In the following
summer, the hot, arid land he lived upon became brown and barren. At this season, directly on the
summer solstice, the Goddess that man worshipped in some way lost the companionship of the God he worshipped.
Ancient man's pagan, religious urges found expression in a variety of beliefs, ideas and practices centering around a sense of a supernatural other world. This world, though invisible, was believed by man to have power over his everyday life.
Since the dawn of their religious consciousness, men and women regarded this supernatural world with a mixture of awe, fear, and hope. They sought to bring their lives into harmony with it. Life was a struggle for survival and a preparation for death.
Men and women offered up sacrifices and prayers to the forces of this mystery religion, which they believed controlled the workings of nature on their behalf. Their hope in offering sacrifices and prayers was to ward off catastrophe, to ensure fine hunting, to obtain bountiful harvests, and to live again beyond the grave. Man sought to understand the elements of nature as powers to be worshipped, since they affected his life so directly.
The Cycle Of Primitive Worship
In the spring of the year, pagan man sought fertility for himself and for his land. Bountiful crops would assure food for himself and his household. It was during this season of the year, at the vernal equinox, that the Goddess he worshipped was fertilized by the God he worshipped.
In the following
summer, the hot, arid land he lived upon became brown and barren. At this season, directly on the
summer solstice, the Goddess that man worshipped in some way lost the companionship of the God he worshipped.
During the
autumn, the sun started dying. The days grew shorter as the nights grew longer. In this season, directly on
the autumn equinox, the Goddess that man worshipped began weeping for the missing God he worshipped.
During the
winter, the sun began to come back to life. The days grew longer and the nights shorter. Life was assured
for another year, because the Goddess he worshipped, who had been fertilized at the previous vernal equinox, gave birth to a son
at the winter solstice. The God was reborn!
At the Februa—Purification, forty days after the birth of the son: on February 15th in ancient times, but celebrated
on February 14th today, and now known as Valentine's Day—this ancient Mother Goddess was ritually cleansed of childbirth.
The pagan religious year had come to a full circle. Again, at the vernal equinox in the spring of the year, the Goddess
he worshipped married her son/husband, by whom she was fertilized in order to refertilize the earth.
The worship of this ancient pagan trinity—the mother, the husband, and the son—would continue in a cycle of worship enacted in man's religious year, perpetually.
Through these rituals performed on the exact dates of the vernal equinox, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox, and the winter solstice, men and women believed they were warding off catastrophe, ensuring fine hunting, obtaining bountiful harvests, and giving themselves hope of living again beyond the grave.
These mystery religions dramatized the annual decay of vegetation as the death of a divine youth over whom a Goddess mourned. Later, the celebrations were with ecstatic joy as the reborn youth returned.
Participation in each of these rites at the appointed time of the sun was believed to cleanse the devotees of their sins and mystically unite them with the Gods. The ceremonies generated powerful emotions; thus, this worship of the Gods flourished. Due to these same powerful emotions generated during these rites, this pagan worship of mystery is still flourishing today.
Every year, just after the harsh winter months are over and the earth is turning green with the fresh new growth of spring, there is a pagan ceremony which is celebrated even today. This day is the most important day in Christian worship. This day was set apart by the ancient pagans as the special day for the worship of the Goddess of the dawn. This rite, still set today according to the vernal equinox, is more familiarly known to this deceived world as Easter.
The Christian Celebration Of Easter
The New International Dictionary Of The Christian Church, by J.D. Douglas, Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI, 1974, page 322, gives the following information about the Christian celebration called Easter:
EASTER. The celebration of Christ's resurrection. Although the Scriptures make no provision for the observance of Easter as the day of resurrection, all the evidence suggests that the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ began at a very early date in the history of the church, probably as early as the apostolic age. It would seem also that the Christians of the first century consciously sought to create a Christian parallel to the Jewish Passover, since the close relationship between the significance of that event in the O.T. and the crucifixion in the N.T. made a transformation of that Jewish feast into Easter both logical and easy.
