I've written several times on, or made reference to, astrotheology, which is the study of, or belief, that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and their movements are the basis for all mythological and religious stories.Earlier articles include:I have come to believe this is not only the basis of the general story of Jesus and other savior-gods who came before and since Him, but is also the source of the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff, and why the Sun and Moon are such important symbols in Freemasonry.
This doesn't discount the fact that Jesus may actually have existed; it simply calls into question whether the widespread astrotheological beliefs of the ancient Middle East and later Rome were superimposed upon a historical man who was the descendant of King David and rightful heir to the title King of the Jews, and that then superimposed onto religious, spiritual and moral philosophies and commandments.
Heretical? Yes. True? Could be. It vibrates as truth to me.
I live in the country, where the lights of the city don't block out the stars at night. I sit outside in the evenings regularly, basking in their shimmering, subtle rays. I can't observe a sunrise or sunset, or watch the motion of the Moon, Venus and the constellations without the overwhelming feeling that humanity has been doing the same thing for eons, watching the sky with a curious amazement, creating stories to explain what they see.
Until now.
In today's world, we seldom look up. We take the Heavens for granted. To most of us, space is just a place we send satellites and shuttles, and a setting for sci-fi soap operas and shoot-em-ups.
I stood in awe a few months ago, watching a perfect lunar eclipse just after sunset, with hundreds of unaware people near me, first outside a scouting function I was attending at a local elementary school, and then in a Wal-Mart parking lot.... A few scouts came out to watch with me, but to my knowledge, no one there even knew the eclipse was happening until I mentioned it to a few people who then joined me outside. Later, at Wal-Mart, shoppers bustled through the parking lot, not noticing the magnificent light show in the sky, as I leaned against my car watching for another half hour.
Is not the Sun the Giver of Life? It shines upon us, warms us, and feeds us. It is the Light without which we would die. Humanity figured that out long ago, and deified it, calling it (or its human, often kingly "son") Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Ra, Osiris, Mithras, Deus Sol Invictus, and finally, Jesus, the Son of God. Some Hindu teachings have 12 names for the Sun, one for each month. Sun-chariots are pulled by 12 horses. Its disk shape is the All-Seeing Eye of God to Freemasons, and together with the (apparent) same-sized Moon disk, it is the Eye of Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis. The child is or becomes the parent, just as Jesus, the Son of God, is also considered God the Father.
It's not easy making this "leap of faith," that the Jesus story as we usually hear it is a myth. I'm as steeped in Christianity as any one of you reading this, perhaps moreso. Sunday School threats of eternal damnation for disbelief still rattle around in my brain, I guess.
But it's never made sense to me. Jesus, the scapegoat. God killing himself on a cross because He loves us, but damning us if we don't believe it. Paul, the former Christian-hater, writing all the rules of Christianity, right down to silly requirements about women wearing hats to church that most Christians ignore. Judas died either by hanging himself, or by falling off a cliff, depending on which book of the Bible you read. Walking on water. Raising the dead. Miracles....
These things are illogical and in most cases impossible, and if someone told you any of this happened in modern times, you'd laugh and call them a kook. Because people don't rise from the dead or fly or walk on water, except in movies and comic books. And myths.
And don't even get me started on the Old Testament Yahweh, the baby-killing, nation-smiting, jealously insecure God in a Box. That God certainly isn't "love."
I read recently there are 30,000 different sects or variations of Christianity on the planet. If any one of them is "right," the other 29,999 are wrong by definition.
But... if it's all metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic — then and only then does it resonate rationally within me.
There you go.... There's my "testimony" as it stands today. I don't expect I'll be invited to give it at the local Baptist church, but so it goes.
Have I been duped by the Devil, doomed to Hell for my non-belief in today's "standarized" version of an age-old world mythology? I don't think so. It doesn't seem that way to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay "On Self Reliance,"
On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil’s child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.None of this means I don't necessarily believe in a God, or a Great Architect of the Universe, or a Higher Power, or the survival of the soul or survival of the personality after death, nor does it deny the desirability of being moral, upright, compassionate or spiritual. It's simply my attempt to shake off the shackles of a twisted theology based in fear, foisted upon me at an early age, and to replace it with something of value that makes sense.
This, for now, is my Truth. I don't ask that it be yours.
You might enjoy the video below. You can watch it here, or on YouTube.com.
Image: Sunrise over the Atlantic, taken on the shores of Daytona Beach, Florida, July 4, 2005. Released into the public domain.
Masons | Astrotheology | Solar Worship | Freemasonry | Christianity | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com
Thank you. Finally someone who has come to the same conclusions as me!
ReplyDeleteI agree.
Thank you for the links. I intend to do a bunch of exploring...
I think you'd enjoy the Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good book and covers what you've been talking about.
