Indo-European Mythology and Religion
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exodus from Egypt. For it was the blood of the sacrificed
lamb sprinkled on the door-posts of the Israelites in Egypt
that allowed the Lord to pass over these houses while
conducting His massacre of the first-born of the Egyptians.
However, the substitution of Christ for the sacrificial
lamb constitutes a revolution against the Jewish religion
since, by proclaiming Christ as the Messiah who gave his
life for the world, it makes the Christians the redeemed
Jews while the Jahvist Jews continue unredeemed in their
constant expectation of a saviour. This is one reason why
the Christian liturgy often uses passages from the Hebrew
Bible—such as the Sanctus borrowed from Isaiah 6:3—
without sensing any contradiction.
The mass was undoubtedly the principal sacrament among
the early Christians. The resurrection of Christ celebrated
in the Mass is indeed a revival of the heavenly nature of
the first Adam (Purusha) whose “fal ”, as we have seen,
was occasioned by his intimacy with Earth. Thus, in the
first Epistle to the Corinthians 15:21-22 we read: “For since
by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.” The epistle goes on to explain the cosmic
drama at greater length but simplifying the original Adam
into an “earthly” entity on account of his association with
Earth:
417 The term 'mass' is derived from the conclusion of the Latin liturgy which states “Ite, missa est” (go, this is the dismissal).
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44 ... There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual
body.
45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made
a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit.
46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but
that which is natural; and afterward that which is
spiritual.
47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second
man is the Lord from heaven.
...
49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we
shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
The earliest Christian rite that is attested is that of the St.
James Liturgy,418 which was used original y in Jerusalem,
perhaps in the Greek language, and then transferred to the
patriarchate of Antioch when it was translated into Syriac.
An important section of this rite is that where the priest,
making the sign of the cross on the gifts, says:
Holy art Thou, King of eternity, and Lord and giver of
all holiness; holy also Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom Thou hast made all things; holy
also Thy Holy Spirit, which searches all things, even
Thy deep things, O God: holy art Thou, almighty, all-
powerful, good, dread, merciful, most compassionate
to Thy creatures; who didst make man from earth
418 James is said to have been a “brother” of Christ, though it is not clear if this is a familial or fraternal appel ation.
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after Thine own image and likeness;419 who didst give
him the joy of paradise.
This is a reference to the creation of Adam/the Purusha,
who is also, as we have seen, formed of a union of
heavenly substance with material substance of “earth”.
The “fal ” of Adam is a reference to the castration of the
Purusha effected by Chronos on account of his aversion
to his father's lascivious union with Earth. The priest then
continues:
and when he transgressed Thy commandment, and
fell away, didst not disregard nor desert him, O Good
One, but didst chasten him as a merciful father, call
him by the law, instruct him by the prophets; and
afterwards didst send forth Thine only-begotten Son
Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ [Tiphereth], into the
world, that He by His coming might renew and restore
Thy image;
This is a description of the production of the supreme Light
of Consciousness that is Brahman, who is identifiable with
the Cosmic Christ and the Kabbalistic Tiphereth.
We know from our reconstructed scheme of the Indo-
European cosmogony that Brahman is indeed felled by
the continuing stormy aspect of Chronos in the manifest
cosmos called Zeus/Ganesha. The result of this assault
is the descent of the Heavenly Light to the underworld,
which is described thus in the Christian rite:
Who, having descended from heaven, and become
[Osiris] flesh of the Holy Spirit [Yesod] and Virgin
Godmother Mary [Malkuth],
419 My italics.
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This earthly incarnation of Christ actual y corresponds
to the beginning of the ordeal of Osiris/Dionysus in the
underworld that we have already observed in the pagan
myths:
and having sojourned among men, fulfilled the
dispensation for the salvation of our race; and being
about to endure His voluntary and life-giving death
by the cross, He the sinless for us the sinners, in the
night in which He was betrayed, nay, rather delivered
Himself up for the life and salvation of the world.
The ordeal represented in the Christian rite as an earthly
historical one meant to improve humanity is, in fact, an
ordeal that the heavenly light undergoes in order to purify
itself of its material dross and emerge in the atmospheric
space between the Earth and Heaven of our own universe
as the sun. However, the reference to the “power of the
precious and life-giving cross” in this liturgy420 brings to
mind the import of the cross as an Indo-European phallic
symbol. In Germanic mythology the tree also serves as the
locus of the great self-sacrifice of the god Odin/Wotan/
Wata to himself, which is a repetition, as it were, of the
original killing of Ymir, the First Man/Purusha:421
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself.422
It is as a result of this sacrifice—akin to the ordeals of
Osiris, Marduk, Tammuz, and Christ—that Odin achieves
knowledge of the magical runes.
