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Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning

Edward Carpenter

III. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC

The Vernal Equinox has all over the ancient world, and
from the earliest times, been a period of rejoicing and of
festivals in honor of the Sungod. It is needless to labor
a point which is so well known. Everyone understands
and appreciates the joy of finding that the long darkness
is giving way, that the Sun is growing in strength, and
that the days are winning a victory over the nights. The
birds and flowers reappear, and the promise of Spring is
in the air. But it may be worth while to give an elementary
explanation of the ASTRONOMICAL meaning of this period,
because this is not always understood, and yet it is very
important in its bearing on the rites and creeds of the early
religions. The priests who were, as I have said, the early
students and inquirers, had worked out this astronomical
side, and in that way were able to fix dates and
to frame for the benefit of the populace myths and legends,
which were in a certain sense explanations of the order of
Nature, and a kind of "popular science."

The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line
or circle girdling the Earth half-way between the North
and South poles. If you imagine a transparent Earth with
a light at its very centre, and also imagine the SHADOW
of this equatorial line to be thrown on the vast concave
of the Sky, this shadow would in astronomical parlance
coincide with the Equator of the Sky--forming an imaginary
circle half-way between the North and South celestial poles.

The Equator, then, may be pictured as cutting across the
sky either by day or by night, and always at the same
elevation--that is, as seen from any one place. But the
Ecliptic (the other important great circle of the heavens)
can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations
as they are seen at NIGHT. It is in fact the Sun's path
among the fixed stars. For (really owing to the Earth's
motion in its orbit) the Sun appears to move round
the heavens once a year--travelling, always to the left,
from constellation to constellation. The exact path of
the sun is called the Ecliptic; and the band of sky on either
side of the Ecliptic which may be supposed to include
the said constellations is called the Zodiac. How then--
it will of course be asked--seeing that the Sun and the Stars
can never be seen together--were the Priests ABLE to map
out the path of the former among the latter? Into that
question we need not go. Sufficient to say that they succeeded;
and their success--even with the very primitive instruments
they had--shows that their astronomical knowledge
and acuteness of reasoning were of no mean order.

To return to our Vernal Equinox. Let us suppose that
the Equator and Ecliptic of the sky, at the Spring season,
are represented by two lines Eq. and Ecl. crossing each
other at the point P. The Sun, represented by the small
circle, is moving slowly and in its annual course along the
Ecliptic to the left. When it reaches the point P (the
dotted circle) it stands on the Equator of the sky, and then
for a day or two, being neither North nor South, it
shines on the two terrestrial hemispheres alike, and day and
night are equal. BEFORE that time, when the sun is low
down in the heavens, night has the advantage, and the
days are short; AFTERWARDS, when the Sun has travelled more
to the left, the days triumph over the nights. It will be seen
then that this point P where the Sun's path crosses the Equator
is a very critical point. It is the astronomical location
of the triumph of the Sungod and of the arrival of Spring.

How was this location defined? Among what stars was
the Sun moving at that critical moment? (For of course
it was understood, or supposed, that the Sun was deeply
influenced by the constellation through which it was, or
appeared to be, moving.) It seems then that at the
period when these questions were occupying men's minds
--say about three thousand years ago--the point where
the Ecliptic crossed the Equator was, as a matter of
fact, in the region of the constellation Aries or the he-
Lamb. The triumph of the Sungod was therefore, and quite
naturally, ascribed to the influence of Aries. THE LAMB
BECAME THE SYMBOL OF THE RISEN SAVIOR, AND OF HIS PASSAGE
FROM THE UNDERWORLD INTO THE HEIGHT OF HEAVEN. At first such
an explanation sounds hazardous; but a thousand texts and
references confirm it; and it is only by the accumulation
of evidence in these cases that the student becomes convinced
of a theory's correctness. It must also be remembered
(what I have mentioned before) that these myths and legends
were commonly adopted not only for one strict reason but
because they represented in a general way the convergence of
various symbols and inferences.

