the story of the christ part 2

[Painting copyright Raffaelo Sanzio: “Madonna of the Meadow” (1506).]

AN EXPLANATION OF THE FABLE, IN WHICH THE SUN IS WORSHIPPED UNDER THE NAME OF CHRIST.

By Charles François Dupuis (1798).

Part 2.

According to the principles of the cosmogony, or of the Genesis of the Magi,—with which that of the Jews has the greatest affinity, because both put man into a delightful garden, where a Serpent introduced the Evil—there is born from the womb of time without end, or from eternity a finite period, divided into twelve parts, six of which belong to Light, and six to Darkness, six to creative action, and six to destructive action, six to the good and six to the evil of Nature. This period is the annual revolution of Heaven or of the World, which the Magi represent by a mystical egg, divided into twelve parts, six of which belong to the Lord of Goodness and of Light and six to the Chief of Evil and of Darkness; here it is by a tree, which gives the knowledge of good and of evil, and which has twelve fruits; for it is thus described in the Gospel of Eve; there it is by twelve thousand years, six of which are called the thousands of God, and six the thousands of the Devil. These are as many emblems of the year, during which man passes successively from the dominion of light to that of darkness, from that of the long days to that of the long nights, and experiences the physical good and evil, which follow each other in quick succession, or commingle, according to the Sun’s approach to, or retreat from our hemisphere, conformably as it organizes sublunary matter through vegetation, or as it abandons it to its principle of inertia, from which follow the disorganization of bodies and the disorder, which winter produces in all elements, and on the surface of the Earth, until Spring restores the harmony again.
It is then, when fecundated by the immortal and spiritual (intelligent) action of the fire Ether, and by the heat of the Sun of the equinoctial Lamb—that Earth becomes a delightful abode for man. But when the Star of day, reaching the Balance and the celestial Serpent, or the signs of autumn, passes into the other hemisphere, then it consigns our regions by its retreat to the hardships of winter, to the impetuous winds, and to all the devastations, which the destructive Genius of Darkness commits in the World. There is no more hope for man, except the return of the Sun to the sign of Spring or to the Lamb, being the first of the signs. This is the Redeemer which he expects.
Now let us see, whether really the God of the Christians, he whom John calls the Light, “which lighteth every man that commeth into the World,” has the character of the God Sun, worshipped by all nations under a great many names and with different attributes; and whether his fable has the same foundation, as all the other solar fables, which we have analysed. Two principal epochs of the solar movement, as we have already observed, have attracted the attention of all men. The first is that of the winter solstice, when the Sun, after seemingly abandoning us, resumes again its route towards our regions, and when the day, in its infancy, is successively increased. The second is that of the equinox of spring, when this mighty luminary spreads its fecundating heat over the whole of Nature, after its transit of the equinoctial line, which separates the reign of light from that of darkness, the abode of Ormuzd from that of Ahriman. To these two epochs have the worshippers of the Star, which dispenses light and life to the World, attached their principal feasts.
The Sun is neither born nor dies in reality: it is always as luminous as it is majestic; but in the relation, which the days, engendered by it, have with the nights, there is in this World a progressive gradation of increase and decrease, which has originated some very ingenious fictions amongst the ancient theologians. They have assimilated this generation, this periodical increase and decrease of the day, to that of man, who after having been born, grown up and reached manhood, degenerates and decreases, until he has finally arrived at the term of the career, allotted to him by Nature to travel over. The God of Day, personified in the sacred allegories, had therefore to submit to the whole destiny of man; he had his cradle and his tomb, under the names either of Hercules or of Bacchus, of Osiris or of Christ. He was a child at the winter solstice, at the moment, when the days begin to grow: under this form they exposed his image in the ancient temples, in order to receive the homage of his worshippers, “because,” says Macrobius, “the day being then the shortest, this God seems to be yet a feeble child. This is the child of the mysteries, he, whose image was brought out from the recesses of their sanctuaries by the Egyptians every year on a certain day.”
This is the child, of which the Goddess of Saïs claimed to be the mother in that famous inscription, where these words could be read: “The fruit, which I have brought forth is the Sun.” This is the feeble child, born in the midst of the darkest night, of which this virgin of Saïs was delivered about the winter solstice, according to Plutarch.
This God had his mysteries and his altars and statues, representing him in the four ages of the human life.
