The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

Passing by the symbolism of fire-worship prevalent in nearly all ancient lands, and omitting to notice ancestor-worship, the worship of the sun, which embraces nearly all the forms of Nature-worship, now claims our attention. It should be kept in mind what has already been intimated, that the use of natural objects in worship is not necessarily idolatrous.

The priests of Chaldea, Babylonia, Hindostan, and Egypt disclaimed the actual worship of the material objects prominent in their rituals, and held that these visible signs were necessary for the vulgar to contemplate, while intelligent worshippers fixed their spiritual eyes upon the thing or principle signified by the sign. The Roman Catholic Church well understands this principle, and by its appeal to the ear and eye of uneducated people attracts them to its gorgeous temples and holds them in loyal subjection to the priests. Take the following as an illustration of the ancient customs referred to:

“Mr. F. Buckland tells us, in Land and Water, that on the first of May all the choristers of Magdalen College, Oxford, still meet on the summit of their tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, and sing a Latin hymn as the sun rises, whilst the final peal of ten bells simultaneously welcomes the gracious Apollo. In former days high mass was held here, and the rector of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, it appears, still has to pay ten pounds yearly for the one performance of sundry pieces of choir-music at 5 A. M. on the top of this tower. This May music, Christian priests explain, is for the repose of the souls of kings and others, which, of course, is quite an after-thought. Early mass for Sol used also to be held in the college chapel, but it is now explained that, owing to this having been forbidden at the Reformation, it has since been performed at the top of the tower. After the present hymn is sung by the choristers—boys dressed in womanly raiment—the lads throw down eggs upon the crowd beneath, and blow long loud blasts to Sol through bright new tin horns—showing us that the Bacchic and Jewish trumpet fêtes are not yet forgotten by Christians. Long before daybreak the youths of both sexes used to rise and go to a great distance to gather boughs and flowers, and reach home at sunrise to deck all doors, windows, and loved spots.... Long before man was able to appreciate ploughing and harvesting, he keenly felt the force of the winter and of the vernal equinox, and was ready to appreciate the joyous warmth of the sun and its energizing power on himself, as well as on fruits and flowers.”

While the Jewish and Christian Bibles contain traces of all forms of the ancient Nature-worship, there is one form that is specially conspicuous from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelation—to wit, the worship of the sun.

This form of worship was more general among pagan nations than any other. It was natural for those primitive people, leading pastoral lives in the open air, to fix their attention upon the sun and to notice his relations to other celestial orbs. It was natural for the contemplative and devout to come to regard the sun as the best emblem of the creating, animating, fecundating spirit of the universe, while the ignorant multitude may never have looked beyond the material object. Those who have read the history of the sun-worshippers of Mexico and Peru, detailed in the great works of Prescott, must have been impressed by the fact that these nations enjoyed a higher prosperity and a purer public morality when they were worshippers of the sun than they have ever enjoyed since under the Roman Catholic religion called Christian.

To fully understand how the astronomical element came to be extensively incorporated into the Jewish and Christian religions, it is absolutely necessary to familiarize ourselves with that ancient pictorial device known as the solar zodiac.

Zodiac-1

Zodiac-2

This is nothing more than an imaginary belt covering that region of the starry heavens within the bounds of which the apparent motions of the sun, moon, and many other large planets are observed. It is divided into twelve equal parts of thirty degrees each, called “signs,” known as “constellations” and designated as follows:

Aries, the Ram or Lamb; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-carrier; Pisces, the Fishes.