After a.d. 100, Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany became the final parts of the church year.
Easter does not come from the Scriptures. This pagan custom has another source. As we have read, there was a transformation of the Jewish Feast (Passover) into Easter. Remember though, this was done by man and not by Yahweh. The word transform means a different form or appearance, to change.
The New International Dictionary Of The Christian Church, by J.D. Douglas, page 322, tells us how this transformation was accomplished in the religion called Christianity.
CHRISTIAN YEAR, THE. The early Christians who were mainly Jews were used not only to keeping one day in the week as separate but also to marking the year with certain religious festivals, notably Passover, Tabernacles, and Pentecost. From early times Christians kept a commemoration of Christ's resurrection. This was held at Passover time and was finally fixed on the Sunday following Passover. Pentecost was then celebrated at the appropriate time; the fifty days between the two were days of joy and rejoicing. The choice of 25 December (in the East, 6 January) for the birth of Christ is almost certainly because that day was the great pagan day of honor to the sun, and in Rome in the fourth century it was transformed into a Christian festival.
Why doesn't this whole Christian world simply celebrate the Feasts which Yahweh ordained in His Holy Scriptures, clearly written in Leviticus 23? Why would there have to be any transformation of these Feasts in the first place?
The answer to these questions lies in the early history of Christianity; specifically, at the Council of Nicea in 325 c.e. when Constantine the Great helped to formulate Christian doctrine.
When Constantine the Great—the only man in history who was extolled both as a Christian Saint and a pagan God—presided over the Council of Nicea in 325 c.e., his main objective was political: how to merge religion and politics efficiently. Since there were more politically powerful pagans than there were politically powerful believers, the celebrations that the pagans were accustomed to observing were the celebrations which were accepted; and at the same time, the celebrations of the Jews were rejected. Reading from Funk and Wagnall's Standard Reference Encyclopedia, Volume 8, we find the following.
An important historic result of the difference was that the Christian churches in the East, which were closer to the birthplace of the new religion, and in which old traditions were strong, observed Easter according to the date of the Passover festival, while the churches of the West, whose communicants were descendants of Græco-Roman civilization, celebrated Easter on a Sunday.
Settlement of this difference was one of the objects of the Roman emperor Constantine in convoking, in 325 a.d. the Council of Nicæa.
At the Council of Nicea, it was decided that Easter should be celebrated in accordance with the Alexandrine Computation. Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 17, page 520, gives us the following information:
...It also decided that Easter should thenceforth be celebrated everywhere at the same time in accordance with the Alexandrine computation.
The pagan Alexandrine Computation for the setting of Easter, is written in Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 8, page 492, which says:
EASTER, the church feast which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is considered the most ancient and most important festival of the Christian year.
Prior to the time of Pope Victor I (189-c. 198), the Western churches as a rule kept Easter on the first day of the week, while many of the Eastern churches, conforming to the Jewish rule, observed it on the fourteenth of the month of Nisan. Through the energetic efforts of Pope Victor, the latter practice gradually disappeared. But another problem came to the fore: granted that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, how was that Sunday to be determined? The Council of Nicaea (325) paved the way for a final settlement by ruling that Easter is to be observed by all on the same Sunday, that this must be the Sunday following the fourteenth day of the paschal moon, and that that moon was to be accounted as the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the vernal equinox.
...Throughout Western Christendom the corrected calendar is now universally accepted, and Easter is solemnized on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, with the result that the earliest possible date is March 22, the latest, April 25.
The Catholic Church's justification for using the Vernal Equinox to set their date for Easter Sunday, which the Protestant Churches have accepted completely, comes from the words of Constantine the Great himself, at the Council of Nicea in the year 325 of this Common Era, saying:
And truly, in the first place, it seems to everyone a most unworthy thing that we should follow the customs of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy solemnity, who, polluted wretches! having stained their hands with a nefarious crime, are justly blinded in their minds. It is fit, therefore, that rejecting the practice of this people, we should perpetuate to all future ages the celebration of this rite, in a more legitimate order, which we have kept from the first day of our "Lord's" passion even to the present times. Let us then have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews. (Council of Nicea, pg. 52.)
