. The God who is born at the dawning of December 25th is ever
crucified at the spring equinox, and ever gives his life as food to his
worshippers--these are among the most salient marks of the Sun-God. The
fixity of the birth-date and the variableness of the death-date are full
of significance, when we remember that the one is a fixed and the other
a variable solar position. "Easter" is a movable event, calculated by
the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year
by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and
indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing
dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the Hero of a solar
myth.
These events are reproduced in the lives of the various Solar Gods, and
antiquity teems with illustrations of them. Isis of Egypt like Mary of
Bethlehem was our Immaculate Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven,
Mother of God. We see her in pictures standing on the crescent moon,
star-crowned; she nurses her child Horus, and the cross appears on the
back of the seat in which he sits on his mother's knee. The Virgo of the
Zodiac is represented in ancient drawings as a woman suckling a
child--the type of all future Madonnas with their divine Babes, showing
the origin of the symbol. Devaki is likewise figured with the divine
Krishna in her arms, as is Mylitta, or Istar, of Babylon, also
with the recurrent crown of stars, and with her child Tammuz on her
knee. Mercury and Aesculapius, Bacchus and Hercules, Perseus and the
Dioscuri, Mithras and Zarathustra, were all of divine and human birth.
The relation of the winter solstice to Jesus is also significant. The
birth of Mithras was celebrated in the winter solstice with great
rejoicings, and Horus was also then born: "His birth is one of the
greatest mysteries of the [Egyptian] religion. Pictures representing it
appeared on the walls of temples.... He was the child of Deity. At
Christmas time, or that answering to our festival, his image was brought
out of the sanctuary with peculiar ceremonies, as the image of the
infant Bambino is still brought out and exhibited at Rome."[180]
On the fixing of the 25th December as the birthday of Jesus, Williamson
has the following: "All Christians know that the 25th December is _now_
the recognised festival of the birth of Jesus, but few are aware that
this has not always been so. There have been, it is said, one hundred
and thirty-six different dates fixed on by different Christian sects.
Lightfoot gives it as 15th September, others as in February or August.
Epiphanius mentions two sects, one celebrating it in June, the other in
July. The matter was finally settled by Pope Julius I., in 337 A.D., and
S. Chrysostom, writing in 390, says: 'On this day [_i.e._ 25th December]
also the birth of Christ was lately fixed at Rome, in order that while
the heathen were busy with their ceremonies [the Brumalia, in honour of
Bacchus] the Christians might perform their rites undisturbed.' Gibbon
in his _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, writes: 'The [Christian]
Romans, as ignorant as their brethren of the real date of his [Christ's
birth] fixed the solemn festival to the 25th December, the Brumalia or
winter solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the birth of the
Sun.' King, in his _Gnostics and their Remains_, also says: 'The ancient
festival held on the 25th December in honour of the birthday of the
Invincible One,[181] and celebrated by the great games at the Circus,
was afterwards transferred to the commemoration of the birth of Christ,
the precise date of which many of the Fathers confess was then unknown;'
while at the present day Canon Farrar writes that 'all attempts to
discover the month and day of the nativity are useless. No data whatever
exist to enable us to determine them with even approximate accuracy.'
From the foregoing it is apparent that the great festival of the winter
solstice has been celebrated during past ages, and in widely separated
lands, in honour of the birth of a God, who is almost invariably alluded
to as a 'Saviour,' and whose mother is referred to as a pure virgin. The
striking resemblances, too, which have been instanced not only in the
birth but in the life of so many of these Saviour-Gods are far too
numerous to be accounted for by any mere coincidence."[182]
In the case of the Lord Buddha we may see how a myth attaches itself to
a historical personage. The story of His life is well known, and in the
current Indian accounts the birth-story is simple and human. But in the
Chinese account He is born of a virgin, Mayadevi, the archaic myth
finding in Him a new Hero.
Williamson also tells us that fires were and are lighted on the 25th
December on the hills among Keltic peoples, and these are still known
among the Irish and the Scotch Highlanders as Bheil or Baaltinne, the
fires thus bearing the name of Bel, Bal, or Baal, their ancient Deity,
the Sun-God, though now lighted in honour of Christ.[183]
Rightly considered, the Christmas festival should take on new elements
of rejoicing and of sacredness, when the lovers of Christ see in it the
repetition of an ancient solemnity, see it stretching all the world
over, and far, far back into dim antiquity; so that the Christmas bells
are ringing throughout human history, and sound musically out of the
far-off night of time. Not in exclusive possession, but in universal
acceptance, is found the hallmark of truth.