The Egyptians are not the only people, who celebrated at the winter solstice the birth of the God Sun, or of that luminous orb, which redeems Nature every year. The Romans also fixed at that epoch the great festival of the new Sun and the celebration of the solar games, known by the name of games of the circus. They had fixed it at the eighth day before the Calends of January, to-wit: at the same day, which corresponds to our 25th of December, or on the birth-day of the Sun, worshipped under the name of Mithras and Christ. This indication is to be found in a calendar which has been printed in the “Uranology” of father Petan and after the publication of our larger work, where it reads: “On the eighth before the calends of January, ‘natalis invictis,’ birth of the invincible. This invincible was Mithras or the Sun. We celebrate says Julian, the philosopher, some days before the new year’s day, the magnificent games in honor of the Sun, to which we give the title of the Invincible. Oh! could I be so happy, as to celebrate them for a long time to come; oh Sun, king of the Universe, thou, who from all eternity was engendered by the first God, of his pure substance, &c.” This is a Platonic expression, because Plato called the Sun the son of God. The title of Invincible is that, which all the monuments of the Mithraic religion give to Mithras or the Sun, the great Divinity of the Persians. “To the God Sun, the invincible Mithras.”
Thus Mithras and Christ were born on the same day, and that day was the birth-day of the Sun. They said of Mithras, that he was the same God as the Sun, “that he was the Light, that lighteth every man, that cometh into the world.” The birth-place of Mithras was placed in a grotto, that of Bacchus and of Jupiter in a cavern, and that of Christ in a stable. It is a parallel, which was drawn by St. Justinus himself. According to tradition, it was in a grotto that Christ was laying, when the Magi came to worship him. But who were the Magi? The worshippers of Mithras or the Sun. What presents did they bring to the new-born God? Three sorts of presents, consecrated to the Sun by the worship of the Arabs, the Chaldeans and other Orientals. By whom are they informed of this birth? By astrology their favorite science. What were their dogmas? They believed, says Chardin, in the eternity of a first Being, which is the Light. What are they presumed to do in the fable? To fulfill the first precept of their religion, which commands them to worship the newborn Sun. What name do the prophets give to Christ? That of Orient. Orient they say is his name. It is at the Orient and not in Orient, that they see his image in the Heavens. And indeed, the sphere of the Magi and of the Chaldeans painted in the Heavens a new-born babe, called Christ or Jesus; it was placed in the arms of the celestial Virgin, or the Virgin of the signs, the very same one, to which Eratosthenes gives the name of Isis, the mother of Horus. To which point of Heaven corresponded this Virgin of the spheres and her child? To the hour of mid-night on the twenty-fifth December, at the same moment, when the birth of the God of the year, the new Sun or Christ is said to take place at the eastern border, at the same point, whence the Sun of the first day rose.
It is a fact, which is independent of all hypothesis, independent of all the consequences, which I shall draw from it, that at the precise hour of midnight on the 25th December, in the centuries, when Christianity made its appearance, the celestial sign, which rose at the horizon, and the ascendant of which presided at the opening of the new solar revolution, was the Virgin of the constellations. It is another fact, that the God Sun, born at the winter solstice, is re-united with her and surrounds her with his lustre at the time of our feast of the Assumption, or the re-union of mother and son. And still another fact is that, when she comes out heliacally from the solar rays at the moment, when we celebrate her appearance in the World, or her Nativity. I shall not examine the motive, which caused these feasts to be fixed on these days: it is sufficient for me to say, that those are three facts, which no reasoning can destroy, and out of which an attentive observer, who is well acquainted with the genius of the ancient mystagogues, may draw great consequences, unless people prefer to see in it a mere sport of the hazard; but this, it will be difficult to pursued those, who are on their guard of anything, which might mislead their reasoning faculties and perpetuate their prejudices. At all events it is certain, that this same Virgin, the only one who can become mother without ceasing to be a virgin, fills the three great functions of the Virgin, the mother of Christ, be it in the birth of her son, or in that of her own, or in her conjunction with him in the Heavens. It is chiefly her function as mother, which we shall examine here. It is but natural to suppose, that those who personified the Sun, and who made it pass through the various ages of the human life, who imagined for it a series of wonderful adventures, sung either in poems or narrated in legends, did not fail, to draw its horoscope, the same as horoscopes were drawn for other children at the precise moment of their birth. This was especially