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Importance of Catastrophism
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John the Baptist
Kahlil Gibran on Law
Man: A Systems Approach
Meditation, Thoughts on
Model for Visions & Dreams
Some Pertinent Parables
Personal Experience
Perspective on Myth
Questions Better than Answers
The Road to Saturn Thesis
Sex Bias in Medicine Practice
Spiritual Growth Stages
Spiritual versus Material
Symbolism of Human Body
Telepathic Ability
Tobacco Corruption in AMA
Toxic Metals & Criminality
Unity Agreement Outline
The Velikovsky Debate
Some Conclusions
The Velikovsky Affair Journals
Video-lecture links
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Velikovsky, Saturn and the Story of Jesus
Author Lewis Greenberg? 1981(?)
In 1950,
Worlds in Collision was published. Written by a
psychologist, Immanuel Velikovsky, it was the product of over a decade of
research. In the next five years Velikovsky brought forward
Ages in Chaos, and Earth in Upheaval. Together these books document a
series of worldwide catastrophes caused by planetary objects.
There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to the theories of Immanuel
Velikovsky. Many respected scientists and academics consider
his work of revolutionary import and worthy of serious
investigation. Vine Deloria, for instance, has written: "Immanuel Velikovsky,
in my opinion, will be seen by civilized people a century
from now as the truly great thinker in human history dwarfing
both his contemporaries and all but a select few of the now-honoured
giants of the human intellect. His classic work, Worlds in
Collision, will be regarded as the watershed in the development
of our knowledge about the universe and about ourselves
and will be seen as the first effort to present a truly cosmic
history of our species." [Deloria, 1980, p. 78] Equally
respected scientists, however, consider Velikovsky's work
pseudoscience bordering on quackery. Thus, Carl Sagan has viciously
attacked Velikovsky's theories in his last three books, charging
Velikovsky with gross errors of fact and logic, non-originality,
lucky guesses, and an attempted rescue and validation of old-time
religion. [Sagan, 1977] Although this essay can never hope to
solve this debate of thirty years duration, a purpose will be served
if it raises some questions of concern to all students of mind,
man, and evolution.
Anthropology of Velikovsky
Velikovsky's work can perhaps be seen as an extension of Freud's
historical-anthropological speculations in Totem and Taboo, and in Moses and
Monotheism. While researching a book on the heroes of Freud,
Velikovsky stumbled across the idea that maybe the biblical story of
the Exodus described real events of catastrophic
proportions. Reasoning that if there was any historicity to the Jewish
account, perhaps some Egyptian account exists; Velikovsky began a
search of the world's libraries. In Holland, Velikovsky found what
he was looking for in the Ipuwer Papyrus, and the close
similarities of the two accounts confirmed his suspicion that there had
been a natural catastrophe at the time of the Jewish Exodus from
Egypt. Velikovsky supplemented this thesis with myths and legends
from around the world, and Worlds in Collision resulted.
Even before it was published, however, Worlds in Collision caused quite a
stir. A group of prominent scientists, including Harvard astronomer
Harlow Shapley, led a campaign to suppress the book. Later,
threatened with the loss of their textbook sales, Macmillan was forced
to drop Worlds in Collision even though it had topped the
bestseller lists for twenty straight weeks. One can only wonder what
caused the scientists such anguish. [de Grazia, 1966]
Velikovsky major claims
In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky made the following claims:(1) that
there were physical upheavals of a global character in historical
times;(2) these catastrophes were caused by extra-terrestrial agents;(3) these
agents can be identified (i.e. in
the most recent events Venus and Mars played the major roles). Velikovsky
placed the Exodus at 1450 BCE and ascribed the
catastrophic elements to the near passby of Venus, then on a comet-like
course after its recent expulsion from Jupiter. Like Halley's
comet, Venus was to periodically return to the Earth, wreaking
havoc for the next 700 years. During this span of time, Velikovsky
argues, Venus was an awesome and terrifying fireball in the sky,
and its presence and memory gave rise to many myths and legends.
(Homer's Iliad is one example). [Velikovsky, 1950]
Predictions of Velikovsky
As possible tests of his thesis Velikovsky put forward a series of
predictions. If Venus was recently ejected from Jupiter, and if as a comet it
had passed close to the sun and disturbed both Mars and the Earth,
it must be hot, hotter than anyone then imagined. Indeed,
Venus' outer cloud layer had been measured at -25C.
Nevertheless, in 1961 the Mariner probe found Venus' temperature to be in
excess of 600k. [de Grazia, 1966] Velikovsky also suggested
that because of its repeated contacts with other planets Venus may
be disturbed in its rotation. Over a decade later Mariner
found that Venus did in fact spin slowly and in retrograde direction.
The scientists who reported the find announced: "maybe Venus was
created apart from the other planets, perhaps as a secondary
solar explosion, or perhaps in a collision of planets."
[Velikovsky, 1979, p. 66]
To account for all the complex physical phenomena involved in such a scenario
(such as the thunderbolts described as having been thrown by
Venus and Jupiter, Venus' ejection and circularization of orbit,
disturbances in the Earth's rotation, etc.), Velikovsky imagined a
solar system permeated by electro-magnetic fields, then a novel
idea and one which drew a lot of ridicule. Thus, he predicted
that the sun was charged, that Jupiter had a massive
magnetosphere, and Venus a minimal magnetosphere as compared with the one he
envisaged for the Earth. All of these far-fetched
"predictions" of 1950 are scientific facts of 1980. [Ransom, 1976]
Two final predictions are of interest here, although I could point to many
more that have been confirmed. Since Velikovsky pointed to Mayan
sources which described the comet Venus and the associated cataclysms,
he argued that the Mayan civilization must be far older than
was believed in 1950 (at least seventh century BCE). In1950 George
Kubler of Yale argued that here Velikovsky was off by perhaps
1000 years: "the Mesoamerican cosmology to which Velikovsky
repeatedly appeals for proof did not originate and could not
originate until about the beginning of our era." [de Grazia,
1966, p. 222] Yet here as so often in the Velikovsky chronicles
the impossible became possible. Thus, in 1956 the National
Geographic would report: "Atomic science has proved the ancient
civilization of Mexico to be some 1000 years older than had been
believed. The findings basic to Middle American archeology,
artifacts dug up in La Venta, Mexico, have been proved to come
from a period 800 to 400 years before the Christian era... Dr.
Matthew W. Sterling, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology
at the Smithsonian Institution, declared the new dating the most
important archaeological discovery in recent history. "[de Grazia,
1966, p. 222]
Finally, the Mayans as well as many other ancient peoples had stories
which described heavenly bread as literally falling from the sky.
This was the manna of the Jews which Velikovsky ascribed to
bacterial reaction upon the hydrocarbonous tail of the comet Venus.
Velikovsky argued that under certain conditions
hydrocarbons could be formed by electrical discharges acting upon the
appropriate gases (for example, the ammonia and methane of Jupiter),
and that these hydrocarbons could in turn be changed into edible
carbohydrates by bacterial action. Recently, both of these
suggestions have been experimentally confirmed. [Ransom,1976]
Origin of religions
Near the end of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky discussed the possibility
of a racial memory of these catastrophic events, citing
Freud and Jung. Velikovsky also made clear his belief that the world's
religions were of astral origin. Velikovsky promised to return
to psychology and the question of the origins of religion in
a later work, but, despite occasional references to this
project in scattered papers, it remained unpublished at the time of his
death in 1979. With Velikovsky's writing being edited for a
posthumous publication, scholars from around the world are concerning
themselves with this very problem of religious origins and its
relation to catastrophism. My intention here is to explore the
possible role racial memories of catastrophic events play in the origins
and forms of religious belief and ritual.
Age of Saturn
In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky stated that the earliest remembered
and most traumatic catastrophes involved the planets Saturn and
Jupiter. Velikovsky has claimed that one of these events, the
Deluge, was caused by the nova-like explosion of Saturn some
time in the last 5,000 - 10,000 years. Velikovsky has also
referred briefly to the Golden Age, a time of peace and plenty, and
a time in which he suggests the Earth may have been a satellite
of Saturn. [Velikovsky, 1979] Velikovsky argues that Saturn was
once the major and most impressive object in the sky, thus its
epithet the `Father of the Gods.' Velikovsky claims that before its
disruption Saturn was considerably larger than it is today–much
of its material later being absorbed by Jupiter–and although it
was not as large as the sun, because it was so close to the
Earth it presented an awesome celestial picture. Velikovsky believed
that the explosion of Saturn was caused by the close conjunction
of it with Jupiter, both planets being disrupted in their
orbits and rotational stability. Velikovsky states that it was during
this series of events that Saturn's rings were formed. Velikovsky
claims that the nova-like explosion of Saturn blinded the Earth
with light: "The memory of these stupendous events survived
for millennia and vestiges of the cult of Saturn persist even till
today. One of these memorials is the feast of light, celebrated
in mid-winter: Hannukah or Christmas, both stemming from the
Roman Saturnalia. These are all festivals of light, of seven days
duration, and they commemorate the dazzling light in which the
world was bathed for the seven days preceding the Deluge; in
their original form these festivals were a remembrance and a symbolic
re-enactment of the Age of Saturn." [Velikovsky,1979, p. 9]
Velikovsky suggested that the deluge was brought to the Earth by cometary
matter ejected from Saturn, and that it greatly increased the volume
of the water on Earth. Velikovsky argues that a major portion of
the Atlantic ocean (called by the ancients the sea or tear of
Kronos) probably owes its deposition to this event. Finally,
Velikovsky claims that a major proportion of the ocean's salt is due
to the cometary matter from Saturn.
On the basis of his research, Velikovsky was led to make several
`predictions' concerning the planet Saturn. Because of its star-like
nature, Velikovsky claimed it would be found to emit cosmic rays. For
obvious reasons, Velikovsky imagined that Saturn must contain
large quantities of water or ice. Finally, because of its association
with salt, Velikovsky suggested that Saturn was rich in
chlorine. Several of these predictions have already received support
from the recent space probes. Thus, Saturn's star-like nature is
largely taken for granted, and it is known to be composed of ice.
Evolution theory impact
Needless to say, Velikovsky's thesis regarding Saturn has profound
implications for any theory of evolution. Velikovsky has pointed out that
the worship of Saturn was usually associated with vegetation,
and he claims that the radiation emitted in Saturn's flare-up
caused massive mutations among the Earth's vegetation. Velikovsky
has also suggested that primitive forms of plant life may be
found on Saturn, and presumably this means that the Earth may have
been seeded in the near past with extra-terrestrial vegetation.
[Velikovsky, 1979] Obviously, a flood of the proportions
imagined by Velikovsky would have a major effect on animal
life, allowing some to prosper but bringing destruction to many
others. Indeed, Velikovsky argues that many of the dinosaurs met their
fate at this time, not only because of the flood and radiation,
but primarily because of gravitational effects associated
with the Earth's new position, charge, and
magnetosphere. Thus, Velikovsky claims that all objects became heavier at
this time, and the dinosaurs huge bulk doomed them to extinction.
Here Velikovsky clips 70 million years off the standard
timetables with regard to the dinosaurs, and that itself should give
an idea of the importance of his theories for biology if they
have any basis in fact.
These are
the essentials of Velikovsky's thesis in regard to Saturn and
planetary history. Several other scholars are also working on
these and related problems, most notably Talbott, Rose, Cardona,
Greenberg, Sizemore, Mullen, and Wolfe. I will have occasion to
refer to the work of these men repeatedly throughout the course
of this essay. In
researching the subject of the religious importance of Saturn, I have been
aided by four major works of scholarship, produced by four
researchers of widely separate backgrounds. Carl Jung devoted the latter
part of his life to the investigation and understanding of the
world's myths, symbols, and religious systems. A renowned expert in
this area, Jung wrote extensively on the subject and obtained a
library of rare and valuable literature in the field, including
the famous Nag Hammidic texts.