Let me enumerate a few points with regard to the Vernal
Equinox. In the Bible the festival is called the Passover,
and its supposed institution by Moses is related in Exodus,
ch. xii. In every house a he-lamb was to be slain,
and its blood to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the
house. Then the Lord would pass over and not smite that
house. The Hebrew word is pasach, to pass.[1] The lamb
slain was called the Paschal Lamb. But what was that
lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb--(though certainly
the earthly lambs on the hillsides WERE just then ready
to be killed and eaten)--but the heavenly Lamb, which
was slain or sacrificed when the Lord "passed over" the
equator and obliterated the constellation Aries. This was
the Lamb of God which was slain each year, and "Slain
since the foundation of the world." This period of the
Passover (about the 25th March) was to be[2] the beginning
of a new year. The sacrifice of the Lamb, and its blood,
were to be the promise of redemption. The door-frames of the
houses--symbols of the entrance into a new life--were
to be sprinkled with blood.[3] Later, the imagery of the
saving power of the blood of the Lamb became more
popular, more highly colored. (See St. Paul's epistles, and
the early Fathers.) And we have the expression "washed
in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian
Church.

[1] It is said that pasach sometimes means not so much to pass
over, as to hover over and so protect. Possibly both meanings
enter in here. See Isaiah xxxi. 5.

[2] See Exodus xii. i.

[3] It is even said (see The Golden Bough, vol. iii, 185) that
the doorways of houses and temples in Peru were at the Spring
festival daubed with blood of the first-born children--commuted
afterwards to the blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as
to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that
it was a custom of the people there to "smear the outside of
their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and
ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest"
(Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).


In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression
and its origin we must turn for a moment to the worship
both of Mithra, the Persian Sungod, and of Attis the Syrian
god, as throwing great light on the Christian cult and
ceremonies. It must be remembered that in the early centuries
of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole Western
world. It has left many monuments of itself here
in Britain. At Rome the worship was extremely popular,
and it may almost be said to have been a matter
of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity,
or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the
rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in
the face of the latter.

Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra
cult the slaying of a Bull by the Sungod occupies the same
sort of place as the slaving of the Lamb in the Christian
cult. It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the blood
of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue.
Mithraism was a greatly older religion than Christianity;
but its genesis was similar. In fact, owing to the Precession
of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of the Ecliptic and
Equator was different at the time of the establishment
of Mithra-worship from what it was in the Christian period;
and the Sun instead of standing in the He-lamb, or Aries,
at the Vernal Equinox stood, about two thousand years
earlier (as indicated by the dotted line in the diagram), in this
very constellation of the Bull.[1] The bull
therefore became the symbol of the triumphant God, and the
sacrifice of the bull a holy mystery. (Nor must we
overlook here the agricultural appropriateness of the bull as
the emblem of Spring-plowings and of service to man.)

[1] With regard to this point, see an article in the Nineteenth
Century for September 1900, by E. W. Maunder of the Greenwich
Observatory on "The Oldest Picture Book" (the Zodiac). Mr.
Maunder calculates that the Vernal Equinox was in the centre of
the Sign of the Bull 5,000 years ago. [It would therefore be in
the centre of Aries 2,845 years ago--allowing 2,155 years for the
time occupied in passing from one Sign to another.] At the
earlier period the Summer solstice was in the centre of Leo, the
Autumnal equinox in the centre of Scorpio, and the Winter
solstice in the centre of Aquarius--corresponding
roughly, Mr. Maunder points out, to the positions of the
four "Royal Stars," Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut.