The death-date, as said above, is not a fixed one, like the birth-date.
The date of the death is calculated by the relative positions of Sun and
Moon at the spring equinox, varying with each year, and the death-date
of each Solar Hero is found to be celebrated in this connection. The
animal adopted as the symbol of the Hero is the sign of the Zodiac in
which the Sun is at the vernal equinox of his age, and this varies with
the precession of the equinoxes. Oannes of Assyria had the sign of
Pisces, the Fish, and is thus figured. Mithra is in Taurus, and,
therefore, rides on a Bull, and Osiris was worshipped as Osiris-Apis, or
Serapis, the Bull. Merodach of Babylon was worshipped as a Bull, as was
Astarte of Syria. When the Sun is in the sign of Aries, the Ram or Lamb,
we have Osiris again as Ram, and so also Astarte, and Jupiter Ammon, and
it is this same animal that became the symbol of Jesus--the Lamb of God.
The use of the Lamb as His symbol, often leaning on a cross, is common
in the sculptures of the catacombs. On this Williamson says: "In the
course of time the Lamb was represented on the cross, but it was not
until the sixth synod of Constantinople, held about the year 680, that
it was ordained that instead of the ancient symbol, the figure of a
_man_ fastened to a cross should be represented. This canon was
confirmed by Pope Adrian I."[184] The very ancient Pisces is also
assigned to Jesus, and He is thus pictured in the catacombs.
The death and resurrection of the Solar Hero at or about the vernal
equinox is as wide-spread as his birth at the winter solstice. Osiris
was then slain by Typhon, and He is pictured on the circle of the
horizon, with outstretched arms, as if crucified--a posture originally
of benediction, not of suffering. The death of Tammuz was annually
bewailed at the spring equinox in Babylonia and Syria, as were Adonis in
Syria and Greece, and Attis in Phrygia, pictured "as a man fastened with
a lamb at the foot."[185] Mithras' death was similarly celebrated in
Persia, and that of Bacchus and Dionysius--one and the same--in Greece.
In Mexico the same idea re-appears, as usual accompanied with the cross.
In all these cases the mourning for the death is immediately followed by
the rejoicing over the resurrection, and on this it is interesting to
notice that the name of Easter has been traced to the virgin-mother of
the slain Tammuz, Ishtar.[186]
It is interesting also to notice that the fast preceding the death at
the vernal equinox,--the modern Lent--is found in Mexico, Egypt, Persia,
Babylon, Assyria, Asia Minor, in some cases definitely for forty
days.[187]
In the Pseudo-Mysteries, the Sun-God story was dramatised, and in the
ancient Mysteries it was lived by the Initiate, and hence the solar
"myths" and the great facts of Initiation became interwoven together.
Hence when the Master Christ became the Christ of the Mysteries, the
legends of the older Heroes of those Mysteries gathered round Him, and
the stories were again recited with the latest divine Teacher as the
representative of the Logos in the Sun. Then the festival of His
nativity became the immemorial date when the Sun was born of the Virgin,
when the midnight sky was filled with the rejoicing hosts of the
celestials, and
Very early, very early, Christ was born.
As the great legend of the Sun gathered round Him, the sign of the Lamb
became that of His crucifixion as the sign of the Virgin had become that
of His birth. We have seen that the Bull was sacred to Mithras and the
Fish to Oannes, and that the Lamb was sacred to Christ, and for the same
reason; it was the sign of the spring equinox, at the period of history
in which He crossed the great circle of the horizon, was "crucified in
space."
These Sun myths, ever recurring throughout the ages, with a different
name for their Hero in each new recension, cannot pass unrecognised by
the student, though they may naturally and rightly be ignored by the
devotee; and when they are used as a weapon to mutilate or destroy the
majestic figure of the Christ, they must be met, not by denying the
facts, but by understanding the deeper meaning of the stories, the
spiritual truths that the legends expressed under a veil.
Why have these legends mingled with the history of Jesus, and
crystallised round Him, as a historical personage? These are really the
stories not of a particular individual named Jesus but of the universal
Christ; of a Man who symbolised a Divine Being, and who represented a
fundamental truth in nature; a Man who filled a certain office and held
a certain characteristic position towards humanity; standing towards
humanity in a special relationship, renewed age after age, as generation
succeeded generation, as race gave way to race. Hence He was, as are all
such, the "Son of Man," a peculiar and distinctive title, the title of
an office, not of an individual. The Christ of the Solar Myth was the
Christ of the Mysteries, and we find the secret of the mythic in the
mystic Christ.