the custom of the Chaldeans and of the Magi. Afterwards this feast was celebrated under the name of “dies natalis” or the feast of the birth-day. Now, the celestial Virgin, who presided at the birth of the God Day personified, was presumed to be his mother, and thus fulfill the prophecy of the astrologer, who had said: “A Virgin shall conceive and bring forth,” in other words, that she shall give birth to the God Sun, like the Virgin of Saîs: from this idea are derived the pictures, which are delinated in the sphere of the Magi, of which Abulmazar has given us a description, and of which Kirker, Selden, the famous Pic, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, Blaëu, Stoffler and a great many others have spoken. We are extracting here the passage from Abulmazar. “We see, says Abulmazar, in the first decan, or in the ten first degrees of the sign of the Virgin, according to the traditions of the ancient Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, of Hermes and of Æsculapius, a young maiden, called in the Persian language ‘Seclenidos de Darzama,’ a name, when translated into Arabian by that of ‘Adrenedefa,’ signifies a chaste, pure and immalculate virgin, of a handsome figure, agreeable countenance, long hair and modest mien. She holds in her hand two ears of corn; she sits on a throne; she nourishes and suckles a babe, which some call Jesus, and the Greeks call Christ.” The Persian sphere, published by Scaliger as a sequel of his notes, on Manilius, gives about the same description of the celestial Virgin; but there is no mention made of the child, which she suckles. It places alongside of her a man, which can only be Bootes, called the foster-father of the son of the Virgin Isis, or of Horus.
In the national library there is an Arabian manuscript, containing the twelve signs, delineated and colored, and there is also to be seen a young child alongside of the celestial Virgin, being represented in about the same style as our Virgins, and like an Egyptian Isis with her son. It is more than probable, that the ancient astrologers have placed in the Heavens the infantile image of the new Sun, in the constellation, which presided over its new birth and at that of the year in the winter solstice, and that from this have originated the fictions of the God Day, conceived in the chaste womb of a virgin, because that constellation was really the Virgin. This conclusion is far more natural, than the opinion of those, who obstinately believe, that there had existed a woman, who had become mother, without ceasing to be virgin, and that the fruit engendered by her, is that Eternal Being, which moves and governs whole Nature. Thus the Greeks said, that their God with the forms of Ram or Lamb, the famous Ammon or Jupiter, was brought up by Themis, which is also one of the names of the Virgin of the constellations; she is also called Ceres, to whom the title of “Holy Virgin” was given, and who was the mother of young Bacchus or of the Sun, the image of which was exposed in the sanctuaries at the winter solstice, in the shape of an infant, according to Macrobius. His testimony is confirmed by the author of the Chronicle of Alexandria, who expresses himself in the following words: “The Egyptians have consecrated up to this day the child-birth of a virgin and the nativity of her son, who is exposed in a ‘crib’ to the adoration of the people. King Ptolemy, having asked the reason of this custom, he was answered that it was a mystery, taught by a respectable prophet to their fathers.” It is well known, that with them a prophet meant one of the Chiefs of the Initiation.
It is alleged, I do not know on what authority, that the ancient Druids paid also homage to a virgin, with this inscription: “Virgina paritura,” and that her statue was in the territory of Chartres. At all events it is certain, that in the monuments of Mithras, or of the Sun, the worship of which was established in ancient times in Great Britain, there is to be seen a woman, which suckles an infant, and which can be only the mother of the God Day. The English author, who has written a dissertation on this monument, gives the particulars of all the features, which can establish the relationship, which existed between the festivities of the birth of Christ and those of the birth of Mithras. This author, being more pious, than a philosopher, sees there festivities imagined, in conformity with the prophetic notions on the future birth of Christ. He very properly remarks, that the Mithraic worship was spread over the whole Roman Empire, and especially in Gaul and in Great Britain. He also quotes the testimony of St. Hieronymus, who complains, that the Heathens celebrated the feasts of the new-born Sun or of Adonis, also of Mithras in the same place at Bethlehem, where it was said, that Christ was born; which in our opinion, was merely the same worship under a different name, as we have shown in the fable of Adonis, dead and resuscitated like Christ.
After having demonstrated, on what astronomical foundation was reposing the fable of the incarnation of the Sun, under the name of Christ, in the womb of a virgin, we shall now examine the origin of that, which makes him die and afterwards resuscitate at the vernal equinox under the form of the Paschal Lamb.
