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Perhaps my title is one too strong for our
modern palates. But here in the Breadbasket of America, as the harvest
time gives way to the waning of the Solar Year and the celebrations of the
birth of a new God, the ancient symbols of Paganism begin to make their
yearly appearance throughout my neighborhood, the commercial districts and
even my own home. Of course, these ancient symbols are jealously defended
as sacred by mainstream religions, and their practitioners would argue
aggressively with me when I submit that:
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As they hang their mistletoe, burn their
Yule Log or conduct any other Christmas tradition, they are
participating in Pagan ritual that began in remote prehistory;
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Many of the major events in the lives of our
Prophets, such as births, deaths, etc. were assigned calendar dates to
coincide with major Pagan Holy Days, and;
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The celebration of our major Holy Days date
back to the seasonal events of our primal agricultural societies
(planting, harvest, etc.) and our veneration of the Sun as a God and the
Solar Year as his life cycle.
First we should reach an understanding of
Paganism itself and then examine the influences of Paganism on
Zarathushtrianism, Judaism and Christianity.
The term Pagan is Latin in origin and
was coined by the (Pagan) Romans to describe those simple country folk who
worshipped the Old Gods as opposed to the official Roman ones. A similar
term from Old English is Heathen used to describe the People of
the Heath, again, those country folk who worshiped the Old Gods. Over
time these terms came to mean something very different.
In Europe’s Middle Ages, when a resurgence of
interest in our Pagan past threatened the Christian Church, the old
country gods were demonized by the Church, eventually becoming the very
definition of Evil. The Old God of the forest, the Satyr (known by many
other names such as Pan, Cernunos, Robin Goodfellow, etc.) is transformed
from a simple symbol of unbridled masculine energy, to become Shaitan
himself, or Satan, a Deity of ultimate evil that guides the souls
of men to evil. He is physically described with the exact features of the
Satyr; half man, half goat with horns and cloven hooves. All that was
left for the Church to add was a pointed tail and a pitchfork. Thus we
have the first physical description of Satan, who was never described
physically in the Torah, the Christian Gospels or the Quran.
Satan is a godform that did not exist in
Gathic Zarathushtrianism or early Judaism. Zarathushtra spoke of Angra
Mainyu as a negative force in the Universe but not as a Deity. The
concept of Angra Mainyu as an evil Deity in opposition to Ahura Mazda
would creep into Zarathushtrianism in later centuries as a form of
Dualism, perhaps even influenced by the Pagan Anthropomorphism of
Christianity and Hinduism (more on anthropomorphism later). This is a
reputation that Zarathushtrians have fought against ever since – the view
that they belief in two Gods, one of Light and one of Darkness, locked in
an eternal struggle for the hearts of men. The truth in this matter is
that Dualism and Anthropomorphism can only be seen as Pagan in nature.
The entity, Shaitan, in early Judaism
was merely seen as the Adversary. Each tribal group had their own
titled “Shaitan”. He was simply a member of the tribe who was selected to
play an important part in early Judaic society. It was his responsibility
to argue for the opposition of any major decision, a Devil’s Advocate if
you will; they held a position in society somewhat like our modern
prosecuting attorneys.
By the time of Mohammad, the Christian Satan
had been so sufficiently developed that the god form was fully embraced by
Islam. It is easy to see why so much of Christian and Islamic History is
full of violence toward other peoples, when we understand that, to this
day, Christian and Islamic faithful see all of life as an eternal war
against the forces of the Shaitan, and all “Pagans” as soldiers in His
army (“Pagan” having long ago come to mean the same as “Infidel”, anyone
who was not Christian or Islamic).
The earliest epochs of our Pagan past were not
so threatening or violent as our later reaction to it. In time, Paganism
would become violent and lead to Zarathushtra's revolutionary
pronouncements against it, but its beginnings are much more benign. Let
us start there.
