II. SOLAR MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

To the ordinary public--notwithstanding the immense amount

of work which has of late been done on this subject--

the connection between Paganism and Christianity still seems

rather remote. Indeed the common notion is that Christianity

was really a miraculous interposition into and

dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan

gods (as in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in

dismay before the sign of the Cross, and at the sound

of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a view much

encouraged by the early Church itself--if only to enhance

its own authority and importance; yet, as is well known

to every student, it is quite misleading and contrary to

fact. The main Christian doctrines and festivals, besides

a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really

quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature

worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate

mystification and falsification that this derivation has been

kept out of sight.

In these Nature-worships there may be discerned three

fairly independent streams of religious or quasi-religious

enthusiasm: (1) that connected with the phenomena of the

heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and stars, and

the awe and wonderment they excited; (2) that connected

with the seasons and the very important matter of the

growth of vegetation and food on the Earth; and (3)

that connected with the mysteries of Sex and reproduction.

It is obvious that these three streams would mingle and

interfuse with each other a good deal; but as far as

they were separable the first would tend to create Solar heroes

and Sun-myths; the second Vegetation-gods and personifications

of Nature and the earth-life; while the third

would throw its glamour over the other two and contribute

to the projection of deities or demons worshipped

with all sorts of sexual and phallic rites. All three systems

of course have their special rites and times and ceremonies;

but, as, I say, the rites and ceremonies of one

system would rarely be found pure and unmixed with

those. belonging to the two others. The whole subject

is a very large one; but for reasons given in the Introduction

I shall in this and the following chapter--while not

ignoring phases (2) and (3)--lay most stress on phase (1)

of the question before us.

At the time of the life or recorded appearance of Jesus

of Nazareth, and for some centuries before, the Mediterranean

and neighboring world had been the scene of a

vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were

Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus

among the Greeks, Hercules among the Romans,

Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and Attis in Syria and

Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal and

Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so

forth. Societies, large or small, united believers and the

devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their

respective deities, and in the creeds which they confessed

concerning these deities. And an extraordinarily

interesting fact, for us, is that notwithstanding great

geographical

distances and racial differences between the adherents

of these various cults, as well as differences in the

details of their services, the general outlines of their creeds

and ceremonials were--if not identical--so markedly similar

as we find them.

I cannot of course go at length into these different cults,

but I may say roughly that of all or nearly all the deities

above-mentioned it was said and believed that:

(1) They were born on or very near our Christmas Day.

(2) They were born of a Virgin-Mother.

(3) And in a Cave or Underground Chamber.

(4) They led a life of toil for Mankind.

(5) And were called by the names of Light-bringer,

Healer, Mediator, Savior, Deliverer.

(6) They were however vanquished by the Powers of

Darkness.

(7) And descended into Hell or the Underworld.

(8) They rose again from the dead, and became the

pioneers of mankind to the Heavenly world.

(9) They founded Communions of Saints, and Churches

into which disciples were received by Baptism.

(10) And they were commemorated by Eucharistic

meals.

Let me give a few brief examples.

Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December.[1]

He was born of a Virgin.[2] He traveled far and wide as

a teacher and illuminator of men. He slew the Bull

(symbol of the gross Earth which the sunlight fructifies).

His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring

equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions

or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried

in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his

resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He

was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as

a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were

held by his followers. This legend is apparently partly

astronomical and partly vegetational; and the same may be said

of the following about Osiris.

[1] The birthfeast of Mithra was held in Rome on the 8th day

before the Kalends of January, being also the day of the

Circassian games, which were sacred to the Sun. (See F. Nork, Der

Mystagog, Leipzig.)

[2] This at any rate was reported by his later disciples (see

Robertson's Pagan Christs, p. 338).

Osiris was born (Plutarch tells us) on the 361st day of

the year, say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and

Dionysus, was a great traveler. As King of Egypt he

taught men civil arts, and "tamed them by music and

gentleness, not by force of arms";[1] he was the discoverer

of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the

power of darkness, and slain and dismembered. "This happened,"

says Plutarch, "on the 17th of the month Athyr,

when the sun enters into the Scorpion" (the sign of the

Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body

was placed in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again

to life, and, as in the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and

others, so in the cult of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin

was brought out before the worshipers and saluted with

glad cries of "Osiris is risen."[1] "His sufferings, his death

and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great

mystery-play at Abydos."[2]

[1] See Plutarch on Isis and Osiris.

