The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

But further proofs are superfluous, as the zodiacal designs must be much older than the Bible or they could not have been so frequently used in it.

The Chaldean drama called the book of Job is supposed by some persons to be very ancient, and its author showed his familiarity with the zodiacal constellations when he so sublimely challenged his opponent: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth?” etc. etc. But can there be any doubt as to the antiquity of the zodiac when there is an honored Protestant doctor of divinity, now living, who holds to the opinion that Enoch, or even Adam himself, invented the zodiac to foreshadow the redemption of fallen man through the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of a veritable God? Martin Luther is said to have thrown his inkstand at the head of the devil. If the lusty old Reformer could now visit this world, he would denounce in unmeasured terms of righteous wrath a man who under the garb of a Lutheran minister could utter such consummate nonsense. And yet we must not forget that Dr. Martin Luther himself denounced Copernicus as an atheist and a fool.

It is the misfortune of the prevalent dogmatic theology that it was formed by people who held the geocentric theory—that is, that this little globe is the centre of the universe. Even now our professional priests seldom extend their thoughts beyond the narrow limits of the planet upon which we dwell. They do not realize that, while the earth travels at the rate of 68,000 miles an hour, Mercury makes 110,000 miles an hour, and that the sun has 1,380,000 times our earth’s bulk, and has a diameter of 822,000 miles to our earth’s 8000; and that astronomers have some knowledge of a fixed star in the constellation of the Swan which is 62,481,500,000,000 (62 trillions 481 billions 500 millions) of miles from this planet, and that light, which travels from the sun to the earth in eight minutes, would require ten years to reach us from that star. Yet the author of the Gospel in the Stars thinks the whole celestial universe was so constructed as to shadow forth the dogmas of petty preachers of modern times! One can only laugh at such fanciful follies.

CHAPTER VI. ASTRAL KEYS TO BIBLE STORIES

“Therefore they took a key and opened them.”—Judg. 3: 25.

IT is the carefully-formed conclusion of many independent thinkers that there is very little real history or biography in the Old-Testament Scriptures. It is a monstrous mistake in modern ministers to take as literal what is, in fact, strictly allegorical. The figurative character of most of the Bible narratives was well known and freely admitted by many ancient writers, Jewish and Christian, as will be shown hereafter.

It would be natural to commence our studies of Hebrew symbolism with the account of the creation and alleged fall of man; but as this dogma is so directly connected with the dogmas of modern sacerdotalism, we reserve the examination of the so-called Mosaic account of Eden and the fall until we are ready to enter upon what is called, in theological parlance, “the redemptive scheme” of Christianity. We say so-called Mosaic account, for there are many reasons for doubting, as I have shown, that he wrote the Pentateuch, should his existence be admitted for the sake of argument. Archbishop Burnet, in speaking of the story of creation, says: “We receive this history without examination, because it was written by Moses; but if we had found it in the work of a Greek philosopher, a rabbi, or Mohammedan, our minds would be arrested at every step by doubts and objections. This difference in our judgment does not come from the nature of the facts; it comes from the opinion we have of Moses, whom we believe to be inspired.” Here are three assumptions not supported by a particle of evidence, to wit: that such a man as Moses existed, that he was supernaturally inspired, and that he wrote Genesis and other books of the Pentateuch under divine inspiration. Now, we have no account of the real existence of Moses, and no account of what he did and said except from writings accredited to him and the incidental mention of him in the New Testament. His alleged wonderful exploits in Egypt are not mentioned in Egyptian annals nor in any other contemporaneous writings, while many things-said of him in the Old Testament are substantially recorded of many other persons, as already shown.

