Helios, Christos, The Sun; Ferrying the Architypal Zodiac Disciples

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                        HELIOS, CHRISTOS, THE SUN: FERRYING THE ARCHITYPAL ZODIAC DISCIPLES





by Ralph Monday

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.Thomas Paine

The Zodiac, therefore, is the Path or Way. When Christ spoke to His disciples as the Cosmic Christ, He told them "I am the Way," and to this it is possible to give an astrological significance, for all three types of lives tread this cosmic Way, the Cosmic Christ, the Planetary Spirit and the human being (Path of the Soul).

Christianity views Jesus as being the "light of the world," and indeed he is, but not in the way the story is told in the New Testament. If one has the courage to throw off religious fetters and abandon a blind acceptance of subjective "faith" dogma, and instead employ reason, abundant evidence can be examined that is the basis for an argument where the story of Christ is neither new, original, nor unique, but is instead the creation of the church, a powerful astrotheological archetypal symbol to solidify and consolidate power over the mind of culture. Christianity, and beginning with the Catholic Church in particular, has molded and transformed the figure of Christ into its own peculiar votive offering served up during the course of a year, but the majority of the influence is focused around Easter and Christmas, the vernal equinox and the winter solstice, for the one year story of Christ's ministry on earth is an allegory of the passing of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, Christ as the symbol of the sun and the twelve disciples as corresponding allegorical symbols of the astrological progression of the zodiac through the seasons, the connection of the earth to the heavens--"As above, so below"--observation of natural phenomenon that has been of great interest to the race since time immemorial, the cycles of the heavens given a supernatural interpretation and overlay that to this day remains as a powerful crucible molded around the minds of countless millions of people. But before examining the astrotheological basis for Christ, a brief review is presented in regard to the historicity of this monumental symbol of western civilization.

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An "Historical" Christ

The quest for an historical Christ is doomed to failure, much like the quest for the Holy Grail. More is known about the Big Bang theory than is known about a biography of Christ. The vast majority of all that is "known" about probably the most famous figure in Western history is contained in the New Testament, and to large extent the four Canonical Gospels of the Bible. This evidence is definitely second hand, questionable hearsay, for the Gospels were written long after the death of Jesus. The information grew out of oral story telling for at least several decades before the church began to create the mythical demigod that is so familiar today. Walker affirms this point:
…[T]hese Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John .The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." (Romer, qtd. in Walker)

That no historian wrote about the crowds of thousands that purportedly followed Jesus, the miracles that he performed, his crucifixion and resurrection, defies and challenges reason. Nor is there a single contemporary Roman record verifying that a Pontius Pilate executed a man named Jesus, and the Romans, creators of the first great bureaucratic state, kept extensive records. The non-Christian sources that are invariably used by Christian apologists in an attempt to establish the historicity of Christ were all written after the time when Christ was supposed to have lived and are hardly "eye witness" accounts. The most commonly referenced sources are Josephus Flavius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius.

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Josephus lived from 37-100 C.E. In his Antiquities of the Jews written in 93 C.E. a famous reference is made to, "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah…" (qtd. in Goldberg). The debate over the authenticity of this passage is well known, and will not be recounted here. Suffice to say that the vast majority of biblical scholars since the nineteenth century hold that it is a later Christian interpolation, an assertion that can easily be verified if the reader cares to examine the matter further.

Of the remaining three references, Pliny the Younger (B 62 C.E.), Tacitus (B 64 C.E.), and Suetonius (B 69 C.E.), were all born well after the time of Jesus, and again, none are held to be reliable by most biblical scholars; there is no need to go into the matter further in this essay; the arguments questioning the authenticity of these passages are well known, and the historicity of Christ is not the major thesis. Robert Keable, in his work, The Great Galilean makes note of this strange history of silence:

No man knows sufficient of the early life of Jesus to write a biography of him. For that matter, no one knows enough for the normal Times obituary notice of a great man. If regard were had to what we should call, in correct speech, definitely historical facts, scarcely three lines could be filled. Moreover, if newspapers had been in existence, and if that obituary notice had had to be written in the year of his death, no editor could have found in the literature of his day so much as his name. Yet few periods of the ancient world were so well documented as the period of Augustus and Tiberius. But no contemporary knew of his existence. Even a generation later, a spurious passage in Josephus, a questionable reference in Suetonius, and the mention of a name that may be his by Tacitus-that is all. His first mention in any surviving document, secular or religious, is twenty years after. (qtd. in Jackson)

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Earl Doherty in his provocative work The Jesus Puzzle also makes note of the strange silence of history, and in perhaps one of the greatest feats of twentieth century biblical scholarship, constructs a compelling argument that questions the very existence of a historical Jesus.

