SCORPION

 Author: John Denham Parsons

The Non-Christian Cross
       An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion

CHAPTER XX.

MISCELLANEOUS EVIDENCE.

The most noteworthy features of the available evidence illustrative of
the real origin and history of the symbol of the cross have now been
placed before the reader, but a number of more or less miscellaneous
facts directly or indirectly throwing additional light upon the subject
have still to be drawn attention to.

For instance, no mention has yet been made of the _Hermae_ of bygone
ages. And although their origin may have had no connection with the
symbol in question, it is noteworthy that some at least of the early
Christians discovered in the more or less cruciform outline of the
Hermae a reason or excuse for paying them homage, while very similar
figures are to be seen illustrated upon Christian antiquities, such as
the mosaic of which the great cross of the Lateran forms the principal
feature.

The Hermae venerated by the ancient Greeks were pillars, usually of
stone and quadrangular, surmounted in most instances with a head of
either Hermes or Dionysos; and with a peculiar transverse rail just
below the head, much used for hanging garlands upon, which made the
whole look more or less like a cross.

These pillars were erected in front of temples, tombs, and houses; but
more especially as sign posts at cross roads; and whether the head at
the top was that of Hermes the Messenger of the Gods, or, as was very
often the case, that of Dionysos the Sun-God, a phallus was always a
prominent feature.

Moreover these phallic and often solar erections called Hermae,
undoubtedly more or less cross-shaped owing to the transverse rail,
were worshipped as conducive to fecundity.

It is also worthy of notice that the cross is well known to have been
venerated in America before even the Norsemen who preceded Columbus set
foot upon that afterwards rediscovered continent.

For instance a cross surrounded by a circle was in use among the
ancient Mexicans as a solar sign, another cross was a solar symbol of
the natives of Peru from time immemorial, and we are also told by the
authorities that a cross of four equal arms with a disc or circle at
the centre was the age-old Moqui symbol of the Sun.[68]

Other noteworthy points are that the cross occurs upon Runic monuments
in Europe long before Christianity was introduced into the regions
containing them; that ancient altars to the Sun-God Mithras bearing the
sacred symbol of the cross have been discovered even in England; and
that the Laplanders of old when sacrificing marked their idols with the
symbol of the cross, using the life blood of their victims for that
purpose.[69]

It should also be pointed out that on a coin of Thasos bearing
representations of a phallic character connected with the worship of
the Thracian Bacchus, a Svastika cross is a prominent symbol; that upon
ancient vases the headgear of Bacchus is sometimes ornamented with the
cross of four equal arms; that upon a Greek vase at Lentini, Sicily, an
ancient representation of the Sun-God Hercules is accompanied by no
less than three different kinds of crosses as symbols; and that upon an
archaic Greek vase in the British Museum, the Svastika cross, the St.
Andrew's cross, and the other and right angled cross of four equal
arms, appear under the rays of the Sun. Nor should it be forgotten that
though the Svastika cross has almost died out as a Christian symbol and
was perhaps never thoroughly acclimatised as such, it often appeared
upon Christian ecclesiastical properties of the Middle Ages, and,
either as a Pagan or Christian symbol, continually occurs in the
catacombs of Rome.

We are told that circular wafers or cakes were used in the mysteries of
the Sun-God Bacchus, and, being marked with a cross, resembled the
disc-like wafers of the Christian Mass. Whether this was so or not, it
is noteworthy that a cross is said to appear upon the representation of
a circular wafer used in the mysteries of Mithras which occurs upon an
ancient fresco at Rome.

In this connection it may be mentioned, as a series of curious
coincidences, that in the Zoroastrian religion long before our era the
Sun-God Mithras bore much the same relation to the All-Father that the
Christ does in ours, and is referred to in the Zend Avesta as the
_Incarnate Word_; that Mithras is said, like the Christ, to have been
born in a cave; that the Fathers admitted that the new-born Sun had
been worshipped in the cave at Bethlehem to which the story of the
birth of Jesus referred; and that in framing its calendar our Church
fixed upon the recognised birthday of Mithras, the _Natalis Invicti_ of
the Roman Brumalia, as the birthday of the Christ.