The Sun, being the only redeemer of the evils, which winter produces, and presumed in the sacerdotal fictions to be born at the solstice, must remain yet three months more in the inferior signs, in the regions affected by evil and darkness, and there be subject to their ruler, before it makes the famous passage of the vernal equinox, which assures its triumph over Night, and which renews the face of the Earth. They must therefore make him live, during all that time, exposed to all the infirmities of mortal life, until he had resumed the rights of Divinity in his triumph. The allegorical genius of the mystagogues shall then soon compose a life for him, and which is convenient for the end, which the Initiation proposes to accomplish. Thus we see Æesopus,—when he wanted to describe the strong and unjust man, oppressing the feeble,—making use figuratively of animals to perform those parts, to whom he gave opposite characters, and imagined an action, proper to attain the moral aim of his apologue. Thus did the Egyptians invent the fable of Osiris or the beneficent Sun, who travels over the Universe, in order to spread over it the countless blessings, of which he is the source, and set up in opposition to him, Typhon, the Prince of Darkness, who counteracts his actions and finally kills him. On such a simple idea as this, did they invent the fable of Osiris and Typhon, in which, one is represented as a legitimate king, and the other as the tyrant of Egypt. Besides the fragments of these ancient sacerdotal fictions, which have been transmitted to us by Diodorus and Plutarch, we have a life of Osiris and of Typhon, composed by bishop Sinesius, because in those times the bishops manufactured legends. In the one here mentioned, the adventures, the characters and the portraits of the two principles of Egyptian theology, were drawn from imagination, yet still after the idea of the character, which each of them had to play, in order to express in a fable the opposite action of the principles, which counteract and contend with each other in Nature. The Persians had also their history of Ormuzd and Ahriman, which contained the account of their battles, and of the victory of the good over the bad principle. The Greeks had a life of Hercules and of Bacchus, which contained the history of their glorious exploits and of the blessings, which they had spread over the whole Earth; and those narrations were ingenius poems, the production of learned men. The history of Christ on the contrary, is nothing but a tiresome legend, having the same character of sadness and dryness, which is the attribute of the legends of the Indians, in which we find only bigots, penitents and Brahmins, living in holy meditation. Their God Vishnu, who became man (or flesh) in Chrisnu, has a great many traits in common with Christ. There are certain vagaries to be met with little Chrisnu, very similar to those, which are attributed to the childhood of Christ in the gospel: when grown he rises from the dead like Christ.
The Magi had also a legend of the Chief of their religion; prodigies had announced his birth. He was exposed to dangers from the time of his infancy, and was obliged to fly into Persia, like Christ into Egypt; like him he was persecuted by a king, his enemy, who wanted to get rid of him. An Angel transported him into Heaven, whence he returned with the book of his law. Like Christ he was tempted by the Devil, who made him magnificent promises, in order to induce him, to become his servant and to be dependent of him. He was calumniated and persecuted by the priests, as Christ was by the Pharisees. He opposed them with miracles, in order to confirm his divine mission and the dogmas, which his book contained. By this parallel we can easily understand, that the authors of the legend of Christ, who make the Magi come to his cradle, guided by the famous star, which people said was predicted by Zoroaster, the Chief of their religion,—would not have failed to introduce in this legend a great many traits, which belonged to the leader of the religion of the Persians, of which Christianism is merely a branch, and with which it has the greatest resemblance, as we shall have occasion to remark, when we shall speak of the Mithraic religion, or of the Sun Mithras, the great Divinity of the Persians.