Alchemy, symbology and
psychology
Jung's last major work, Mysterium
Coniunctionis, was concerned with an exploration of the symbology
and psychology behind alchemy, a science in which ancient
traditions played a prominent role long after they had disappeared
elsewhere. Jung believed that the study of religion could
uncover the past history of the race, due in part to its saturation
with racial memories: "The importance of hermeneutics should not
be under-estimated: it has a beneficial effect on the psyche by
consciously linking the distant past, the ancestral heritage
which is still alive in the unconscious, with the present,
thus establishing the vitally important connection between a
consciousness oriented to the present moment only and the
historical psyche which extends over infinitely long periods of time. As
the most conservative of all products of the human mind,
religions are in themselves the bridges to the ever-living past, which
they make alive and present for us." [Jung, 1977, p.336]
Hamlet's Mill
In 1969, a major work on myth appeared, Hamlet's Mill, written by
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. This fascinating book
centres around an unusual story of a giant mill, which the authors
trace from country to country, showing it to be part of a universal
tradition relating to the Golden Age and the glorious reign of
Saturn. Santillana claims that myth is essentially
cosmological, and that "archaic thought is cosmological first and last."
[Santillana, 1969, p. 56] Adhering to a rigid
uniformitarian viewpoint, Santillana and Dechend can hardly be accused of
being partial to Velikovsky. Yet the universal religious
prominence of Saturn emerges nevertheless, amidst great floods and
cosmic battles. Santillana concludes that, "The most `ancient
treasure'–in Aristotle's word–that was left to us by our
predecessors of the High and Far-off Times was the idea that the gods
are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces
reside in the starry heavens, and all the stories, characters,
and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active
powers among the stars, who are the planets."
[Santillana, 1969, p. 177]
The Saturn Myth
It remains to be seen whether all the stories
involving Kronos-Saturn can be explained by appeal to the precession
of the equinoxes as Santillana and Dechend would have us believe. The most
recent contribution to the Saturnian puzzle is that of David
Talbott, past editor of the Pensee journal devoted to a scholarly
discussion of the work of Velikovsky. Published in 1980, The Saturn
Myth attempts to reconstruct the events and celestial picture
associated with Saturn. The major undertaking of The Saturn Myth
is the re-translation and reinterpretation of the ancient
Egyptian writings. Talbott shows conclusively that myths
traditionally regarded as solar in nature properly belong to Saturn.
Thus, Re, Atum, Ptah, and Osiris are not synonyms of the supreme
solar deity (our sun), but synonyms of Saturn.
El as Saturn
Finally, there is the recent work in biblical scholarship by Frank Cross,
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. As this book provides a good
jumping off point for my conclusions, it would be best to start here.
The first third of Cross' book is devoted to tracing the
historical-religious significance of El, the god whose name appears the
most frequently in the Old Testament (over 2500 times).
Cross points out that El was the chief divinity of the
Mesopotamian Semites. Furthermore, Cross believes there can be no doubt that
El was common to the old Arabic and Canaanite pantheons as well.
Attesting to the widespread nature of El, Cross cites evidence
equating El with the Egyptian Ptah, and with Baal of the Punic
colonies. Cross shows that El was regarded as the God of the fathers,
the Creator, the One of the mountain, the divine warrior, and as the
Ancient One. Cross also regards El as being synonymous with
Yahweh, or Jehovah. [Cross, 1973, p. 71]
Finally, cross concludes that El was synonymous with Saturn: "Philo Byblius, and other
classical sources, and inscriptions in Greek and Latin all establish
the formula that B'l Hmn on the one hand, and El on the other, are
Greek Kronos, Latin Saturnus. These equations have long been known,
and all new data confirm the ancient." [Cross, 1973,p. 25]
Saturn, God of the Jews
One has to agree with Cross that these identifications have long been known;
thus St. Augustine came right out and declared that the
ancients considered the planet Saturn the god of the Jews. [Cardona,
1978, p. 35] Surely it must come as a surprise to find that the
revered god of the Old Testament was originally Saturn. How is this
strange fact to be explained? In what sense could an obscure
speck in the sky have been the subject of the epithets the Creator, or
the God of the fathers (an object which modern spaceships
are just now exploring)?
Sol/Helios/Sun confusion
At this point I'll attempt to reconstruct the celestial picture presented
by Saturn; this will answer these questions as well as demonstrate
the reasons for its prominence in the myths and religious
systems of the ancients. As I said earlier, there is a great deal
of evidence proving that many of the myths and stories attributed
to the sun (Helios) were actually the product of after-the-fact
distortions of scholars.
But the confusion is not only a recent one.
Talbott informs us that, "many scholars notice that among the
Greeks and Latins there prevailed a mysterious confusion of the sun
(Greek helios, Latin sol) with the outermost planet. Thus, the
expression `star of Helios' or `star of sol' was applied to Saturn."
[Talbott, 1980, p. 38] Talbott notes that even Plato called
Saturn Helios. Talbott states that later copyists changed the word
Helios to Kronos in Plato's Epinomis, and cites Boll to the effect
that this was a common practice among the later copyists.
Boll concluded that Helios and Saturn were originally one and the
same god. [Talbott, 1980, p. 39]
Santillana came to the same
conclusion quite independently. It seems that the scribes of Plato's
time, like the scholars of our time, found it hard to believe
that Saturn was once the major mythological figure. Talbott
shows that among the Sumero-Babylonians, Saturn was typically
called a sun. Talbott cites Diodorus to the effect that, "the one we
call Saturn they give a special name, `Sun-Star'."[Talbott,
1980, p. 39] Talbott concludes: "Among the Babylonians the sun-god
par excellence was Shamash, the `light of the gods, 'whom
scholars uniformly identify with the solar orb. But M. Jastrow ...
reports that in the Babylonian astronomical texts the
identification of Shamash with Saturn is unequivocal: `the planet Saturn is
Shamash,' they boldly declare." [Talbott, 1980, p. 39] The noted
scholar, Stephen Langdon, likewise concludes that the Sumerian
creator god Ninurta was both a sun and Saturn. [Langdon, 1964]
Sun of night
I could go
on and on with this line of evidence, but perhaps the point has
been made. The simple fact of the matter seems to be that Saturn
was once regarded as a sun, a sun that came forth at night.
Thus, Jastrow wrote: "Strange as it may seem to us, the Planet
Saturn appears to have been regarded as the `sun of night'
corresponding to Samas as `the sun of the day time' and the cause of such
light as the night furnishes." [Cardona, 1977, p. 34] E. A. Budge,
renowned authority on Egyptian mythology, found that Atum, the
Egyptian creator-god, was also a sun of night. [Cardona, 1977,p. 35] Jung
too found mythological references to the sun of night; "there is
... also a Sol niger, who, significantly enough, is contrasted
with the day-time sun and clearly distinguished from it." [Jung,
1977, p. 148]
Greater and lesser Lights
In an
article entitled "Sun of Night", Dwardu Cardona suggests that Saturn
appeared larger in the night sky than the sun did during the
day. Cardona also noted that a colleague of Jastrow's, Prof. J.A.
Montgomery, raised the question as to whether in Genesis
1:16 the two `lights' may not at one time have referred to the sun and
Saturn? Of course, if Saturn was nearer and larger in a former
age (as Velikovsky suggests), then its light would perhaps
warrant the sun-appellation. Talbott concludes: "Saturn was an immense
and terrifying body in the sky, but it was not called the sun
because it outshone the solar orb ... No other stable body could
compete with the light of our sun. It was within the frame of a
darkened sky that Saturn shone most brightly, and in this setting its
light had an incomparably greater impact than the largely
uninteresting light of the sun. A fireworks display would appear
innocuous in the light of day–but spectacular at night. And you
have to imagine Saturn as a glowing or incandescent globe of
gargantuan size putting on its own fireworks display after each sunset.
[Talbott, 1977, p. 2]
Axis mundi, pillar of fire, celestial pole, phallus of god
One of the
most important characteristics of the Saturnian god is that it was
presented as being perched atop a pole connecting it to the
earth. This pole was seen by the people of the earth as a great
pillar of light, as the god's leg or phallus, and as a cosmic
tree. Talbott asks, "Why do so many records say that Saturn stood at
the centre of the cosmic revolutions–or at the summit of the world
axis? Saturn's orbit today could hardly be further removed
from the Pole. Now this placement of Saturn at the Pole is not some
frivolous choice of one nation alone. The polar Saturn or polar sun
is a global tradition. The Egyptian Ra, Osiris, ... the
Mesopotamian Ninurta, Enki, Anu, Shamash, ... the Hebrew, or Ugaritic
El, ... the Hindu Brahma, Vishnu, Varuna, Surya, ... the Chinese
Huang-ti or Shang-ti, ... the Greek Kronos–all appear as stationary
suns. That is they do not rise and set in the fashion of our
solar orb. They are described as fixed at the polar summit."
[Talbott, 1977, pp. 2-3]
Lynn Rose
has written on the physics of such a pole, and suggests that it be
compared to the recently discovered flux tube joining Jupiter and
Io. [Rose, 1979] Talbott, after an exhaustive survey of the
Egyptian material, concludes: "The pillar of Shu is said to have been
formed from the same khu or primeval matter as the celestial
enclosure at the summit. The khu erupts from the creator and comes
eventually to form a pillar of light stretching along the world
axis. The clear implication is that the cosmic debris which had
exploded from Saturn not only congealed into the Saturnian
band, but gathered into a stream between Saturn and Earth,
creating a visual appearance of a light pillar ... It is mythically
conceived as the luminous breath of the creator, and this in
turn passes into the mythical North Wind, which Egyptian texts
describe issuing from Atum or Ra but also holding him aloft as a cosmic
pillar." [Talbott, 1977, p. 5]
Santillana
also notes the association of Saturn with a pole or pillar, the
title of their book being derived from yet another
interpretation of the pole (Hamlet's Mill). Another interpretation was that of
the cosmic tree: "One of the great motifs of myth is the
wondrous tree so often described as reaching up to heaven. There are
many of them ... The tree is often cut down too. The other motif
is the foundation stone, which sometimes becomes a cubic ark."
[Santillana, 1969, p. 223]
Ark as Saturn
The foundation stone or ark is Saturn,
resting atop the cosmic tree or floating in the cosmic ocean. Saturn was
also represented as standing on one foot, or as one-legged.
Santillana notes that, "The One-legged Being, ... can be followed
through many appearances beginning with the Hunrakan of the Mayas,
whose very name means `one-leg.' From it comes our hurricane,
so there is no wonder that he disposes of wind, rain, thunder and
lightning in lavish amounts." [Santillana, 1969, p.126] That
the pillar dispensed with or produced the wind is an important
symbolic motif to which we will return in a moment. Talbott
traced the one-legged god around the world, and suggested that the
most important evidence comes from Egypt. He points out that Osiris
is said to shine above the leg of heaven. Talbott cites
Massey to the effect that, "the leg or thigh was an Egyptian figure of
the pole. as we find it in `the leg of Ptah'." [Talbott,1980, p.
211] Talbott concludes that, "almost all of the primeval sun gods,
at one time or another, are depicted as one-legged gods. The
Egyptians called the cosmic column `the Leg of Fire', which is clearly the
same thing as the one leg of Ptah." [Talbott, 1977, p.5]
In Hindu
mythology these leg-tree motifs stand out clearly. Thus, the
Upanishads state that the, "Brahman is only one-footed." [Jung,
1977, p. 134] Jung also cites the following passage from the
Upanishads in his discussion of the importance of the cosmic tree:
"There is that ancient tree, whose roots grow upward and whose
branches grow downward–that indeed is called the Bright, that is
called Brahman, that alone is called immortal." [Jung,1977, p.
135] Talbott suggests that our Christmas tree, with the star placed
on top, is a reminiscence of the cosmic tree topped by Saturn.
Jung traces the prevalence of one-footed gods around the globe, and notes
that the foot has a phallic significance. This is obvious at
first glance of the Egyptian symbolism. Thus, the pillar of
Shu is the same as the leg of fire, and represents the male organ
of Atum. [Talbott, 1980] The Hebrews equipped their god El with a
long penis as Cross relates, [Cross, 1973, p. 23] The phallic
significance of the fiery pole descending from Saturn cannot be
overestimated for an understanding of myth, ancient symbols,
and religious ritual. Indeed, it even has ramifications for modern psychology.