It was not the Jews who were being rejected. Constantine and his followers were rejecting the Laws that these people obeyed—Yahweh's Laws which established each of the Feasts that He had ordained. Effectually, because Christianity wanted nothing in common with the Jews, they also have nothing in common with the ordinances—Laws of Yahweh. Therefore, because Christianity has nothing in common with Yahweh and His Feasts, it has everything in common with paganism and its holidays. This fact is documented from The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, page 894.
11. The church week and year. The development of the church calendar was a remarkably slow process in Christianity, and equally striking is the fact that so little of the Jewish year finally found a place in Christian celebrations. Where we should have expected a Christian transformation of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succoth, Chanukah, Purim, etc., we find only the retention of the paschal festival. This is due to the fact that the church year was largely the creation of the Gentile church, and the background of such notable days as Christmas, Epiphany, Ember, etc., is pagan, not Jewish.
Reading from Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, Volume 4, page 140, we find that Easter is the greatest festival of the Christian Church, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ—which festival was named after the ancient Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring.
EASTER. The greatest festival of the Christian church commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ...
The name Easter comes from the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre or Ostara, in whose honor an annual spring festival was held. Some of our Easter customs have come from this and other pre-Christian spring festivals.
Unger's Bible Dictionary, by Merrill F. Unger, page 283, goes on to corroborate this fact.
The word Easter is of Saxon origin, Eastra, the goddess of spring, in whose honor sacrifices were offered about Passover time each year. By the 8th century Anglo-Saxons had adopted the name to designate the celebration of Christ's resurrection.
It is a fully documented historical fact that the day which was chosen by the Christian Church to celebrate this resurrection, was a day which had been celebrated by pagans from antiquity. The only difference between these two celebrations, is that its name was changed to veneer it with Christian respectability.
It is simply no secret that Easter originated with the worship of a pagan Goddess.
Compton's Encyclopedia, Volume 4, says the following about Easter:
'Many Easter customs come from the Old World...colored eggs and rabbits have come from pagan antiquity as symbols of new life...our name 'Easter' comes from 'Eostre', an ancient Anglo Saxon goddess, originally of the dawn. In pagan times an annual spring festival was held in her honor. Some Easter customs have come from this and other pre-christian spring festivals.'
Reading about this pre-Christian spring festival from Funk & Wagnall's Standard Reference Encyclopedia, Volume 8, page 2940, we learn:
Although Easter is a Christian festival, it embodies traditions of an ancient time antedating the rise of Christianity. The origin of its name is lost in the dim past; some scholars believe it probably is derived from Eastre, Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated Eastre monath, corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, and traditions associated with the festival survive in the familiar Easter bunny, symbol of the fertile rabbit, and in the equally familiar colored Easter eggs originally painted with gay hues to represent the sunlight of spring.
The Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols, Part 1, page 487 tells us more about this Spring Festival.
It incorporates some of the ancient Spring Equinox ceremonies of sun worship in which there were phallic rites and spring fires, and in which the deity or offering to the deity was eaten...The festival is symbolized by an ascension Lily...a chick breaking its shell, the colors white and green, the egg, spring flowers, and the Rabbit. The name is related to Astarte, Ashtoreth, Eostre and Ishtar, goddess who visited and rose from the underworld. Easter yields 'Enduring Eos'... 'Enduring Dawn'.
Part of this spring festival centered around phallic rites. Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 9, page 622, tells us of the Babylonian Ishtar Festival phallic rites.
The Ishtar Festivals were symbolical of Ishtar as the goddess of love or generation. As the daughter of Sin, the moon god, she was the Mother Goddess who presided over child birth; and women, in her honor, sacrificed their virginity on the feast day or became temple prostitutes, their earnings being a source of revenue for the temple priests and servants.
