Chapter V

THE MYTHIC CHRIST

We have already seen the use that is made
of Comparative Mythology against Keligion,
and some of its most destructive attacks
have been levelled against the Christ. His
birth of a Virgin at " Christmas," the
slaughter of the Innocents, His wonder-
working and His teachings, His crucifixion,
resurrection, and ascension — all these
events in the story of His life are pointed to
in the stories of other lives, and His histori-
cal existence is challenged on the strength
of these identities. So far as the wonder-
working and the teachings are concerned,
we may briefly dismiss these first with the
acknowledgment that most great Teachers
have wrought works which, on the physical
plane, appear as miracles in the sight of
their contemporaries, but are known by oc-
cultists to be done- by the exercise of powers

144

The Mythic Christ

possessed by all Initiates above a certain
grade. The teachings He gave may also
be acknowledged to be non-original; but
where the student of Comparative Myth-
ology thinks that he has proved that none is
divinely inspired, when he shows that sim-
ilar moral teachings fell from the lips of
Manu, from the lips of the Buddha, from
the lips of Jesus, the occultist says that cert-
ainly Jesus must have repeated the teach-
ings of His predecessors, since He was a
messenger from the same Lodge. The pro-
found verities touching the divine and the
human Spirit were as much truths twenty
thousand years before Jesus was born in
Palestine as after He was born; and to say
that the world was left without such teach-
ing, and that man was left in moral dark-
ness from his beginnings to twenty centu-
ries ago, is to say that there was a human-
ity without a Teacher, children without a
Father, human souls crying for light into a
darkness that gave them no answer — a con-
ception as blasphemous of God as it is des-
perate for man, a conception contradicted
by the appearance of every Sage, by the
10 145

Esoteric Christianity

mighty literature, by the noble lives, in the
thousands of ages ere the Christ came forth.

Recognising then in Jesus the great Mas-
ter of the West, the leading Messenger of
the Lodge to the western world, we must
face the difficulty which has made havoc of
this belief in the minds of many : Why are
the festivals that commemorate events in
the life of Jesus found in pre-Christian re-
ligions, and in them commemorate identical
events in the lives of other Teachers?

Comparative Mythology, which has
drawn public attention to this question in
modern times, may be said to be about a
century old, dating from the appearance of
Dulaure's Histoire Abregee de differ ens
CulteSj of Dupuis' Origine de tous les Cul-
tes, of Moor's Hindu Pantheon, and of God-
frey Higgins' Anacalypsis. These works
were followed by a shoal of others, growing
more scientific and rigid in their collection
and comparison of facts, until it has be-
come impossible for any educated person to
even challenge the identities and similari-
ties existing in every direction. Christians
are not to be found, in these days, who are

146

The Mythic Christ

prepared to contend that Christian symbols,
rites, and ceremonies are unique — except,
indeed, among the ignorant. There we still
behold simplicity of belief hand -in-hand
with ignorance of facts; but outside this
class we do not find even the most devout
Christians alleging that Christianity has
not very much in common with faiths older
than itself. But it is well-known that in
the first centuries "after Christ " these like-
nesses were on all hands admitted, and that
modern Comparative Mythology is only re-
peating with great precision that which was
universally recognised in the Early Church.
Justin Martyr, for instance, crowds his
pages with references to the religions of his
time, and if a modern assailant of Christ-
ianity would cite a number of cases in
which Christian teachings are identical with
those of elder religions, he can find no better
guides than the apologists of the second
century. They quote Pagan teachings,
stories, and symbols, pleading that the very
identity of the Christian with these should
prevent the off-hand rejection of the latter
as in themselves incredible. A curious
147