It is also noteworthy that the Christ is thus said to have been born as
well as to have risen again the third _or fourth_ ("_After_ three
days," _Matt_, xxvii. 63; _after_ "Three days and three nights," Matt,
xii. 40) day. For the birthday of Mithras and afterwards of the Christ,
known to us as Christmas day, seems to have been fixed upon as the
third or fourth day after the winter solstice, and as that upon which
the sun's resurrection from the south was first discernible after its
apparent cessation of movement or death.

In this connection it should be added that Lucian records the fact that
the Sun-God referred to by the Fathers as worshipped at Bethlehem was
lamented as dead once a year and always acclaimed as alive again the
third day; that in several places in the Zend Avesta we meet with
passages which show that the Mithras worshippers of old believed that
at the death of a man his spirit sits at the head of the corpse for
three days and three nights, and then, at dawn, rises free from all
earthly attachments; and that we say that the execution of Jesus took
place at the time of the Passover or Vernal Equinox, while instead of
the prophesied "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth"
(_Matt_. xii. 40) the period between the death and burial on Good
Friday evening and the resurrection before dawn on Easter Sunday is
just about that during which the Sun's disc is at the Vernal Equinox
transfixed by the Equator, _viz._, 32 2/3 hours.

The question why the Cock so often, like the Cross, surmounts the
steeples wherewith we adorn our Christian churches, is brought before
us by the fact that it was in ancient days a well-known symbol both of
the generative powers and of the Sun-God; often appearing as such upon
the top of a sacred pillar in Assyrian and Babylonian representations
of priests in the act of sacrificing or worshipping. It was probably as
the "herald of the dawn" that this bird became a symbol of the Sun-God,
and it would seem that we place its effigy aloft with the same idea in
view.

Another point to be noted is that in the Kunthistorisches Museum at
Vienna is an ancient vase upon which is a representation of the Sun-God
Apollo bearing upon his breast as his one ornament and symbol a
Svastika cross.

We are reminded of the facts that we Christians were once in the habit
of alluding to the cross as the Tree of Life, and that the ancients
dressed up the trunks of trees and worshipped them as symbols of life
and growth, by an Attic vase of the fifth century B.C. Upon this is a
red coloured painting of a tree so dressed, on which is to be seen near
the top a head of the Sun-God Dionysos, and surrounding the trunk a
shirt or garment covered with crosses.

As to the evidence obtained from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii,
it is said that much which is of a phallic character has been, from
quite worthy motives, kept in the background. An important fact has
however been mentioned by Mr. C. W. King, M.A., in his well known work
on the _Gnostics and, their Remains_, and this at least can be
commented upon. He tells us that the Cross and the Phallus were found
placed in juxtaposition upon the walls as meaning one and the same
thing, and he goes on to add that

     "This cross seems to be the Egyptian Tau, that ancient
     symbol of the generative power and therefore transferred
     into the Bacchic mysteries."

The foregoing are the last of the evidences throwing light upon the
origin and history of the symbol adopted by our religion as its own,
which the author thinks it necessary to bring forward in support of his
contention. And however much of the evidence sought out by the author
and in this work marshalled by him into something like order may seem
by itself to be untrustworthy or worthless, no reader can reasonably
deny that it has been proved that the cross was a well known symbol of
Life long before our era, and that as a whole the evidence tends to
show that it became such as a phallic symbol, and therefore as a symbol
of the Sun-God.

And what is the moral of the real, as distinguished from the imaginary,
history of the symbol of the cross but this: that from the beginning
nought has caused the beliefs of men to assume an appearance of radical
difference, save the difference in the name or dress with which this or
that set of men have clothed similar ideas?

For, as has already been hinted, Humanity has ever had but one God and
but one Religion. And as from one point of view Life is but another
term for the Real Presence, and Death but another term for the
withdrawal of Deity, it may be said that that God is Life, and that
Religion the desire for Life, more Life, and fuller Life. Moreover, as
has been said before, this universal worship of Life is discernible
even in the willingness of some to sacrifice what remains to them of
mortal life in the hope of thus being enabled to lay hold of a life
immortal which is not for all.

The worship of Life is natural, and must of necessity continue. Let us
however render it nobler by recognising its catholicity; and by
contemptuously refusing to either seek or accept a life of bliss
hereafter which any of our brothers and sisters are, either in our
imagination or in reality, to be debarred from sharing.