The authors of that legend had neither knowledge nor genius enough to compose such poems as the cantos on Hercules, Theseus, Jason, Bacchus, &c. Besides the thread of the astronomical science had been lost, and they limited themselves to compose legends with the fragments of the ancient fictions, which were no longer understood. Let us add to all this, that the aim of the leaders of the Initiation into the mysteries of Christ, was a purely moral aim, and that they endeavored to represent, not so much the conquering hero of the Giants and of all kind of evils, with which Nature is afflicted, as the meek, the patient, the charitable man, who had come on Earth to teach by his example the virtues, the practice of which they wished to inculcate upon the Initiates into his mysteries, which were those of the eternal Light. They made him therefore act in this sense, and preach and command the austere practices of the Essenians, which resembled much those of the Brahmins and the devotees of the Indies. He had his disciples, like the Sommona-Kodon of the Siamese, a God also born of a virgin by the action of the Sun; and the number of his Apostles described the great duodecimal division, which is found in all the religions, of which the Sun is the hero; only his legend was more marvelous than amusing, and is showing there a little the ear of the credulous and ignorant Jew. As the author of the sacred fable made him be born amongst the Hebrews, he had to subject him and his mother to the religious rites of that people. Like all Jewish children he had to be circumcised on the eighth day: his mother was obliged, like other Jewish women, to present herself at the Temple, in order to be there purified. One feels, that all this is a necessary sequence of the first idea, or of that, which caused him to be born to preach and to die, in order to resuscitate afterwards: because there cannot be a resurection without a previous death. Since they had made of it a man, they had to make him pass through all the stages of adolescence and of youth, and he seemed to advance rapidly in knowledge and understanding to such perfection, that at the age of twelve years he astonished all the Doctors. The morals, which they wished to inculcate, were put in lessons in his sermons, or in example in his actions. They imagined miracles with which to support it, and fanatics were employed, who alleged to have been witnesses: for, who is not capable of making miracles anywhere, where willing minds are found ready to believe them? Did they not see them, or believe to have seen them at the tomb of the blessed Paris in so enlightened an age as ours, and in the midst of a population, which could furnish more than one critic, but infinitely more enthusiasts and rogues? All leaders of religion have the reputation of having made miracles: “Fo,” amongst the Chinese made miracles and forty thousand disciples publish everywhere, that they did see them. Odin, amongst the Scandinavians has made them also; he resuscitated dead persons, he also descended into Hell, and he gave to new-born infants a species of baptism. Miracles are the great resort of all religions: nothing is so stoutly believed, as that which is incredible. Bishop Sinesius has said—and he knew something about it—that the people wanted miracles at any price, and that it was impossible to conduct it otherwise. The whole life of Christ was therefore composed in this sense. Those who have “fabricated” it, have added thereto fictitious events, not only at known places, as all the ancient poets have done in the fables of Hercules, Bacchus, Osiris, &c., but also at an epoch with well known names, such as the age of Augustus, of Tiberius, of Pontius Pilate, &c.; which does not prove the real existence of Christ, but only that the sacerdotal fiction is posterior to that epoch; and of this we have no doubt. There have been made even several of them, because they count about sixty Gospels or lives of Christ, and so many stories have been told about him, that immense volumes could scarcely contain them, according to the expression used by one of the authors of these legends. The genius of the mystagogues has launched forth into a vast career, but all have agreed on two fundamental points: on the incarnation, which we have explained, and on the death and the resurrection, which we are going to prove as having only reference to the Sun, and that it is merely the repetition of a tragic event, described in all the mysteries, in all the songs, and in all the legends of the worshippers of the Sun, under a great many different names.
Let us well bear in mind here, what we have proved in another place, that Christ has all the characteristics of the God Sun in his birth, or in his incarnation in the womb of a virgin, and that this birth arrives just at the same moment, when the ancients celebrated that of the Sun or of Mithras, and that it happens beneath the ascendant of a constellation, which, in the sphere of the Magi, carries a babe called Jesus. The actual question now is, to show, that he has also the characteristics of the God Sun in his resurrection, either on account of the epoch, at which this event is presumed to have happened, or on account of the form under which Christ shows himself in his triumph.
In concluding our explanation of the pretended fall of man and of the fable, in which the Serpent introduces the Evil into the World, we observed, that this evil was of a nature; which could only be repaired by the Sun of spring, and that it could be effected by it only. The Redemption of Christ, if he is the God Sun, must necessarily take place at that epoch.