These constellations are filled up with imaginary forms of men, women, animals, monsters, and many fantastic figures, each including a group of stars. In the ancient astronomy these groups numbered thirty-six, to which many modern additions have been made. Through these constellations passes a wavy line called the Ecliptic, apparently marking the path of the sun, but really indicating the path of our own earth around the sun. The sun seems to move thirty degrees a month, and at the end of the year appears at the point from which he started. We thus have a natural belt or way about sixteen degrees wide extending around the entire heavens, one half the year north, and the other half south, of the equator. But the sun does not cross the equator at the same point each year, so that in crossing he is not always in the same sign. The sun seems to recede, and as the apparent recession of the sun is caused by the real movement of the earth, the phenomenal result is the precession of the equinoxes; and as the equinoctial point recedes in a fixed ratio, this point will go back through the whole circle of the constellations in about twenty-five thousand years, requiring about twenty-one hundred and sixty years to pass through each sign. According to the ancient astrology, the sun assumed at different times the character of the particular sign through which it passed, and as such was symbolically worshipped. Four thousand years ago the sign Taurus gave rise to the worship of the Bull (the Egyptian Apis); and when the sun passed into the sign of Aries the Lamb, this emblem dominated the worship of Persians and other sun-worshippers, and so became the paschal or passover lamb of the ancient Hebrews.

You will now begin to see what this zodiacal device has to do with our interpretations of the Bible. The Jewish Scriptures also contain it, and, as will soon be made to appear, it is impossible to make sense of large portions of the Bible without it.

Many superficial persons imagine this peculiar mapping of the celestial heavens to be a modern fancy, because it is found in modern almanacs and in the maps and charts of modern school-books; but the fact is that it is so old and so universal that it is impossible to ascertain with historical accuracy when and where and how it did originate. There are two ancient zodiacs—one at Esne on the Nile, and one in India—besides two more modern ones at Denderah in Egypt. Sir William Drummond, who wrote in 1811, estimated the age of the one at Esne at about 6500 years; Dupuis made it 1000 years older; while other calculations date the Indian zodiac back 22,875 years, and the Egyptian one 30,100 years. These calculations are based upon the assumption that the signs were in a certain position at certain known times, so that the computation is one of simple mathematical astronomy. The credibility of these calculations is strengthened by the following fact: Upon the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, now in the British Museum, is found a zodiac with the precise indication of the position of the constellations in the year 1722 B. c. Our own Professor Mitchell calculated the exact position of the celestial bodies belonging to our solar system at the time indicated, and found that on October 7, 1722 B. c., the planets had actually occupied the position in the heavens marked upon the mummy coffin!

But further proofs are superfluous, as the zodiacal designs must be much older than the Bible or they could not have been so frequently used in it.

The Chaldean drama called the book of Job is supposed by some persons to be very ancient, and its author showed his familiarity with the zodiacal constellations when he so sublimely challenged his opponent: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth?” etc. etc. But can there be any doubt as to the antiquity of the zodiac when there is an honored Protestant doctor of divinity, now living, who holds to the opinion that Enoch, or even Adam himself, invented the zodiac to foreshadow the redemption of fallen man through the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of a veritable God? Martin Luther is said to have thrown his inkstand at the head of the devil. If the lusty old Reformer could now visit this world, he would denounce in unmeasured terms of righteous wrath a man who under the garb of a Lutheran minister could utter such consummate nonsense. And yet we must not forget that Dr. Martin Luther himself denounced Copernicus as an atheist and a fool.

It is the misfortune of the prevalent dogmatic theology that it was formed by people who held the geocentric theory—that is, that this little globe is the centre of the universe. Even now our professional priests seldom extend their thoughts beyond the narrow limits of the planet upon which we dwell. They do not realize that, while the earth travels at the rate of 68,000 miles an hour, Mercury makes 110,000 miles an hour, and that the sun has 1,380,000 times our earth’s bulk, and has a diameter of 822,000 miles to our earth’s 8000; and that astronomers have some knowledge of a fixed star in the constellation of the Swan which is 62,481,500,000,000 (62 trillions 481 billions 500 millions) of miles from this planet, and that light, which travels from the sun to the earth in eight minutes, would require ten years to reach us from that star. Yet the author of the Gospel in the Stars thinks the whole celestial universe was so constructed as to shadow forth the dogmas of petty preachers of modern times! One can only laugh at such fanciful follies.

CHAPTER VI. ASTRAL KEYS TO BIBLE STORIES

“Therefore they took a key and opened them.”—Judg. 3: 25.