Elim
I agree with this theory whole heartedly. However, it has been left out that the sun may not be...IS not just a gaint ball of gas that peoople have mistakenly worshipped AS a God. The planets are not just rock and ether. These are the only attributions we can percieve with our limited five senses, but there exist other subtle attributes, influences if you will, that these heavenly bodies exert upon humanity wchich we cannot directly perceive using sight, sound, touch, taste or smell. These forces are subtle, yet great. The most obvious example is the sun,the life-giving energy, without which we would perish. This transforms it from a distant burning ball of hot gas, to a literal God, one who gives life. It is hardly symbolic at all. All of the other planets also exert their influence on earth, in ways less obvious, (though just as legitimate) and are therefore Gods in their own right. What I'm trying to say is that the ancient ledgends of Gods might be mythical in the sense that the entities were personified as humans, but not neccesarily untrue! We have almost forgotten in this materialistic age that the "heavenly bodies" are exactly what their name suggests.
ReplyDeleteDude, you are right on with your assesement of Christianity. Too many people have been enslaved mentaly by the hogwash of fear and bondage.Hail Isis and the grand builder. I fear only ignorance! Arise humanity! Shine forth brave souls. Respectfully, Dennis.Hgthree21@msn.com
ReplyDeleteA central guiding light surrounded by twelve figures has always suggested Polaris and the divisions of the night sky into the zodiac, giving the basis for the calendar, navigation, and tracking the wandering "stars" (planets), providing the origins of geometry and physics and our ability to leave this rock and literally enter the heavens. Science is practical and prehistoric; religion is merely historic.
ReplyDeleteHere comes the son/sun vidio needs prime tim exposure! zHow nice was that! Genius! Respectfully, Dennis, from oregon.
ReplyDeleteReally, why has this case been made on vidio before. Great song and images. Respectfully, Dennis from Oregon
ReplyDeleteEh, the only God that makes sense is the God of Deism or PanDeism anyway, a God that isn't messing around with the Universe all the time (if Deism is to be believed because God made a self-regulating Universe; if PanDeism is to be believed, because God IS a self-regulating Universe)
ReplyDeleteWe are space, we are in it.
ReplyDeleteWe project what we are experiencing to all the rest of space.
You project wonder, amazement love respect because that is what you are yourself, or you project alien enemy destroyers, because that is what you see in yourself.
Here, if we are living drama, stress, soap opera, then that is what we project.
However, I would like to say that in my little corner of space, I would prefer that they spend billions of dollars playing "space cowboy" then spending billions of dollars attacking and destroying... this little corner of space.
Wow i never would of even thought of god being the sun..it makes lotz of sence though:0, i was raised to be catholic but theres much that i disagree with..im not sure what i believe in at the time but i really like ur way of thinken and will enjoy looking up more information about ur belief:)
ReplyDeleteThe origins of religion are often traced to sun worship-to say that is the only possibility leaves out the many forms of animism. Of course, to say the ancients worshiped the sun is not necessarily fair to them not here to defend themselves. To say they RECOGNIZED the sun as a symbol of God's power as Akhenaten did with the Aten might possibly be as valid. People claim religion is evil, but they must recognize somewhere in their tiny brains that religion comes from 'our' brains (as biology suggests). To say it comes from our minds does nothing to eliminate the possibility of God as a central consciousness to this particular universe.
ReplyDeleteStill, a lot of the argument for Christianity being sun-worship has very little ground, and even uses insipidly ridiculous arguments such as 'sun' and 'son' being homonyms, and thus it means that Jesus was the 'sun of god' is just an insult to everyone's intelligence. Of course, the pathetic film Zeitgeist is the latest of this kind of lame-brained thinking, not to mention the idiocy surrounding the conspiracy theories about 9-11:
http://www.debunking911.com/
This is like people not knowing when the Civil War happened in the United States.
Consider that not everyone had 12 symbols in their zodiac, as is often suggested that Jesus is surrounded by the 12 signs of the zodiac because he had 12 apostles. Seriously? Even if the 12 apostles were based on the Zodiac, how do we know who based it on the Zodiac? Perhaps Jesus did himself. Perhaps not. The 12 Apostles existed before the council of Nicea (from whence we could expect an origin for 'control in Christianity' to come).
ReplyDeleteThe words 'sun' and 'son' would not have been around in any bible before the Wycliffe Bible in the 13th century Taking it from the earlier Latin Vulgate, we see 'son' is 'filius' and 'sun' is 'sol'. It falls apart even further when we look at Hebrew or Greek and the ancient Egyptian language. These conclusions are not new, and have been written about since the 19th century. They have not gained much ground in credibility, and lost quite a bit when challenged further. It's not about what sounds good. The truth is the only important thing.
It may have begun with that heretical genius Akhenaten back in ancient aegypt. Then there were dual solar-lunar cults for ages before and afterwards.
ReplyDeleteOne could wax poetic about these awesome forces in our world, but from a practical point of view every thing on our planet is governed by solar and lunar cycles, and we being conscious beings have the literal capacity of establishing unique and aware relationshipts to the astrobiorhythms of Sun, Moon, our Earth, and the Planets, and the stars. Not so much astrological but more as a relation of position, space and the distribution of influences.
I could be wrong, as any hypothesis could be, but in my own workings it seems effacious to start from that supposition.
It is hard to believe no one has left comments in six years. Still and all I am grateful for your blog. To finally connect with someone else who shares like beliefs is a good feeling. thanks.
ReplyDelete