Now it is precisely at the vernal equinox, that Christ triumphs, and that he redeems the misfortunes of mankind in the sacerdotal fable of the Christians, called the life of Christ. Just at that annual epoch those festivities take place, the object of which is the celebration of this great event, because the Easter of the Christians, like that of the Jews is necessarily fixed at the full moon of the vernal equinox, to-wit: at that moment of the year when the Sun conquers and overcomes that famous passage which separates the dominion of the God of Light, from that of the Prince of Darkness, and where in our climes that Luminary re-appears, which gives light and life to all Nature. The Jews and the Christians call it the feast of the Pass-over, because at that time the God Sun or the Lord of Nature passes towards, or approaches us, in order to shower over us his blessings, of which the Serpent of darkness and of autumn had deprived us during all winter. This is the handsome Apollo in the fulness of all vigor of youth, who triumphs over the Serpent Python. This is the feast of the Lord, because this title of respect was given to the Sun; because Adonis and Adonaï styled this Luminary, Lord of the World, in the oriental fable of Adonis, the God Sun, who, like Christ came out victorious from the tomb, after his death had been lamented. In the consecration of the seven days of the week to the seven planets, the day of the Sun is called the day of the Lord. It precedes Monday or the day of the Moon, and follows Saturday or the day of Saturn, two planets, which occupy the extremes of the musical scale, of which the Sun is the center and forms the quart. Therefore the title of “Lord” is under all circumstances a very proper one for the Sun.
This feast of the Pass-over of the Lord was originally fixed on the 25th of March, to wit: three months, day for day, after the feast of his birth, which is also that of the nativity of the Sun. It was then, that this Luminary, while recovering its creative power and all its fecundating activity, was presumed to renovate Nature, to re-establish a new order of things, to create so to say a new Universe on the wreck of the old World, and to make mankind enter through the mediation of the equinoctial Lamb, the realm of Light and blessedness, which its presence brought back.
All these mystical ideas are to be found compiled in this passage of “Cedrenus.” “The first day of the first mounth,” says this historian, “is the first of the month ‘Nisan;’ it corresponds to the 25th of March of the Romans, and the ‘Phamenot’ of the Egyptians. On that day Gabriel saluted Mary, in order to make her conceive the ‘Savior.’ I observe, that it is the same month Phamenot, that Osiris gave fecundity to the Moon, according to the Egyptian theology. On the very same day, adds Cedrenus, our God, Savior, after the termination of his career, arose from the dead; that is, what our forefathers called the Pass-over, or the passage of the Lord. It is on the same day, that our ancient theologians have fixed also his return, or his second advent, as the new Era had to count from that epoch, because on the same day the Universe had commenced.” All this agrees very well with the last chapter of the Apocalypse, which makes the throne of the equinoctial Lamb the starting point of the new Era, which shall regulate the destinies of the World of Light, and of the friends of Ormuzd.
The same Cedrenus makes Christ die on the 23d of March and resuscitate on the 25th, from which, says he, originates the custom of the Church, to celebrate Easter on The 25th of March, to-wit: on the 8th day before the Calends of April, or three months after the eighth of the Calends of January, at which epoch happened the nativity of the Sun. This eighth of the Calends, whether in January or in April, was the same day, on which the ancient Romans had fixed the arrival of the Sun at the winter solstice and at the vernal equinox. If the eighth of the Calends of January was a holiday in the religion of the worshippers of the Sun, as we have shown above, the eighth of the Calends of April or the 25th of March was one equally so with them. The great mysteries were then celebrated, which symbolized the triumph of the Sun at that epoch every year over the long nights of winter.
In the sacred legends that Luminary was personified: they lamented its supposed death for several days, and they celebrated in songs its resurrection on the 25th of March, or on the eighth of the Calends of April. Of this we are informed by Macrobius, the same Macrobius, who has told us, that at the winter solstice, or on the eighth day before the Calends of January, this same God Sun was represented under the form of a new-born infant, and on that of spring under the emblem of a strong vigorous young man. He adds, that these feasts of the Passion, or of the death and resurrection of the God Day, which had been fixed at the equinox of spring, were to be found in all sects of the religion of the Sun. With the Egyptians, it was the death and resurrection of Osiris, with the Phœnicians it was the death and resurrection of Adonis, and with the Phrygians it represented the tragical adventures of Atys, &c., therefore the God Sun experiences in all religions the same misfortunes as Christ, that like him he triumps over death, and that this happens just at the same epochs of its annual revolution. It is on those, who persist, to make of Christ another being than the Sun, that the duty devolves, to give us their reasons for such a singular coincidence. As far as we are concerned, who do not believe in these sports of the hazard, we shall simply observe, that the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ, celebrated at Easter, partake of the mysteries of the ancient solar religion or of the worship of universal Nature.