In regard to the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, no one knows who wrote them. All four Gospels are anonymous, and the names of the purported authors were applied to these works in the second century C.E. In regard to the composition of the Gospels, Remsberg notes that,

Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote around the middle of the second century and makes more than three hundred quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books; but none from the Four Gospels. -- In the latter half of the second century, between the time of Justin and Papias, and the time of Theophilus and Irenaeus, the Four Gospels were undoubtedly written or compiled. (The Gospels: Second Century Writings)

As for the dates of the composition of the four Gospels some conservative scholars believe that Matthew was written between 60-65 C.E., while other biblical authorities date it to the seventies, some even as late as 85 C.E. In regard to Mark, most scholars assign a date no later than 70-73 C.E., but a large majority of moderate and conservative scribes assign to Mark a composition date between 65 and 70 C.E., while Luke's composition date is assigned between 60-64 C.E. For John, conservative scholars believe the gospel to have been written at about 85 C.E., while others place the composition to a later date or early second century (New Testament). This evidence is presented in establishing that so little is known about the "authorship" of the Gospels, and the "historicity" of Christ, that an alternative hypothesis can be advanced, namely that the story of Jesus can be interpreted as being a mythologized allegory of the progression of the sun through the yearly zodiac, an astronomical phenomenon that was well known and extremely important to the ancient world.

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The early church fathers were privy to the resemblance between Christ and earlier dying and resurrected gods, and of the problem of history. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, for example, explained away the resemblance of the Christ mythos to earlier pagan gods by asserting that Satan had previously created these "imitators" in order to confuse and deceive when Christ incarnated, and Pope Leo X said, "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" (qtd. in Acharya S).

And Justin Martyr writing to a pagan in the second century C.E. also had these words to relate: "When we say that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter" (Savior Myth).

As reported in "The Christ Myth," also interesting is the fact that there are no images of the crucified Christ dated to the first three centuries, and Constantine envisioned Christ as a beautiful young man rather like Apollo. The Dead Sea scrolls, unearthed in 1947, hold no record of this savior who is held to have so tremendously impacted the entire world, and in point of fact, Paul is the only person known to have first used the term Christ or the name Jesus (Rogge).

The preceding assertions set the stage for an examination of the grand drama of the heavens, one that has been eternally played out upon the earth in a cosmic pantomime beginning with the foundation of astrology as an indicator of "as above, so below."

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Astrology, Mythology-Heavens and Earth-Origin of the Zodiac



Sometime between 3000-2000 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia the earliest evidence is found for the emergent disciplines of astronomy, mathematics and mythology, a triplicate that together would become the basis of astrology and the linkage between the heavens and the earth. Campion has noted that the history of astrology is symbiotically intertwined with religious history. Notwithstanding the practical importance of correlations between such occurrences as the sun's annual rhythm through the heavens and the corresponding seasons, symbolic linkages also began to develop: the human life cycle progressing through birth to death was interlinked with the sun's "birth" in the east each morning and "death" in the west each evening, "bringing with it the transition from darkness to light, and the annual cycle of vegetation throughout the seasons. Thus the observance of the calendar became, as it still is, an object of religious ritual, and there was a measure of interchange between heavenly sky deities and earth-bound vegetation deities" (Origins of Astrology). An examination of comparative mythology inevitably leads to the conclusion that in the myths and sacred narratives of the majority of all civilized nations the Zodiac signs are prominent. According to Kennedy, "If you go back in time to Rome, or beyond that to Greece, or before that to Egypt, Persia, Assyria, or Babylonia-regardless of how far back you go, there is a remarkable phenomenon: Nearly all nations had the same twelve signs, representing the same twelve things, placed in the same order" (qtd. in Horn).