We learn about these temple prostitutes from The Interpreter's Dictionary of The Bible, Volume 3, pages 933-934:
a. The roll of the sacred prostitute in the fertility cult. The prostitute who was an official of the cult in ancient Palestine and nearby lands of biblical times exercised an important function. Projecting their understanding of their own sexual activities, the worshippers of these deities, through the use of imitative magic, engaged in sexual intercourse with devotees of the shrine, in the belief that this would encourage the gods and goddesses to do likewise. Only by sexual relations among the deities could man's desire for increase in herds and fields, as well as in his own family, be realized. In Palestine the gods Baal and Asherah were especially prominent (see BAAL; ASHERAH; FERTILITY CULTS).
Sexual relations for ritual purposes was the ceremony for the fertility cults. The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 2, page 265 says:
FERTILITY CULTS. The oldest common feature of the religions of the ancient Near East was the worship of a great mother-goddess, the personification of fertility. Associated with her, usually as a consort, was a young god who died and came to life again...
In Mesopotamia the divine couple appear as Ishtar and Tammuz, in Egypt as Isis and Osiris. Later in Asia Minor, the Magna Mater is Cybele and her young lover is Attis. In Syria in the second millennium b.c., as seen in the Ugaritic myths, the dying and rising god is Baal-Hadad, who is slain by Mot (Death) and mourned and avenged by his sister/consort, the violent virgin Anath. In the Ugaritic myths there is some confusion in the roles of the goddesses. The great mother-goddess Asherah, the wife of the senescent chief god El, seems on the way to becoming the consort of the rising young god Baal, with whom we find her associated in the O.T. Ashtarte also appears in the Ugaritic myths, but she has a minor and undistinguished role.
Reading on page 103 of The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, we find that Easter and Ishtar are the same.
Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than "Astarte", one of the titles of Beltis, "The Queen of Heaven..."
The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop tells us of the doctrines of Semiramis.
She (Semiramis) taught that he (Nimrod the Babe) was a god-child; that he was Nimrod, their leader reborn; that she and her child were divine. This story was widely known in ancient Babylon and developed into a well established worship__The Worship of The Mother and Child!
Numerous monuments of Babylon show the Goddess Mother Semiramis with her child Tammuz in her arms.
Ishtar of Assyria was worshipped in pagan antiquity during her spring festival. Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 15, page 748, gives us the following information.
Ishtar, goddess of love and war, the most important goddess of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon. Her name in Sumerian is Inanna (lady of heaven). She was sister of the sun god Shamash and daughter of the moon god Sin. Ishtar was equated with the planet Venus. Her symbol was a star inscribed in a circle. As goddess of war, she was often represented sitting upon a lion. As goddess of physical love, she was patron of the temple prostitutes. She was also considered the merciful mother who intercedes with the gods on behalf of her worshippers.
Astarte of Phoenicia was the offshoot of Ishtar of Assyria. To the Hebrews, this abomination was known as Ashtoreth—Ashtoroth. From Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 3, page 13, we read:
ASHTAROTH the plural of the Hebrew `Ashtoreth, the Phoenician Canaanite goddess Astarte, deity of fertility, reproduction, and war.
Watson's Biblical and Archaeological Dictionary, 1833, tells us more about this mother Goddess, Ashtaroth.
ASHTAROTH, or ASTARTE, a goddess of the Zidonians. She was also called the queen of heaven; and sometimes her worship is said to be that of "the host of heaven."
The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 3, page 975, tells us of Ishtar's role as The Queen of Heaven:
Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility, who was identified with the Venus Star and is actually entitled "Mistress of Heaven" in the Amarna tablets. The title "Queen of Heaven" is applied in an Egyptian inscription from the Nineteenth Dynasty at Beth-shan to "Antit," the Canaanite fertility-goddess Anat, who is termed "Queen of Heaven and Mistress of the Gods."