The sacrifice of the Bull became the image of redemption.
In a certain well-known Mithra-sculpture or group, the Sungod
is represented as plunging his dagger into a bull, while
a scorpion, a serpent, and other animals are sucking the
latter's blood. From one point of view this may be taken as
symbolic of the Sun fertilizing the gross Earth by plunging
his rays into it and so drawing forth its blood for the
sustenance of all creatures; while from another more astronomical
aspect it symbolizes the conquest of the Sun over winter
in the moment of "passing over" the sign of the Bull, and the
depletion of the generative power of the Bull by the Scorpion
--which of course is the autumnal sign of the Zodiac and
herald of winter. One such Mithraic group was found at
Ostia, where there was a large subterranean Temple "to the
invincible god Mithras."

In the worship of Attis there were (as I have already indicated)
many points of resemblance to the Christian
cult. On the 22nd March (the Vernal Equinox) a pinetree
was cut in the woods and brought into the Temple of
Cybele. It was treated almost as a divinity, was decked
with violets, and the effigy of a young man tied to the stem
(cf. the Crucifixion). The 24th was called the "Day of
Blood"; the High Priest first drew blood from his own
arms; and then the others gashed and slashed themselves,
and spattered the altar and the sacred tree with blood; while
novices made themselves eunuchs "for the kingdom of
heaven's sake." The effigy was afterwards laid in a tomb.
But when night fell, says Dr. Frazer,[1] sorrow was turned to
joy. A light was brought, and the tomb was found to
be empty. The next day, the 25th, was the festival of
the Resurrection; and ended in carnival and license (the
Hilaria). Further, says Dr. Frazer, these mysteries "seem
to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of
blood."

[1] See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Part IV of The Golden Bough, by
J. G. Frazer, p. 229.


"In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and
wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of
which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned
with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold
leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed
to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood
poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received
with devout eagerness by the worshiper on every part of
his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit,
drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to
receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows--as
one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed
away his sins in the blood of the bull."[1] And Frazer continuing
says: "That the bath of blood derived from slaughter
of the bull (tauro-bolium) was believed to regenerate
the devotee for eternity is proved by an inscription
found at Rome, which records that a certain Sextilius
Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and
the mother of the gods (Cybele) was taurobolio criobolio que
in aeternum renatus."[2] "In the procedure of the Taurobolia
and Criobolia," says Mr. J. M. Robertson,[3] "which
grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the literal
and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of
the lamb'[4]; the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal
life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the
actual blood of a sacrificial bull or ram."[5] For the
POPULARITY of the rite we may quote Franz Cumont, who
says:--"Cette douche sacree (taurobolium) pareit avoir ete
administree en Cappadoce dans un grand nombre de sanctuaires, et
en particulier dans ceux de Ma la grande divinite
indigene, et dans ceux: de Anahita."

[1] See vol. i, pp. 334 ff.

[2] Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius,
and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8.

[3] That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of
the ram born again into eternity."

[4] Pagan Christs, p. 315.

[5] Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153.


Whether Mr. Robertson is right in ascribing to the priests
(as he appears to do) so materialistic a view of the
potency of the actual blood is, I should say, doubtful. I
do not myself see that there is any reason for supposing that
the priests of Mithra or Attis regarded baptism by
blood very differently from the way in which the Christian
Church has generally regarded baptism by water--namely,
as a SYMBOL of some inner regeneration. There may certainly
have been a little more of the MAGICAL view and a little
less of the symbolic, in the older religions; but the
difference was probably on the whole more one of degree
than of essential disparity. But however that may be,
we cannot but be struck by the extraordinary analogy
between the tombstone inscriptions of that period "born
again into eternity by the blood of the Bull or the Ram,"
and the corresponding texts in our graveyards to-day.
F. Cumont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs
aux Mysteres de Mithra (2 vols., Brussels, 1899) gives
a great number of texts and epitaphs of the same character
as that above-quoted, and they are well worth studying
by those interested in the subject. Cumont, it may be
noted (vol. i, p. 305), thinks that the story of Mithra and
the slaying of the Bull must have originated among some
pastoral people to whom the bull was the source of all life.
The Bull in heaven--the symbol of the triumphant Sungod--
and the earthly bull, sacrificed for the good of humanity
were one and the same; the god, in fact, SACRIFICED HIMSELF
OR HIS REPRESENTATIVE. And Mithra was the hero who first
won this conception of divinity for mankind--though of
course it is in essence quite similar to the conception put
forward by the Christian Church.