[2] Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane E. Harrison, chap. i.

The two following legends have more distinctly the character

of Vegetation myths.

Adonis or Tammuz, the Syrian god of vegetation, was

a very beautiful youth, born of a Virgin (Nature), and so

beautiful that Venus and Proserpine (the goddesses of the

Upper and Underworlds) both fell in love with him.

To reconcile their claims it was agreed that he should

spend half the year (summer) in the upper world, and the

winter half with Proserpine below. He was killed by a

boar (Typhon) in the autumn. And every year the maidens

"wept for Adonis" (see Ezekiel viii. 14). In the spring

a festival of his resurrection was held--the women set out

to seek him, and having found the supposed corpse

placed it (a wooden image) in a coffin or hollow tree, and

performed wild rites and lamentations, followed by even

wilder rejoicings over his supposed resurrection. At Aphaca

in the North of Syria, and halfway between Byblus and

Baalbec, there was a famous grove and temple of Astarte,

near which was a wild romantic gorge full of trees, the

birthplace of a certain river Adonis--the water rushing from

a Cavern, under lofty cliffs. Here (it was said) every year

the youth Adonis was again wounded to death, and the

river ran red with his blood,[1] while the scarlet anemone

bloomed among the cedars and walnuts.

[1] A discoloration caused by red earth washed by rain from the

mountains, and which has been observed by modern travelers. For

the whole story of Adonis and of Attis see Frazer's Golden Bough,

part iv.

The story of Attis is very similar. He was a fair young

shepherd or herdsman of Phrygia, beloved by Cybele (or

Demeter), the Mother of the gods. He was born of a Virgin

--Nana--who conceived by putting a ripe almond or

pomegranate in her bosom. He died, either killed by a

boar, the symbol of winter, like Adonis, or self-castrated

(like his own priests); and he bled to death at the foot of

a pine tree (the pine and pine-cone being symbols of fertility).

The sacrifice of his blood renewed the fertility of

the earth, and in the ritual celebration of his death and

resurrection his image was fastened to the trunk of a pine-

tree (compare the Crucifixion). But I shall return to this

legend presently. The worship of Attis became very widespread

and much honored, and was ultimately incorporated

with the established religion at Rome somewhere about the

commencement of our Era.

The following two legends (dealing with Hercules and

with Krishna) have rather more of the character of the

solar, and less of the vegetational myth about them. Both

heroes were regarded as great benefactors of humanity; but

the former more on the material plane, and the latter on the

spiritual.

Hercules or Heracles was, like other Sun-gods and benefactors of

mankind, a great Traveler. He was known in

many lands, and everywhere he was invoked as Saviour.

He was miraculously conceived from a divine Father; even

in the cradle he strangled two serpents sent to destroy him.

His many labors for the good of the world were ultimately

epitomized into twelve, symbolized by the signs of the Zodiac.

He slew the Nemxan Lion and the Hydra (offspring

of Typhon) and the Boar. He overcame the Cretan Bull,

and cleaned out the Stables of Augeas; he conquered Death

and, descending into Hades, brought Cerberus thence and

ascended into Heaven. On all sides he was followed by the

gratitude and the prayers of mortals.

As to Krishna, the Indian god, the points of agreement

with the general divine career indicated above are too salient

to be overlooked, and too numerous to be fully recorded.

He also was born of a Virgin (Devaki) and in a Cave,[1]

and his birth announced by a Star. It was sought to destroy

him, and for that purpose a massacre of infants was ordered.

Everywhere he performed miracles, raising the dead, healing

lepers, and the deaf and the blind, and championing the

poor and oppressed. He had a beloved disciple, Arjuna, (cf.

John) before whom he was transfigured.[2] His death is

differently related--as being shot by an arrow, or crucified on

a tree. He descended into hell; and rose again from the

dead, ascending into heaven in the sight of many people.

He will return at the last day to be the judge of the quick

and the dead.

[1] Cox's Myths of the Aryan Nations, p. 107.