We find the following information about Ashtoreth from The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 1, pages 319-320.
ASHTORETH ash'te-reth [Heb. 'astoret. pl. 'astarôt; Gk. Astarte]. A goddess of Canaan and Phoenicia whose name and cult were derived from Babylonia, where Ishtar represented the evening and morning stars and was accordingly androgynous in origin. From Babylonia the worship of the goddess was carried to the Semites of the West, and in most instances the feminine suffix was attached to her name; where this was not the case the deity was regarded as a male. The cult of the Greek Aphrodite in Cyprus was borrowed from that of Ashtoreth; that the Greek name also is a modification of Ashtoreth is doubtful. It is maintained, however, that the vowels of Heb. `astoret were borrowed from boset ("shame") in order to indicate the abhorrence the Hebrew scribes felt toward paganism and idolatry.
In Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar was the goddess of love and war. An old Babylonian legend relates how the descent of Ishtar into Hades in search of her dead husband Tammuz was followed by the cessation of marriage and birth in both earth and heaven... The other goddesses of Babylonia, who were little more than reflections of a god, tended to merge into Ishtar, who thus became a type of the female divinity, a personification of the productive principle in nature, and more especially the mother and creatress of mankind.
In Babylonia Ishtar was identified with Venus. Like Venus, Ishtar was the goddess of erotic love and fertility. Her chief seat of worship was Uruk (Erech), where prostitution was practiced in her name and she was served with immoral rites by bands of men and women.
The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 1, page 252 says:
The antipathy toward the Asherah on the part of the Hebrew leaders was due to the fact that the goddess and the cult object of the same name were associated with the fertility religion of a foreign people and as such involved a mythology and a cultus which were obnoxious to the champions of Yahweh.
Unger's Bible Dictionary, page 412, gives us the following information about Asherah.
Asherah (a-she'ra), plural, Asherim, a pagan goddess ...Asherah was only one manifestation of a chief goddess of Western Asia, regarded now as the wife, now as the sister of the principal Canaanite god El. Other names of this deity were Ashtoreth (Astarte) and Anath. Frequently represented as a nude woman bestride a lion with a lily in one hand and a serpent in the other...
Characteristically Canaanite, the lily symbolizes grace and sex appeal and the serpent fecundity.
On page 413 of Unger's Bible Dictionary, we have found that Astarte is the Greek name for the Hebrew Ashtoreth. From Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 3, page 97, we find that Astarte-Ashtaroth is merely the Semitic Ishtar, Easter.
In Ephesus, this Mother Goddess had been called Diana, who was worshipped as the Goddess of Virginity and Motherhood. She was said to represent the generative powers of nature, and so was pictured with many breasts. A tower shaped crown, symbolizing the Tower of Babylon, adorned her head.
Reading from Bible Manners And Customs, page 451, we learn the following facts about the mother of all things.
The circle round her head denotes the nimbus (sin circle) of her glory, the griffins inside of which express its brilliancy. In her breasts are the twelve signs of the zodiac... Lions are on her arms to denote her power, and her hands are stretched out to show that she is ready to receive all who come to her. Her body is covered with various breasts and monsters, as sirens, sphinxes, and griffins, to show that she is the source of nature, the mother of all things... Like Rhea, she was crowned with turrets, to denote her dominion over terrestrial objects.
The worship of Ishtar-Easter spread throughout the world, where she was venerated in almost every segment of society. The original of this Goddess, however, loomed upon the historical scene in Babylon. From The Two Babylons by Hislop, pages 20-22, we find this information about the original of this Great Mother Goddess—Semiramis.
The Babylonians in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother, and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother's arms (Figs. 5 and 6). From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth.
The original of that mother, so widely worshipped, there is reason to believe, was Semiramis, * already referred to, who, it is well known, was worshipped by the Babylonians, * and other eastern nations, § and that under the name of Rhea, ||the great goddess "Mother."