420 “Exalt the horn of Christians by the power of the precious and life-giving Cross”.
421 See, for instance, 'Vafþrúðnismál ' in the Poetic Edda.
422 ‘Havamal’, 138.
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An even more precise understanding of the crucifixion
and the of the significance of the cross itself emerges in
one of the early Syriac hymns, the Haw Nurone hymn,423
which demonstrates the significance of the Christian
sacrifice in considerable detail. The Haw Nurone hymn
first declares that the Christian altar
is fashioned like the chariot of the cherubim. And is
surrounded by multitudes of the heavenly hosts. On
this altar is laid the Body of God’s Son and Adam’s
clad in silk, stands the (priest), and distributes alms
among the needy. If envy existed among the angels the
cherubim would envy human beings.
The Christian altar, therefore, has the same significance as
the altar constructed by the brāhmans in the Agnicayana
ritual which seeks to restore the mutilated Purusha.
The reference to the shape of the altar as resembling
“the chariot of the cherubim” should be glossed by the
instructions given to Solomon by his father David in 1
Chron. 28:18:
And, for the altar of incense, refined gold by weight;
and gold for the pattern of the chariot of the cherubims
that spread out their wings, and covered the ark of the
covenant of the Lord.
The Ark of the Covenant itself is the one that preserves
the stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments
(Exod.25:10ff). However, in the Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox Churches,424 Mary is referred to as
423 See the translation of this hymn at http://newandoldmonks.
blogspot.ca/2009/09/syriac-hymn-nurone.html
424 See, for instance, the 16th century Litany of Loreto, where Mary is addressed as the “Ark of the Covenant”.
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the “Ark” in that she bore Christ, just as the original
Jewish ark bore the Mosaic Law. So the reference in the
Christian hymn to the “chariots of the cherubim” and the
Ark here suggests that the Christian sacrifice, unlike the
Jewish ones, is aimed at producing not the Law of the Old
Testament but the Christian solar god who is also the god
of Love, since his original form as the Cosmic Christ is the
same as that of the Indo-European Brahman/Helios, who
is regularly identified with Eros.425
More interestingly, the hymn now directly refers to the
cross as the “Tree”, which is of course the “tree” or “axis” of
the universe that is now being formed from the restored
phal us of the Purusha/Adam so that the sun which it
bears within it may emerge at the top:
Where Zion set up the Cross to crucify the Son, there
grew up the Tree which gave birth to the Lamb.
The final value of the manifestation of Christ therefore—
after his original appearance as the cosmic Light
(Tiphereth/Brahman), and then as a suffering victim in
the underworld (represented by the early Christians as
the passion of the “human” Christ among the Hebrews
and Romans)—is as the “resurrected” sun of our universe.
The reference to the “Lamb” in this passage is to the Old
Testament sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, which
is considered by the Christians as a prototype of the
sacrifice of the Christ:
Where the nails were firmly driven in the Son’s
hands, there Isaac's hands were bound for an offering.
Welcome priest who carries his Lord’s Mysteries, and
with thy right hand, life is given to mankind.
425 See A. Jacob, Brahman, pp.7,34.
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The solar nature of the resurrected Lamb of Christianity
may itself be observed in the frequent Christian use of the
term “sun of righteousness”426 for Christ.427
The climactic point of the Christian sacrifice is the
magical transformation of the bread and wine of the
Holy Communion into the body and blood of Christ.
Already in the second century A.D. St. Irenaeus of Lyons
made it clear that “the bread which is produced from the
earth is no longer common bread once it has received the
invocation of God; it is then the Eucharist consisting of
two realities, earthly and heavenly.”428 This is due to the
inspiration of the Word of God, “When the … cup and the
man-made bread receive the Word of God, they become
the Eucharist of the blood and body of Christ”.429 The
vivifying principle of the Word of God is the Holy Spirit,
as Clement of Alexandria (ca.150-215) declared: “To drink
of the blood of Jesus is to partake in the Lord's immortality
for the Spirit is the vital principle of the World, as blood is
of flesh”.430
This participation in the Christian mass endows an
individual with eternal life, as St. Irenaeus continues
to explain: “So also our bodies, when they receive the
Eucharist, are no longer corruptible but have the hope of
the resurrection to eternity”.431 This is, of course, an exegesis of the Gospels, for, as Jesus declares in John 6:54, “Whoso
426 This term is taken from the last OT book of Malachi 4:2: “the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings”.