As illustrating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was
accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer
quotes an ancient writer[1] who says that for some time after
the ceremony the fiction of a new birth was kept up
by dieting the devotee on MILK, like a new-born babe.
And it is interesting in that connection to find that even in
the present day a diet of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT MILK for
six or eight weeks is by many doctors recommended as
the only means of getting rid of deep-seated illnesses
and enabling a patient's organism to make a completely new
start in life.

[1] Sallustius philosophus. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, note,
p. 229.


"At Rome," he further says (p. 230), "the new birth and
the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood appear
to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the
Phrygian Goddess (Cybele) on the Vatican Hill, at or near
the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter's now stands;
for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when
the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From
the Vatican as a centre," he continues, "this barbarous system
of superstition seems to have spread to other parts of
the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany
prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that
of the Vatican."

It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early
days of the Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials
of Mithra and Cybele, probably much intermingled and
blended, were exceedingly popular. Both religions had been
recognized by the Roman State, and the Christians, persecuted
and despised as they were, found it hard to make any
headway against them--the more so perhaps because the
Christian doctrines appeared in many respects to be merely
faint replicas and copies of the older creeds. Robertson
maintains[1] that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the
Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying[2]
that "a place near the equinoctial circle was assigned to
Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he
bears the sword of the Ram [Aries] which is a sign of Mars
[Ares]." Similarly among the early Christians, it is said,
a ram or lamb was sacrificed in the Paschal mystery.

[1] Pagan Christs, p. 336.

[2] De Antro, xxiv.


Many people think that the association of the Lamb-god
with the Cross arose from the fact that the constellation
Aries at that time WAS on the heavenly cross (the
crossways of the Ecliptic and Equator-see diagram, ch.
iii), and in the very place through which the Sungod
had to pass just before his final triumph. And it is
curious to find that Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho[1]
(a Jew) alludes to an old Jewish practice of roasting a Lamb on
spits arranged in the form of a Cross. "The lamb,"
he says, meaning apparently the Paschal lamb, "is roasted
and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed
right through the lower parts up to the head, and one
across the back, to which are attached the legs [forelegs] of
the lamb."

[1] Ch. xl.


To-day in Morocco at the festival of Eid-el-Kebir, corresponding
to the Christian Easter, the Mohammedans sacrifice
a young ram and hurry it still bleeding to the precincts
of the Mosque, while at the same time every household slays
a lamb, as in the Biblical institution, for its family feast.

But it will perhaps be said, "You are going too fast and
proving too much. In the anxiety to show that the
Lamb-god and the sacrifice of the Lamb were honored
by the devotees of Mithra and Cybele in the Rome of the
Christian era, you are forgetting that the sacrifice of the
Bull and the baptism in bull's blood were the salient
features of the Persian and Phrygian ceremonials, some centuries
earlier. How can you reconcile the existence side
by side of divinities belonging to such different periods, or
ascribe them both to an astronomical origin?" The answer
is simple enough. As I have explained before, the Precession of
the Equinoxes caused the Sun, at its moment
of triumph over the powers of darkness, to stand at one period
in the constellation of the Bull, and at a period some
two thousand years later in the constellation of the Ram.
It was perfectly natural therefore that a change in the
sacred symbols should, in the course of time, take place;
yet perfectly natural also that these symbols, having once
been consecrated and adopted, should continue to be
honored and clung to long after the time of their astronomical
appropriateness had passed, and so to be found side by
side in later centuries. The devotee of Mithra or Attis
on the Vatican Hill at Rome in the year 200 A.D. probably
had as little notion or comprehension of the real origin of
the sacred Bull or Ram which he adored, as the Christian in
St. Peter's to-day has of the origin of the Lamb-god whose
vicegerent on earth is the Pope.