It was from the son, however, that she derived all her glory and her claims to deification. In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. viii. 14) under the name of Tammuz, but he is commonly known among classical writers under the name of Bacchus, that is, "The Lamented One." ¶ To the ordinary reader the name of Bacchus suggests nothing more than revelry and drunkenness, but it is now well known, that amid all the abominations that attended his orgies, their grand design was professedly "the purification of souls," * and that from the guilt and defilement of sin. This lamented one, exhibited and adored as a little child in his mother's arms, seems, in point of fact, to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name, Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified "The Son,"* As Semiramis, the wife, was worshipped as Rhea, whose grand distinguishing character was that of the great goddess ``Mother,''* the conjunction with her of her husband, under the name of Ninus, or "The Son," was sufficient to originate the peculiar worship of the "Mother and Son" so extensively diffused among the nations of antiquity...
The Babylonian worship of the Great Mother spread throughout the known world. This Mother Goddess was known by different names, but the form of her religion has not transformed since antiquity. The Layman's Bible Encyclopedia, page 209, gives the following facts about Easter.
EASTER, an annual celebration observed by much of the Christian church, commemorating Christ's resurrection. Modern observance of Easter represents a convergence of three traditions: (1) The Hebrew Passover, celebrated during Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew lunar calendar; (2) The Christian commemoration of the 'crucifixion' and resurrection of 'Jesus', which took place at the feast of the Passover; and (3) The Norse Ostara or Eostra (from which the name, "Easter" is derived), a pagan festival of spring which fell at the vernal equinox, March 21. Prominent symbols in this celebration of the resurrection of nature after the winter were rabbits, signifying fecundity, and eggs, colored like the rays of the "returning sun" and the northern lights, or "aurora borealis."
Eggs have absolutely nothing to do with the resurrection of the Messiah (three days and three nights after He was placed in
the grave), but the egg was a sacred symbol to the Babylonians. An egg of wondrous size fell from heaven into the Euphrates
River; from this marvelous egg the Goddess Astarte (Easter) was hatched. From the land of Babylon, humanity was scattered to
the various parts of the earth. These religious people took with them the symbol of the mystic sacred egg. Each pagan nation
had its own representation of this wonder. The Greeks had their sacred egg of Heliopolis, and the Typhon's Egg.
From The Two Babylons, by Hislop on page 109, we learn about the Mystic Egg of Astarte:
An egg of wondrous size is said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates. The fishes rolled it to the bank, where the doves having settled upon it, hatched it, and out came Venus, who afterwards was called the Syrian Goddess''* -- that is, Astarte. Hence the egg became one of the symbols of Astarte or Easter...
The Roman Catholic Church now has their own Official Representation of
Ishtar—the Virgin Mother,who stands upon
the top of this Sacred Egg of Heliopolis, with the Serpent Typhon at her feet.
From The Encyclopedia Britannica, we find the following information about Easter:
Like the Easter Egg, the Easter Hare came to Christianity from antiquity. The hare is associated with the moon in the legends of ancient Egypt and other peoples... Through the fact that the Egyptian word for hare—um, means also open and period. The hare came to be associated with the idea of periodicity both lunar and human, and with the beginning of new life in both the young man and young woman, and so a symbol of fertility and of the renewal of life.
Easter eggs and rabbits are the symbols of sexual fertility in the ancient, pagan religions. The Reader's Digest Book of Facts, page 122, gives the following information.
EASTER AND THE BUNNY—Children's stories in many countries tell how Easter eggs are brought not by a chicken but by hares and rabbits. These long eared hopping mammals have represented fertility in many cultures because they breed so quickly. In traditional Christian art the hare represents lust, and paintings sometimes show a hare at the Virgin Mary's feet... Yet as a symbol of life reawakening in the spring -- often portrayed as the innocent and cuddly Easter bunny -- the rabbit coexists in many places with the solemn Christian rites of Easter.