[2] Bhagavat Gita, ch. xi.

Such are some of the legends concerning the pagan and

pre-Christian deities--only briefly sketched now, in order

that we may get something like a true perspective of the

whole subject; but to most of them, and more in detail,

I shall return as the argument proceeds.

What we chiefly notice so far are two points; on the

one hand the general similarity of these stories with that

of Jesus Christ; on the other their analogy with the yearly

phenomena of Nature as illustrated by the course of the

Sun in heaven and the changes of Vegetation on the earth.

(1) The similarity of these ancient pagan legends and

beliefs with Christian traditions was indeed so great that

it excited the attention and the undisguised wrath of the

early Christian fathers. They felt no doubt about the similarity,

but not knowing how to explain it fell back upon the

innocent theory that the Devil--in order to confound the

Christians--had, CENTURIES BEFORE, caused the pagans to

adopt certain beliefs and practices! (Very crafty, we

may say, of the Devil, but also very innocent of the

Fathers to believe it!) Justin Martyr for instance

describes[1] the institution of the Lord's Supper as narrated

in the Gospels, and then goes on to say: "Which the wicked

devils have IMITATED in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding

the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup

of water are placed with certain incantations in the

mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know

or can learn." Tertullian also says[2] that "the devil by the

mysteries of his idols imitates even the main part of the

divine mysteries." . . . "He baptizes his worshippers in

water and makes them believe that this purifies them from

their crimes." . . . "Mithra sets his mark on the forehead

of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread;

he offers an image of the resurrection, and presents at once

the crown and the sword; he limits his chief priest to a

single marriage; he even has his virgins and ascetics."[3]

Cortez, too, it will be remembered complained that the Devil

had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which

God had taught to Christendom.

[1] I Apol. c. 66.

[2] De Praescriptione Hereticorum, c. 40; De Bapt. c. 3; De

Corona, c. 15.

[3] For reference to both these examples see J. M. Robertson's

Pagan Christs, pp. 321, 322.

Justin Martyr again, in the Dialogue with Trypho says

that the Birth in the Stable was the prototype (!) of the

birth of Mithra in the Cave of Zoroastrianism; and boasts

that Christ was born when the Sun takes its birth in the

Augean Stable,[1] coming as a second Hercules to cleanse

a foul world; and St. Augustine says "we hold this

(Christmas) day holy, not like the pagans because of the

birth of the Sun, but because of the birth of him who made

it." There are plenty of other instances in the Early Fathers

of their indignant ascription of these similarities to the work

of devils; but we need not dwell over them. There is no

need for US to be indignant. On the contrary we can now

see that these animadversions of the Christian writers are

the evidence of how and to what extent in the spread of

Christianity over the world it had become fused with the

Pagan cults previously existing.

[1] The Zodiacal sign of Capricornus, iii.).

It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after

the supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius

Exiguus, an abbot and astronomer of Rome, was

commissioned to fix the day and the year of that birth.

A nice problem, considering the historical science of the

period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt,[2]

and for day and month he adopted the 25th December

--a date which had been in popular use since about

350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or two, of the

supposed birth of the previous Sungods.[3] From that

fact alone we may fairly conclude that by the year 530

or earlier the existing Nature-worships had become largely

fused into Christianity. In fact the dates of the main

pagan religious festivals had by that time become so

popular that Christianity was OBLIGED to accommodate itself

to them.[1]

[1] As, for instance, the festival of John the Baptist in June

took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and

bathing; the Assumption of the Virgin in August the place of that

of Diana in the same month; and the festival of All Souls early

in November, that of the world-wide pagan feasts of the dead and

their ghosts at the same season.

[2] See Encycl. Brit. art. "Chronology."

[3] "There is however a difficulty in accepting the 25th December

as the real date of the Nativity, December being the height of

the rainy season in Judaea, when neither flocks nor shepherds

could have been at night in the fields of Bethlehem" (!). Encycl.

Brit. art. "Christmas Day." According to Hastings's

Encyclopaedia, art. "Christmas," "Usener says that the Feast of

the Nativity was held originally on the 6th January (the

Epiphany), but in 353-4 the Pope Liberius displaced

it to the 25th December . . . but there is no evidence of a

Feast of the Nativity taking place at all, before the fourth

century A.D." It was not till 534 A.D. that Christmas Day and

Epiphany were reckoned by the law-courts as dies non.