For example, keeping in mind that our word hurricane
comes from the one-legged Mayan god who produces the wind, a
clinical case described by Jung has relevance here. In Symbols of
Transformation, Jung reports the following
hallucination of a schizophrenic patient: "He told me he could see an erect
phallus on the sun. When he moved his head from side to side, he
said, the sun's phallus moved with it, and that was where the wind
came from." [Jung, 1976, p. 101] Jung states
that he was thoroughly baffled by this hallucination until he
stumbled across a similar vision in a Mithraic liturgy: "And
likewise the so-called tube, the origin of the ministering wind. For
you will see hanging down from the disc of the sun something
that looks like a tube." [Jung, 1976, p. 100]
Thus, we see that
the tube, like the phallus and the single leg, are all responsible
for the wind. Jung points out the obvious phallic
significance of the tube, and states that the schizophrenic's
hallucination is a perfect example of an archetype, a universally present
psychic characteristic. I would agree with Jung as far as he goes;
however, I would suggest that the tube or phallus properly
belongs to Saturn. Thus, the patient sees or envisions a brightly
shining orb with a phallus, and either the patient or Jung
naturally assumed that it must be the sun because of our present
skies. But the sun does not present the image of a protruding
phallus. However, as we have seen from the Egyptian material
cited by Talbott, the planet Saturn presented just such an image in the
skies of thousands of years ago.
When I first read of Saturn's pole several years ago in a paper by Rose, I
wrote to him and presented him with Jung's account of the
schizophrenic. I suggested then that this patient's hallucination was a great
example of a racial memory. Later, Rose referred me to Talbott's
book, where the phallic significance of Saturn's pole is clearly
recognized. In regard to the liturgy cited by Jung, it is of
significance that Mithra was originally Saturn. [Talbott, 1980]
We will keep returning to this question of racial memory throughout
the remainder of this essay. Jung's case of the
schizophrenic is a prime example of a faulty interpretation because of
uniformitarian premises. Here, (as elsewhere in his writings)
Jung attributes qualities or characters to the sun which it does not
possess. Nevertheless, Jung's analysis, combined with the
Saturnian mythological material, goes a long way towards accounting
for the primitive superstition that wind may impregnate.
Elsewhere, Jung refers to "all those sun, fire, flame, wind,
breath similes that from time immemorial have been symbols of the
procreative and creative power that moves the world." [Jung,
1971, p. 202]
These symbols have their origin and explanation
in the visual appearance of Saturn, not from any
metaphorical process imagined by the ancients. These symbols are too
universal to be adequately accounted for by any creative act. Saturn's
wind-producing nature may also give us a clue to the original
meaning of spirit, for "pneuma, like spirit, originally meant air
in motion." [Jung, 1977, p. 136]
Phallic worship
Finally, I need hardly mention the
importance of the celestial phallus of Saturn for an
understanding of the origin and prevalence of ancient systems of phallic
worship. At this
point, one may well wonder whether Nietzsche was right after all
when he suggested that, "In the outbreaks of passion and in the
fantasies of dreams and madness man rediscovers his own and mankind's
prehistory." [Kaufmann, 1968, p. 182] I can hardly convey to
the reader my feeling of the profundity of this insight of
Nietzsche's. Taken in this light, the hallucination of Jung's patient may
not only be an example of racial memory, but an example for
all students of the mind. For the simple fact seems to be that, in
this phylogenetic sense, the hallucination makes sense.
The Primordial man
What
does this mean to all of us who brand as nonsensical and crazy
the bizarre statements of those considered mentally ill? Of course,
I am far from being the first to express the opinion that there
may be method and meaning behind the expressions of madness. Moving on
with the symbolism associated with Saturn, as we've seen the planet
presented with leg and phallus, it will come as no surprise to
find that Saturn and its pillar was personified as the Primordial Man.
As Talbott shows, the first man was represented as holding up
the heavens a la Atlas. Talbott states that, "Legends around the
world speak of a primal, cosmic man. The point which the
commentators usually miss is that this first man is the same figure as
the creator. It is incredible the extent to which ancient
testimony confirms that identity." [Talbott, 1977, p. 4] As such
creator/first-man types, Talbott includes Atum of the Egyptians
and Yama and Manu of the Hindus.
Adam and Anthropos
These identifications also impressed Jung and Santillana. The most important
identification for our purposes, however, is that Adam too was Saturn.
Again and again Jung equates the Primordial Man/Adam with Saturn.
Jung states that usually, "Adam is a `light' figure whose splendour
even outshines that of the sun. He lost his radiance owing to
the Fall." [Jung, 1977, p. 406] Jung refers to the traditions
describing Adam as the `perfect man' and as a `pillar of light.'
Jung notes that, "the pillar has affinities with the tree of
life and the tree of fire, as well as with the world's axis."
[Jung, 1977, p. 76] Jung concludes that, "it is clear ...that the
statue or pillar is either the perfect Primordial Man or at least
his body, both at the beginning of creation and at the end of
time." [Jung, 1977, p. 395]
Talbott cites Hebrew legends which state that, "Adam's stature was so great
that his head reached the centre of heaven. His countenance
obscured the sun, and the creatures of the world came to worship
him as the creator." [Talbott, 1977, p. 4] Talbott also states his
opinion that earlier scholars were right when they insisted on
a relationship between Atum and Adam, for each was Saturn, the
Primordial Man. It is here that the origin of the concept of
a heavenly Anthropos is most likely to be found, a concept
which plays a crucial role in Christian symbology. As Jung states it:
"As the first man, Adam is the homo maximus, the Anthropos
from whom the macrocosm arose, or who is the macrocosm."[Jung,
1977, p. 409] Jung believed that the archetype of the Anthropos
formed the essential core of the great religions.
Cosmic Egg, Eye, Wheel
To go on listing the numerous epitaphs or names of Saturn would lead us too
far astray. Suffice it to say that he was also known as the One
of the mountain (Olympus, Zion, Meru, etc.), and as the one who
lives upon the seas. Thus, Cross cites ancient traditions referring
to `El the one of the mountain,' and, "I am El, in the seat of
Elohim. I am enthroned in the midst of the seas." [Cross,1973, p.
45] Saturn was also the original cosmic egg, eye of heaven, and
cosmic wheel. Jung comes right out and declares that, "the
world-egg is the ancient Saturn." [Jung, 1977, p. 47]
Talbott shows all
of these traditions to be virtually universal. Many of the
epitaphs of Saturn become obvious once one is presented
with the ancient pictographs of the Creator or First Man.**[6
graphic images: enclosure, orb-in-enclosure, orb-in-cross,
orb-in-cross-inside-enclosure, orb-in-enclosure-atop-column, orb-
in-cross-inside-enclosure-atop-column ]** Several of
the more common symbols or pictographs are pictured above. The
crowning achievement of Talbott is his masterly analysis of
these symbols. Talbott claims that the three most common
symbols are **[graphic: orb-in-enclosure ]**, **[graphic:
orb-in-cross ]**, and **[graphic: orb-in-cross-inside-enclosure]**.
Talbott argues that, "literally the dot in the circle means the
`enclosed sun.' The enclosed sun is Saturn.
Universal Sun symbol
If I asked you to draw a
simple picture of our sun, would you draw it as a dot within a
circle? I think that's very unlikely. Yet it is the universal,
unquestioned assumption today that the dot in circle means the
solar orb. The sign dates to pre-history. It occurs in rock
drawings on every continent. You'll find it in the hieroglyphs
or pictographs of every ancient race–and it is always given
special prominence. Now would all the ancient races have hit upon the
same, inexplicable means of representing the solar orb? The orb
within a circle is a ... literal, completely
straightforward picture of Saturn within the cosmic band." [Talbott,
1977, p. 4]
Stephen Langdon found the star-cross **[graphic: orb-in-cross ]**on many
ancient tablets and pots, some of which are believed to date to the
prehistoric period. Langdon claims that this star-cross is
virtually the only religious symbol of the primitive period, and
in the early Sumerian language this star sign is the pictograph
for writing god, high, heaven, and bright. Langdon alsonotes that
it is the ideogram for An, the oldest and loftiest ofthe
Sumerian gods. Significantly, both Langdon and Talbott have equated An
with the planet Saturn. [Talbott, 1980, pp. 10 and 32] Talbott
claims that when Saturn emerged from the celestial waters, a brilliant
band of emitted material formed around the planet.
The Cosmos
Talbott argues that this band was the original Cosmos, commonly portrayed
as a revolving island or wheel, a coil of rope, an encoiled
snake or dragon, or as a belt enclosing the central god. In fact,
the band or circle represented the female aspect of the original
hermaphroditic god, the dot representing the male aspect. Talbott
points out that, "Egyptian texts are quite explicit in identifying
the goddess with the band of the Aten, the Aten being the
dwelling of the Ra. Ra shines in the womb of Nut, ... just as Osiris
shines in the womb of Isis. The idea is the same wherever you look."
[Talbott, 1977, p. 4)
Talbott shows that most of the great gods of antiquity have a female
aspect or are hermaphroditics: Kronos, El, An, Brahma, Shiva, and
Quetzalcoatl. Jung is forever referring to the
hermaphroditic nature of Adam-Saturn, and he shows that the dot within a
circle was an age-old mystical symbol for Adam. [Jung,1977, p.
373] With respect to the foregoing symbolism, it is wise to remember
Albright's observation that, "we have only to glance at the
litanies to see that Near-Eastern gods shifted in
disconcerting fashion from astral form to zoomorphic,
dendromorphic, and composite manifestations." [Greenberg and Sizemore,
1975, p. 37]
Cosmos as serpent or dragon
As I stated earlier, the ancients perceived the band around Saturn as a giant
serpent or dragon. Talbott reports that, "all of the great
Saturnian gods–Atum, Ra, An, Yama, Huang-ti, Quetzalcoatl,
Kronos–reside within the fold of a serpent (dragon, fish, crocodile,
etc.). Talbott also shows that the Egyptians regarded the
circular serpent as a symbol of the Great Mother. This, of course,
agrees with our earlier finding that the band or circle around
Saturn was the female aspect of the hermaphroditic god. Albright
showed that the Babylonians called their great goddess `the mother
python of heaven.' [Talbott, 1980, p. 166] Cross points out
the fact that El's virgin bride, the great mother goddess
Tanit, was known as `the Dragon Lady,' and `the One of the serpent.'
[Cross, 1973, p. 32]
Surely it must strike the reader as odd that
ancients the world over would describe the great female divinity in
such terms. What qualities does a serpent possess that would
qualify it as a symbol for the great mother? Rather, it would seem
that the serpent is preeminently qualified as a symbol of the male divinity.
Cross symbol
The final symbol which I will discuss here is that of the cross, as it bears
a special significance for the rest of the essay. The cross is
undoubtedly one of the most ancient and universal of all symbols.
Obviously it seems related to the sun-cross met with earlier. As
one author states: "Its undoubted antiquity, no less than its
extraordinary diffusion, evidences that it must have been, as it
may be said to be still in unchristianized lands,
emblematical of some fundamental doctrine or mystery ... it is most
usually associated with water; ... it was the emblem of the
water-deities of the Babylonians in the East and of the Gothic nations in
the West, as well as that of the rain deities
respectively of the mixed populations in America. ... In Egypt, Assyria,
and Britain it was emblematical of creative power and eternity;
in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and
immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence ...; while in both
hemispheres it was the common symbol of the resurrection, or `the sign
of life to come'." [Donnelly, 1882, p. 321]
Four rivers, four winds
After what we have found with regard to the sun-cross, it will be no great
surprise to learn that Saturnian gods from around the world were
associated with the sign of the cross. Talbott explains how this is
so: "From Saturn, the central sun, flowed four primary paths of
light. In the myths these appear as four rivers, four winds, four
streams of arrows, etc. ... The sun-cross and the enclosed
sun-cross depicting the four life-bearing streams, thus serve as
universal signs of the Holy Land." [Talbott, 1980, p.122]
Flood myth
We can trace traditions of a land of four-waters to the Americas as well as
the Near East. In the American myths, Saturn's association
with the waters of the flood is explicit. Thus the Aztecs knew
their great god Nahui-atl (Saturn) as the sun of four-waters.