Another custom closely associated with Easter is the baking and eating of Hot Cross Buns. There is, of course, no
Scriptural justification for this custom, but there is great pagan justification involved. The cross is the original sign of the God
Tammuz. The cross is the letter T.
The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop on pages 197-200, tells us the following about the sign of the cross.
The magic virtues attributed to the so-called "sign of the cross", the worship bestowed on it, never came from (Yahshua or His Apostles). The same sign of the "cross" that Rome now worships was used in the Babylonian Mysteries, and was applied by paganism to the same magic purposes (signing oneself, kissing the cross, holding the cross, wearing it as a charm), was honored with the same honors. That which is now called the "Christian Cross" was originally no Christian emblem at all, but was the Mystic Tau of the Chaldeans and Egyptians—the true original form of the letter "T" -- the initial of the name of Tammuz...that mystic "Tau" was marked in baptism on the foreheads of those initiated in the Mysteries...The mystic "Tau", as the symbol of the great divinity, was called "the Sign of Life"; it was used as an amulet ("god luck charm") over the heart; it was marked on the official garments of the (Ancient Pagan) priests, as (now) on the official garments of the Priests of Rome (today)...The Vestal Virgins of pagan Rome wore (the crosss) suspended from their neck laces, as the Nuns do today...men as well as women wore earrings and they frequently had a small cross supspended to a necklace or to the collar of their dress..(the cross) was also appended to the robes of the "Rot-N-No" (Pagan Priests), and traces of it may be seen in the fancy ornaments of the "Rebo" (Pagan Priests); showing that it was already in use as early as the the Fifteenth Century before the Christian Era...
There is hardly a pagan tribe where the cross has not been found. The cross was worshipped by the pagan Celts long before the "incarnation" and death of Christ...
The Druids in their groves were accustomed to select the most stately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity (god) they adorned, and having cut the side branches, they affixed two of the largest of them to the highest part of the trunk, in such a manner that those branches extended on each side like the arms of a man, and together with the body, presented the appearance of a huge cross, and on the bark, in several places, was also inscribed the letter "Thau". It was worshipped in Mexico for ages before the Roman Catholc missionaries set foot there, large stone crosses being erected, probably to the the "god of rain". The cross thus widely worshipped, or regarded as a scred emblem, was the unequivocal symbol of "Bacchus", the Babylonian Messiah, for he was represented with a head-band covered with crosses.
Tammuz according to Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 15, page 749, was the Sumero-Akkadian God of vegetation, who was known as Adoni -- my Lord.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 4, page 725, shows that the original of the name Tammuz, is dumuzi, and means invigorator of the child. Tammuz was the same Sumerian and Babylonian God of fertility, who married Easter-Ishtar at the vernal equinox. Tammuz is mentioned in Yechetzqyah.
Yechetzqyah 8:13-14
13 He also said to me: Turn yet again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.
14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of Yahweh's House, which was toward the north; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.
This weeping for Tammuz was an abomination which was being practiced even by the people of Yerusalem at the time that Yechetzqyah was prophesying. This weeping was a fertility rite. one of the ceremonies of Ishtar-Easter worship, was weeping for the dead vegetation God, because fertility had ceased from the land. In the people's minds, unless this God was resurrected, there would be no renewing of fertility with the great Mother Goddess. So, through sympathetic magic, Tammuz was mystically resurrected. Each year these people grieved with Ishtar-Easter over the death of Tammuz; and at each vernal equinox they were rewarded as this resurrected God was reunited wtih his great Mother Goddess, in order to ensure that success of the crops and the fertility of animals and people.
The very things that the people were seeking to reproduce in this fertility worship, man, animals, fruits, and produce, were the very things that Yahweh would not bless because of their God worship.
The Interpreter's Dictionary of The Bible, Volume 3, page 975, tells us of Ishtar's role as The Queen of Heaven.