It is chiefly in the religion of Mithras or the God Sun, worshipped under that name by the Magi, that we find mostly those features of analogy with the death and resurrection of Christ and with the mysteries of the Christians. Mithras, who was also born on the 25th December like Christ, died as he did; and he had his sepulchre, over which his disciples came to shed tears. During the night the priests carried his image to a tomb, expressly prepared for him; he was laid out on a litter, like the Phœnician Adonis. These funeral ceremonies, like those on good Friday, were accompanied with funeral dirges and the groans of his priests; after having spent some time with these expressions of feigned grief; after having lighted the sacred flambeau or their Paschal candle and anointed the image with Chrism or perfumes, one of them came forward and pronounced with the gravest mien these words: “Be of good cheer, sacred band of Initiates (“initiés,”) your God has risen from the dead; his pains and his sufferings shall be your salvation.” Why, exclaims the Christian writer, from whom we have all these details—why do you exhort these unhappy people to rejoice? Why do you deceive them with false promises? The death of your God is known: but there is no proof of his new life. There is no oracle, which warrants his resurrection; he did not show himself to the people after his death, in order that they might believe in his Divinity. It is an idol, which you bury; it is an idol over which you shed tears; it is an idol, which you are drawing from the tomb; and after your sorrows, you are now rejoicing. It is yourself, who deliver your God, &c. I ask you, continued Firmicus, who has seen your God with ox-horns, whose death afflicts you so much? And I shall ask Firmicus and his credulous Christians: and you, who are so much afflicted about the death of the Lamb, slaughtered in order to wash out with his blood the sins of the World,—who has seen your God in the forms of a Lamb, of which you celebrate the triumph and the resurrection?
Do you ignore, that two thousand years before the Christian era, to which epoch the religion of the Persians and the Mithraic worship, or the Bull of Mithras is traced,—the Sun made the transit of the equinox under the sign of the Bull, and that it is merely through the effect of the precession of the equinoxes, that this passage in our days is under the sign of the Lamb; that there is nothing changed but the celestial forms and the name? That the worship is absolutely the same? And it would really seem, in this instance, as if Firmicus, in his onset on the ancient religions, had set his heart on it, to collect all the traits of analogy, which their mysteries had with those of the Christians. He clings chiefly to the Mithraic Initiation, of which he draws a pretty uniform parallel with that of Christ, and to which it has so much resemblance, merely because it is one and the same sect. It is true, he explains all this conformity, which exists between these two religions, by asserting, as Tertullian and St. Justin did, that a long time before there were Christians in existence, the Devil had taken pleasure to have their future mysteries and ceremonies copied by his worshippers. This may be an excellent reason for certain Christians, such as there are plenty in our days, but an extremely paltry one for men of common sense. As far as we are concerned, we, who do not believe in the Devil, and who are not, like them, in his secrets, we shall simply observe, that the religion of Christ, founded like all the others on the worship of the Sun, has preserved the same dogmas, the same practices, the same mysteries or very nearly so; that everything has been in common; because the God was the same; that there were only the accessories, which could differ, but that the basis was absolutely the same. The oldest apologists of the Christian religion agree, that the Mithraic religion had its sacraments, its baptism, its penitence, its Eucharist and its consecration by mystical words; that the catechumens of that religion had preparatory trials, more rigorous than those of the Christians; that the Initiates or the faithful marked their foreheads with a sacred sign; that they admitted also the dogma of the resurrection; that they were presented with the crown, which ornamented the forehead of the martyrs; that their sovereign Pontiff was not allowed to marry several times; that they had their virgins and their laws of continence; finally, that they had everything, which has since been practiced by the Christians. Of course, Tertullian calls again the Devil to his assistance, in order to explain away so complete a resemblance. But as there is not the slighest difficulty, without the intervention of the Devil, to perceive, that whenever two religions resemble each other so completely, the oldest must be the mother and the youngest the daughter, we shall conclude, that since the worship of Mithras is infinitely older than that of Christ, and its ceremonies a great deal anterior to those of the Christians, that therefore the Christians are incontestably either sectarians or plagiarists of the religion of the Magi.
