Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning. Edward Carpenter

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