Esoteric Christianity

reason is, indeed, given for this identity, one
that will scarcely find many adherents in
modern days. Says Justin Martyr: " Those
who hand down the myths which the poets
have made adduce no proof to the youths
who learn them ; and we proceed to demon-
strate that they have been uttered by the
influence of the wicked demons, to deceive
and lead astray the human race. For
having heard it proclaimed through the
prophets that the Christ was to come, and
that the ungodly among men were to be
punished by fire, they put forward many to be
called sons of Jupiter, under the impression
that they would be able to produce in men
the idea that the things which were said
with regard to Christ were mere marvellous
tales, like the things whch were said by the
poets." "And the devils, indeed, having
heard this washing published by the prophet,
instigated those who enter their temples,
and are about to approach them with liba-
tions and burnt offerings, also to sprinkle
themselves; and they cause them also to
wash themselves entirely as they depart.'5
"Which [the Lord's Supper] the wicked

148

The Mythic Christ

devils have imitated in the mysteries of
Mithras, commanding the same thing to be
done."1 "For I myself, when I discovered
the wicked disguise which the evil spirits
had thrown around the divine doctrines of
the Christians, to turn aside others from
joining them, laughed."2

These identities were thus regarded as the
work of devils, copies of the Christian origin-
als, largely circulated in the pre-Christian
world with the object of prejudicing the
reception of the truth when it came. There
is a certain difficulty in accepting the earli-
er statements as copies and the later as
originals, but without disputing with Justin
Martyr whether the copies preceded the
original or the original the copies, we may
be content to accept his testimony as to the
existence of these identities between the
faith flourishing in the Eoman empire of his
time and the new religion he was engaged
in defending.

Tertullian speaks equally plainly, stating

^ol. II. Justin Martyr. First Apology, liv., lxii.
and lxvi.

2 Vol. II. Justin Martyr. Second Apology, § xiiL
149

Esoteric Christianity

the objection made in his days also to Chris-
tianity, that " the nations who are strangers
to all understanding of spiritual powers,
ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters
with the self -same efficacy." "So they do,"
he answers quite frankly, "but these cheat
themselves with waters that are widowed.
For washing is the channel through which
they are initiated into some sacred rites of
some notorious Isis or Mithra ; and the
Gods themselves they honour by washings.
.... At the Appollinarian and Eleusinian
games they are baptised ; and they presume
that the effect of their doing that is the re-
generation and the remission of the penal-
ties due to their perjuries. Which fact,
being acknowledged, we recognise here also
the zeal of the devil rivalling the things of
God, while we find him too practising bapt-
ism in his subjects." 1

To solve the difficulty of these identities
we must study the Mythic Christ, the Christ
of the solar myths or legends, these myths
being the pictorial forms in which certain
profound truths were given to the world.

1 Vol. VII. Tertullian, On Baptism, cli. v.
150

The Mythic Christ

Now a "myth " is by no means what most
people imagine it to be — a mere fanciful
story erected on a basis of fact, or even
altogether apart from fact. A myth is far
truer than a history, for a history only
gives a story of the shadows, whereas a
myth gives a story of the substances that
cast the shadows. As above so below; and
first above and then below. There are cert-
ain great principles according to which our
system is built; there are certain laws by
which these principles are worked out in
detail; there are certain Beings awho em-
body the principles and whose activities are
the laws ; there are hosts of inferior beings
who act as vehicles for these activities, as
agents, as instruments; there are the Egos
of men intermingled with all these, per-
forming their share of the great kosmic
drama. These multifarious workers in the
invisible worlds cast their shadows on physic-
al matter, and these shadows are " things ??
— the bodies, the objects, that make up the
physical universe. These shadows give but
a poor idea of the objects that cast them,
just as what we call shadows down here
151

Esoteric Christianity

give but a poor idea of the objects that cast
them; they are mere outlines, with blank
darkness in lieu of details, and have only
length and breadth, no depth.

History is an account, very imperfect
and often distorted, of the dance of these
shadows in the shadow-world of physical
matter. Anyone who has seen a clever Shadow-
Play, and has compared what goes on behind
the screen on which the shadows are cast
with the movements of the shadows on
the screen, may have a vivid idea of the
illusory nature of the shadow-actions, and
may draw therefrom several not misleading
analogies.1

Myth is an account of the movements of
those who cast the shadows; and the lan-
guage in which the account is given is what
is called the language of symbols. Just as
here we have words which stand for things
—as the word " table" is a symbol for a
recognised article of a certain kind — so do
symbols stand for objects on higher planes.