This brings us to the second point mentioned a few

pages back--the analogy between the Christian festivals

and the yearly phenomena of Nature in the Sun and the

Vegetation.

Let us take Christmas Day first. Mithra, as we have

seen, was reported to have been born on the 25th December

(which in the Julian Calendar was reckoned as the day

of the Winter Solstice AND of the Nativity of the Sun);

Plutarch says (Isis and Osiris, c. 12) that Osiris was born

on the 361st day of the year, when a Voice rang out proclaiming

the Lord of All. Horus, he says, was born on the

362nd day. Apollo on the same.

Why was all this? Why did the Druids at Yule Tide

light roaring fires? Why was the cock supposed to crow all

Christmas Eve ("The bird of dawning singeth all night

long")? Why was Apollo born with only one hair (the

young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson

(name derived from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength

when he lost his hair? Why were so many of these gods

--Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others, born in

caves or underground chambers?[1] Why, at the Easter

Eve festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light

brought from the grave and communicated to the candles

of thousands who wait outside, and who rush forth rejoicing

to carry the new glory over the world?[2] Why indeed?

except that older than all history and all written records

has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men

over the failure of the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay

of their God; and the anxiety lest by any means he should

not revive or reappear?

[1] This same legend of gods (or idols) being born in caves has,

curiously enough, been reported from Mexico, Guatemala, the

Antilles, and other places in Central America. See C. F. P. von

Martius, Etknographie Amerika, etc. (Leipzig, 1867), vol. i, p.

758.

[2] Compare the Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire and

communicating it to the multitude from the wounded breast of a

human victim, celebrated every 52 years at the end of one cycle

and the beginning of another--the constellation of the Pleiades

being in the Zenith (Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch.

4).

Think for a moment of a time far back when there were

absolutely NO Almanacs or Calendars, either nicely printed

or otherwise, when all that timid mortals could see was that

their great source of Light and Warmth was daily failing,

daily sinking lower in the sky. As everyone now knows

there are about three weeks at the fag end of the

year when the days are at their shortest and there is very

little change. What was happening? Evidently the god

had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness,

had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had

shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him;

Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen

under the influence of those malign constellations--the

Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker

and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after

all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early

men and women watched for the first indication of a lengthening

day; and the universal joy when the Priest (the representative

of primitive science) having made some simple

observations, announced from the Temple steps that the

day WAS lengthening--that the Sun was really born again

to a new and glorious career.[1]

[1] It was such things as these which doubtless gave the

Priesthood

its power.

Let us look at the elementary science of those days a

little closer. How without Almanacs or Calendars could

the day, or probable day, of the Sun's rebirth be fixed?

Go out next Christmas Evening, and at midnight you will

see the brightest of the fixed stars, Sirius, blazing in the

southern sky--not however due south from you, but somewhat

to the left of the Meridian line. Some three thousand

years ago (owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes) that

star at the winter solstice did not stand at midnight where

you now see it, but almost exactly ON the meridian line.

The coming of Sirius therefore to the meridian at midnight

became the sign and assurance of the Sun having reached

the very lowest point of his course, and therefore of having

arrived at the moment of his re-birth. Where then was

the Sun at that moment? Obviously in the underworld

beneath our feet. Whatever views the ancients may have

had about the shape of the earth, it was evident to the

mass of people that the Sungod, after illuminating the

world during the day, plunged down in the West, and

remained there during the hours of darkness in some cavern

under the earth. Here he rested and after bathing in the

great ocean renewed his garments before reappearing in the

East next morning.

But in this long night of his greatest winter weakness,

when all the world was hoping and praying for the renewal

of his strength, it is evident that the new birth would come

--if it came at all--at midnight. This then was the sacred

hour when in the underworld (the Stable or the Cave or

whatever it might be called) the child was born who was

destined to be the Savior of men. At that moment Sirius

stood on the southern meridian (and in more southern lands

than ours this would be more nearly overhead); and that

star--there is little doubt--is the Star in the East mentioned

in the Gospels.

