APPENDIX ONE
Question: Which of these two sermons is true?
(1) Christian preacher to a congregation of Americans in A.D. 2000:
Christianity is absolutely unique. Christianity is the only true religion. Christianity's message first was preached by Jesus of Nazareth. All other so-called religions, past and present, were/are mere cults of Satan. Only through Jesus Christ will anyone ever know the Father. Believe in Christ and obey me, your preacher, and you will avoid the perpetual tortures of Hell.
(2) Christian preacher to a congregation of Hellenized Jews and Gentiles in A.D. 199:
Christianity asks you to modify and to perfect your pre-Christian spiritual and religious beliefs rather than to abandon them. God has changed His heavenly signs, so we must modify our religious practices to accord with those changes. As Moses had seen but as his people had failed to see, the Hand of God (precession of the equinoxes) had caused the archaic Jewish New Year (predating Rosh Hashanah) to occur when the Lamb of God (Aries) arose with the Sun at the Vernal (Spring) Equinox instead of, as previously, at the rising of the Bull of Heaven (Taurus). Moses broke the first tablets of the law in wrath when he found his people still worshiping the golden calf (Bull of Heaven) instead of wearing the horns of light of the Lamb of God, as was Moses when he came down from the Mountain of God. We agree with Moses and with you that events on Earth must correspond with the current Signs of Heaven, and that persons only may enter Heaven through the heavenly gate. While the Lamb of God, rather than the Bull of Heaven, was the Sign of Heaven which guarded that gate, only through Him could Heaven be entered. We have restated the ancient formula of "as above, so below" in the new words, "On Earth, as it is in Heaven." Christianity thus is a new way of restating your ancient beliefs as modified by the Signs of Heaven.
At your archaic New Year, corresponding to our Easter, some of you (the Jews) symbolically tied the sins of the community to an earthly correspondent of the Goat of Heaven (Capricorn) and drove that correspondent into the wasteland, symbolically to carry away your sins. Also at your archaic New Year, during your (the Jews') Pascal ceremonies which correspond with our Easter, some of you (the Jews) also slaughtered an earthly correspondent of the heavenly Lamb of God, and hung Him on a cross-spit before your campfires to correspond with the heavenly Lamb of God's being hung before the Vernal Sun to give the Sun strength to prevail over the equal nights at your New Year, our Easter. In proof of what I have said, I should mention that we Christians named our Easter after Eastre, the goddess of spring of the gentile members of this congregation. Christianity is a restatement of, rather than an abrupt change in, your ancient beliefs.
As you know, before animal sacrifices replaced human sacrifices, as typified by the Story of Abraham and Isaac, the ancestors of both the Jewish and Gentile members of this congregation raised a common criminal to the status of king, cursed Him and physically abused Him, then put Him to death on a stauros, the earthly correspondent of the axis mundi, that is, the theoretical, rotational pole of the Heavens, which earthly sacrifice corresponded with the heavenly sacrifice they perceived on the Veil of Heaven (Katapetasma). This sacrifice is necessary to give the Sun the strength to pass from His birth at the Winter Solstice, our Christmas, through the perils of the New Year, our Easter, when darkness is equal to light, so that all of God's creation can be redeemed from perpetual death in the underworld.
As you also know, in order to participate personally in that strengthening, our ancestors ate the flesh and drank the blood of the sacrificed hero, who was the earthly correspondent of the One like the Son of Man whom they saw (in a vision) sacrificed on the Veil of Heaven (Katapetasma).
We Christians have abandoned both human and animal sacrifices, believing, as we do, that God's sacrifice of His first-born Son on the Katapetasma redeems for all times our first-born sons and animals from corresponding sacrifices here on Earth. The abandonment of human and animal sacrifice is but one feature of Christianity which makes Christianity an improvement upon your otherwise nearly-identical Mystery Religions of Adonis, Attis, Balder, Dionysus, Esus, Hercules, Mithras, Orpheus, Osiris, and Tammuz, all of which Mysteries merely were, as you know, restatements of the ancient Aryan Mysteries of Agni.
Do not discard your beliefs in those sacrificial heroes whom you believe died to save their people, then were born again. Instead, transfer those beliefs to our Son of God, the ancient One like the Son of Man on the Katapetasma, whose name and sign were divined among the constellations, and whose earthly correspondent was a Nazoraean Zadok (the leader of a Jewish sect) who taught that temple sacrifice should be replaced by simple repentance from one's sins, followed by a ritual death of the sinner in, and ritual raising up of the redeemed person from, the earthly river corresponding to the heavenly Jordan, which baptism is our Christian sign confirming repentance. His earthly correspondent's name in Hebrew was Joshua ("salvation"), which we have translated into Koine Greek as "Jesus." We believe Jesus was the earthly correspondent to the One like the Son of Man on the Katapetasma because both died on cross-spits as heroes of their people. We believe the One like the Son of Man and Jesus died to right the wrongs done to the Cosmos by human departures from the Word of God.