1 The student might read Plato's account of the " Cave "
and its inhabitants, remembering that Plato was an Initiate.
Republic, Bk. vii.

152

The Mythic Christ

They are a pictorial alphabet, used by all
myth-writers, and each has its recognised
meaning. A symbol is used to signify a
certain object just as words are used down
here to distinguish one thing from another,
and so a knowledge of symbols is necessary
for the reading of a myth. For the origin-
al tellers of great myths are ever Initiates,
who are accustomed to use the symbolic lan-
guage, and who, of course, use symbols in
their fixed and accepted meanings.

A symbol has a chief meaning, and then
various subsidiary meanings related to that
chief meaning. For instance, the Sun is
the symbol of the Logos ; that is its chief or
primary significance. But it stands also for
an incarnation of the Logos, or for any of
the great Messengers who represent Him
for the time, as an ambassador represents
his King. High Initiates who are sent on
special missions to incarnate among men
and live with them for a time as Rulers
or Teachers, would be designated by the
symbol of the Sun; for though it is not
their symbol in an individual sense, it is
theirs in virtue of their office.

153

Esoteric Christianity

All those who are signified by this symbol
have certain characteristics, pass through
certain situations, perform certain activi-
ties, during their lives on earth. The Sun
is the physical shadow, or body, as it is
called, of the Logos; hence its yearly course
in nature reflects His activity, in the partial
way in which a shadow represents the
activity of the object that casts it. The
Logos, "the Son of God," descending into
matter, has as shadow the annual course of
the Sun, and the Sun -Myth tells it. Hence,
again, an incarnation of the Logos, or one
of His high ambassadors, will also represent
that activity, shadow-like, in His body as a
man. Thus will necessarily arise identities
in the life-histories of these ambassadors.
In fact, the absence of such identities would
at once point out that the person concerned
was not a full ambassador, and that his
mission was of a lower order.

The Solar Myth, then, is a story which
primarily representing the activity of the
Logos, or Word, in the kosmos, secondarily
embodies the life of one who is an incarna-
tion of the Logos, or is one of His ambas-

154

The Mythic Christ

sadors. The Hero of the myth is usually
represented as a God, or Demi-God, and his
life, as will be understood by what has been
said above, must be outlined by the course
of the Sun, as the shadow of the Logos.
The part of the course lived out during
the human life is that which falls between
the winter solstice and the reaching of the
zenith in summer. The Hero is born
at the winter solstice, dies at the spring
equinox, and, conquering death, rises
into mid-heaven.

The following remarks are interesting in
this connection, though looking at myth in
a more general way, as an allegory, pictur-
ing inner truths: "Alfred de Vigny has
said that legend is frequently more true
than history, because legend recounts not
acts which are often incomplete and abort-
ive, but the genius itself of great men and
great nations. It is pre-eminently to the
Gospel that this beautiful thought is applic-
able, for the Gospel is not merely the narra-
tion of what has been; it is the sublime
narration of what is and what always will
be. Ever will the Saviour of the world be
155

Esoteric Christianity

adored by the kings of intelligence, repre-
sented by the Magi; ever will He multiply
the eucharistic bread, to nourish and com-
fort our souls ; ever, when we invoke Him
in the night and the tempest, will He come
to us walking on the waters, ever will He
stretch forth His hand and make us pass
over the crests of the billows ; ever will He
cure our distempers and give back light to
our eyes; ever will He appear to His faith-
ful, luminous and transfigured upon Tabor,
interpreting the law of Moses and moderat-
ing the zeal of Elias." 1

We shall find that myths are very closely
related to the Mysteries, for part of the
Mysteries consisted in showing living pic-
tures of the occurrences in the higher
worlds that became embodied in myths. In
fact in the Pseudo-Mysteries, mutilated
fragments of the living pictures of the true
Mysteries were represented by actors who
acted out a drama, and many secondary
myths are these dramas put into words.