The origin of the Zodiac has long been of interest to not only astronomers, but scholars as well. Gilman notes that,

[…] the narrow strip in the sky in which we observe and measure the movements of the Sun, Moon and the planets, was undoubtedly recognized in Babylon 4,000 or so years ago. It was not apparently until about 520 B.C. that the twelve Signs were actually defined. This seems to have been done by Cleostratos of Tenedos, […] who divided the ecliptic into twelve equal parts and is said to have "recognized the Signs of the Zodiac." He reputedly described them in a now-lost poem, Astrologia. (Twelve Gods)

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Also, early in the 19th century Pieree-Simnon de Laplace stated that, "The names of the zodiacal constellations were not haphazard fancies. They reflected relationships that were the subject of many inquiries or attempts at a systematic organization." Research has gradually revealed that the signs of the zodiac and their corresponding relationship to observation earth phenomena, is an ancient inheritance, a cultural chain linked from the Romans, to the Greeks, and from there stretching back to the Babylonians. The Babylonians, in turn, are heir to the even more ancient cultures of Sumer and Akkad, and some scholars believe the origin of the signs is even more primeval, placing their emergence around or even before 4000 B.C.E. Even more surprising than this antiquity is the stability of the constellations over the centuries, even with the attempt by Christian authors to reshape the stars to fit their particular interest in biblical stories, the original names and shapes have survived (Johnson and van Berkel 6-7).

From the earliest written records, the Sumerian/Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, (whose history may have been transmitted to the Greeks by the Phoenicians) where this ancient demigod of Uruk passes through twelve stages on his underground journey to Dilmun, to the civilizations of the Greek and Roman, an ancient astronomical religion is clearly in evidence, one that developed geographically over the entire Mediterranean region. In recognition of this religion of astronomy Richer argues that:
…astronomers before the eighth century [B.C.E.] used stars of first magnitude as the principal celestial markers. In the ancient Egyptian calendar, for example, "the beginning of the year was related to the heliacal rising of Spica. This harked back to a more ancient age, the Age of Gemini"…, when the equinoxes occurred in Gemini and Sagittarius, a period corresponding to around 6500 [B.C.E.]. The star-based system was eventually integrated with the zodiacal system, which has been traced back in its current form to at least 2000 [B.C.E.] in the ancient Near East.

Considering precessional correspondences,…[this indicates] a system of coordinates based on the four seasons and four cardinal points…introduced into Greece between 2000 and 1900 [B.C.E.]….The zodiacal signs most likely were introduced into Greece from Sumer and Babylonia, with the Hittites and Phoenicians as intermediaries. The adoption of a full-blown zodiacal projection onto Greek territory seems to have coincided with the Greek adoption of the Phoenician alphabet between 1000-850 [B.C.E]. (qtd. in Dougherty)

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Dougherty also notes that ancient myths of gods, demigods, and heroes are connected to this primal astronomical religion, and that the adoration and worship of Greek heroes like Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and Bellerophon predated the worship of the Olympian gods and their narratives at a later date were merged with the stories of the twelve zodiacal deities. Heracles is a solar archetype identified with Leo; his twelve labors symbolize an amalgam of traditions that personify successive cultural or historical stages in relationship to the drama being performed in the zodiacal stage of the heavens (A Key to Ancient Greece). In addition:

Many deities have been associated with the sun. The Greeks believed that Apollo, Bacchus, Dionysos, Sabazius, Hercules, Jason, Ulysses, Zeus, Uranus, and Vulcan partook of either the visible or invisible attributes of the sun. The Norwegians regarded Balder the Beautiful as a solar deity, and Odin is often connected with the celestial orb, especially because of his one eye.