[Bailey, 1973] The Aztecs had a tradition of a great flood in which
only one couple survived. The Codex Vaticanus preserves a similar
tradition among the Indians of Mexico, in which a world age
governed by Atonatiuh (or `Sun of Water') was destroyed by a deluge in
which only one couple survived. The largest pyramid ever
constructed, that of the Toltecs at Cholula, was said to gave been
constructed, "as a means of escaping from a second flood, should one occur."
[Donnelly, 1882, pp. 98-128]
Tower of Babel
Ignatius Donnelly has exhaustively traced flood legends from around the
globe, comparing those of the Mexican Indians with those of
the Middle East. Donnelly shows that these traditions agree
almost to the point of identity. Donnelly notes that the Tower of
Babel legend was prominent among the Indians, and that the
pyramids were their towers.
One look at the symbolism presented
by Talbott will show quite clearly the similarity between the
pillar or mount supporting Saturn, and the pyramid. Indeed,
Rose has suggested that the Tower of Babel was erected in imitation
of the pillar of Saturn, and Velikovsky has suggested that it
acted as a giant lightning-rod, thus calling upon itself the wrath
of the great deity above. [Rose, 1979] Here one is also reminded of
Ezekial's vision of the ladder to heaven.
I have now laid out the basics of the traditions and legends regarding
the Golden Age of Saturn. We have seen that in Saturn many of the
most treasured symbols seem to be united, and that Saturn
under the name of El was regarded as the original god of the Jews.
We have seen that El-Saturn, far from being the boring god
described by some of the greatest biblical scholars (Albright went so far
as to describe El as otiose), was actually the most revered god
of ancient times, as Velikovsky claimed (and Cross concurs.
[Cross, 1973, p. 22]) I would now
like to deal briefly with some of the mystery cults of the
Near-East, as this will not only fill in some of the details of
Velikovsky's thesis, but it will serve as a connecting bridge between the
traditions of Saturn and those of Christianity.
The Mystery Cults
Of all the mystery cults, that of Osiris is certainly the most famous, and
probably the most ancient. Yet the identity of Osiris has been
the subject of great speculation. Who was this mysterious figure that
so dominated the religious thought of Egypt for thousands
of years? Sir James Frazer regarded Osiris as the
personification of vegetation, a vegetation-god, while recent scholarship
suggest that Osiris was a mythic representation of the kingship.
[Frazer, 1959, pp. 462-463] Velikovsky, however, expressed
the opinion that Osiris was the planet Saturn (although he has yet
to present fully his reasons for this identification).
Osiris myth
Osiris presents us with the story of a god-man who dies tragically,
only to be resurrected. Frazer notes that Osiris was the most
popular of all Egyptian deities. The myth of Osiris was preserved
on the walls of the pyramids–hence the name Pyramid texts–and
appears to date from the fifth and sixth dynasties. Frazer
suggests the date 2600 BC as the probable time of their carving. As
they stand, the Pyramid texts are probably the oldest religious
literature yet around. Frazer notes that in these pyramids
the myth of Osiris is presented as common knowledge, once again
attesting to their great antiquity. The myth of Osiris was also
preserved by Plutarch.
Here I can only present the major details of the myth of Osiris. It seems
that Osiris was born in tumultuous fashion. Thus, Frazer states
that, "at his nativity a voice rang out proclaiming that the Lord of
All had come into the world." [Frazer, 1919, p. 6] Mullen
states that the Pyramid texts make no mention of Osiris' existence
before his dismemberment, except for his birth like that of the
other gods. Mullen speculates that Osiris was another name, or
later manifestation, of Atum, whom he equated with Saturn.
[Mullen, 1973]
In Plutarch's version, Osiris' reign was associated with great prosperity
and culture. Indeed it was said that Osiris taught the people
agriculture, and raised Egypt from barbarism. The major portion of
the Osiris myth, however, deals with his death and
resurrection. In short, Osiris was attacked by his brother Set. Set locked
Osiris in a coffin, and sent it down the Nile where it became
lodged within the branches of a pine-tree.
Jubilee of 30 years
The festivals associated with Osiris provide a powerful clue to the god's
identity. Breasted claims that the Sed festival was probably
the oldest Egyptian feast of which we have a trace. [Frazer,
1919, p. 156] Frazer suggests that it was as old as Egypt, and
shows that it was continued until the end of the Roman period.
Celebrated every thirty years, the Sed festival was apparently
designed to commemorate the resurrection of Osiris.
Significantly, thirty years is the period of Saturn's revolution around the
sun. Frazer states that several scholars have noticed this
correlation of the festival with the planet's revolution. Santillana
also comments on this relationship, comparing it to a similar
jubilee celebrated in Persia every thirty years.
[Santillana, 1969]
Tet festival
Frazer also describes another festival or mystery performed annually
for Osiris throughout the whole of Egypt. A kind of All Souls
festival, here the passion of the dying god was acted out at night, near
or upon a lake. Frazer notes that, "A great feature of the
festival was the nocturnal illumination." [Frazer, 1919, pp.50-51]
Another All Soul-like festival was that of Tet, in which a tall pole
was set up in front of every house where it remained for seven days.
Usually a face was painted on the top of the pole a la a totem
pole. Frazer observes that in Egyptian theology, the pole or pillar
was regarded as the backbone of Osiris, "and whatever its meaning
may have been, it was one of the holiest symbols of the
national religion." [Frazer, 1919, p. 108] Besides
representing the backbone of Osiris, the pillar was also believed to
hold up the sky. [Talbott, 1980, p. 180]
At this point the symbolism of Osiris and his festivals begins to make sense from a
Velikovskian perspective. The pillar was a holy symbol precisely
because it held up the revered god Osiris, and when it collapsed
Osiris floated away. The Golden Age vanished with the collapse of
the pillar. The pillar is synonymous with the Cosmic Tree met
with earlier, thus Osiris' close connection with, and enlodgement
within, the tree. The pillar may also bear some symbolic
meaning in regard to Osiris' lost phallus. The
illumination at night, like the festivals of light in later times,
almost certainly commemorates the illumination of the heavens by
Osiris-Saturn. Here I refer especially to the nova-like phase
spoken of by Velikovsky, but the illumination present at the god's
dismemberment would also be a factor in strengthening the people's
memory of the lighted skies. Thus, Budge states that, "the
Egyptian texts suggest that ... the Sun-god of night may have been
regarded as a form of Osiris." [Cardona, 1977, p. 36]
Lord of the Mill
The allusions to the wrappings of Osiris probably correspond to the rings
that formed around Saturn during the celestial
catastrophes. This is almost certainly the origin of the practice of
mummification by wrapping, a tradition which extended to the
Meso-American Indians as well. [Donnelly, 1882] In the Egyptian myth,
Osiris is wrapped by Isis (identified by Velikovsky with Jupiter),
whereas in the Greek myth, Zeus ties up his father Kronos. As
Santillana tells it: "The Lord of the Mill is declared to be
Saturn/Kronos, ... banished in chains to a blissful island, where he
dwells in sleep, for being immortal he cannot die, but is thought to
live a life-in-death, wrapped in funerary linen, until his time,
say some, shall come to awaken again, and he will be reborn to
us as a child." [Santillana, 1969, p. 148)
This statement of Santillana's has undoubtedly made clear to the reader the
importance of Saturnian motifs in regard to
Christianity. Thus, throughout his writings Jung is forever pointing
out the parallels between Osiris and Jesus, and those between
Osiris and Saturn. Thus, Osiris "is the dying and resurgent
God-man and hence a parallel to Christ." [Jung, 1977, p.509]
Likewise, Jung cites the mystical tradition that, "the king is buried
in Saturn, an analogy of the buried Osiris." [Jung,1977, p.
64]
Resurrection of Christ, Osiris
Frazer concludes his discussion of the Osiris myth with the
observation: "In the faith of the Egyptians the cruel death and
blessed resurrection of Osiris occupied the same place as the
death and resurrection of Christ holds in the faith of the Christians.
As Osiris died and rose again from the dead, so they hoped
through him ... to wake ... to a blissful eternity. ... That was the
hope which supported and consoled millions of Egyptian men and women
for a period of time far longer than that during which
Christianity has now existed on earth. In the long history of religion no
two divine figures resemble each other more closely in the fervour
of personal devotion which they have kindled, and in the high
hopes which they have inspired than Osiris and Christ. "[Frazer,
1919, p. 159]
I think more sense can be made of the Osiris myth by comparing it with the
similar myths of the other mystery cults. This I will now attempt to
do. Being closer in time to the life of Jesus, these cults may
well have provided a crucial link between the ancient cults of
Egypt and those stories and cults that appeared around the time of
the composition of the gospels. In the
classic Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer groups together the myths and
worship of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and several
others. Most of these myths relate the premature
disappearance and tragic death of a hero, who is subsequently
resurrected. These heroes were the subjects of the great mystery cults that
dominated the religious life of the Near East from the time of the
construction of the pyramids, to the fall of Rome.
Cult influence on Christianity
It can be shown that these cults had a profound influence upon the origin and
character of Christianity. It is my belief that these heroes
represent in mythical form the planet Saturn, and by comparing
their rituals and belief systems it may be possible to come to
some understanding regarding the history of the solar system. My
position is that of Jung: "The collective unconscious expresses
itself in the mythological teachings, characteristic of most
mystery religions, which reveal the secret knowledge concerning
the origin of all things and the way to salvation." [Jung,
1977, pp. 199-200]
Frazer prefaces his study of these mystery cults with the
observation: "in name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in
substance they were the same." [Frazer, 1959, p. 341] Tammuz, the
`true son of the deep water,' was the youthful husband and/or
lover of Ishtar, the great mother goddess of Babylon. Tammuz
seems to have met his fate by being ground up in a giant mill: "The
women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground his
bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the wind. "[Frazer,
1959, p. 348]
Tammuz's death was annually mourned amidst great
ceremony, the shrill music of flutes, and much lamentation. Ezekial
8:14 contains a reference to the lamentations for Tammuz. Santillana
states that the cult lasted into the thirteenth century in Harran. There seems
to have been an All Souls festival associated with the mourning
for Tammuz, and T.H. Gaster has traced similar practices all around
the globe. [Frazer, 1959] Both Frazer and Gaster maintain
that this festival survives in our Halloween, first sanctioned
for the entire Church by Pope John XIX in 1006. The festival
seems to involve not only the return of the spirits of the dead,
but a general spirit of the rejuvenation of nature as well. Who was
this Tammuz? Alfred Jeremias, the noted scholar of
Mesopotamian mythology, believed Tammuz represented Saturn, and Talbott
agrees. [Talbott, 1980, p. 32]
Adonis cult
A closely analogous cult to that of Tammuz, is that of Adonis. Adonis was
the handsome and youthful love of Aphrodite. Adonis is said to
have been born from a myrrh-tree. Like Osiris, Adonis appears to
have served a brief sentence in a chest, but he met his death at
the tusks of a wild boar (said to have been the jealous Ares in
disguise). Aphrodite is the lamenting Isis-figure here. The chief
ceremony seems to have involved tossing an image of Adonis into
the ocean. The shrill notes of the flutes and the cries of
women were also common here. Frazer devotes a brief discussion
to a communal procession involving the worshippers of Adonis, and
notes its close agreement with similar rites held in Italy on
Good Friday on behalf of Christ. Frazer remarks: "When we reflect how
often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of
the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise
that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted
upon a similar celebration of the dead and arisen Adonis,
which ... was celebrated in Syria at the same season." [Frazer,
1959, p. 356]
Attis cult
A more interesting cult is that of Attis, said to be the Phrygian Adonis.