The broad outlines of the story of the

Sun-God are very clear, the eventful life of

1 Eliphas Levi. The Mysteries of Magic, p. 48,
156

The Mythic Christ

the Sun-God being spanned within the first
six months of the solar year, the other six
being employed in the general protecting
and preserving. He is always born at the
winter solstice, after the shortest day in the
year, at the midnight of the 24th of Decem-
ber, when the sign Virgo is rising above the
horizon ; born as this sign is rising, he is
born always of a virgin, and she remains
a virgin after she has given birth to her
Sun-Child, as the celestial Virgo remains
unchanged and unsullied when the Sun
comes forth from her in the heavens. Weak,
feeble as an infant is he, born when the
days are shortest and the nights are longest
— we are on the north of the equatorial line —
surrounded with perils in his infancy, and
the reign of the darkness far longer than
his in his early days. But he lives through
all the threatening dangers, and the day
lengthens towards the spring equinox, till
the time comes for the crossing over, the
crucifixion, the date varying with each year.
The Sun-God is sometimes found sculptured
within the circle of the horizon, with the
head and feet touching the circle at north
157

Esoteric Christianity

and south, and the outstretched hands at
east and west— "He was crucified." After
this he rises triumphantly and ascends into
heaven, and ripens the corn and the grape,
giving his very life to them to make their
substance and through them to his wor-
shippers. The God who is born at the
dawning of December 25th is ever crucified
at the spring equinox, and ever gives his
life as food to his worshippers — these are
among the most salient marks of the Sun-
God. The fixity of the birth-date and the
variableness of the death-date are full of
significance, when we remember that the
one is a fixed and the other a variable solar
position. "Easter" is a movable event,
calculated by the relative positions of sun
and moon, an impossible way of fixing year
by year the anniversary of a historical
event, but a very natural and indeed inevit-
able way of calculating a solar festival.
These changing dates do not point to the
history of a man, but to the Hero of a solar
myth.

These events are reproduced in the lives
of the various Solar Gods, and antiquity

158

The Mythic Christ

teems with illustrations of them. Isis of
Egypt like Mary of Bethlehem was our Im-
maculate Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of
Heaven, Mother of God. We see her in
pictures standing on the crescent moon,
star-crowned; she nurses her child Horus,
and the cross appears on the back of the
seat in which he sits on his mother's knee.
The Virgo of the Zodiac is represented in
ancient drawings as a woman suckling a
child — the type of all future Madonnas with
their divine Babes, showing the origin of
the symbol. Devaki is likewise figured
with the divine Krishna in her arms, as is
Mylitta, or Istar, of Babylon, also with the
recurrent crown of stars, and with her child
Tammuz on her knee. Mercury and -ZEs-
culapius, Bacchus and Hercules, Perseus
and the Dioscuri, Mithras and Zarathustra,
were all of divine and human birth.

The relation of the winter solstice to
Jesus is also significant. The birth of
Mithras was celebrated in the winter solstice
with great rejoicings, and Horus was also
then born : " His birth is one of the great-
est mysteries of the [Egyptian] religion.
159

Esoteric Christianity

Pictures representing it appeared on the
walls of temples. . . . He was the child of
Deity. At Christmas time, or that answer-
ing to our festival, his image was brought
out of the sanctuary with peculiar ceremo-
nies, as the image of the infant Bambino is
still brought out and exhibited at Eome." 1

On the fixing of the 25th December as
the birthday of Jesus, Williamson has the
following: "All Christians know that the
25th December is now the recognised festi-
val of the birth of Jesus, but few are aware
that this has not always been so. There
have been, it is said, one hundred and
thirty-six different dates fixed on by differ-
ent Christian sects. Lightfoot gives it as
15th September, others as in February or
August. Epiphanius mentions two sects,
one celebrating it in June, the other in
July. The matter was finally settled by
Pope Julius L, in 337 a.d., and S. Ohrysos-
torn, writing in 390, says: 'On this clay
[i.e. 25th December] also the birth of Christ