Among the Egyptians, Osiris, Ra, Anubis, Hermes, and even the mysterious Ammon himself had points of resemblance with the solar disc. Isis was the mother of the sun, and even Typhon, the Destroyer, was supposed to be a form of solar energy. The Egyptian sun myth finally centered around the person of a mysterious deity called Serapis. The two Central American deities, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, while often associated with the winds, were also undoubtedly solar gods. (The Sun, A Universal Deity)

The connection of deity to the sun is obvious for anyone who has even a minute amount of analytical skill. The observation is nothing new, but it is one that has only begun to filter into the masses in western culture, for Fiske noted over a century ago that,

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…astronomers before the eighth century [B.C.E.] used stars of first magnitude as the principal celestial markers. In the ancient Egyptian calendar, for example, "the beginning of the year was related to the heliacal rising of Spica. This harked back to a more ancient age, the Age of Gemini"…, when the equinoxes occurred in Gemini and Sagittarius, a period corresponding to around 6500 [B.C.E.]. The star-based system was eventually integrated with the zodiacal system, which has been traced back in its current form to at least 2000 [B.C.E.] in the ancient Near East.

Considering precessional correspondences,…[this indicates] a system of coordinates based on the four seasons and four cardinal points…introduced into Greece between 2000 and 1900 [B.C.E.]….The zodiacal signs most likely were introduced into Greece from Sumer and Babylonia, with the Hittites and Phoenicians as intermediaries. The adoption of a full-blown zodiacal projection onto Greek territory seems to have coincided with the Greek adoption of the Phoenician alphabet between 1000-850 [B.C.E]. (qtd. in Dougherty)

Dougherty also notes that ancient myths of gods, demigods, and heroes are connected to this primal astronomical religion, and that the adoration and worship of Greek heroes like Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and Bellerophon predated the worship of the Olympian gods and their narratives at a later date were merged with the stories of the twelve zodiacal deities. Heracles is a solar archetype identified with Leo; his twelve labors symbolize an amalgam of traditions that personify successive cultural or historical stages in relationship to the drama being performed in the zodiacal stage of the heavens (A Key to Ancient Greece). In addition:

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Many deities have been associated with the sun. The Greeks believed that Apollo, Bacchus, Dionysos, Sabazius, Hercules, Jason, Ulysses, Zeus, Uranus, and Vulcan partook of either the visible or invisible attributes of the sun. The Norwegians regarded Balder the Beautiful as a solar deity, and Odin is often connected with the celestial orb, especially because of his one eye.

Among the Egyptians, Osiris, Ra, Anubis, Hermes, and even the mysterious Ammon himself had points of resemblance with the solar disc. Isis was the mother of the sun, and even Typhon, the Destroyer, was supposed to be a form of solar energy. The Egyptian sun myth finally centered around the person of a mysterious deity called Serapis. The two Central American deities, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, while often associated with the winds, were also undoubtedly solar gods. (The Sun, A Universal Deity)

The connection of deity to the sun is obvious for anyone who has even a minute amount of analytical skill. The observation is nothing new, but it is one that has only begun to filter into the masses in western culture, for Fiske noted over a century ago that,

Countless other examples, when similarly analyzed, show that the earliest […] conception of a Divine Power, nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originator of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted to believe the source, not only of "the golden light," but of everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. (Myths and Myth-makers 109)

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This all, of course, means that:

The ancients believed that the sun, the moon, "wandering" stars (planets), comets, and other celestial bodies were heavenly gods who were in motion about a stationary earth. Since the sun (Sol invictus) seemed to be the most influential of the celestial gods, it was especially worshipped and regarded as annually "reborn" at its lowest point in the sky during the winter solstice of December 25th. Since the plane of the ecliptic--the path that the sun travels in the sky--traces out the band of the twelve star-patterns that make up the zodiac, the sun was considered a god that gave "birth" to, or was a father of, the twelve zodiacal gods. [However], [t]he Greek astronomer Hipparchus made the astounding discovery in 128 BCE that the zodiac of constellations slowly drifted backward over time so that they appeared, with respect to the sun's position at winter solstice, in a new location in the heavens. Every 25 thousand years these constellations slowly moved; a phenomenon we know today to be the precession of the equinoxes which is caused by the "wobble" of the earth on its axis. To the ancients, it was a frightening and astounding event[.]

(Still) Hipparchus lived from 190-120 B.C.E. and Still also notes that his discovery of the precession of the equinoxes shattered the geocentric theory of the immovable earth, and that the precession could only mean that the whole cosmic sphere was in motion, and for the ancients this was a revelation that they interpreted as being the result of a powerful new god, so incredible in its force that it was fully possible for moving the entire universe.