Modern Neo-Pagans refer to their religion as
the Old Religion and truly it was Mankind’s first understanding of
his environment. Primal Man, as a nomadic tribesman, saw himself not only
as a part of Nature but integrally connected to it. His Gods were Gods of
Life and Sustenance. The Birth of a child, the creation of Life, was the
most magical and powerful event in his experience and therefore he
venerated those feminine forces that were powerful enough to do it. The
Moon, the Earth and Nature itself were all seen as feminine and to this
day we still make reference to “Mother Earth” and “Mother Nature”. In his
Holy Songs, Zarathushtra repeatedly refers to Nature and Creation in the
feminine gender. The most violent event in Primal Man’s life was the hunt
and even this, along with the gathering of plant foods, were seen as gifts
and blessings of sustenance from the Mother Earth Goddess, as if she
suckled us at her own breast. This is how close Man’s relationship was to
Nature, like that of child to mother. In many ways the reforms of
Zarathushtra was a return to this close and gentle relationship with
Mother Earth.
The Moon was a particularly powerful symbol of
the divine feminine with its three phases symbolizing the three phases of
a woman’s life. The Waxing Moon was representative of the Maiden in
preparation for motherhood, the Full Moon was the Mother herself in all
her glory, and the Waning Moon was woman in her aging years, at her most
powerful as the Wise Matriarch of the tribe and family. The Moon was so
much associated with Woman’s power to create life that her monthly
cleansing cycle was called her “Moon Cycle”, the literal meaning of
Menstrual. The fact that a woman’s cycle is 28 days, exactly equal to
a full cycle of the Moon, could not have been seen as coincidence by
Primal Man.
All of Life was understood to be cyclical in
nature. There was no understanding of true death, for with each death in
the tribe there was a birth and the cycle continued. In fact, the cycle
of the tribe and of Nature itself was Immortal and would continue
forever. We still celebrate this rebirth and renewal of Life every year
in the Spring, when the Earth is bursting with new life and Nature is in
full bloom. Our Easter and Nowruz (Novruz) Festivals are just two
examples of how we still celebrate the Earths regeneration and
refreshment.
Anthropology and Pagan tradition tell us that
this way of life continued for thousands and thousands of years, but with
the advent of animal and plant domestication, everything began to change.
Man began to look to the cycle of the Sun to guide him through his
agricultural year and it is from this era that most of our calendars are
based, a solar year divided by 13 months (more moon cycles). This seems
benign enough but as agriculture began to turn tribal/nomadic societies
into extended/settled societies, the priorities in life also began to
change. What was the most important thing to insure the success and
prosperity of an agricultural society? Land. And how does a society
obtain Land? They take it from other Peoples. And how do they do this?
War!!! In time the birth of a child and human life itself was no longer
embraced as Sacred and Divine. The gentle Gods of Life gave way to the
masculine Gods of War and Death. And how did Warriors appease the Gods of
War? They killed something, human or animal, and spilled its blood on the
altar. The act of killing, in its own right, became holy, a sacrament to
the Gods. What a horrific change this must have been for those who still
worshipped in the old ways! We should here remember what was the first
thing that the God of Abraham promises. Land (Genesis 15). And the
greatest test of Abraham’s faith was to spill the blood of his own son
upon the altar (Genesis 22). Though God ultimately stays the hand of
Abraham, the story enlightens us as to the accepted religious practices of
the age. It is into this age that Asho Zarathushtra is born (but let us
come back to Zarathushtra a little later).
Between the cycles of War, for those who were
not members of the new warrior class, agricultural societies seemed to go
on peacefully celebrating the blessings of Nature. Therefore, some of the
Old Gods continued in new forms. Goddesses of water and Fertility such as
Anahita (she had many other names in other cultures) became very
important, for what is more important to agriculture than Fertility and a
reliable source of Water? Well, perhaps the light of the Sun, and it was
here that the Sun became all-important as a god form. Seen as the Divine
Masculine in union with the Divine Mother in the creation and sustenance
of Life, He became our “Father in Heaven” and has been so ever since.
However, the Sun can sometimes be a severe and punishing father as well as
a nurturing one. He became a perfect symbol of the severity of War as
well as the Life giver and Guide through the agricultural year. The Sun
became associated with Mithra, the Aryan God of Contracts, for what could
be more important in that age of Kings and their entitlements, and what
could be more severe than to break an agreement between kings or
warriors? Thus, eventually Mithra becomes Sol Invictus, the
Unconquerable Sun, the primary god of Roman Soldiers and Emperors.