Attis was a handsome young shepherd cherished by Cybele, the Mother
of the gods. Some say Cybele was his mother, and that his was a
virgin birth. Frazer gives two accounts of the tragic death of
Attis. In one, he was speared by a boar. In the other, Attis
castrated himself beneath a pine tree and bled to death. The celebration
of Attis' mystery is dominated by tree worship. As Frazer
describes it, a pine tree was cut and brought into the sanctuary
of Cybele, "where it was treated as a great divinity." [Frazer,
1959, p. 370] The tree was wrapped with woolen bands, and an
effigy of Attis was hung upon it. The festival proceeded amongst
great trumpeting, and was marked for its frenzied dancing, wild
abandon, and outbursts of bloodletting. There also seems to have been a
sacramental meal, and a baptism of blood. At the height of
the celebration, the men offered the ultimate sacrifice: "Wrought up
to the highest pitch of religious excitement they dashed the
severed portions of themselves against the image of the cruel
goddess. These broken instruments of fertility were afterwards
reverently wrapped up and buried in the earth ...where, like
the offering of blood, they may have been deemed
instrumental in recalling Attis to life." [Frazer, 1959, p. 371]
Frazer points out how common it was to find the great Mother goddesses
served by eunuch priests. Thus, the custom was found among the
Mexican Indians as well. [Bailey, 1973, p. 48] Frazer quotes one
author to the effect that, "the mad worshipper endeavoured
thus against nature to assimilate himself more closely to his
goddess." [Frazer, 1919, p. 258] Without disagreeing with this
hypothesis, could it not be that the worshippers also identified
with the great god-son who had lost his life and phallus in
preparing the way for salvation? Perhaps their offering was a
symbolic act intended to provide Attis with the missing part necessary
for his return. It seems likely that in later times the celibacy of
Christian priests replaced these rather drastic acts of
devotion.
Dionysus cult
The final great god of antiquity who belongs in this tradition, is Nietzsche's
soul-mate, the Greek Dionysus. The Dionysian rites were, of
course, notorious for their orgiastic nature. Dionysus is usually
presented as a personification of the vine, but, as Frazer points out,
it is clear he was also a god of trees in general. Thus the Greeks
sacrificed to `Dionysus of the tree.' He was also known as
`Dionysus in the tree.' Frazer notes that his image was usually an upright
post draped in a mantle, and sporting a bearded mask. Dionysus
also died a tragic death–he was torn to pieces by the Titans
during an attempt to occupy the throne of Zeus. [Frazer,1959] In the
passion of Dionysus, the god was represented by a bull (as was Osiris,
the Apis bull). Frazer reports that the Cretans, when they acted
out the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to
pieces with their teeth. The slaughter and meal of a bull seems to
have been a regular part of the Dionysian ritual. In fact,
Frazer suggests that the Greeks probably offered human sacrifices
to Dionysus, as the Egyptians once had to Osiris: "These
Greek traditions may well be distorted reminiscences of a custom of
sacrificing human beings, and especially divine kings, in the
character of Dionysus, a god who resembled Osiris in many points."
[Frazer, 1959, p. 406]
Frazer also cites the testimony of Euripedes
that the human victim was first tied or hung from a pine tree before
being torn to pieces. [Frazer, 1919] There are
several other gods and goddesses of less renown who properly
belong in the tradition of the dying and reviving god: Pan,
Demeter, Mithra, Odin, Artemis, and Quetzalcoatl. With Demeter and
Artemis, the passion is enacted in the name of the great
Mother goddess. Thus, Demeter searches for the lost Persephone
(Saturn). Artemis was annually hanged upon a tree in effigy, and
was known by the name of the `Hanged One.' Odin, the great god
of the Scandinavians, was known as the `Lord of the Gallows,'
or as the `God of the Hanged.'
Frazer records that human beings were
sacrificed to Odin by being hung upon a tree and then stabbed in
the side with a spear. Frazer even cites the Bagabos of the
Philippine Islands as offering a curiously analogous example: they
annually sacrificed human victims by hanging them from a tree and
thrusting them through with a spear in the side. [Frazer,1959] The
numerous points of resemblance between these gods and their mysteries
is obvious to everyone, but who or what they represented is a
different matter. Frazer argued that they were all vegetation gods,
commemorating the seasonal growth and harvest of the crops. This
opinion has been criticized on numerous grounds, and Gaster gives the
modern opinion that the purpose of the god's passion is to provide
a mythological explanation or "reason for the god's absence: he
has met with an accident." [Frazer, 1959, p. 462]
Who, we might ask, is the god who met with an accident? Gaster suggests that each
was a local god, symbolizing the annual or periodic passion and
revival of some form of communal or corporate life. But how
then is one to account for the amazing resemblances between the
numerous local gods? In
Velikovsky's theory, the gods are planets, and to discover the identity of
Osiris and the rest, we need to ask: Who is the planet that fell,
died, or met with an accident? As Velikovsky informs us, it was
Saturn who met with an accident leading to the end of the Golden
Age of antiquity. It was Saturn who, as Osiris, was perched
upon the sacred tree and suffered dismemberment. It was
Saturn-Osiris who met his fate at the tusks of a boar, losing his perch and
phallus in the process, and exiting upon his
resurrection to the netherworld. Suffice it to say, if Tammuz, Adonis,
Attis, Dionysus, and the rest closely resemble Osiris, they too
must be identified with the planet-god Saturn.
Scholars apart from Velikovsky have noticed some of these
correlations, and some have identified the gods of the mystery cults with
this or that planet, but no one seems to be able to account for
these relationships satisfactorily. Thus, we are back at the
beginning: why is Saturn associated with the Creation or with a sun
of night? (and Dionysus and Tammuz were regarded as suns of the
night. [Talbott, 1980, p. 340])
Sacraments
For example, Jung is continually
equating the gods of the various mystery cults, but whether he
relates them to the sun or Saturn, he is unable to provide any
plausible reason why they are hung upon a tree,
dismembered, or bandaged. In what sense can the sun be said to be torn apart
or attacked by a boar? Jung cites the important mystical
tradition that Adam too is represented as having been pierced in
the side with a spear, but again, why is this such a persistent
tradition? [Jung, 1977, p. 31] Now the
mysteries of the early Church were deeply influenced by the mystery
cults we are now considering. [Hislop, 1959] As Jung states, "it
is very significant that the mysteries of the early Church
turned soon enough into sacraments." [Jung, 1977, p. 232]
Saturnalia festival
Thus, in the Greek Orthodox rite the loaf of bread is pierced by as mall
silver lance (the bread symbolizing Christ's body). Could it be that
just beneath the surface of all this there is a golden thread that
will tie it all together, uniting, and in effect equating,
the worship of the fifth dynasty of Egypt with that of St. John? Like Jung,
Frazer had the correct answer at his fingertips, but seemed
unable to grasp it fully. In Frazer's description of the Saturnalia
the thread is laid bare: "Of such periods of license the one
which is best known ... is the Saturnalia. This famous festival
fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was
popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, god of
sowing and husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous
and beneficient king of Italy.. ... His reign was the fabled
Golden Age. At last the good god, the kindly king, vanished suddenly;
but his memory was cherished to distant ages. ... Yet the bright
tradition of his reign was crossed by a dark shadow: his altars
are said to have been stained with the blood of human victims,
for whom a more merciful age afterwards substituted effigies.
... Feasting and revelry ... are the features that seem to have
especially marked this carnival of antiquity, as it went on for
seven days in the streets." [Frazer, 1959, pp. 641-642]
The Saturnalia was celebrated from Rome to Mexico and China.
[Santillana, 1969] Frazer points out that a central feature of the festival
was the selection of a mock king, who, for thirty days was allowed
complete freedom in satisfying his cravings and lusts. At the end
of his brief reign, however, the man was required to slit his
own throat, or was led to a tree and hung. After the
indulgence and pleasures of the feast, it was followed by a period
of abstinence (in modern times at least).
Frazer notes that, "ecclesiastical historians have been puzzled to say why after much
hesitation and great diversity of usage in different places the
Christian church finally adopted forty days as the proper
period for the mournful celebration of Lent." [Frazer,1959, p.
655] Of course, the number forty is considered sacred, like the
number seven (the number of days in the Saturnalia). But why are
these numbers any more sacred than others? Frazer suggest that the
forty day Lent period was borrowed from the forty day period of
mourning in the Greek Demeter mystery. Now, as I've shown,
Demeter has Saturnian connections, but again, why the number
forty? What else is Saturn universally associated with? With the
Deluge, of course; thus, seven days of glorious light were said
to have preceded the traumatic flood of forty days duration.
The Symbols
and Legends of Jesus
As we move on to the traditions surrounding Jesus, the points I have made
regarding Saturn-El of the Old Testament, and Saturn-Osiris of
the mystery cults, take on an almost overwhelming
significance. For the dramatic conclusion, I'd better set the stage
first. Originally this essay arose out of an attempt to understand
the symbology of the story of Jesus, particularly that found in
the fourth gospel. For example, John refers to Jesus as Word. What,
I wondered, did this actually signify? As an aid to the
sought-for understanding, I read C.H. Dodd's The Fourth Gospel,
somewhat of a classic in the field. It soon became apparent
that many of the traditional symbols of Jesus–Word, bread,
water, shepherd, etc.–had celestial ramifications, if not a celestial
origin. With the aid of Velikovsky's thesis, I detected
the following mystery. Like many of the Jews of Jeremiah's
time, who, try as they may to escape the lure and charms of
the stars and astrologers, I too it seems must eventually
return and pay homage to the planet known as Baal.
If the past two sections have been surprising or controversial, this one is only
more so. Goethe once
said that there are only a few basic themes of art which
underlie all stories and literature. I think there is a lot of truth to
this view, not only in regard to literature, but in myth and
religion as well. I believe that the story of Jesus is no exception
to Goethe's dictum, that it too has its origins and parallels
in ancient beliefs, some of which stem from the earliest traditions
of mankind. If there is such a thing as racial memory, it seems
certain that the gospels would draw upon this powerful source of
imagery as well. Dodd
provides a good background with which to view early
Christianity, and considers in some detail the many religious influences
that may have acted upon the author of the fourth gospel.
Particularly valuable are Dodd's discussion of Gnosticism, Rabbinic
Judaism, and Hermetic literature. All of these traditions,
it appears, had their share of influence on John and the story
of Jesus. For example, Dodd concludes that the statements
made in the fourth gospel about the Son of Man "recall the figure
of the heavenly anthropos as we have met it in the Hellenic
conceptions." [Dodd, 1965, p. 243] We met it as well in the
discussion of the ancient conceptions of Saturn.
Messianic titles
The gospel of John is famous for its extensive use of these Messianic
titles, using them more than any other New Testament writer. The
Son of Man is one of Jesus' better known titles, yet its meaning
is probably obscure to most Christians. Dodd point out that for
John, the Son of Man is the Son of God, represented
symbolically by light, bread, and vine. Dodd also alludes to the fact that,
for Philo, the first-born Son of God is the Logos. Now it can be
shown that Philo exerted a profound influence over the author of
the fourth gospel. A distinguished Jewish scholar and philosopher
located in Alexandria, Philo had the unique opportunity
to study at close-hand the ancient traditions of three great
civilizations: the Egyptian, Greek, and Hebrew. Philo's cultural
heritage has an added significance in the wake of Dodd's conclusion
that, "the substance of a Logos-doctrine similar to Philo's is
present all through the gospel" of John. [Dodd, 1965,p. 279]
Logos concept
One of the most interesting features of the fourth gospel is the author's
use of the logos concept. In his recent An Introduction to New
Testament Literature, Juel emphasizes the significance of the Logos
and the Prologue for the rest of the gospel, and points out that
only in the Prologue is Jesus called the Word: "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
[John 1:1] The author of John emphasizes the Word's role in
Creation: "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything
made that was made." [John 1:3] Only in the prologue does the author
use the Logos in a cosmological sense. Juel points out the
parallels between Genesis and the Prologue, and one may well wonder in
what sense Word could be responsible for the creation of light and
the planets. Perhaps Psalms 33:6 can give us a clue: "By the word of
the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath
of his mouth."
Another crucial clue is that the ancient Jews
believed that words not only had a causal efficacy of their own, but a
physical substantive nature as well. Thus, we remember the Old
Testament story of the blessing of Jacob. How could such a belief
arise? In any event, it is clear that in the eyes of the author of
the fourth gospel Jesus is the Logos become incarnate. Thus, Dodd
states that, "the life of Jesus is the history of the Logos."