At that time the spring equinox took place in Aries the Ram, and preceding that Taurus the Bull heralded in the rebirth of the earth in spring, and it was believed that Mithras was the cosmic power whose force was so formidable that the Bull was killed (The Virgin Birth).

In the great cosmic war between dark and light, Christ replaced Mithras as this force strong enough to bend the very cosmos to his will, and as the parallels between Mithrass and Christ are well known, there is no point in discussing them here, for I have dealt with this topic at length in another essay, and the present work will focus in specific content on only one of these solar deities:

Christ in order to provide support for the illuminating archetypal pattern that this example provides in the context of the solar deity and the twelve signs of the zodiac.

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Christ and the Twelve Zodiac Disciples



Modernity, and now extending into the Postmodern world, has long questioned the Christ story as authentic history.

The philosophes of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment and their new world counterparts in the Age of Reason began exploring nature from the standpoint of Natural Philosophy or Natural Law. This was the genesis of modern science, and from that point forward supernatural explanations of natural phenomena have been stripped away one by one, laid bare by the scrutiny of the scientific method, so that a reign of supernaturalism lasting more than six thousand years has been virtually eliminated as a satisfactory cause of human experience in just over two hundred years.

First, a brief summary of the archetype of the dying and resurrected god is presented, a common motif that existed in the Mediterranean world centuries before the church adopted this primal story and grafted the narrative into its own peculiar hierarchy for the purpose of control and power.

The ancient Greek and Roman cultures from which much of Postmodern Western culture is descended, adopted gods from Asia Minor: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylon, Phrygia, Persia, etc. These gods were often symbolic of vegetation myths tied to the seasons and shared the following characteristics, an archetypal pattern similar to Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, for the day god, the Sun god, was the ancient world's great deity, one that has been worshipped all over the planet, personified in every sacred allegory, and mythopoetically associated with mortal suffering, for, "everywhere we read of the birth, death, and resurrection of the Sun; he had his cradle and his tomb, whether called Adonis, Osiris, Hercules, Bacchus, Attis, Krishna, Mithra, or Christ" (Existence of Christ Disproved).

According to Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth these dying and resurrected gods were born of a Virgin Mother on or near the date of modern Christmas in a Cave or Underground Chamber; they held such titles as Light-bringer, Mediator, Healer, Deliverer, Savior and led a life of toil and service for humanity; eventually all were defeated by the Powers of Darkness and descended into Hell or the Underworld, then rose from the dead, and became the archetypal connector of humanity to the Heavenly world; they triumphantly went on to have disciples, found Communions of Saints Churches where acolytes were received into the mysteries by Baptism, and their memory was commemorated by Eucharistic meals (Pagan Christs).

Edward Carpenter in 1919 likewise stated the same assertion in his Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning. The idea of Christ being interpreted as a solar god is not new. Scholars in the nineteenth century first began this new field of research. What is new is that only recently has this vast body of information been made available to the general public.

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Christ as Zodiac Sun Myth



The ruling deity of day, Helios or the sun as God, was the supreme god of the ancient world universally worshipped in both continents, the old and the new world, and this god was allegorically personified in the mythos of every culture.

The daily and annual passage of the sun, in myth, became the poetic interpretation of the destiny of all. The birth, death, and resurrection of the sun is a continually reoccurring archetypal image, cradle to tomb, whether the name of the sun god was Hercules, Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, Mithra, Chrishna, or Christ. Mangasarian points out that,

The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events. (Truth About Jesus)

Of course, why all these stories are so similar is easily surmised.

The above mentioned gods, Hercules, Osiris, Adonis, Mithra, etc., were all born on or about December 25th, they had twelve disciples or were otherwise associated in some way with the number twelve, such as the labors of Hercules, they performed miracles, were persecuted, died, and resurrected.

This archetypal pattern is common because it is based on the sun's movements through the constellations which according to Acharya S is […] "an astrotheological development that can be found throughout the planet because the sun and the twelve zodiac signs can be observed around the globe.[…] Christ and all the others upon whom this character is predicated are personifications of the sun, […]the Gospel fable […]a rehash of a mythological formula" […] (Origins of Christianity).