It is indeed easy to imagine that the change from the
worship of the Bull to the worship of the Lamb which
undoubtedly took place among various peoples as time
went on, was only a ritual change initiated by the priests
in order to put on record and harmonize with the astronomical
alteration. Anyhow it is curious that while Mithra
in the early times was specially associated with the bull,
his association with the lamb belonged more to the Roman
period. Somewhat the same happened in the case of Attis.
In the Bible we read of the indignation of Moses at the
setting up by the Israelites of a Golden Calf, AFTER the
sacrifice of the ram-lamb had been instituted--as if indeed
the rebellious people were returning to the earlier
cult of Apis which they ought to have left behind them in
Egypt. In Egypt itself, too, we find the worship of
Apis, as time went on, yielding place to that of the Ram-
headed god Amun, or Jupiter Ammon.[1] So that both
from the Bible and from Egyptian history we may conclude
that the worship of the Lamb or Ram succeeded to
the worship of the Bull.

[1] Tacitus (Hist. v. 4) speaks of ram-sacrifice by the Jews in
honor of Jupiter Ammon. See also Herodotus (ii. 42) on the same
in Egypt.


Finally it has been pointed out, and there may be some
real connection in the coincidence, that in the quite early
years of Christianity the FISH came in as an accepted symbol
of Jesus Christ. Considering that after the domination
of Taurus and Aries, the Fish (Pisces) comes next in succession
as the Zodiacal sign for the Vernal Equinox, and
is now the constellation in which the Sun stands at that
period, it seems not impossible that the astronomical change
has been the cause of the adoption of this new symbol.

Anyhow, and allowing for possible errors or exaggerations,
it becomes clear that the travels of the Sun through
the belt of constellations which forms the Zodiac must
have had, from earliest times, a profound influence on
the generation of religious myths and legends. To say
that it was the only influence would certainly be a mistake.
Other causes undoubtedly contributed. But it was a main
and important influence. The origins of the Zodiac are
obscure; we do not know with any certainty the reasons
why the various names were given to its component sections,
nor can we measure the exact antiquity of these names; but
--pre-supposing the names of the signs as once given--it
is not difficult to imagine the growth of legends connected
with the Sun's course among them.

Of all the ancient divinities perhaps Hercules is the one
whose role as a Sungod is most generally admitted. The
helper of gods and men, a mighty Traveller, and invoked
everywhere as the Saviour, his labors for the good of the
world became ultimately defined and systematized as
twelve and corresponding in number to the signs of the
Zodiac. It is true that this systematization only took place
at a late period, probably in Alexandria; also that the
identification of some of the Labors with the actual
signs as we have them at present is not always clear. But
considering the wide prevalence of the Hercules myth over
the ancient world and the very various astronomical systems
it must have been connected with in its origin, this lack of
exact correspondence is hardly to be wondered at.

The Labors of Hercules which chiefly interest us are:
(1) The capture of the Bull, (2) the slaughter of the Lion,
(3) the destruction of the Hydra, (4) of the Boar, (5) the
cleansing of the stables of Augeas, (6) the descent into
Hades and the taming of Cerberus. The first of these is
in line with the Mithraic conquest of the Bull; the Lion is
of course one of the most prominent constellations of the
Zodiac, and its conquest is obviously the work of a Saviour
of mankind; while the last four labors connect themselves
very naturally with the Solar conflict in winter against
the powers of darkness. The Boar (4) we have seen
already as the image of Typhon, the prince of darkness;
the Hydra (3) was said to be the offspring of Typhon;
the descent into Hades (6)--generally associated with
Hercules' struggle with and victory over Death--links
on to the descent of the Sun into the underworld, and its
long and doubtful strife with the forces of winter; and
the cleansing of the stables of Augeas (5) has the same
signification. It appears in fact that the stables of Augeas
was another name for the sign of Capricorn through which
the Sun passes at the Winter solstice[1]--the stable of course
being an underground chamber--and the myth was that
there, in this lowest tract and backwater of the Ecliptic
all the malarious and evil influences of the sky were collected,
and the Sungod came to wash them away (December was the
height of the rainy season in Judaea) and cleanse the year
towards its rebirth.