There are many reasons for believing that Moses was a personification of the sun and his whole history a myth. Observing persons cannot fail to notice that all ancient paintings and statues of Moses represent him with horns, probably originally denoting the rays of the sun when in the constellation Taurus the Bull. The fact is well known that what is called the history of the Jews is mainly fiction, and that, too, borrowed from other peoples and modified to suit circumstances; and very bungling work have they made of it. The sacerdotalists of the world may be safely challenged to produce anything strictly original from the Old Testament, especially relating to morals. The historian Josephus admits that the Jews “never invented anything useful.” Even the writings of Josephus should be received with many grains of allowance. He was himself superstitious and credulous, as shown in his story of a heifer giving birth to a lamb when being led from the temple stable to the altar. Moreover, we have no ancient certified copies of what he did actually write, and there is abundant evidence of alterations and interpolations in his alleged writings by sacerdotalists in modern times. There is no greater imposition palmed off upon the ignorant than the commonly-believed falsehoods that the Jews were a very ancient people and that their Scriptures are the oldest book extant.

We now take up a few Bible stories, and give to them a symbolic instead of an historic interpretation; and for obvious reasons we begin with the alleged progenitor of the Jewish nation, Abraham.

It may or may not be a mere coincidence that by transposing the letters of the name Abraham we have the name Brahma—just as in the old legend of the sacrifice of the daughter of Agamemnon, Iphthi-genia, if we divide the syllables into words, Iphthi-geni, we have literally Jephthah’s daughter; so, after all, it may be greatly to the credit of Jephthah that the story is fabulous. These curious coincidences are not here offered as evidence. It is acknowledged, at least by implication, in the Bible itself that the story of Abraham is of Chaldean origin, as his father Terah was a native of Ur of the Chaldees and the alleged patriarch was a Chaldean. Now, these people were great astronomers in very ancient times, and were accustomed to veil their occult science under just such allegorical personifications and fabulous tales as this of Abraham. Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle credited to him, lets out the whole secret (Gal. 4: 22-26): “For it is written Abraham had two sons, one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise; which things are an allegory,” etc. Now, if you carefully read the apostolic explanation in these verses, you will notice that the two sons of Abraham are two covenants, and the bondmaid Hagar represents an Arabian mountain, which by a magical change becomes the same as the city of Jerusalem. The name Abram signifies the “Father of Elevation,” which is the astronomical distinction of the planet Saturn, the exaltation of which, with its devious ways, well represents the alleged history of its prototype. The word Chasdim, translated Chaldees, literally means light, and is a professional not a geographical name, and probably refers to the art of magic and the work of astrologers; so that it is more than probable that Abram was not a person, any more than Chasdim was a place. There are many references in the Scriptures which favor this interpretation, but which cannot here be mentioned. Even in the Lord’s Prayer, found in Jewish rituals long before the Christian era, there are evidences that it was first addressed to Saturn. There never was any form of religious worship which did not contain an expression equivalent to Our Father who art in heaven. Even Jupiter means Our Father in the sky.

The name of Abram has many variations, and there is an important sense in which he may be called “the father of many nations.” He was the Esrael of the Chaldeans, the Israel of the Phœnicians, as the historian Sanchoniathon distinctly alleges that their name for Saturn was Israel: the names Abraham and Israel are used interchangeably in both the Old and New Testaments, and among the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Persians, and other nations he was the god Saturnus of the whole pagan world. Even upon the dials of our “grandfathers’ clocks,” cherished in many families as heirlooms in our day, his memory is kept green by the figure of the god of Time. Scores of other similitudes between Saturn and Abraham could here be introduced did space permit. Suffice it to say, Saturn in fable married his own sister, who was a star; and so did Abraham, and the name of his wife signifies a star. Both had many sons, but each had a favorite son, and Saturn called his Jeoud, which implies an only son, as Abraham so regarded Isaac. A learned English scholar has suggested that the name “Jeoud” is the real origin of the name “Jew,” and he assigns several philological and historical reasons for his theory. It is certain in the minds of many profound and independent investigators that the Jewish tribes originated in Arabia, and were originally a mere religious order, and that their so-called history is largely fabulous, and that their exodus is a comparatively modern novel with an ancient date, as has been shown.

Let us now take the best-remembered incident in the life of Abraham, the attempted murder and the rescue of his son Isaac, and see what will come of applying the symbolic instead of the literal interpretation to it.