IT is the carefully-formed conclusion of many independent thinkers that there is very little real history or biography in the Old-Testament Scriptures. It is a monstrous mistake in modern ministers to take as literal what is, in fact, strictly allegorical. The figurative character of most of the Bible narratives was well known and freely admitted by many ancient writers, Jewish and Christian, as will be shown hereafter.

It would be natural to commence our studies of Hebrew symbolism with the account of the creation and alleged fall of man; but as this dogma is so directly connected with the dogmas of modern sacerdotalism, we reserve the examination of the so-called Mosaic account of Eden and the fall until we are ready to enter upon what is called, in theological parlance, “the redemptive scheme” of Christianity. We say so-called Mosaic account, for there are many reasons for doubting, as I have shown, that he wrote the Pentateuch, should his existence be admitted for the sake of argument. Archbishop Burnet, in speaking of the story of creation, says: “We receive this history without examination, because it was written by Moses; but if we had found it in the work of a Greek philosopher, a rabbi, or Mohammedan, our minds would be arrested at every step by doubts and objections. This difference in our judgment does not come from the nature of the facts; it comes from the opinion we have of Moses, whom we believe to be inspired.” Here are three assumptions not supported by a particle of evidence, to wit: that such a man as Moses existed, that he was supernaturally inspired, and that he wrote Genesis and other books of the Pentateuch under divine inspiration. Now, we have no account of the real existence of Moses, and no account of what he did and said except from writings accredited to him and the incidental mention of him in the New Testament. His alleged wonderful exploits in Egypt are not mentioned in Egyptian annals nor in any other contemporaneous writings, while many things-said of him in the Old Testament are substantially recorded of many other persons, as already shown.

There are many reasons for believing that Moses was a personification of the sun and his whole history a myth. Observing persons cannot fail to notice that all ancient paintings and statues of Moses represent him with horns, probably originally denoting the rays of the sun when in the constellation Taurus the Bull. The fact is well known that what is called the history of the Jews is mainly fiction, and that, too, borrowed from other peoples and modified to suit circumstances; and very bungling work have they made of it. The sacerdotalists of the world may be safely challenged to produce anything strictly original from the Old Testament, especially relating to morals. The historian Josephus admits that the Jews “never invented anything useful.” Even the writings of Josephus should be received with many grains of allowance. He was himself superstitious and credulous, as shown in his story of a heifer giving birth to a lamb when being led from the temple stable to the altar. Moreover, we have no ancient certified copies of what he did actually write, and there is abundant evidence of alterations and interpolations in his alleged writings by sacerdotalists in modern times. There is no greater imposition palmed off upon the ignorant than the commonly-believed falsehoods that the Jews were a very ancient people and that their Scriptures are the oldest book extant.

We now take up a few Bible stories, and give to them a symbolic instead of an historic interpretation; and for obvious reasons we begin with the alleged progenitor of the Jewish nation, Abraham.

It may or may not be a mere coincidence that by transposing the letters of the name Abraham we have the name Brahma—just as in the old legend of the sacrifice of the daughter of Agamemnon, Iphthi-genia, if we divide the syllables into words, Iphthi-geni, we have literally Jephthah’s daughter; so, after all, it may be greatly to the credit of Jephthah that the story is fabulous. These curious coincidences are not here offered as evidence. It is acknowledged, at least by implication, in the Bible itself that the story of Abraham is of Chaldean origin, as his father Terah was a native of Ur of the Chaldees and the alleged patriarch was a Chaldean. Now, these people were great astronomers in very ancient times, and were accustomed to veil their occult science under just such allegorical personifications and fabulous tales as this of Abraham. Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle credited to him, lets out the whole secret (Gal. 4: 22-26): “For it is written Abraham had two sons, one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise; which things are an allegory,” etc. Now, if you carefully read the apostolic explanation in these verses, you will notice that the two sons of Abraham are two covenants, and the bondmaid Hagar represents an Arabian mountain, which by a magical change becomes the same as the city of Jerusalem. The name Abram signifies the “Father of Elevation,” which is the astronomical distinction of the planet Saturn, the exaltation of which, with its devious ways, well represents the alleged history of its prototype. The word Chasdim, translated Chaldees, literally means light, and is a professional not a geographical name, and probably refers to the art of magic and the work of astrologers; so that it is more than probable that Abram was not a person, any more than Chasdim was a place. There are many references in the Scriptures which favor this interpretation, but which cannot here be mentioned. Even in the Lord’s Prayer, found in Jewish rituals long before the Christian era, there are evidences that it was first addressed to Saturn. There never was any form of religious worship which did not contain an expression equivalent to Our Father who art in heaven. Even Jupiter means Our Father in the sky.