I shall add with the learned “Hyde,” that concerning the Angels, the theory of the Persians was more complete, than that of the Jews and of the Christians; that they acknowledged the distinction of the Angels into Angels of Light and Angels of Darkness; that they knew the narratives of their battles, and the names of the Angels, which have been admitted into our religion; that they baptised their children and gave them a name; that they had the fiction of Paradise and of Hell, which is likewise found with the Greeks and the Romans, and with several other nations; that they possessed a hierarchical order, and the whole ecclesiastical constitution of the Christians, which, according to Hyde, dates back with them more than three thousand years. But I shall not say with him, that we should see in this resemblance the work of Providence, which has willed, that the Persians should do in anticipation, what the Christians should do at some future day. If Hyde, (who was born in an island, where superstition is almost always to be found alongside of philosophy, forming with it a monstrous alliance)—was not deterred through fear of shocking the prejudices of his time and of his country, to disguise in this way the opinion, which such a striking resemblance must necessarily awaken in him,—then we must confess, that wisdom is not always common sense, and is by no means its equal. I shall therefore agree with Hyde, that the two religions are similar in almost all points; but I shall come to the conclusion, that they form only one, or at all events, that they are only two sects of the ancient religion of the Orientals, worshippers of the Sun, and that their institutions, as well, their principal dogmas had—at least as far as their basis is concerned, one common origin. It is still the Sun, which is the God of their religion, may he be called Christ or Mithras, Osiris or Bacchus, Adonis or Atys, &c. Let us now pass to the forms, which characterize the God Sun of the Christians in his triumph.
These forms are very naturally taken from the celestial sign, thro’ which the Star of Day passed at the time, when it restored to our hemisphere the long days and heat. At the epoch, when Christianism came to be known in the West, and more than fifteen centuries before, this sign was the Ram, which the Persians in their cosmogony call the Lamb, as we have shown before. This was the sign of the exaltation of the Sun in the system of the astrologers, and the ancient Sabismus had fixed there its grandest feast. It was therefore the Sun’s return to the celestial Lamb, which annually regenerated Nature. This then is the form, which this majestic Luminary, this beneficent God, this savior of mankind, took in its triumph. And this is,—to speak in mystical style, “the Lamb, which redeemeth the sins of the World.”
The same as Ahriman, or the ruler of darkness, had assumed the forms of the constellation, which in autumn brought back the long nights and winter, so also had the God of Light, his conqueror, to take in spring the forms of the celestial sign, under which his triumph was accomplished. This is the wholly natural consequence, which follows from the principles, which we have adopted in the explanation of the fable about the introduction of the Evil by the Serpent. We know besides, that it was peculiar to the genius of the worshippers of the Sun, to paint that Luminary under the forms and with the attributes of the celestial signs, with which it was in conjunction each month: this was the origin of the various metamorphoses of Jupiter with the Greeks, and those of Vishnu with the East Indians. For instance, they painted a young man leading a ram, or who carried a ram on his shoulders, or who had his front armed with the horns of a ram. Jupiter Ammon was represented under this last form. Christ also, took the name and the forms of a lamb, and this animal was the symbolical expression, under which he was designated. People did not say the Sun of the Lamb, but simply the Lamb, as the Sun of the Lion, or Hercules, was frequently called the Lion. These are merely the various expressions of the same idea, and a varied usage of the same celestial animal in the pictures made of the Sun of Spring.
This denomination of the Lamb, which was given in preference to Christ or the God of Light in his equinoctial triumph, is to be found every where in the sacred books of the Christians, but especially so in their book of Initiation, known by the name of the Apocalypse. The faithful or those, who had been initiated are there qualified as disciples of the Lamb. The slaughtered Lamb is there represented in the midst of four animals, which are also found in the constellations, and which are placed at the four cardinal points of the sphere. It is before the Lamb, that the Genii of the twenty-four hours, designated under the emblem of old men, prostrate themselves. It is the slaughtered Lamb, according to the phrase, which is worthy to receive all power, divinity, wisdom, strength, honor, glory and benediction; it is the Lamb, which opens the book of fate, designated under the emblem of a book, closed with seven seals.
All the nations of the Universe are placing themselves before the throne and before the Lamb. They are dressed in white; they have palms in their hands, and sing with a loud voice: Glory to our God, who is sitting on the throne! It will be remembered that the celestial Lamb or the Ram is the sign of the exaltation of the God Sun, and this victorious luminary seems to be carried on it in its triumph. The Lamb is surrounded by the duodecimal court or retinue, of which it is the leader in the celestial signs. It appears to be standing on the mountain, and the twelve tribes surround it, and are appointed to follow it, wherever it goes.

Part 3: here.