QUEEN OF HEAVEN. The object of worship, particularly by women, in Judah in the time of Jeremiah; cakes (konim), possibly shaped as figurines, were offered to her with libations (Jer. 7:18; 44:17-19, 25). Jeremiah censures the Jewish refugees in Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem for burning incense and offering libation to the Queen of heaven ..
If "the queen of heaven" is to be read--which seems more probable--the reference might be to Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility, who was identified with the Venus Star and is actually entitled "Mistress of Heaven" in the Amarna tablets.
We have had the opportunity to read more than once that the name and the festival of Easter have their origins in the worship of a pagan Goddess of spring, but Easter is now the most important of Christian festivals. From The Last Two Million Years by The Reader's Digest Association, page 215, we learn how the worship of a pagan Goddess became the most important Christian festival.
Pagan rites absorbed.
By a stroke of tactical genius the Church, while intolerant of pagan beliefs, was able to harness the powerful emotions generated by pagan worship. Often, churches were sited where temples had stood before, and many heathern festivals were added to the Christian calendar. Easter, for instance, a time of sacrifice and rebirth in the Christian year, takes its name from the Norse goddess Eostre., in whose honour rites were held every spring. She in turn was simply a northern version of the Phoenician earth-mother Astarte, goddess of fertility. Easter eggs continue an age-old tradition in which the egg is a symbol of birth; and cakes which were eaten to mark the festivals of Astarte and Eostre were the direct ancestors of our hot-cross buns.
Why were the pagan rites absorbed, rather than being completely abolished? The answer to this question is that many people had been drawn to the religion called Christianity, but so strong in the their minds was their adoration for the Mother Goddess, that they would not forsake her worship. Due to the fact that Christianity could readily trasnform its beliefs, compromising church leaders saw their opportunity. They found similarities in Christian customs with those of the Mother Goddess--and brought people by the droves into their fold.
Who did these compromising church leaders find to worship, instead of the Great Mother Ishtar-Easter? They found Miryam, the mother of Yahshua Messiah. Through Mary worship, the people could continue their customary prayers and devotion to the mediating Goddess--just change her name to Mary. This would give
the pagan worship of the Mother the appearance of respectability the same respectability that it still holds today. Slowly but methodically, the religion of pagan Rome, which was a synthesis of everything that was abominable to Yahweh from the beginning, became established with its new name: Christianity.
During the first centuries of this religion, no emphasis was placed upon Mary whatsoever. Due to Constantine the Great, in the early part of the Fourth Century of this Common Era, the worship of Mary as a Goddess was encouraged. Since Rome had long been a a center for the worship of the Mother Goddess of paganism, we need not be surprised that Rome was one of the first places where Mary worship, and many ohter renamed, but very familar customs, became firmly rooted.
From Grolier's Encyclopedia, Volume 17, we find the following information.
Easter: A Day of Joy
Though not all Protestants observe Lent and Holy Week, all Christians celebrate Easter Day, commemorating the Resurrection. Easter Day invariably falls on a Sunday, the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox, usually late in March.
The name of this holiday and the time it is celebrated have led people to believe that an earlier holiday existed on this day before the Christian observance. For many ancient nations joyously celebrated the end of winter and the "resurrection of the sun" at this season of the year; and some devoted this festival to Eostre, Germanic goddess of spring.
The Church Fathers turned this heathen holiday into a the Christian celebration of the Resurrection.
On Easter people go to church services and delight in the sight of the great masses of Easter lilies that decorate the altars.
Many encyclopedias will make the statement that Easter is the worship of a pagan Goddess and at the same time will state this celebration is one of the most important Christian celebrations today. In each of these reference works a statement is made, in one form or another, that Easter is the day on which the Christian Chruch commemorates our Savior's resurrection.
On Easter Sunday morning, almost the entire Christian world will participate in a sunrise service that they believe to be in celebration of he resurrection of our Messiah. This is actually a pagan custom celebrated long before our Savior was even born. Yahweh condemns this pagan practice through the pages of your own Bible.