The name of Abram has many variations, and there is an important sense in which he may be called “the father of many nations.” He was the Esrael of the Chaldeans, the Israel of the Phœnicians, as the historian Sanchoniathon distinctly alleges that their name for Saturn was Israel: the names Abraham and Israel are used interchangeably in both the Old and New Testaments, and among the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Persians, and other nations he was the god Saturnus of the whole pagan world. Even upon the dials of our “grandfathers’ clocks,” cherished in many families as heirlooms in our day, his memory is kept green by the figure of the god of Time. Scores of other similitudes between Saturn and Abraham could here be introduced did space permit. Suffice it to say, Saturn in fable married his own sister, who was a star; and so did Abraham, and the name of his wife signifies a star. Both had many sons, but each had a favorite son, and Saturn called his Jeoud, which implies an only son, as Abraham so regarded Isaac. A learned English scholar has suggested that the name “Jeoud” is the real origin of the name “Jew,” and he assigns several philological and historical reasons for his theory. It is certain in the minds of many profound and independent investigators that the Jewish tribes originated in Arabia, and were originally a mere religious order, and that their so-called history is largely fabulous, and that their exodus is a comparatively modern novel with an ancient date, as has been shown.

Let us now take the best-remembered incident in the life of Abraham, the attempted murder and the rescue of his son Isaac, and see what will come of applying the symbolic instead of the literal interpretation to it.

Let it be noted that this is not an original story. The ancient Hindoos have one like it. King Haris-candra had no son. He prayed for one, and promised that if one should be born to him he would sacrifice him to the gods. One was born, and he named him Rohita. One day his father told him of his promise to Varuna to offer him in sacrifice. The son bought a substitute, and when he was about to be immolated he was marvellously rescued. Then there is the well-known similar story written by the Phœnician Sanchoniathon

thirteen hundred years before our era. Then there is the Grecian story of Agamemnon, to whom, when about to sacrifice his daughter, a stag was furnished by a goddess as a substitute. There is another Grecian fable in which a maiden was about to be sacrificed, and as the priest uplifted his knife to shed her blood the victim suddenly disappeared, and a goat of uncommon beauty stood in her place as a substitute. Another story runs thus: In Sparta the maiden Helena was about to be immolated on the altar of the gods, when an eagle carried off the knife of the priest and laid it upon the neck of a heifer, which was sacrificed in her stead. Similar stories might be produced from among many nations in the most ancient times, long before the Jews picked this up in Babylon and rewrote it, with modifications, so as to apply it to their mythical progenitor; for this fable of Abraham's offering was not written until after their return from their Babylonish captivity—much nearer our own time than is generally suspected.

Regarded as an historic account of a real transaction, this story of the attempted sacrifice of a beloved son by a venerable father is shocking in the extreme, dishonoring alike to God and to Abraham. A good God could not have done such an unnatural and cruel thing. He had no occasion to try Abraham to find out how much faith he had. He knew that already. Regarded as an astrological allegory, it is ingenious and contains a moral lesson, to wit: obedience to the voice of God and the hope of deliverance in the hour of extreme emergency. The defect in the story is, that God could trifle with a loving child, and pretend to require him to break one of his own commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” and subject him to its own penalty, “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” It would not have availed Abraham to plead that God told him to murder his son, any more than it availed the Pocasset crank when he pleaded that God had directed him to murder his little daughter. The State of Massachusetts sent the semi-lunatic to a safe place of confinement. This story of Abraham and Isaac has led to scores and scores of murders of children by their fathers, just as the passage in the Old Testament, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” has been pleaded in justification of the cool, deliberate murder of multitudes of men, women, and children on the charge of witchcraft.