This heritage continued for so many hundreds of years that in 325 of the
Common Era, the Roman Emperor Constantine, a Mithraic worshiper of Sol
Invictus and therefore a Pagan (though he is called Saint Constantine
by Christians for having Christianized the empire) decreed that the
Christian God would be worshiped on the Day of the Sun, or Sunday as
opposed to the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday. This is one of the most
important of our Pagan traditions as it is practiced by millions of
Christians every week.
Our own modern calendars and seasonal
celebrations are also based on this veneration of the Sun and His yearly
cycle, entwined with the ancient agricultural cycles of planting and
harvest. The Zarathushtrian Gahanbars (Thanksgiving Festivals) are based
on these Solar and agricultural cycles of the year. They are: Nowruz
(Novruz), New Year, literally the New Day or First Day (Spring
Equinox); Maidyozarem, Mid-Spring (May 1st); Maidyoshahem,
Mid-Summer (very near the Summer Solstice); Paitishahem, Harvest
(very near the Autumnal Equinox); Ayathrem, No-Travel/the End of
caravan season (mid October); and Maidyarem, Mid-Year (very near
the Winter Solstice).
There is good evidence that many of the
ancient Jewish Festivals, which have long been celebrated in commemoration
of biblical events, were originally seasonal festivals, Solar or Lunar in
nature. Examples of this transformation are: the Feast of the
Tabernacles, originally Sukkot, a harvest festival, now associated
with the Exodus from Egypt; and Purim, also associated with the
Exodus but originally celebrated on the first full moon after the Spring
Equinox.
The Solar Year begins at the Winter Solstice
with the birth of the Sun God, as the days begin to get longer and the Sun
is in its waxing phase. As the Sun gets stronger, day-by-day, so does the
Sun God, the Father God. He continues to grow stronger until the Summer
Solstice when the length of each day, and therefore the power of the Sun
God, begins to wane. At the Winter Solstice the whole cycle begins anew
when the Old Solar God dies and a new Solar God is born. It was the
perfect time of year to celebrate the birth of a new God and was declared
(again, by Emperor Constantine in C.E. 325) to be the official birthday of
Jesus, whose real birth date is nowhere given in the Christian Bible.
Thus, it was the fate of the Christian Prophet and God to be forever
entwined with the ancient Aryan God Mithra and his Roman counterpart Sol
Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun. Virtually all of the modern symbols of
Christmas, from the decorated tree to the red and green colors and even
Santa Claus himself are Pagan and Pre-Roman in origin. Another remnant of
the ancient Solar Deity at this time of year is the image of Old Father
Time giving way to the New Year, symbolized by a Baby.
This is only the beginning of the Pagan year
that was embraced by Christianity. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
say that the Church began a deliberate program of Christianizing the Pagan
festivals of the Sun Cycle in an attempt to win the hearts of Pagans to
the new religion, knowing that the country folk would be hard pressed to
give up their ancient ways.
A review of the Christian calendar shows
us that the seasonal festivals that were accepted most readily were the
intermediary solar events called Minor Sabats by Pagans, the
Major Sabats being the major solar events of Equinox and Solstice.
These minor solar events were celebrated at the mid-point between each
Equinox and Solstice and it may be that they were more readily accepted as
Christian Holy Days because they did not have the Pagan stigma that the
major solar events did. They are: Imbolg, celebrated by
Christians as Candlemas (February 2nd); Betlaine,
Christian May Day (May 1st); and Samhaine, Christian All
Hollows (the day after All Hallows Eve or Halloween, October 31st). There
is one of these minor solar events that is conspicuous by its absence,
that being Lughnasadh (August 1st), the Festival of Lugh
(pronounced Lu), the Bringer of Enlightenment. Of course the Church of
the Christian Dark Ages could not allow the veneration of a Bringer of
Light, not at a time when only the Clergy were allowed to learn how to
read and only the Church was allowed to bring Light to the faithful. By
his other name, Lucifer, he would eventually be demonized and fully
transformed into the Christian deity of ultimate evil, Satan himself.