[1] See diagram of Zodiac.


It should not be forgotten too that even as a child in the
cradle Hercules slew two serpents sent for his destruction--
the serpent and the scorpion as autumnal constellations
figuring always as enemies of the Sungod--to which
may be compared the power given to his disciples by Jesus[1]
"to tread on serpents and scorpions." Hercules also as
a Sungod compares curiously with Samson (mentioned
above, ii), but we need not dwell on all the
elaborate analogies that have been traced[2] between these two
heroes.

[1] Luke x. 19.

[2] See Doane's Bible Myths, ch. viii, (New York, 1882.)


The Jesus-story, it will now be seen, has a great number
of correspondences with the stories of former Sungods and
with the actual career of the Sun through the heavens--so
many indeed that they cannot well be attributed to
mere coincidence or even to the blasphemous wiles of the
Devil! Let us enumerate some of these. There are (1)
the birth from a Virgin mother; (2) the birth in a stable
(cave or underground chamber); and (3) on the 25th December
(just after the winter solstice). There is (4) the
Star in the East (Sirius) and (5) the arrival of the Magi
(the "Three Kings"); there is (6) the threatened Massacre
of the Innocents, and the consequent flight into a distant
country (told also of Krishna and other Sungods). There
are the Church festivals of (7) Candlemas (2nd February),
with processions of candles to symbolize the growing
light; of (8) Lent, or the arrival of Spring; of (9) Easter
Day (normally on the 25th March) to celebrate the crossing
of the Equator by the Sun; and (10) simultaneously the
outburst of lights at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There
is (11) the Crucifixion and death of the Lamb-God, on Good
Friday, three days before Easter; there are (12) the
nailing to a tree, (13) the empty grave, (14) the glad
Resurrection (as in the cases of Osiris, Attis and others);
there are (15) the twelve disciples (the Zodiacal signs);
and (16) the betrayal by one of the twelve. Then later
there is (17) Midsummer Day, the 24th June, dedicated to
the Nativity of John the Baptist, and corresponding
to Christmas Day; there are the festivals of (18) the
Assumption of the Virgin (15th August) and of (19) the
Nativity of the Virgin (8th September), corresponding
to the movement of the god through Virgo; there is the conflict
of Christ and his disciples with the autumnal asterisms,
(20) the Serpent and the Scorpion; and finally
there is the curious fact that the Church (21) dedicates the
very day of the winter solstice (when any one may very
naturally doubt the rebirth of the Sun) to St. Thomas, who
doubted the truth of the Resurrection!

These are some of, and by no means all, the coincidences
in question. But they are sufficient, I think, to prove--
even allowing for possible margins of error--the truth
of our general contention. To go into the parallelism
of the careers of Krishna, the Indian Sungod, and Jesus
would take too long; because indeed the correspondence
is so extraordinarily close and elaborate.[1] I propose, however,
at the close of this chapter, to dwell now for a
moment on the Christian festival of the Eucharist, partly
on account of its connection with the derivation from
the astronomical rites and Nature-celebrations already
alluded to, and partly on account of the light which the festival
generally, whether Christian or Pagan, throws on the
origins of Religious Magic--a subject I shall have to deal
with in the next chapter.

[1] See Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, Part II, pp.
129-302; also Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xxviii, p. 278.