And these mythological characters share the following characteristics in relationship to the sun: on December twenty-second the sun apparently dies for three days because it appears to stop in its movement south, and then is resurrected or "born again" on December twenty-fifth when it begins moving north once again, the light coming forth into the world. 

At some locations in the ancient world the new year began in the constellation of Virgo where the sun was born of a virgin; when the sun rises in the morning it is the Savior of mankind, and wears a crown of thorns which is the corona or halo, and the sun can also walk on water, its reflection passing across the surface; the disciples are the twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac that the sun must journey through; at twelve noon the sun is in the house or temple of the Most High and Jesus began his work at twelve years of age; the sun enters at thirty degrees into each sign of the zodiac, and Jesus began his ministry at age thirty.

The sun is crucified when it is hung on the cross of the equator and the polar axis at the vernal equinox, or Easter, and at that time the sun is resurrected (Origins of Christianity).

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Another interesting facet in regard to the "virgin birth" is that,


The Virgin Mary is the Constellation of Virgo and the story of virgin births is the timeless allegory of Virgo giving birth to the Sun on the darkest night of the year, the 24th of December.

If we follow the path of the sun we discover that towards the end of August the radiant Sun enters the celestial Virgo and places the seed of the new Sun in her to germinate the embryo of the new Sun, Horus, Apollo or Christ. This phenomenon, which takes place every year in August, gave rise to Christmas, a festival which still exists, and in which it is supposed that the Mother of Christ, disregarding her earthly life, is associated with the glory of her son, and is placed by his side in the heavens.

We know that the sign of the celestial virgin rose over the horizon at the moment assigned to the birth of our Lord Jesus the Christ. Christians may be reluctant to recognize Virgo as the Blessed Virgin. Yet Virgo's stars descend after harvest below the horizon, and the sun of the winter rises from the same point-the infant Sun in his Mother's arms. It is the birthday of the Christos who represents the Sun that is born in each and every one of us. (The Immaculate Conception)

The church was well aware of the astrological significance of the constellation of Virgo for as Carpenter has stated:

But it is well known as a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant saviour, and so passed into the European ceremonial. We have therefore the Virgin Mary connected by linear succession and descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the sky!

A curious confirmation of the same astrological connection is afforded by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted, it will be found that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the 15 August, while the festival of the birth of the Virgin is dated the 8 September…

At the present day, the Zodiacal signs- owing to the precession of the Equinoxes-have shifted some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time when the Zodiac was constituted and these names were given, the first date obviously would signalise the actual disappearance of the cluster Virgo in the sun's rays, i.e. the Assumption of the Virgin into the glory of the god, while the second date would signalise the reappearance of the constellation-or the birth of the Virgin. (Sun Worship)

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The constellation of Virgo is not the only interesting connection between religious worship and the stars. Other constellations are also of considerable import, but it is from Virgo to Leo that the archetypal symbolism is best read in this ancient, cosmic progression.

In order to understand this assertion it is necessary to know that the sun in its yearly progression moves through the constellations (the plane of the ecliptic, an imaginary line drawn from the earth's equator to the sun's equator) to the left, and these constellations have always been thought to have a great influence on the character of the sun.

The other important point to remember is that the earth's axis is tilted twenty-three and one quarter degrees from the plane of the ecliptic, called the precession of the axis, the earth slowly wobbles at the north polar axis like a spinning top, and the sun moves below the equator at the autumnal equinox and rises above the equator at the vernal equinox, thus forming the image of a cross. Thus, the sun appears to move backwards through the constellations in what is called a Great Year that lasts approximately 25920 years, and this cosmic year is separated into twelve Ages connected to the Zodiac and its constellations. Each of these ages endures for about 2160 years.

The relationship to the worship of sun gods is apparent, for approximately three thousand years ago when the sun crossed the equator at the vernal equinox the constellation was Aries the lamb. Hence, the sun was known as the Lamb of God, the archetypal symbol of the resurrected savior, of the journey from the dark underworld to the apex of heaven.

Christ is still identified in this way, but what of the fish? The sun entered the constellation of Pisces at approximately 6 B.C.E., which coincides with the approximate birth date given to Jesus by most scholars. Pisces is the sign of the fish, and Jesus was the fisher of men. And according to Dowling in her introduction,