Let it be noted that this is not an original story. The ancient Hindoos have one like it. King Haris-candra had no son. He prayed for one, and promised that if one should be born to him he would sacrifice him to the gods. One was born, and he named him Rohita. One day his father told him of his promise to Varuna to offer him in sacrifice. The son bought a substitute, and when he was about to be immolated he was marvellously rescued. Then there is the well-known similar story written by the Phœnician Sanchoniathon

thirteen hundred years before our era. Then there is the Grecian story of Agamemnon, to whom, when about to sacrifice his daughter, a stag was furnished by a goddess as a substitute. There is another Grecian fable in which a maiden was about to be sacrificed, and as the priest uplifted his knife to shed her blood the victim suddenly disappeared, and a goat of uncommon beauty stood in her place as a substitute. Another story runs thus: In Sparta the maiden Helena was about to be immolated on the altar of the gods, when an eagle carried off the knife of the priest and laid it upon the neck of a heifer, which was sacrificed in her stead. Similar stories might be produced from among many nations in the most ancient times, long before the Jews picked this up in Babylon and rewrote it, with modifications, so as to apply it to their mythical progenitor; for this fable of Abraham's offering was not written until after their return from their Babylonish captivity—much nearer our own time than is generally suspected.

Regarded as an historic account of a real transaction, this story of the attempted sacrifice of a beloved son by a venerable father is shocking in the extreme, dishonoring alike to God and to Abraham. A good God could not have done such an unnatural and cruel thing. He had no occasion to try Abraham to find out how much faith he had. He knew that already. Regarded as an astrological allegory, it is ingenious and contains a moral lesson, to wit: obedience to the voice of God and the hope of deliverance in the hour of extreme emergency. The defect in the story is, that God could trifle with a loving child, and pretend to require him to break one of his own commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” and subject him to its own penalty, “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” It would not have availed Abraham to plead that God told him to murder his son, any more than it availed the Pocasset crank when he pleaded that God had directed him to murder his little daughter. The State of Massachusetts sent the semi-lunatic to a safe place of confinement. This story of Abraham and Isaac has led to scores and scores of murders of children by their fathers, just as the passage in the Old Testament, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” has been pleaded in justification of the cool, deliberate murder of multitudes of men, women, and children on the charge of witchcraft.

The literal interpretation of what is called infallible Scripture has been the most bitter curse to deluded, priest-ridden humanity. It is the “stock in trade” of ignorant and selfish ecclesiastics to-day.

Let us look a little more closely at this Abraham-and-Isaac myth. Abraham was the personification of Saturn, the god of Time, while Isaac was the personification of the Sun. Abraham took Isaac up to Hebron—which means union or alliance, and clearly indicates a union of the ecliptic and equinoctial line—the very point at which the Ram of the vernal equinox passed by, or, as might be poetically said, was caught in a cloud or bush; so that the whole story was written long ages before in the celestial heavens, and emblazoned in the skies at the return of each vernal equinox. Writers on astro-theology point out details at great length to support the symbolic interpretation, but it is enough for pur purpose to merely give the keynote. Let the fact be specially noted that the names of the patriarchs have an astrological meaning,