I have already (Ch. II) mentioned the Eucharistic
rite held in commemoration of Mithra, and the indignant
ascription of this by Justin Martyr to the wiles of the Devil.
Justin Martyr clearly had no doubt about the resemblance
of the Mithraic to the Christian ceremony. A Sacramental
meal, as mentioned a few pages back, seems
to have been held by the worshipers of Attis[1] in
commemoration of their god; and the 'mysteries' of the
Pagan cults generally appear to have included rites--
sometimes half-savage, sometimes more aesthetic--in which
a dismembered animal was eaten, or bread and wine (the
spirits of the Corn and the Vine) were consumed, as
representing the body of the god whom his devotees desired
to honor. But the best example of this practice is
afforded by the rites of Dionysus, to which I will devote
a few lines. Dionysus, like other Sun or Nature deities,
was born of a Virgin (Semele or Demeter) untainted by any
earthly husband; and born on the 25th. December. He was
nurtured in a Cave, and even at that early age was
identified with the Ram or Lamb, into whose form he was
for the time being changed. At times also he was worshiped
in the form of a Bull.[2] He travelled far and
wide; and brought the great gift of wine to mankind.[3]
He was called Liberator, and Saviour. His grave "was
shown at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo.
Secret offerings were brought thither, while the women
who were celebrating the feast woke up the new-born
god. . . . Festivals of this kind in celebration of the
extinction and resurrection of the deity were held (by
women and girls only) amid the mountains at night,
every third year, about the time of the shortest day. The
rites, intended to express the excess of grief and joy at the
death and reappearance of the god, were wild even
to savagery, and the women who performed them were
hence known by the expressive names of Bacchae, Maenads,
and Thyiades. They wandered through woods and mountains,
their flying locks crowned with ivy or snakes, brandishing
wands and torches, to the hollow sounds of the drum,
or the shrill notes of the flute, with wild dances and
insane cries and jubilation.

[1] See Frazer's Golden Bough, Part IV, p. 229.

[2] The Golden Bough, Part II, Book II, p. 164.

[3] "I am the TRUE Vine," says the Jesus of the fourth gospel,
perhaps with an implicit and hostile reference to the cult of
Dionysus--in which Robertson suggests (Christianity and
Mythology, p. 357) there was a ritual miracle of turning water
into wine.


Oxen, goats, even fawns and roes from the forest were killed,
torn to pieces, and eaten raw. This in imitation of the
treatment of Dionysus by the Titans"[1]--who it was supposed
had torn the god in pieces when a child.

[1] See art. Dionysus. Dictionary of Classical Antiquities,
Nettleship and Sandys 3rd edn., London, 1898).


Dupuis, one of the earliest writers (at the beginning of
last century) on this subject, says, describing the mystic
rites of Dionysus[1]: "The sacred doors of the Temple in which
the initiation took place were opened only once a year, and
no stranger might ever enter. Night lent to these august
mysteries a veil which was forbidden to be drawn aside
--for whoever it might be.[2] It was the sole occasion
for the representation of the passion of Bacchus [Dionysus]
dead, descended into hell, and rearisen--in imitation
of the representation of the sufferings of Osiris which,
according to Herodotus, were commemorated at Sais in
Egypt. It was in that place that the partition took
place of the body of the god,[3] which was then eaten--
the ceremony, in fact, of which our Eucharist is only a
reflection; whereas in the mysteries of Bacchus actual raw
flesh was distributed, which each of those present had
to consume in commemoration of the death of Bacchus
dismembered by the Titans, and whose passion, in Chios
and Tenedos, was renewed each year by the sacrifice of a man
who represented the god.[4] Possibly it is this last fact which
made people believe that the Christians (whose hoc est corpus
meum and sharing of an Eucharistic meal were no more than
a shadow of a more ancient rite) did really sacrifice a child
and devour its limbs."

[1] See Charles F. Dupuis, "Traite des Mysteres," ch. i.

[2] Pausan, Corinth, ch. 37.

[3] Clem, Prot. Eur. Bacch.

[4] See Porphyry, De Abstinentia, lii, Section 56.


That Eucharistic rites were very very ancient is plain
from the Totem-sacraments of savages; and to this subject
we shall now turn.
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