[Dodd, 1965, p. 284]
Shepherd as symbol
Several other symbols or images play a central role in the artistry
and impact of the fourth gospel. For example, Jesus is compared to
a shepherd: "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his
life for the sheep." [John 10:11] Dodd refers to some of the
Jewish history of this symbol, adding that many ancient peoples
regarded their deities as shepherds. Thus, in Plato's Statesman
God equals Shepherd. In the last section we saw that several
other deities were also shepherds. In Philo, the Logos is described
as a shepherd of the cosmos. [Dodd, 1965]
Bread as symbol
Bread likewise plays an important role in the symbology of John. Juel points
out the fact that bread was an ancient symbol for Wisdom or
the words of the Torah. Furthermore, and especially significant
in light of Velikovsky's discussion in Worlds in Collision,
there is the fact that, "manna, the bread from heaven, is not only
in Jewish Apocalyptic one of the blessings of the Messianic
age, but in Philo it's a symbol of the Logos." [Dodd,1965, p.
137]
Water as symbol
Water is also of importance in regard to the symbolism of the fourth
gospel. As we have already seen, water is an ancient and continually
recurring religious symbol. Indeed, "the Lord sitteth upon a
flood." [Psalms 29:10] Usually considered symbolic because of its
cleansing nature, water was important to the ancients for
cosmological reasons. They believed that water literally spanned the
heavens, and that it played a central role in the Creation (the waters
of the firmament, etc.). Dodd cites the interesting Jewish
tradition that, "water that comes down from above is Torah, Wisdom, or
Holy Spirit." [Dodd, 1965, p. 138] We may be relatively certain
that this is not a reference to spring showers. Elsewhere, Dodd points
out that Philo placed great emphasis on the passage in Jeremiah
where God is described as the fountain of living waters .[Jeremiah
2:13] Finally, in the Apocryphon of John God is referred to both as
a celestial being, and as, "the spring of the water of life."
[Robinson, 1977, p. 101]
Light as symbol
The last of the symbols of Jesus which I'll consider here, is that of light.
It would be hard to over-emphasize the significance of the
symbolic role played by light in most religious systems. Dodd observes
that, "Light seems to be a natural symbol for deity." [Dodd,
1965, p. 201] But why should this be? In Philo's writings, God is
referred to as the archetype of light. In the First Epistle of John,
God is light. [1:15] In the Apocryphon of John, God is pure light.
[Robinson, 1977, p. 104] In the Prologue to the fourth gospel,
this archetypal light is somehow connected with or within the Logos.
Thus, light is directly associated with the Creation. Dodd points
out that for the Jews of the Christian era, the dwelling
place of God was believed to be light. In fact, God's very being
was described in terms of radiance, splendour, and dazzling
light. It almost seems as if the ancient traditions are trying to
tell us something specific about God, light, and the Creation,
apart from their symbolic relation.
At this point it appears that we have a situation which may be described
by the following symbolic equation: Jesus= Word= God=Son of God=
Son of Man= Light= Shepherd= Water= Bread= the Creator.
Most of these titles or symbols of Jesus appear to have some
relation to the Creation, and all have celestial origins. In a sense,
this is obvious and perhaps trivial; but then again how does bread,
Word, or Shepherd relate to the heavens? I believe we can tie all
this together and explain the probable origins of all of these
symbols by returning to the myths surrounding Saturn.
We have seen that El-Saturn was regarded as the God of the Jews, and as the
Creator. Thus, if John speaks of Jesus as bearing a relation to
the god of the Old Testament, it would seem to follow that Jesus
bears some relation to Saturn. We have found that several
scholars equated the ancient idea of a heavenly Anthropos with
Saturn, and Dodd implies the equation of the Anthropos with the Son of
Man concept. The Anthropos also has a direct relation to Adam and
the Creation. Thus, Jung states that, "As the first man, Adam
is the homo maximus, the Anthropos from whom the macrocosm
arose." [Jung, 1977, p. 409] Adam was the planet Saturn, and as the
second Adam, Jesus must in some way be related to a return or
reminiscence of Saturn. Talbott
notes the belief of the Hebrews that every king was a potential
Messiah, "and at times the hope is expressed that the king will
introduce a new Golden Age." [Talbott, 1980, p. 21]
The traditions surrounding the life of Jesus express the same general ideas and
hopes. People the world over long to return to a time of innocence
and plenty, a Garden of Eden presided over by the beneficent
God-King Saturn. Messiahs were common in Jesus' time and
culture, and all of the various titles used to describe Jesus predate
him. A crucial
clue is provided by Talbott: "Among numerous races, including
the Egyptians, the solitary god of beginnings is recalled as
the Voice of Heaven–or the Word. And this aspect of the creator
is charged with concrete meanings. The texts say that from his
central location in the heavens the creator emitted radiant
streams of speech and it was through this visible speech that he
created his celestial dwelling. It is not an abstract notion, but
a record of a very tumultuous event involving the eruption of
massive quantities of matter from a visible celestial body."
[Talbott, 1977, p. 3]
Talbott claims that this celestial body was Saturn. Thus, it
appears that the Word was Saturn. When Saturn
periodically erupted, its gases, radiations, thunderbolts, and fires
presented an easily observable and awesome display of fireworks
to all earthlings. These eruptions caused planets and comets to
be born, animal species to mutate, and vegetation to flourish.
The massive eruptions probably caused a great deal of noise,
presumably similar in nature to the sound of a volcano or earthquake,
and thus the planet-god appeared to speak–with words of fire.
This is probably the origin of the equation of Holy Spirit with
fire, and of breath and soul with pneuma and ether: "By the
word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the
breath of his mouth." Thus Jung points out that the Holy Ghost is
breathed by Father and Son. [Jung, 1977, p. 216]
Creation or Re-Creation
When Saturn exploded into the night thousands of years ago, the ancients
described it as the Creation. Many of the paradoxes of the account
preserved in Genesis are erased (or at least eased) once one
understands the events described there as re-creation. For
example, the light of the nova actually preceded the `birth' of many of
the lights of heaven, including Venus (and probably Mars and
Mercury as well). As Velikovsky pointed out in the quote at the
beginning of this essay, the intense and dazzling light of the flaring
Saturn has never been forgotten, and is still
unconsciously reenacted in the annual festivals of light by peoples
from all around the globe. Saturn's inundation of the world with
light is the reason light seems `a natural symbol for the deity.'
As a shepherd, Jesus is following a long tradition of shepherds, the
original of which was the celestial shepherd Saturn. [Talbott,1980]
Similarly, Jesus follows Saturn as a god who existed on earth.
Santillana notes that, "No one but Saturn dwelt among men."
[Santillana, 1969, p. 222] Santillana cites ancient Egyptian and Orphic
fragments to the same effect, and Talbott cites Herodotus and
Plutarch. As Atum-Saturn bore Osiris-Saturn, and Ninurta-Saturn bore
Tammuz-Saturn, so too was Jesus believed to embody both Father
and Son. But this
startling list of concordances is by no means all of the
characteristics that Jesus has in common with Saturn.
Sabbath Day
As we have seen, they
share many of the same festivals. Frazer's Golden Bough documents
this fact quite explicitly. In regard to other
observances, some Christians follow the Jews in holding Saturday sacred, it
being the Sabbath. To the Hebrews the seventh day was always held
sacred, it being Saturn's day.
Baptism by water
And what of baptism? Baptism, of course, is an ancient rite dating back at
least to early Egyptian times. The American Indians practiced
many forms of baptism as well. [Donnelly, 1882] The rites of
baptism probably correspond to a repetition and imitation of the holy
and life-giving waters that fell from Saturn. Jung cites
mystical traditions relating the water of baptism to the waters that
flowed from the `good god El.' Jung also refers to St. Augustine's
statement that, "the Red Sea signifies baptism." [Jung,
1977, p. 199]
Red Sea and Salt
But the Red Sea spoken of here has a dual meaning,
one being the sea of fire and water in the sky. Thus, Jung cites
the tradition that the crossing of the Red Sea is the crossing of
the waters of Kronos, and on the other side of the sea is the
other side of Creation. But the most interesting point in support of
this interpretation is that in the Roman rite of baptism,
blessed salt is added to the consecrated water. Jung records
that a few grains of salt are also placed in the neophyte's
mouth with the words: "Receive the salt of wisdom: may it be a
propitiation for thee unto eternal life." [Jung, 1977, p.238]
A Velikovskian interpretation can perhaps make some sense of all the curious
allusions in religious literature to salt, or to the baptisms of
salt, water, and fire. Thus, John the Baptist declares that the
Messiah will baptise with the Holy Ghost and fire. [Matthew
3:11] Mark warns of the day when everyone will be salted with fire,
and every sacrifice salted with salt. [Mark 9:49] Jesus proclaims
to his followers: "Ye are the salt of the earth." [Matthew
5:13] Many more examples of the symbolic importance of salt in
religious thought could be produced. Jung
stresses the metaphorical significance of salt in relation to wisdom and
understanding. Jung also documents the immense importance
that salt held for the alchemists, citing the mystical tradition
that, "Christ is the salt of wisdom which is given at baptism."
[Jung, 1977, p. 241] Indeed, the alchemists claimed that,
"Whoever knows the salt knows the secret of the old sages." [Jung,
1977, p. 189]
Wisdom symbols
Now I ask, what possible relation to wisdom does salt
possess which could give rise to such widespread traditions?
The same query could be directed at the similar symbolism
involving snakes. Thus, Jesus tells his followers, "Be ye
therefore wise as serpents." [Matthew 10:16] As I've come to understand
it, the answer lies with respect to their relation to Saturn and
the Cosmic Tree. In Jewish tradition, this cosmic tree was called
the Tree of Knowledge, and it was guarded by a serpent. Earlier we
saw that ancients the world over described Saturn–the top of the
tree–as being surrounded by a dragon or serpent. The relation of
the serpent to the Tree of Knowledge probably accounts for its
mysterious symbolism with respect to wisdom. Likewise, it is probable
that during both the original flood, and during the later fall
of the celestial pole, the Cosmic Tree rained down salt from above
(as Velikovsky suggested). Coming from God and Heaven it was
regarded as holy, coming from the Tree of Knowledge as a symbol of
Torah and Wisdom. As Dodd showed, the same symbolism applies to
heavenly water. This interpretation is strengthened by Juel's
observation that bread was also an ancient symbol for Wisdom.
For, as several scholars have noted, Saturn was known to have been a
source of manna, the heavenly bread. [Cardona, 1978] Finally, as
Dodd noted, the fall of manna came to be associated with, and
considered a symbol of, the Messianic Age.
Turning now to the life of Jesus as preserved in the gospels, it is
significant that, like Osiris, little was written of his life except
regarding his birth and the events leading up to his death. As with
several of the other Saturnian figures, Jesus' birth was a miraculous
one. As in the case of Osiris, a voice rang out at his nativity
announcing his appearance on earth. [Luke 2:9-15] As in the myth of
Kronos, there is a slaughter of infants, although the details are
different. [Matthew 2:16] It is also interesting to find that
Jerome stated that the cave in which Jesus was born, was once the
sanctuary of Adonis. [Greenberg and Sizemore, 1978, p.76] As
Santillana relates, the age of Jesus' birth was one waiting in ready for
the birth of a Messiah. Thus, the famous poet Virgil prophesied
the return of the Golden Age: "Now the Virgin returns, the reign
of Saturn returns, now a new generation descends from heaven on
high. Only do thou, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of a child,
under whom the iron brood shall first cease, and a golden race spring
up throughout the world." [Santillana, 1969, p. 244]
What gave rise to these expectations? Santillana
and Jung both claim that it was the long-awaited conjunction
of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces that gave rise to these hopes
(6 or 7 BC). This is more than interesting in light of the fact
that Velikovsky suggested that a catastrophic conjunction of Saturn
and Jupiter led to the events described as the Creation. This leads
us to the important question as to the identity of the star of
Bethlehem, the star said to herald Jesus' birth. [Matthew2:2] Almost
certainly, in the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter the people
of Judea saw the return of their patron star. Thus, Amos
mentions Saturn (Chiun) as the `star of your god.' [Amos5:26] Jung
also states that Saturn, as the "second sun ... was the star of
Israel and therefore to some extent identical with Yahweh."