The literal interpretation of what is called infallible Scripture has been the most bitter curse to deluded, priest-ridden humanity. It is the “stock in trade” of ignorant and selfish ecclesiastics to-day.

Let us look a little more closely at this Abraham-and-Isaac myth. Abraham was the personification of Saturn, the god of Time, while Isaac was the personification of the Sun. Abraham took Isaac up to Hebron—which means union or alliance, and clearly indicates a union of the ecliptic and equinoctial line—the very point at which the Ram of the vernal equinox passed by, or, as might be poetically said, was caught in a cloud or bush; so that the whole story was written long ages before in the celestial heavens, and emblazoned in the skies at the return of each vernal equinox. Writers on astro-theology point out details at great length to support the symbolic interpretation, but it is enough for pur purpose to merely give the keynote. Let the fact be specially noted that the names of the patriarchs have an astrological meaning,

and that the twelve sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, have distinctly astrological characters, fully indicated in Jacob’s dying blessing on his sons (Gen. 49) and in the corresponding “Song of Moses” (Deut. 33), on the banner carried by the different tribes in their mythical march from Egypt to Canaan; and that on the breastplate of the officiating high priest the jewels correspond to the celestial signs of the solar zodiac; and although Jacob had children by several different women and was a first-class Mormon, his twelve sons are made to correspond with the twelve months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. This fact is admitted by the orthodox author of The Gospel in the Stars. His daughters are not considered worthy of notice, as that would have spoiled the riddle. The philology and etymology of the name Jacob has suggestions of the serpent; and from his history he must have been a snaky fellow from the first to the last. He was born with his hand upon his brother’s “heel,” and he managed to cheat him out of his share of his mother’s affections, and lied to his father, and conspired with his mother to rob Esau, his brother, of his “blessing.” The stories of Laban and Leah and Rachel all conform to the symbolic rather than the literal hypothesis, as well as Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and his wrestling-match with the angel, when he openly obtained the astrological name of the children of Saturn—Israel. It must be admitted that the allegorical hypothesis relieves the patriarchs of the charge of many mean things, such as the heartless manner in which Abram treated Hagar when Sarah got jealous, and the manner in which he treated Sarah herself when he lied to the king through a selfish cowardice and gave his wife over to the lusts of the monarch Abimelech, who was (or one bearing his name) deceived by Isaac in regard to Rebekah by a similar trick (Gen. 26:1). Lot, the nephew of Abraham, was guilty of a meaner and more unmanly act when he himself proposed to give over his two virgin daughters to the worse than beastly lusts of a howling mob, to protect two angels who were guests at his tent (Gen. 19:1-11).

But theologians will never willingly admit that the Abraham of Genesis was a myth. They well know the logical conclusion. They would have to give up the “Abrahamic covenant,” which is the basis of sacerdotalism. When Professor Driver, of the orthodox University of Oxford, recently admitted only by implication that Abraham may have had no real personal existence, and claimed that such hypothesis would not be injurious to religion, his article was rejected and suppressed by the editor of an orthodox paper in Philadelphia as dangerous. But to assume that all the principal actors of Genesis and some other books were impersonations, not persons, would not destroy the good things they are alleged to have said and done. It is no more necessary to insist upon the real personality of Abraham than to insist upon the literal existence of Faithful and Great-Heart and other impersonations in Pilgrim’s Progress. Nobody insists that the characters in the parables accredited to Jesus must be taken in a literal sense. And yet it may be admitted that the fictions of Scripture may have been suggested by some persons and facts, just as in modern novels there generally is some person who stands for the original of the story. This is eminently so in the novels of Dickens and D’Israeli. Nevertheless, it is difficult to doubt that the principal characters of the Old Testament are mythical, pure and simple, as we find the originals in the older scriptures of different nations, confessedly founded upon the solar and other forms of Nature-worship. The feet is, that the only rational way to explain the marvellous stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is by the well-known methods of ancient symbolism.