427 See for instance the blessing, “Christ the Sun of Righteousness shine upon you, scatter the darkness from before your path” used in certain Anglican Prayer Books.
428 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘Against Heresies’, 4.17.5-4.18.6, quoted in Mike Aquilina, The Mass of the early Christians (2007), p.98.
429 'Against Heresies', 5.2.2, in Aquilina, op.cit. , p.98.
430 Clement of Alexandria, ‘The Teacher’, 2.2, quoted in Aquilina, op.cit., p.135.
431 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘Against Heresies’, 4.17.5-4.18.6.
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eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life;
and I will raise him up at the last day”. Jesus particularly
contrasts the nourishment he offers with the manna that
the Hebrews were said to have received from their God
while they travelled in the desert (Exod 16): “This is that
bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers
did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread
shall live forever”. This gift of immortality is stressed by
the early Christian father St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107
A.D.) who stated that the sacrament is “the medicine of
immortality and the antidote to prevent us from dying”.432
Indeed, the mass is meant to even physical y transform
the individual who participates in it. As the fourth
century bishop St. Cyril of Jerusalem declared in his
Mystagogical Lectures, after receiving the wine during the Communion, the participant should: “while the moisture
is still upon [his] lips, touch it with [his] hands and bless
[his] eyes and forehead and the other organs of sense.”433
And he further exhorts his reader: “And make your face
shine so that, having it unveiled with a pure conscience,
you may, like a mirror, reflect the glory of the Lord and
proceed from glory to glory, in Jesus our Lord.”434 This
il umination may have something to do with the common
Levantine practice of ritual purification with water and
the contemporary Christian use of “holy water” to bless
supplicants, but it also resembles practices in Tantric
Hinduism (derived from Yogic and Vedic rituals) where
the adept, after elaborate yogic purification of his bodily
elements, undertakes a divinisation of his body through
432 St. Ignatius of Antioch, ‘Ephesians’ 20, in Aquilina, op.cit. , p.72.
433 St. Cyril of J
erusalem, Mystagogical Lectures, 5, quoted in Aquilina, op.cit., p.202.
434 Ibid., 4, quoted in Aquilina, op.cit., p.195. Cf. also Rom 12:1:
“Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” 209
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the utterance of magical mantras at the same time as he
touches various parts of his body.435
We see from this comparison of the religious rituals
of the Āryans and the early Christians that, in spite of the
apparent geographical and cultural differences between
the religions of the eastern Indo-Āryans and the middle-
eastern Christians, both of them are indeed informed
by the same cosmological myth of the “fal ” of the Ideal
Man, his descent into the underworld (earth) and his
“resurrection” into the heavens as the sun. The primacy
of the mass as a Christian sacrament corresponds to that
of the various solar sacrificial rituals of the brāhmanical
religion. On the other hand, despite ancient coincidences
with Jewish Kabbalistic lore, the dimly developed
cosmological aspect of the sacred symbolism of the
Kabbala and the relative insignificance of Kabbala itself
in relation to Jahvist Judaism reveal the incompatibility
of Christianity with any form of Judaism, which is rather
considered by the former as a perverse rejection of the
fulfilment of the Scriptures. Indeed, while Judaism and,
to a certain extent, Islam may be considered Abrahamic
religions “in Reinkultur”. Christianity has more complex
origins than facile references to “Judeo-Christianity”
might suggest. And it is clear also that it was not just the
spread of Christianity among the Greeks of southern
Europe or the Germanic tribes of the Holy Roman Empire
that endowed it with certain “pagan” characteristics but,
rather, Christianity as a “mystery” religion possessed
from its very inception an unmistakably Indo-European
cosmological character.
435 Cf. A. Jacob, Brahman, p.226.
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VI. Dionysus and Muruga
Notes on the Dionysiac religion
While most people recognise Zeus and
Dionysus as two of the most important deities
of the ancient Greek pantheon, few are aware
that the cult of Dionysus is closely related to that of
Skanda/Muruga, the son of the preeminent Indian deity,
Shiva. It would, therefore, be instructive to investigate the