The new sign of the One Like the Son of Man, and of his new earthly correspondent, Jesus, is the sacred geometry visica piscis (Pisces) because we now are in the last times of the Zodiac (Pisces), and because our Greek word for fish is the acronym giving us His new name and role, that is, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. As you know, the One like the Son of Man has been with us since God's Creation of the Cosmos, and previously has been known, according to the Signs of Heaven, as Adonis, Attis, Balder, Dionysus, Esus, Mithras, Orpheus, Osiris, and Tammuz, as well as by many other names. His new name, to correspond with the present Signs of Heaven, is Jesus the Anointed, that is, Jesus the Christ. To pass through the Gate of Heaven, you must know and invoke His new name. His Heavenly Sign, the visica piscis (Pisces), arises with the Sun after the ascension of the Virgin (Virgo) to the Meridian at Midnight.
Come to the chancel rail and join me in the Mystery of the Mass, by which the flesh (bread) of your grain Gods, such as Osiris, Tammuz, and Dionysus, and their blood (wine) is converted into the flesh and blood of our new Savior in Real Presence. Be not afraid. We are not asking you to renounce your God but to worship Him in the new ways and under a new name, as decreed by the Signs of Heaven. Like the many Mystery Religions to which some of you belong, we are not (yet!) demanding your exclusive participation in our new Mysteries to the exclusion of your old Mysteries. We are asking you to change your liturgical ceremonies to accord with the present-day Signs of Heaven, but we are not asking you to change your faith or your religion. For instance, our Christ, Jesus, was seized (harvested), then was whipped and tossed about (thrashed and winnowed), after which He was dried on a cross. When He had died (dried), He then was placed into a tomb (a granary) from which He arose again (after three days, in correspondence to the moon) after He had passed a circular stone (a mill stone). And we refer to his body as the "bread of life," which is the exact term you use in the everywhere-popular Mysteries of Osiris and Isis. Your Mystery Religions are allegorical and metaphorical. So is Christianity, our new Mystery Religion.
[Note: The Jewish, Greek, Celtic, and other people to whom the foregoing typical sermon would have been addressed did not then believe in the Devil of the Zoroastrian Medes and Persians. So, the Christian preacher was unable to scare them into Christianity using fear tactics which previously had worked so well, for instance, in Turkey, Syria, and Armenia. His message, instead, was improvement, rather than change, of existing spiritual beliefs. Jews in the typical congregation knew that "Shoel" was the generic word in Hebrew for any hole in the ground, including a grave, and that "Gehenna" was the former ever-burning garbage dump or municipal landfill of the old City of Jerusalem, into which the bodies of convicted Jewish criminals were thrown to be burned, unceremoniously, instead of being buried properly under Jewish custom. Hellenized Jews as well as Gentiles in the typical congregation knew that "Hades" was the place where the ungloriously-dead, that is, those who died from old age, disease, etc., instead of in heroic battle, went to live but not to be punished, and that "Tartarus" was the mythological locus into which Zeus allegedly had hurled the Titans. Celtic and Teutonic congregants knew that "Hel" was the goddess of the Germanic underworld, which was a cold place rather than a hot spot, and was a northern European mythological place, equivalent to "Hades," where the ungloriously dead lived but were not punished. Thus do we still say, "It's cold as Hell." A sermon about those concept words, each of which words our English-language Bibles translate as "Hell," would not have scared the congregation into accepting Christian beliefs. Verbal terrorism was not yet the sine qua non of successful, Christian evangelizing. Note, also, that some Christians never stopped referring to Christ as the Lamb of God, despite the fact of His many associations with Pisces and Our Lady's associations with the ascension of the Heavenly Virgin (Virgo) at the Vernal Equinox. This is but one consequence when literalist pewsitters confuse the symbol with the symbolized and allow their faith to become ossified rather than dynamic.]
Answer to the question: Both sermons represent "Christian truth." The first sermon typifies the "truth" of twenty-first-century Christian fundamentalists and other literalists. The second sermon typifies second-century "Christian truth." The second sermon also is in accord with Christian history, as distinguished from Christian theology. "Truth," unfortunately, is relative to the speaker and the listener. Would that it were not so. Would that religion were a personal relationship between each individual and his/her Creator, rather than a mind-control system used by the power structures of organized religion, government, and commercial enterprise to herd about the brain-washed true believers.