[Jung, 1976]
Star of David
I would also suggest that the star of David was
originally Saturn, and thus the attempt of the biographers to trace
Jesus' lineage to David has a dual meaning and purpose. It appears
that Dod or Dodo was an old title for the central god of Jebusite
Jerusalem, and it has been pointed out that Isaiah addressed
the Lord as Dodi (my beloved). [Isaiah 5:1] Now Dod, Dodo, and
Daud are all believed to be alternatives of David, and all are
other names for Adonis of the mystery cult. [Greenberg and Sizemore,
1978, pp. 64-65] Thus it seems almost beyond a doubt that the
biblical hero known to Sunday school children as the slayer of
Goliath, took or received the name of the revered star-god David.
Moving to the Passion of Christ, several Saturnian motifs standout
clearly. Of crucial significance is Jesus' death on the Cross. Referring
to the hanging deaths of Attis, Odin, and others throughout
mythology, Jung remarks that this should, "teach us that the
hanging of Christ on the Cross is nothing unique in religious
mythology." [Jung, 1976, p. 233] Jung argues that the Cross
symbolizes at one time both the Tree of Life and a Tree of Death (a
coffin). We remember the lodging of Osiris' coffin within or upon the
tree. Jung points out that the imagery of Osiris and Jesus upon
the tree has symbolic reference with regard to their
resurrection; thus the "dead are delivered back to their mother for
rebirth." [Jung, 1976, p. 233]
This almost sounds like gobbledegook; yet the traditions are persistent. Thus, a rather unusual
statement of St. Augustine is of interest here: "Like a bridegroom
Christ went forth from his chamber, he went out with a presage of
his nuptials into the field of the world. ... He came to the
marriage-bed of the cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated
his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature,
he lovingly gave himself to the woman for ever." [Jung,1976, p.
433]
There is also a good deal of snake symbolism in regard to Christ on the
Cross. For example, Jung points to several paintings where a serpent
is substituted for Christ of the Cross. This recalls to mind the
passage in John: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up." [John3:14] Jung
claims that the Cross with a snake on it is often found in medieval
art, but also in the dreams and fantasies of modern people
completely ignorant of these traditions. [Jung, 1959, p.78]
Tree of Knowledge
Jung also shows that in Manichaean tradition, Jesus is believed
synonymous with the Tree of Knowledge in paradise. Recalling
the serpent's connection with Saturn and the Cosmic Tree,
Jesus' serpentine character is perhaps somewhat
understandable: "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." [Luke23:43] Jesus'
connection with the serpent is a good example of what Jung calls an
archetypal image. Thus, although Jesus has little if any conceivable
relation to snakes, he is often represented as one, just as
many other gods have been, and as others will be in the future.
Another example of archetypal material is that surrounding the
androgyny of Christ. In reference to the androgyny of Adam, Jung
remarks: "Since Adam was the prototype of Christ, ... it is
understandable that a picture of Christ should develop showing distinctly
feminine features. In religious art the Christ-image has
retained this character to the present day. [Jung, 1977, p.373] Having
already established the original androgyny of El-Saturn, it
is no surprise that Christ's androgyny is well established
in ecclesiastical tradition. [Jung, 1977]
Piercing in side symbolism
Perhaps the most startling example of archetypal material, or at least of a
very persistent tradition, is that of the piercing of Jesus in
the side with a spear. [John 19:34] We ran across this practice
earlier in the discussion of the mystery cults. Osiris, Attis,
Adonis, Odin, and Adam were all represented as being the victims of
an attack to their chest (being speared either by a boar or
knife). Frazer has shown that this same mode of human sacrifice
(hanging and being speared in the side) also occurs among
primitive islanders. This method of sacrifice was employed by the
Aztecs in their mock-murder of the god Huitzilopochtli.
To what trait or characteristic of the human psyche could this bizarre
practice or tradition be due? Following
Velikovsky's lead, we should perhaps look first to the heavens for
such a bizarre and widespread tradition. This practice is
obviously irrational, and it may actually be closely akin to instinct.
As I attempted to understand or reconstruct the celestial
events which gave rise to this practice, it became obvious
that all these traditions had reference to the fall of the heavenly
pole of Saturn. The fall of the pole caused a second major
deluge. Thus, there is the interesting ecclesiastical tradition
that from the spear wound flowed `rivers from the belly of Christ.'
This is probably a play on John 7:38 where it is said of the
believer that, "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water."
Jung notes that this idea played a great role in both
ecclesiastical metaphor and alchemy. After what we have already
seen, it is no cause for wonder that alchemical traditions also held
that, "from the belly of Saturn's salt flow living waters
leaping up to blessed life." [Jung, 1977, p. 277] The fall of
the pole, and the death or removal of Saturn, was the greatest of
all catastrophes, and as such it was never to be forgotten
by the human race. Neither was the identity of the culprit
forgotten, the celestial boar that slew the revered King-Primordial
Man with a thrust to the side (though it must be admitted
that his identity has not been well-preserved; thus, Egyptian
scholars still have no idea as to who or what Seth
represented) [Griffiths, 1980]
Although I briefly toyed with the idea that
Mercury might have been the assailant, I came to the conclusion
that Mars must have been responsible for the tragedy that befell
Saturn. As I understand it, Mars was probably on a comet-like
course when it passed between the Earth and Saturn and struck the
pole. The pole being the body of the god, this gave rise to the
image of a boar spearing the side of the god with its tusks (See
Worlds in Collision for the various shapes that comets have been
known to assume). I imagine the effects would have been similar to
the near contact of the like poles of two giant magnets.
Mars suffered the greatest destruction, probably from the effects of
fire caused by a giant thunderbolt said to have been thrown by
Jupiter (Horus' revenge over Set). However, Saturn and Mars must
have exchanged charges, with Mars receiving the worst end of the
deal. Thus, Saturn must have suffered a substantial loss of
charge, and it was propelled along its way to `death's dark
country,' perhaps with the aid of a push from Jupiter and its massive
charge. Mars having been sent its own way by the blast of Jupiter,
Zeus now took over reign as the King of the Gods.
As I understand
it (aided by a suggestion of Cardona, 1977), Saturn's fall
released not only whatever waters may have been held in the polar
configuration, but those previously held in abeyance by the close
proximity and massive charge of Saturn. Thus, a second major deluge must
have followed the death of Osiris, and so it is that in some
traditions Osiris was drowned. [Griffiths, 1980]
Secret Knowledge
At this point I am
sure everyone is wondering, how could a college kid get so screwed
up? But this
appears to be the scenario that the myths describe. Thus, we saw
earlier that the boar that attacked Adonis was believed to be the
jealous Ares in disguise. Ares, of course, is the Greek name for
the planet Mars. In remembrance of these events the great mystery
cults originated, and that is their meaning. Thus, when the great
Greek philosophers were initiated into the mysteries, Velikovsky
suggests that some of the secret knowledge obtained was of the
history of the solar system. What importance the testimony of the
ancients assumes if Velikovsky is right.
For example, take the
following paragraph from Plato's Timaeus relating a
conversation between an Egyptian sage and Plato's ancestor, Solon: "O Solon,
Solon, you Hellenes are but children ... I mean to say that in
mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among
you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with
age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, there
will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many
causes. There is a story which even you have preserved,
that once upon a time Phaethon, the son of Helios, having
yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to
drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was
upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a
thunderbolt.
Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a
declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the
heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring
at long intervals of time." [Donnelly, 1882, p. 8] It seems
that the aged Egyptian sage must have been a Neo-Darwinian,
for he forgot the ancient traditions preserved in the blood and
genes of all mankind. Thus, it's Velikovsky's belief that
although man's conscious mind represses these catastrophic memories
(his theory of collective amnesia), they remain alive and well
preserved in the unconscious strata of the mind, where every now and
then their voice is heard, and their will be done. As Velikovsky
put it: "The memory of the cataclysms was erased, not because of
lack of written traditions, but because of some
characteristic process that later caused entire nations, together with their
literate men, to read into these traditions allegories or
metaphors where actually cosmic disturbances were clearly described.
... To uncover their vestiges and their distorted equivalents
in the psychical life of peoples is a task not unlike that of
overcoming amnesia in a single person." [Velikovsky, 1950,p. 300]
If I might be allowed to intrude upon the reader's time just a few more
moments, I think it might be possible to establish the
overwhelming influence these catastrophes have had over the minds and actions
of men. Thus, it's my opinion that several other widespread
customs or rituals have their explanation in the catastrophe
that befell Saturn. Under the
circumstances described above, it is perhaps
understandable that the ancients would both fear and revere the great
celestial boar. Some peoples identified themselves with the bright red
burning planet, while others abhorred it. Thus, we see that the
Syrian followers of Adonis abstained from boar meat. Frazer
makes this point clearly;" The worshippers of Adonis abstained
from pork, because a boar had killed their god." [Frazer,
1959, p. 369] The members of the Attis cult refrained from eating
pork as well, and here perhaps we have the origin of the Jewish
prohibition of pork.
An important point may perhaps be made here,
and that is that Frazer suggests that these and other myths were
invented by the peoples to give credence or meaning to a practice
already engaged in. Thus, the story of Attis' death by a boar was
told to account for their abstention from pork throughout
their history. Here I think Frazer has got the sequence of events
backwards. Thus, I believe that the celestial events were
interpreted in some way, `a boar has attacked our god,' and that
afterwards the customs and rituals were shaped to fit those events and
their interpretation. From this viewpoint, most rituals and customs
are probably attempts at a symbolic reenactment of the events in
question, for it must be remembered that these events always had
a moral and religious significance as well. Thus, the Deluge
occurred because of the decadence of mankind, and reenacting
it through baptism serves as a reminder to stay in line and do the god's will.
Self mutilation
I think the problem inherent in Frazer's theory is
apparent in the following interpretation: "The story of the
self-mutilation of Attis is clearly an attempt to account for the
self-mutilation of his priests, who regularly castrated themselves
on entering the service of the goddess." [Frazer, 1959,p. 369] I
would suggest instead that the castration of the priests results
from the fact that the ancients actually witnessed their god's
castration. (Saturn's loss of the pillar-phallus, or Mars' loss of its
moons for example). Here there is no need to postulate some kind
of urge to self-mutilation, as there appears to be in Frazer's
interpretation. Of course, the process works both ways in the sense
that the people interpret the events in their own peculiar
way. Thus, when Mars lost its moons, this was interpreted by some
myth-makers as castration, and by others as the loss of eyes.
Across the peninsula in Egypt, we meet with analogous practices to those of
the Syrians and Jews. They too abhorred the pig, but once a year they
held a cannibalistic pig-sacrifice. As Frazer describes
it: "In ancient Egypt ... the pig occupied the same dubious
position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its
uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. ... If a man so much as
touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all
his clothes on, to wash off the taint. To drink pig's milk was
believed to cause leprosy to the drinker. ... Yet once a year the
Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and Osiris, and not only
sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the
year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their
flesh." [Frazer, 1959, p. 528]
Set, the Egyptian devil
Now I ask the reader, can these bizarre practices be supposed due to an
imagined fear of trichinosis? Frazer, believing that all Saturnian
gods were vegetation gods, suggests these practices have their
explanation in the havoc caused among the crops by a grazing boar.
Although I obviously disagree with Frazer here, I think he was on the
right track when he suggested that the rites were
accomplished in a spirit of revenge. In reference to the pig, Frazer
wrote: "He came to be looked on as an embodiment of Set, the
Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the shape of a black pig
that Set injured the eye of the god Horus, who burned him and
instituted the sacrifice of the pig. ... Thus, the annual sacrifice
of a pig to Osiris might naturally be interpreted as vengeance
inflicted on the hostile animal that had slain or mangled the
god." [Frazer, 1959, p. 529] The Aztecs
provided a unique twist to their ritual reenactment of the
celestial tragedy, for they had Saturn get his revenge in the exact
manner in which he was struck down.
Child sacrifice
Thus, the Saturnian
representative (a priest acting out the part of the god
Quetzalcoatl) slew the Mars effigy by driving a spear into his side, and
then ate him in a sacrificial meal (Mars=
Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war). Frazer reports that the ceremony
was called teoqualo, or `the god is eaten.' [Frazer,1959, p.