To the right, as the supposed observer looks at Sirius on

the midnight of Christmas Eve, stands the magnificent

Orion, the mighty hunter. There are three stars in his belt

which, as is well known, lie in a straight line pointing to

Sirius. They are not so bright as Sirius, but they are

sufficiently bright to attract attention. A long tradition

gives them the name of the Three Kings. Dupuis[1] says:

"Orion a trois belles etoiles vers le milieu, qui sont de

seconde grandeur et posees en ligne droite, l'une pres de

l'autre, le peuple les appelle les trois rois. On donne aux

trois rois Magis les noms de Magalat, Galgalat, Saraim;

et Athos, Satos, Paratoras. Les Catholiques les appellent

Gaspard, Melchior, et Balthasar." The last-mentioned

group of names comes in the Catholic Calendar in connection

with the feast of the Epiphany (6th January); and

the name "Trois Rois" is commonly to-day given to these

stars by the French and Swiss peasants.

[1] Charles F. Dupuis (Origine de Tous les Cultes, Paris, 1822)

was one of the earliest modern writers on these subjects.

Immediately after Midnight then, on the 25th December,

the Beloved Son (or Sun-god) is born. If we go back in

thought to the period, some three thousand years ago, when

at that moment of the heavenly birth Sirius, coming from

the East, did actually stand on the Meridian, we shall

come into touch with another curious astronomical coincidence.

For at the same moment we shall see the Zodiacal

constellation of the Virgin in the act of rising, and becoming

visible in the East divided through the middle by the line

of the horizon.

The constellation Virgo is a Y-shaped group, of which <gr a>,

the star at the foot, is the well-known Spica, a star of

the first magnitude. The other principal stars, <gr g> at the

centre, and <gr b> and <gr e> at the extremities, are of the

second magnitude. The whole resembles more a cup than the human

figure; but when we remember the symbolic meaning

of the cup, that seems to be an obvious explanation of

the name Virgo, which the constellation has borne since

the earliest times. [The three stars <gr b>, <gr g> and <gr a>,

lie very nearly on the Ecliptic, that is, the Sun's path--a fact

to which we shall return presently.]

At the moment then when Sirius, the star from the East,

by coming to the Meridian at midnight signalled the Sun's

new birth, the Virgin was seen just rising on the Eastern

sky--the horizon line passing through her centre. And

many people think that this astronomical fact is the explanation

of the very widespread legend of the Virgin-birth. I

do not think that it is the sole explanation--for indeed in

all or nearly all these cases the acceptance of a myth seems

to depend not upon a single argument but upon the convergence

of a number of meanings and reasons in the same

symbol. But certainly the fact mentioned above is curious,

and its importance is accentuated by the following

considerations.

In the Temple of Denderah in Egypt, and on the inside

of the dome, there is or WAS an elaborate circular representation

of the Northern hemisphere of the sky and the

Zodiac.[1] Here Virgo the constellation is represented, as

in our star-maps, by a woman with a spike of corn in her

hand (Spica). But on the margin close by there is an annotating

and explicatory figure--a figure of Isis with

the infant Horus in her arms, and quite resembling in style

the Christian Madonna and Child, except that she is

sitting and the child is on her knee. This seems to show

that--whatever other nations may have done in associating

Virgo with Demeter, Ceres, Diana[2] etc.--the Egyptians

made no doubt of the constellation's connection with Isis

and Horus. But it is well known as a matter of history

that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the early

Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form

of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant Savior,

and so passed into the European ceremonial. We have

therefore the Virgin Mary connected by linear succession and

descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the sky! Also

it may be mentioned that on the Arabian and Persian globes

of Abenezra and Abuazar a Virgin and Child are figured in

connection with the same constellation.[3]

[1] Carefully described and mapped by Dupuis, see op. cit.

[2] For the harvest-festival of Diana, the Virgin, and her

parallelism

with the Virgin Mary, see The Golden Bough, vol. i, 14 and ii,

121.

[3] See F. Nork, Der Mystagog (Leipzig, 1838).