and that the twelve sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, have distinctly astrological characters, fully indicated in Jacob’s dying blessing on his sons (Gen. 49) and in the corresponding “Song of Moses” (Deut. 33), on the banner carried by the different tribes in their mythical march from Egypt to Canaan; and that on the breastplate of the officiating high priest the jewels correspond to the celestial signs of the solar zodiac; and although Jacob had children by several different women and was a first-class Mormon, his twelve sons are made to correspond with the twelve months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. This fact is admitted by the orthodox author of The Gospel in the Stars. His daughters are not considered worthy of notice, as that would have spoiled the riddle. The philology and etymology of the name Jacob has suggestions of the serpent; and from his history he must have been a snaky fellow from the first to the last. He was born with his hand upon his brother’s “heel,” and he managed to cheat him out of his share of his mother’s affections, and lied to his father, and conspired with his mother to rob Esau, his brother, of his “blessing.” The stories of Laban and Leah and Rachel all conform to the symbolic rather than the literal hypothesis, as well as Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and his wrestling-match with the angel, when he openly obtained the astrological name of the children of Saturn—Israel. It must be admitted that the allegorical hypothesis relieves the patriarchs of the charge of many mean things, such as the heartless manner in which Abram treated Hagar when Sarah got jealous, and the manner in which he treated Sarah herself when he lied to the king through a selfish cowardice and gave his wife over to the lusts of the monarch Abimelech, who was (or one bearing his name) deceived by Isaac in regard to Rebekah by a similar trick (Gen. 26:1). Lot, the nephew of Abraham, was guilty of a meaner and more unmanly act when he himself proposed to give over his two virgin daughters to the worse than beastly lusts of a howling mob, to protect two angels who were guests at his tent (Gen. 19:1-11).

But theologians will never willingly admit that the Abraham of Genesis was a myth. They well know the logical conclusion. They would have to give up the “Abrahamic covenant,” which is the basis of sacerdotalism. When Professor Driver, of the orthodox University of Oxford, recently admitted only by implication that Abraham may have had no real personal existence, and claimed that such hypothesis would not be injurious to religion, his article was rejected and suppressed by the editor of an orthodox paper in Philadelphia as dangerous. But to assume that all the principal actors of Genesis and some other books were impersonations, not persons, would not destroy the good things they are alleged to have said and done. It is no more necessary to insist upon the real personality of Abraham than to insist upon the literal existence of Faithful and Great-Heart and other impersonations in Pilgrim’s Progress. Nobody insists that the characters in the parables accredited to Jesus must be taken in a literal sense. And yet it may be admitted that the fictions of Scripture may have been suggested by some persons and facts, just as in modern novels there generally is some person who stands for the original of the story. This is eminently so in the novels of Dickens and D’Israeli. Nevertheless, it is difficult to doubt that the principal characters of the Old Testament are mythical, pure and simple, as we find the originals in the older scriptures of different nations, confessedly founded upon the solar and other forms of Nature-worship. The feet is, that the only rational way to explain the marvellous stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is by the well-known methods of ancient symbolism.

Let us now merely glance at some other Old-Testament fables.

Noah and his Deluge are mainly mythical, as this story is almost a literal copy of the Chaldean, though found substantially in the writings of many other nations. It readily fits the allegorical method of interpretation in almost every particular. The Chaldean account as written by Berosus, and found recently by the late George Smith of the British Museum on the clay tablets, is so much like the story in Genesis that the latter must have been copied from the former; and the slight variations in the two narratives are no greater than might have been expected as between Chaldea and Palestine. The Jews obtained it from Babylon, as there is no mention made of this miracle in any book of the Bible written before the Captivity. The books of Psalms, Proverbs, Chronicles, Judges, Kings, etc. are silent on this subject. Josephus defended the Noachian Deluge on the sole ground that an account of it was held by the Chaldeans, never pretending that the Chaldean account was taken from the Jewish record.

But it is useless to dwell on the story of a universal deluge of water. It is in the light of modern science physically impossible and absurd; and such men as Buckland, Pye Smith, Hugh Miller, and Hitchcock, with many other distinguished Christian scientists, give up the doctrine of a universal deluge while claiming a partial one. And here, again, the ancient astronomy comes in with an explanation of partial floods of waters by the natural results of the “precession of the equinoxes,” in which, at certain periods during the change of the polar axis of the earth, great physical convulsions must follow, with wide eruptions of water, making a partial overflow and suggesting the idea of a universal deluge. Four such cataclysms must have occurred while the sun was making one journey through the twelve zodiacal constellations. Prof. Huxley has recently well said: “But the voice of archæology and historical criticism still has to be heard, and it gives forth no uncertain sound. The marvellous recovery of the records of an antiquity far superior to any that can be ascribed to the Pentateuch, which has been effected by the decipherers of cuneiform characters, has put us in possession of a series once more, not of speculations, but of facts, which has a most remarkable bearing upon the question of the trustworthiness of the narrative of the Flood. It is established that for centuries before the asserted migration of Terah from Ur of the Chaldees (which, according to the orthodox interpreters of the Pentateuch, took place after the year 2000 b. c.) Lower Mesopotamia was the seat of a civilization in which art and science and literature had attained a development formerly unsuspected, or, if there were faint reports of it, treated as fabulous. And it is also no matter of speculation, but a fact, that the libraries of this people contain versions of a long epic poem, one of the twelve books of which tells the story of a deluge which in a number of its leading features corresponds to the story attributed to Berosus, no less than with the story given in Genesis, with curious exactnesss.

