More and more, I realise that Christianity is based on an erroneous family tree, as it were. Christ is not the inheritor of a Hebrew king's mantle or history but is rather a divine Sacrifice in the grand tradition of Attis, Adonis and Osiris.
The entire concept of 'the martyr's crown' so dear to early Christians can be comprehended fully only in the context of the rites of Attis, a very popular mystery religion at the time of his birth and life. Human sacrifice was common in all mystery religions of that era, although the priests and devout worshippers of Attis tended to sacrifice their 'manhood' rather than terminating their lives completely. Nonetheless, the entire concept of being pinned to an evergreen was at the very heart of the myth of Attis and his rebirth in a cave on an annual basis was celebrated in the Holy City as well as other cities closer to his own birthplace.
Mithras is another god who probably should be associated with the same family tree as Christ. He wore a 'Phrygian cap and was born from a rock, much like Attis. Dionysius is another very popular god whose rites and history were closer to that of Christ than any Hebrew tradition.
The Palm Sunday procession is characteristic of ancient Egyptian rituals associated with Osiris and Set. The god rode a donkey and palms were strewn at his feet.
It is the ritual of martyrdom, however, that made me realise how much Christianity is at heart a very ancient mystery religion, artificially attached to the Hebrew literature known as the 'Old Testament', much of which was borrowed or stolen from earlier Canaanite traditions. One can separate the actual myths in the Bible from the books that consist primarily of 'Hebrew history' and it is the myths that were taken from more ancient sources.
Even as a child, I felt that the tome christened as 'The Bible' was a hopeless patchwork quilt of confusion both in literary and spiritual terms. The 'Old Testament' does contain great myths and great poetry but it contains a vast amount of material that is not even remotely spiritual or interesting to any one but those who embrace the Hebrew tradition. Fundamentalism and literalism with respect to the book is an extraordinary exercise in illogic. I apologise to those who firmly believe every word that has been included in 'The Bible' to be 'The Word of God' as I have no desire to offend, but quite frankly, I cannot comprehend how a God who is recognised to be 'infinite' could be associated with much of the material incorporated in the Bible. Repeated tales of genocide and land theft pepper the books of the Old Testament, while the opinions of St. Paul set down in the New Testament are steeped in misogyny.
Many who reached the same conclusions as I did repudiate Christianity completely but to me, that is rather like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The poetry of the Psalms and the proverbs of King Solomon are worth keeping. Many of the myths enshrined in the Old Testament are corrupted forms of more ancient tales and once stripped down to the original form are part of an eternal timeless cycle of myth. Any student of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade can attest to this.
The basic life of Christ must be disassociated from the petty rules and regulations of St. Paul and the attempts of his Jewish disciples to graft Hebrew traditions and predictions onto his history. He was a Nazarene, dedicated from childhood to a mystery religion much like Samson, 'son of the Sun'. (Delilah, the Philistine woman probably was a priestess and not the harlot depicted by the Hebrews and Samson a voluntary Sacrificial Victim rather than a man who had 'lost' his power through the treachery of a 'foreign' woman.) The years Christ spent in Egypt are further evidence of his association with traditions far more ancient than those of the Hebrews who invaded Canaan as nomads and imperfectly adopted the tales of Ba'al and Mot and the rites of their Eternal Sacrifice.
In the early centuries of Christianity, Christ in fact often was depicted as a beardless Greek god, especially in Byzantium which was closer geographically to the original source of his religion than Rome.
Furthermore, the inclusion of the Holy Virgin in the worship of Christ is far more in keeping with ancient mystery religions than the concept of 'Jehovah' as a vengeful, bitter and twisted old man with a long beard who perceives women as rebellious appendages to the male, taken from the rib of the 'first man' Adam and hell-bent from that point onward.
The Virgin and the Sacred Prostitute often were one and the same in ancient mystery religions and it is through the inability to reconcile the two in the culture of the Hebrews that diverted the course of Christianity from the original source from which it sprang. Whether as the Great Goddess Cybele or the Goddess Isis, the Mother of God is Nature Herself, the true Rock upon which the Church was founded.