A curious confirmation of the same astronomical connection

is afforded by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be

consulted it will be found that the festival of the

Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the 15th August, while the

festival of the Birth of the Virgin is dated the 8th September. I

have already pointed out that the stars, <gr a>, <gr b> and <gr

g> of Virgo are almost exactly on the Ecliptic, or

Sun's path through the sky; and a brief reference to the

Zodiacal signs and the star-maps will show that the Sun

each year enters the sign of Virgo about the first-mentioned

date, and leaves it about the second date. At the present

day the Zodiacal signs (owing to precession) have shifted

some distance from the constellations of the same name.

But at the time when the Zodiac was constituted and

these names were given, the first date obviously would

signalize the actual disappearance of the cluster Virgo

in the Sun's rays--i. e. the Assumption of the Virgin into

the glory of the God--while the second date would signalize

the reappearance of the constellation or the Birth of the

Virgin. The Church of Notre Dame at Paris is supposed

to be on the original site of a Temple of Isis; and it is said

(but I have not been able to verify this myself) that one of

the side entrances--that, namely, on the left in entering

from the North (cloister) side--is figured with the signs of

the Zodiac EXCEPT that the sign Virgo is replaced by the

figure of the Madonna and Child.

So strange is the scripture of the sky! Innumerable

legends and customs connect the rebirth of the Sun with

a Virgin parturition. Dr. J. G. Frazer in his Part IV of

The Golden Bough[1] says: "If we may trust the evidence

of an obscure scholiast the Greeks [in the worship of

Mithras at Rome] used to celebrate the birth of the luminary

by a midnight service, coming out of the inner

shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has brought forth! The light

is waxing!' (<gr 'H parhenos tetoken, auzei pws>.)" In

Elie Reclus' little book Primitive Folk[2] it is said of the

Esquimaux that "On the longest night of the year two

angakout (priests), of whom one is disguised as a WOMAN,

go from hut to hut extinguishing all the lights, rekindling

them from a vestal flame, and crying out, 'From the new sun

cometh a new light!' "

[1] Book II, ch. vi.

[2] In the Contemporary Science Series, I. 92.

All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins

of the myths does not of course imply that the Vegetational

origins must be denied or ignored. These latter

were doubtless the earliest, but there is no reason--

as said in the Introduction (ch. i)--why the two elements

should not to some extent have run side by side, or been

fused with each other. In fact it is quite clear that they

must have done so; and to separate them out too rigidly,

or treat them as antagonistic, is a mistake. The Cave or

Underworld in which the New Year is born is not only

the place of the Sun's winter retirement, but also the hidden

chamber beneath the Earth to which the dying Vegetation

goes, and from which it re-arises in Spring. The amours

of Adonis with Venus and Proserpine, the lovely goddesses

of the upper and under worlds, or of Attis with Cybele, the

blooming Earth-mother, are obvious vegetation-symbols; but

they do not exclude the interpretation that Adonis

(Adonai) may also figure as a Sun-god. The Zodiacal

constellations of Aries and Taurus (to which I shall return

presently) rule in heaven just when the Lamb and the Bull

are in evidence on the earth; and the yearly sacrifice of

those two animals and of the growing Corn for the good

of mankind runs parallel with the drama of the sky, as it

affects not only the said constellations but also Virgo (the

Earth-mother who bears the sheaf of corn in her hand).

I shall therefore continue (in the next chapter) to point

out these astronomical references--which are full of

significance and poetry; but with a recommendation at the

same time to the reader not to forget the poetry and significance

of the terrestrial interpretations.

Between Christmas Day and Easter there are several minor

festivals or holy days--such as the 28th December (the

Massacre of the Innocents), the 6th January (the

Epiphany), the 2nd February (Candlemas[1] Day), the

period of Lent (German Lenz, the Spring), the Annunciation of the

Blessed Virgin, and so forth--which have been

commonly celebrated in the pagan cults before Christianity,

and in which elements of Star and Nature worship

can be traced; but to dwell on all these would take too

long; so let us pass at once to the period of Easter itself.

[1] This festival of the Purification of the Virgin corresponds

with the old Roman festival of Juno Februata (i. e. purified)

which was held in the last month (February) of the Roman year,

and which included a candle procession of Ceres, searching for

Proserpine. (F. Nork, Der Mystagog.)