531] Within this
same cosmic tradition, I would place several other rites even
more bizarre. Here I refer to the ancient customs of child
sacrifice, the ritual murder of certain scapegoats, and
self-immolation by fire. To understand these practices it must be realized
that the ancients considered Mars a son of Saturn's. Whether
this should be interpreted as plausible proof that Mars sprang from
the head of Saturn (as Velikovsky claims Venus did from
Jupiter), I am not prepared to say. I would be willing to bet that it
does, but it should be remembered that in Egyptian mythology
Set-Mars was a brother of Osiris. Quite frankly, a definitive
answer to this question will have to wait for a more adequate
translation of the relevant Egyptian material.
One Velikovsky scholar, William Mullen, (a classics professor at the University
of California) has recently received a grant to do just that. It is
suggestive, perhaps, that Seth's birth from Nut was describes
as being a violent one in the Pyramid texts (literally spat out).
[Griffiths, 1980, pp. 117-118] But to give an indication
of the difficulty of interpreting these texts, it should be
mentioned that in later times Seth came to be identified with Venus,
so the above reference could conceivably relate to her violent
birth from Jupiter. Thus, just as Jupiter took over the role and
name of the King of Gods with the removal of Saturn, so too did
Venus take over the role of devil from Mars when she became the
dominant object in the skies. This is no more surprising
in the world of mythology than when in religion Jesus is given
many of the same legends and characteristics of the heroes of
the mystery cults, but it makes myth-divining tricky
nonetheless. In any event I'd like to note that Nut is almost certainly
Saturn, and the recent space probes found that Saturn too had a
gaping hole on its surface, not unlike the red eye of Jupiter
from whence sprang Venus according to Velikovsky. The facts
of the birth aside, what is important is that the ancients
spoke of Mars as a son or child of Saturn.
Thus, we turn our
attention to Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac, where, I think, an
interesting picture unfolds. The vision of Abraham leading his
son to the altar is revolting to many of us, but the ancients
seem to have regarded child sacrifice as a solemn duty. Here I am
only referring to child sacrifice by burning, as in the infamous
rites of Molech. For Mars too was burnt, if not only by his father,
Saturn, at least on the part of his father (Horus-Jupiter's
revenge of Osiris). Frazer
cites the numerous references in the Old Testament to the practice of
child sacrifice, quoting one scholar to the effect that the
sacrifice was intended to, "make pass over by means of fire to
Molech." Frazer notes that the practice was probably very ancient at Jerusalem.
Modern scholarship seems to support Frazer's contention,
and Cross cites Albright and others as having
demonstrated the prevalence of child sacrifice throughout the whole of
the Punic world. Cross sums up the recent research nicely:
"Diodorus Siculus specifically observes that the cult of human
sacrifice was limited to worship of Kronos, that is, of El, and alludes
to the myth of El's sacrifice of his own children. Sakkunyaton
preserves the myth of El's sacrifice of Yadid and Mot, a theme
repeated thrice by the hierophant. An echo of this aspect of the El
cult is probably heard in biblical tradition that the first-born
belonged to the deity, and in the background of the story of
Isaac's sacrifice. ... As Albright has emphasized, there is no
longer any basis to doubt Diodorus' accuracy both in describing
the cultus itself or in his assertion that the cult was linked to
Kronos." [Cross, 1973, p. 26]
A crucial test of the hypothesis presented here, would be whether either
Yadid or Mot is Mars. I would guess that it is probable that one
is, as the tradition is not likely to have been lost or placed
third behind others. In this same tradition of burnt sacrifices,
belongs the ancient rite of suicide by fire. Frazer devotes a
chapter to this strange practice in The Golden Bough. This form
of ritual death appears to have been rather common among the
colonies of Phoenicia. It seems that in dying by fire the Phoenicians
believed themselves to be identifying with their god
Melquarth/Hercules.
Hercules as Mars
As Frazer concludes: "A custom of periodically burning the
chief god of the city in effigy appears to have prevailed
at Tyre and in the Tyrian colonies down to a late time, and the
effigy may well have been a later substitute for a man. For
Melquarth, the great god of Tyre, was identified by the Greeks with
Hercules, who is said to have burned himself to death on a great pyre,
ascending up to heaven in a cloud and a peal of thunder."
[Frazer, 1959, p. 362] In Worlds
in Collision Velikovsky clearly identifies Hercules withMars, and
Hercules was known to be an ancient deity. [Donnelly,1882] Thus,
the sacrifice of children, and the self-sacrifice of men, seem
to be ritual reenactments of the passion of Mars.
Frazer concludes his discussion of suicide by fire with the following
observation, with which I am in complete agreement: "These events and these
traditions seem to prove that under certain
circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn themselves
to death. ... If the intention had merely been to escape from
the hands of a conqueror, an easier mode of death would
naturally have been chosen. There must have been a special reason for
electing to die by fire. The legendary death of Hercules,
the historical death of Hamilcar, and the gesture of Croesus
enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine to
indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn
sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which raised the
victim to the rank of a god." [Frazer, 1959, p. 367]
Mars-god scapegoats
It is not without interest that in ancient Egypt, red-haired men used to be
burnt alive, their ashes being strewn to the wind with winnowing
fans. The red-haired men are probably sacrificial scapegoats
for the evil red-god Mars. It is very significant that these
sacrifices were offered by kings at the grave of Osiris. Here the
phenomenon we encountered earlier presents itself, for the
Phoenicians and Romans were famous for identifying with the war-god
Mars, while the Egyptians regarded Seth-Mars as loathsome. Thus, one
can hardly imagine suicide by fire as playing the same supreme
symbolic role in Egypt that it did in Phoenicia.
Tammuz myth
One more interesting characteristic of myth may be mentioned before
returning to the symbology of Jesus. Different myths tell the same
basic story–describe the same celestial events–in different
ways. Sometimes the times and characters are recast, but the same
underlying motifs emerge just the same. Thus, Samson is the
spitting image of Hercules, and must be identified in some way with Tammuz
of the mystery cult. When the pole-pillar of Saturn fell,
Samson-Mars was crushed beneath it. Hercules' death by fire comes later
with the giant thunderbolts, and plays no part in the Samson myth
(so far as I'm aware). Thus, the Tammuz myth is a
conglomeration of mythical motifs, for Tammuz was originally Saturn.
[Talbott, 1980]
It is significant that the Tammuz myth is the only
one of those of the major cults that has the hero crushed (and not
speared or dismembered in some manner). Both theVelikovsky
scholars and Santillana and Dechend seem to agree that the motifs
and characteristics of Mars and Saturn are deeply
intertwined, and sometimes confused, by scholars and the ancients alike. It
may be that I am joining a little cultus in this respect myself. But
though the motifs may be blended in the Tammuz myth, they appear
crystal clear with regard to the equation of Hercules and Samson
with Mars. Thus, Seth-Mars loses his testicles in one scenario,
while Samson-Mars lost his eyes in another. In
returning to the legends and symbols of Christianity, I'd like to refer to
the following footnote of Jung's: "Robertson ... makes an
interesting contribution to the symbol of carrying the cross: Samson
carried the gate-posts of the city of Gaza, and died between the
pillars of the temple of the Philistines.
Simon the Cyrene
Heracles carried his
pillars to Gades (Cadiz), where, according to the Syrian
version of the legend, he died. "In ancient art," says Robertson,
"he was actually represented carrying the two pillars in such a
way under his arms that they form exactly a cross. Here, probably,
we have the origin of the myth of Jesus carrying his own cross to
the place of execution." [Jung, 1976, p. 302] As if this
were not enough coincidences to account for, Robertson points out
that in the three synoptic gospels a man of Cyrene, Simon,
replaces Jesus as the cross-bearer. Robertson notes that Simon, or
Sem, was actually the name of an old god representing Shamash or
Baal, "from whose mythus that of Samson unquestionably arose."
[Jung, 1976, pp. 302-303]
Alexander Hislop, in complete
independence and on totally different grounds, shows that Sem is
etymologically and mythologically identical to the Egyptian version of
Hercules: "one of the names of the primitive Hercules in Egypt
was Sem." [Hislop, 1959, p. 63] Hislop goes on to equate the
Egyptian Set, or Seth, with Sem. Hislop also states his belief that the
ancient Hercules was responsible for the fall of Saturn. Quite
naturally Hislop equates Osiris with Saturn. [Hislop, 1959,pp. 64-66]
As my entire argument hinges on Velikovsky's
identification of Hercules with Mars, it is of crucial importance that
Santillana also equates Samson with the planet Mars, calling attention
to the obvious similarities between Hercules and Samson at the same
time. [Santillana, 1969, p. 176]
If I was
more of a biblical scholar, I am certain the list of agreement
between the myths involving Saturn and those involving Jesus would
continue to grow. Jesus' transfiguration, the
illumination at his birth, and the earthquake and darkness at his death all
have astral implications. Thus we have seen that Hercules
also ascended to heaven in a cloud and a peal of thunder. All of
these particular legends also belong to the traditions of Buddha (so
too with the virgin birth, the slaughter of the infants,
and many more). [Radhakrishnan, 1940]
Mary as Isis
Before concluding, however,
there remains the place of Mary within the Saturnian connection.
Obviously, Mary must have some spiritual bonds with the great
Mother goddesses of old. Thus, Frazer notes that the
resemblances between Mary and Isis have often impressed the scholars.
In reference to the worship of Isis, Frazer concludes: "Her
stately ritual, with its shaven and tonsured priests, its matins and
vespers, its tinkling music, its baptisms and aspersions
of holy water, its solemn processions, its jeweled images of
the Mother of God, presented many points of similarity to the pomp
and ceremonies of Catholicism. The resemblance need not be
purely accidental. Ancient Egypt may have contributed its share to
the gorgeous symbolism of the Catholic Church as well as to the pale
abstractions of her theology. Certainly in art the figure of
Isis suckling the infant Horus is so like that of the Madonna and
child that it has sometimes received the adoration of ignorant
Christians." [Frazer, 1919, pp. 118-119]
It is
ironic that the cult of Isis was perhaps Christianity's greatest
rival in the early days of the Church. Jung also notes the many
points of resemblance between Isis and Mary, and lays great
psychological importance upon the newly declared divinity of Mary: "The
Assumption of the Virgin ... is vouched for neither in scripture
nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian
Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with
the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it
gradually developed as a `pious opinion' and gained so much power and
influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the
necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to
primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that
the content of the dogma is not even definable. The papal
declaration made a reality out of what had long been condoned.
Assumption doctrine
"This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical
Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images."
[Jung, 1977, p. 469] Jung notes
that it was in 1950 that the doctrine of the Assumption was
approved, about a century after the declaration of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. In an almost Lamarckian sense, it was the
religious `need' of the Catholic masses that prompted these
declarations. Thus, Jung cites his approval of Victor White's
observation: "Nor would it seem, is the underlying motif itself even
peculiarly Christian; rather would it seem to be but one
expression of a universal archetypal pattern, which somehow responds to
some deep and widespread human need, and which finds other
similar expressions in countless myths and rituals ... all over the
globe." [Jung, 1977, pp. 186-187]
In
conclusion, we have seen that, in one way or another, all of the major
symbols and legends of Jesus were also common to the mythology
surrounding Saturn.
This is to be expected from Velikovsky's fundamental thesis that celestial catastrophes involving
the planet Saturn left a permanent mark on the human soul,
something comparable to what Freud described as a tradition in flesh
and blood. Thus, I am led to the conclusion that the
legendary-symbolic life of Jesus as the Christ is simply and literally a
reenactment and condensation of the life and death of the
planet-god Saturn. Jesus is the Son of man–Anthropos come to earth to
initiate another Golden Age. The hoped for kingdom to come is
merely a projection into the future of the Golden Age of the
primeval past, and Jesus' Messianic mission is to take us back to that
time and place where `sin' was absent. The light brought and
personified by Jesus is the life-giving light of the stars. Thus, I
take literally Dodd's conclusion that, "the life of Jesus is the
history of the Logos."
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