This brings us to the most holy of all
Christian Holy Days, Easter. Its origin again goes back to our ancient
Pagan festivals of Spring. Even the name of for this Holy Day (at least
among Northern European Peoples) comes from the German Eostara, a
Pre-Christian celebration of fertility and new
life. Two of the time-honored symbols of Christian Easter are the
colorfully decorated “Easter Egg”, a very obvious symbol of fertility, and
“the Easter Bunny”, the most fertile of all God’s creatures. Is this not
the perfect time of year to celebrate the resurrection or re-birth of a
God?
It is important to note here that the two most
sacred holy days for Christians take place on major solar events,
Christmas (the Winter Solstice) and Easter (the Spring Equinox).
Let us now move to the problem of
Anthropomorphism, the practice of assigning to God the characteristics of
Man. The related practice of assigning godhood to Man, Deification,
should also be discussed here as being purely Pagan in nature and origin.
It was probably natural for Primal Man, in his
attempt to understand the workings of his natural environment, to explain
them in the terms most accessible to him, human terms. It is easy to see
why references such as “the Voice of God” or “the Hand of God” became the
norm in describing the Creator. Even Zarathushtra, in the midst of his
rebellion against Paganism was unable to avoid this practice, referring
several times in the Gathas to the “hand” of Ahura Mazda. But as the Old
Gods of Pre-Gathic times (Mithra, Anahita, Verethregna etc.) crept back
into the Aryan pantheon, this natural anthropomorphism would give way to
an understanding of the Gods as completely man-like. This concept of the
nature of God would later be inherited by Jews and Christians and become
canonized in Holy Scripture, “And God said, ’Let us make Man in our own
image and after our own likeness’” (Genesis 1:26).
The Egyptian and later Greek and Roman
practice of deifying their kings was also adopted by Christians for their
new king, Jesus, descended from the royal bloodline of Jewish Kings
(Matthew 1). After the death of Jesus, Paul and the writers of the Gospels
began to claim that he was one and the same as the Creator of the
Universe. In fact, the deification of Jesus can be traced back to Ancient
Egypt and the Osiris/Horus myth cycle, in which the God is killed in blood
sacrifice and three days later, is resurrected as the new King and Creator
of all Life. Other elements in the story of Jesus, such as his virgin
birth, come directly from Mesopotamian and Pre-Gathic Aryan Myth.
It has been the tendency of all branches of
revealed Monotheism to drastically change the religion from the simple and
pure philosophies of their Prophets by adding voluminous codes of conduct
and re-assimilating ancient practices that were hard to die. The 1st
through 4th Century blood cult of Christian Martyrdom, the
blood lust of the European Inquisition and the suicide blood-cult of
modern Islamic terrorists, all in the name of God, can only be seen as a
return to the Pagan practice of Blood Sacrifice to the Gods of War.
Zarathushtra was the first Prophet to
understand God as a Being of Light and Wisdom, the Primal Creative Force
that emanates to and through all things. The God of Zarathushtra does not
promise Land or Victory in battle, he promises Life and Freedom of Choice,
prefect Bliss and Immortality. Ahura Mazda does not require blood
sacrifice, in fact he abhors it as working against the nature of His
Perfect Truth, Asha. Zarathushtra tells us that that Deity is not the
private domain of Kings, Priests and Warriors, but that the Light and
Wisdom of God resides in all Men and in all Women.
Our Pagan Heritage and the re-introduction of
Pagan Symbols and Pagan Gods into the pure philosophies of Monotheism, is
not something we should look back upon with pointed fingers and regret.
We should rather see this heritage as another step in our religious
evolution, just as Zarathushtra would have seen it, as part of our
continuing evolution toward a pure understanding of the Wise Lord and
the symbol of God’s Perfect Light. Then, perhaps, we will recognize the
symbols of Sun Worship and Anthropomorphism for what Zarathushtra called
them - Pagan Superstitions.
[i]
Based on a paper written for meeting a course requirement at Spenta
University.
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