1 Bonwick. Egyptian Belief, p. 157. Quoted in
Williamson's Great Law, p. 26.

160

The Mythic Christ

was lately fixed at Rome, in order that
while the heathen were busy with their
ceremonies [the Brumalia, in honour of
Bacchus] the Christians might perform
their rites undisturbed.' Gibbon in his
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
writes: £The [Christian] Romans, as ignorant
as their brethren of the real date of his
[Christ's] birth fixed the solemn festival to
the 25th December, the Brumalia or winter
solstice, when the Pagans annually celeb-
rated the birth of the Sun.' King, in his
Gnostics and their Remains, also says:
' The ancient festival held on the 25th
December in honour of the birthday of the
Invincible One,1 and celebrated by the great
games at the Circus, was afterwards trans-
ferred to the commemoration of the birth of
Christ, the precise date of which many of
the Fathers confess was then unknown ' ;
while at the present day Canon Farrar
writes that 6 all attempts to discover the
month and day of the nativity are useless.

lThe festival "Natalis Solis Invicti," the birthday of
the Invincible Sun.

11 161

Esoteric Christianity

No data whatever exist to enable us to de-
termine them with even approximate accu-
racy.' From the foregoing it is apparent
that the great festival of the winter solstice
has been celebrated during past ages, and
in widely separated lands, in honour of the
birth of a God, who is almost invariably
alluded to as a ' Saviour, ' and whose mother
is referred to as a pure virgin. The
striking resemblances, too, which have been
instanced not only in the birth but in the
life of so many of these Saviour-Gods are
far too numerous to be accounted for by
any mere coincidence." 1

In the case of the Lord Buddha we may
see how a myth attaches itself to a histori-
cal personage. The story of His life is well
known, and in the current Indian accounts
the birth-story is simple and human. But
in the Chinese account He is born of a vir-
gin, Mayadevi, the archaic myth finding in
Him a new Hero.

1 Williamson. The Great Law, pp. 40-42. Those who
wish to study this matter as one of Comparative Religion
cannot do better than read The Great Law, whose author
is a profoundly religious man and a Christian.

162

The Mythic Christ

Williamson also tells us that fires were
and are lighted on the 25th December on
the hills among Keltic peoples, and these
are still known among the Irish and the
Scotch Highlanders as Bheil or Baaltinne,
the fires thus bearing the name of Bel, Bal,
or Baal, their ancient Deity, the Sun-God,
though now lighted in honour of Christ.1

Kightly considered, the Christmas festi-
val should take on new elements of rejoic-
ing and of sacredness, when the lovers of
Christ see in it the repetition of an ancient
solemnity, see it stretching all the world
over, and far, far back into dim antiquity;
so that the Christmas bells are ringing
throughout human history, and sound
musically out of the far-off night of time.
Not in exclusive possession, but in universal
acceptance, is found the hall-mark of truth.

The death-date, as said above, is not
a fixed one, like the birth-date. The date
of the death is calculated by the relative
positions of Sun and Moon at the spring
equinox, varying with each year, and the
death-date of each Solar Hero is found to

llMd., pp. 36, 37.
163

Esoteric Christianity

be celebrated in this connection. The animal
adopted as the symbol of the Hero is the
sign of the Zodiac in which the Sun is at
the vernal equinox of his age, and this
varies with the precession of the equinoxes.
| Cannes of Assyria had the sign of Pisces,
the Fish, and is thus figured/; Mithra is in
Taurus, and, therefore, rides on a Bull, and
Osiris was worshipped as Osiris- A pis, or
Serapis, the Bull. Merodach of Babylon
was worshipped as a Bull, as was Astarte
of Syria. When the Sun is in the sign of
Aries, the Earn or Lamb, we have Osiris
again as Ram, and so also Astarte, and
Jupiter Ammon, and it is this same animal
that became the symbol of Jesus — the Lamb
of God. The use of the Lamb as His
symbol, often leaning on a cross, is common
in the sculptures of the catacombs. On this
Williamson says: "In the course of time
the Lamb was represented on the cross, but
it was not until the sixth synod of Constan-
tinople, held about the year 680, that it
was ordained that instead of the ancient
symbol, the figure of a man fastened to
a cross should be represented. This canon

164

The Mythic Christ

was confirmed by Pope Adrian I."1 The
very ancient Pisces is also assigned to Jesus,
and He is thus pictured in the catacombs.