“Looking at the convergence of all these lines of evidence leads to the one conclusion—that the story of the Flood in Genesis is merely a version of one of the oldest pieces of purely fictitious literature extant; that whether this is or is not its origin, the events asserted in it to have taken place assuredly never did take place; further, that in point of fact the story in the plain and logically necessary sense of its words has long since been given up by orthodox and conservative commentators of the Established Church.”

The only rational interpretation of the extraordinary stories of the Pentateuch and other scriptures is to regard them as mythical and allegorical, borrowed from the astrological systems of more ancient peoples. It is very difficult to present within the limits here allowed what has grown into ponderous volumes in elucidating the matter in hand.

The story of Jonah and the Fish, taken as a literal story, is incredible, though the notorious Brooklyn preacher thinks that it must be literally true, as that God might have so diluted the gastric juice in the stomach of the fish as to make Jonah quite indigestible! This whole story is found in earlier pagan writings, and is fully explained by the astronomical phenomena. The earth is a huge fish in the ancient mythology, and on December the 21st the sun (Jonah, the type) sinks into its dark belly, and after three days—to wit, December 25th—it comes forth. The Sun-god is on dry land again.

There is a Hindoo fable much like this. In Grecian fable Hercules was swallowed by a whale at Joppa, and is said to have lain three days in his entrails. The Sun was called Jona, as can be shown from many authorities. The nursery-tale of “Little Red Riding-Hood” was also a sun-myth, mutilated in the English story, showing how the Sun was devoured by the Black Wolf (Night), and came out unhurt. Scores of similar sun-myths could be narrated.

But there are geographical inaccuracies which show its mythical character. Instead of Nineveh being “three days’ journey” from the coast where Jonah was vomited out, it is distant some four hundred miles of hill and plain, and the size of the city was not twenty by twelve miles, but more nearly eight by three miles. Moreover, the city showed no signs of decay till about two hundred and fifty years after the alleged warning of Jonah. It is truly astounding that intelligent men can be so blind. It was recently admitted by high Christian authority that there is not a particle of proof for this story except that Jesus had referred to Jonah as being “three days and nights in the whale’s belly.” If Jesus did say this, he used it as an illustration. He probably stated a current tradition, if he said it at all.

Let us now try our key in the closet-door of the Samson story.