The death and resurrection of the Solar
Hero at or about the vernal equinox is as
wide-spread as his birth at the winter
solstice. Osiris was then slain by Typhon,
and He is pictured on the circle of the horiz-
on, with outstretched arms, as if crucified
— a posture originally of benediction, not of
suffering. The death of Tammuz was
annually bewailed at the spring equinox
in Babylonia and Syria, as were Adonis in
Syria and Greece, and Attis in Phrygia,
pictured "as a man fastened with a lamb at
the foot."2 Mithras' death was similarly
celebrated in Persia, and that of Bacchus
and Dionysius — one and the same — in
Greece. In Mexico the same idea re-appears,
as usual accompanied with the cross.

In all these cases the mourning for the
death is immediately followed by the rejoic-
ing over the resurrection, and on this it
is interesting to notice that the name of

1 The Great Law, p. 116.

165

*IMd., p. 58.

Esoteric Christianity

Easter has been traced to the virgin -mother
of the slain Tammuz, Ishtar.1

It is interesting also to notice that the
fast preceding the death at the vernal equi-
nox,— the modern Lent- — is found in Mexi-
co, Egypt, Persia, Babylon, Assyria, Asia
Minor, in some cases definitely for forty days.2

In the Pseudo-Mysteries, the Sun-God
story was dramatised, and in the ancient
Mysteries it was lived by the Initiate, and
hence the solar " myths 55 and the great facts
of Initiation became interwoven together.
Hence when the Master Christ became
the Christ of the Mysteries, the legends
of the older Heroes of those Mysteries
gathered round Him, and the stories were
again recited with the latest divine Teacher
as the representative of the Logos in the
Sun. Then the festival of His nativity
became the immemorial date when the
Sun was born of the Virgin, when the mid-
night sky was filled with the rejoicing hosts
of the celestials, and

Very early, very early, Christ was born.

1Ibid., p. 56. Uhid., pp. 120-123.

166

The Mythic Christ

As the great legend of the Sun gathered
round Him, the sign of the Lamb became
that of His crucifixion as the sign of the
Virgin had become that of His birth. We
have seen that the Bull was sacred to
Mithras and the Fish to Cannes, and that
the Lamb was sacred to Christ, and for the
same reason ; it was the sign of the spring
equinox, at the period of history in which
He crossed the great circle of the horizon,
was "crucified in space.'5

These Sun myths, ever recurring through-
out the ages, with a different name for their
Hero in each new recension, cannot pass
unrecognised by the student, though they
may naturally and rightly be ignored by
the devotee ; and when they are used as a
weapon to mutilate or destroy the majestic
figure of the Christ, they must be met, not
by denying the facts, but by understanding
the deeper meaning of the stories, the
spiritual truths that the legends expressed
under a veil.

Why have these legends mingled with the
history of Jesus, and crystallised round

Him, as a historical personage? These are
167

Esoteric Christianity

really the stories not of a particular indiv -
idual named Jesus but of the universal
Christ ; of a Man who symbolised a Divine
Being, and who represented a fundament-
al truth in nature ; a Man who filled a cert-
ain office and held a certain characteristic
position towards humanity; standing
towards humanity in a special relationship,
renewed age after age, as generation suc-
ceeded generation, as race gave way to race.
Hence He was, as are all such, the "Son of
Man,?? a peculiar and distinctive title, the
title of an office, not of an individual. The
Christ of the Solar Myth was the Christ of
the Mysteries, and we find the secret of the
mythic in the mystic Christ.

168