According to the Bible account, Samson performed twelve principal exploits; and if you will turn to any good dictionary of mythology you will find a wonderful likeness to the twelve labors of Hercules in the Greek myth of the Sun. Time can be taken to examine only one—the cutting off of Samson’s hair while reposing in the lap of Delilah, and the consequent loss of his strength. Professor Goldhizer says: “Long locks of hair and a long beard are mythological attributes of the sun.”… “When the powerful summer’s sun is succeeded by the weak rays of the winter’s sun, its strength departs.” But as the sun becomes ascendant again he renews his strength, just as Samson’s strength returned when his hair grew out again. The seven locks represent the seven planetary worlds. The constellation Virgo represents Samson’s wife; and Delilah, in whose lap he dallied and lost his strength, represents the months of autumn, before the winter came to hand him over to the Philistines, the dreary time of the winter months. The story of Samson is found in the sun-myths of all the Sun-worship-ping nations, and the story of Hercules was known in an island colony of the Phœnicians five hundred years before it was known in Greece; and the story is almost as old as humanity itself. The very name Samson (or Samp-shon) in some languages means the sun; and there is not an exploit recorded of him that does not yield to the solar interpretation; and when modern ministers undertake to explain how Samson caught three hundred foxes and set fire to their tails, they never think to mention (if they happen to know it) that in the ancient festival of Ceres a fox-hunt was enacted in the theatres of Rome in which burning torches were bound to the foxes' tails. We have an explanation of this from Prof. Steinthal: “This was a symbolical reminder of the damage done to the fields by mildew, called the 'red fox' in the last of April. It was at the time of the Dog Star at which the mildew was most to be feared; and if at that time great solar heat followed too close upon the hoar-frost or dew of the cold nights, the mischief raged like a burning fox through the corn-fields. Like the lion, the fox is an animal that indicates the solar heat, being well suited both by its color and long-haired tail.” Bou-chart gives a similar explanation and application, and so do many other writers. It remains for ministers of this nineteenth century to dole out the ancient fables of the past as literal history to the grown-up children of to-day. The story of Samson in all its details yields to the key of ancient symbolism. Why not admit the fact that this is a solar myth, and thus get clear of all the blasphemy and absurdities of a literal interpretation?

The incredibly absurd story of Joshua’s commanding the sun to stand still for several hours has a rational explanation, regarded as a myth, well known to initiates to set forth the correction of the calendar, so as to make different periods correspondras one stops a clock to make it agree with the ringing of the standard time by the town bell. There are scores of parallels in ancient history.

Regard Solomon as a sun-myth, and you have no difficulty about the size of his family. The seven hundred wives and the three hundred concubines represented so many stars. Even the narratives of David’s exploits with the five kings, his “unpleasantness” with Saul, and his dalliance and intrigue with Bathsheba yield to the astro-mythological key.

The same is true of the story of the two she-bears that ate up the forty-two children who called shorn Elisha “bald-head.” The prophet was the Sun, denuded of his curls at a certain astronomical period; the two bears were the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the great bear and the little bear; and the forty-two children were a group of stars covered by the two bears, so that, figuratively, it might be said they were “eaten up.” And yet the late Dr. Nehemiah Adams of Boston once exclaimed: “I believe that the forty-two children who made fun of the bald head of the prophet of God are now in hell.” He once wrote an admirable book entitled Agnes; or, The Little Key, but he failed to find the skeleton key to unlock the solar fable of the prophet, the saucy little children, and the voracious bears.

Within the last few months Philadelphia has been the scene of a most imposing ecclesiastical ceremony—the investiture of the Roman Catholic archbishop with the pallium, a narrow band or sash made from wool grown upon white lambs that had been blessed by the Pope on St. Agnes’ Day. We heard the eloquent sermon of the archbishop of New York, and he commenced his plausible discourse by tracing the pallium to the mantle that fell from Elijah upon Elisha, the summer and winter sun, and was worn by him after the translation of Elijah. But we try our skeleton key, and find that Elijah represented the ascending summer sun, and Elisha the sun of autumn; and when Elijah gained the greatest height, of course his lessened rays, well called a “mantle,” fell upon the bald-headed man representing the autumn. This is the whole story in plain language, and this is the kind of stuff that ecclesiastical man-millinery is made of. The crowd stared with admiration and wonder, just as children are amused with their doll-babies, who are “sick” or “well,” “naughty” or “good,” according to the whims of the “little women” who dress and nurse them. There is a doll-baby period in every child’s history, and it may be necessary to have a doll-baby period in religion; but it does seem to some of us that it is about time for full-grown women and men to doff their bibs and aprons, lay aside their doll-babies and other ecclesiastical toys, and act as becomes men and women of full growth. Even Paul said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” It has been well said by a judicious writer: “Intelligent readers, except revelationists, well know that the Hebrew fables are myths which teem with history of a kind, if we can only separate the wheat from the chaff. So also is the story of the Creation in Genesis. We have a very valuable myth, though a purely phallic tale, such as East Indians—and perhaps they only—can thoroughly comprehend.