The Cross: Its Origin and SignificancePage 1
Christian Churches of God
No. 39
The Cross: Its Origin and Significance
(Edition 3.0 19940625-19991203)
This paper deals with the origin of the cross in history and examines the significance of the cross in human pre-Christian worship. The use of the cross symbol by the Church is examined as is the development of the form in religious symbolism. The relationship of the cross to the second commandment is also examined.
Christian Churches of God
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(Copyright 1994, 1997, 1999 Wade Cox)
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The Cross: Its Origin and Significance
Contents
The Cross: Its Origin and SignificancePage 1
Relevant Forms...... 2
Non-Christian Crosses...... 3
The Greek...... 3
The Indians...... 3
Bronze Age and Celt...... 3
America...... 3
China...... 4
The Enclosed Sun Cross...... 4
The Ankh Cross...... 5
The Ankh or Handled Cross...... 5
The Ankh in the Mysteries...... 6
The Ankh and the Resurrection...... 6
The Tau Cross...... 6
The Gammate Cross...... 7
The Cross in Christianity...... 8
Mark of the Cross...... 8
The Mystery Systems...... 9
The Basic System in the East...... 11
Europe...... 11
The Asherah...... 14
Extended Cross Symbols...... 15
The Crucifixion and Symbols...... 17
Shamanism and The World Pole...... 18
The Adoption of the Tree...... 18
Crosses and Trees...... 18
The Cross: Its Origin and SignificancePage 1
The Cross: Its Origin and SignificancePage 1
Relevant Forms
Drury (Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult) defines the cross as:
An ancient pre-Christian symbol interpreted by some occultists as uniting the male phallus (vertical bar) and the female vagina (horizontal bar). It is also a symbol of the four directions and a powerful weapon againstevil.
Berry (Encyclopaedia Heraldica) mentions 385 different crosses. Most are purely decorative or of heraldic significance (ERE, art. Cross, Vol. 4, pp. 324 ff). There are 9 types of crosses which have religious symbolism. These are:
1.The Greek or equilateral cross;
2.the so-called Latin cross (crux immissa or capitata) with the lower limb longer than the three others;
3.the Tau shaped cross (potencée or commissa);
4.the handled cross (crux ansata);
5.the St Andrews cross (crux decussata);
6.the Gammate cross;
7.the Maltese or rayed cross;
8.the Lorraine cross with double or triple traverse;
9.the cross mounted on steps (perronnée).
The cross has become associated with Christianity. It was not, however, an early Christian symbol and, indeed, the Sabbath-keeping Churches have traditionally been iconoclastic and have abhorred the use of the cross symbol as pagan. Indeed, some of the Sabbath-keeping Christians have been martyred for their opposition to the use of crosses in Christian symbolism. The Vandals were iconoclastic Subordinationists who destroyed the idols revered in Greece and Rome.
The Paulicians were iconoclasts as were all the Sabbatati who were associated with or descended from them.
The Paulicians always objected to their rivals worship of the Cross (Armenian, Chazus); therefore the term Chazitzarii, Chazinzarians(Staurolatræ) seems to denote no small sect, but the Established Church of Armenia as viewed by the Paulicians (Whitley ERE, art. Sects, p. 319).
This iconoclastic sentiment went with the Sabbatati throughout Europe. Peter of Bruys taught for some twenty years in the south of France against the excesses of the clergy, and specifically against the use of the cross. The Church authorities wrote against the practice thus:
In your parts the people are re-baptized, the churches profaned, the altars overthrown, crosses burned; on the very day of our Lord’s passion meat is publicly eaten, priests are scourged, monks imprisoned and compelled by terrors and tortures to marry (Whitley, ibid., p. 321; cf. A H Newman Manual of Church History, Philadelphia, 1900, 1. 560).
This prohibition against crosses (as well as the practice of adult baptism) continues in Sabbath-keeping Churches of God to the present. The cross symbol is most ancient and has a number of mystical meanings.
Non-Christian Crosses
The Greek
The Greek or equilateral cross is so simple in design that it was used to represent the most basic concepts of flight, armaments and fire production implements. Above all, generally, it was used to represent radiation or space (although, at times, its use was merely ornamental).
[T]he equilateral cross was adopted by the Chaldæo-Assyrians as the symbol of the sky and of its god Anu.
The same people represented the sun and its eight regions by a circle from which eight rays proceeded. By coupling these rays in pairs there was produced the radiated cross which the King of Assyria wore suspended round his neck like the cross worn by a Commander in our orders of knighthood (ERE, ibid., pp. 324-325).
The Assyrian kings were noted by Layard.
The statues of Kings Asurnazirpal and Sansirauman, now in the British Museum, have cruciform jewels about the neck (Layard Monuments of Nineveh, II, pl. IV) (Cath. Encyc., art. Cross, Vol. IV, p. 518).
The cross also appeared among the western Phoenicians.
Cruciform earrings have been found by Father Delattre in Punic tombs at Carthage (ibid.).
The cross has a meaning associated with sun worship. Schliemann has noted the presence of the cross on pottery and whorls of the Troad (the region about Troy) (ERE, ibid., p.325). It is alternated with the rayed disc and at times the two emblems appear in juxtaposition (ibid.)
The association with Apollo and the sun cults is noted, where Apollo’s sceptre assumes at times the form of a cross (cf. coin of Gallienus reproduced in Victor Duruy’s Hist. des Romains, Paris, 1885, Vol. VIII, p. 42, ERE, ibid.).
The cross is associated with Castor and Pollux on the coin of Caracalla (ibid.).
The Indians
The Indians used the equilateral cross alternating with a rayed disc. Cunningham (Bhilsa Topes, 1854, pl. xxxi) reproduces an ancient coin where the branches of the cross terminate in arrowheads.
The cross occurred naturally at the forkings of roads and thus became an object of veneration. The Avesta has the formula:
We sacrifice ... at the forkings of the highways and to the meeting of the roads (SBE, xxxi (1887) 291). In ancient India they were not to be deified or obstructed (ibid., xxii (1884) 182, xxxiii. (1889) 158, ERE, Vol. 4, art. Cross-Roads, pp. 330 ff).
The divinities in time became associated with the demonic activities that they were intended to ward off (ibid.).
Bronze Age and Celt
During the bronze age, especially amongst the Gauls, the cross appears frequently on pottery, jewels and coins (G de Mortillet La Signe de le Croix avant le christianisme, Paris, 1866, pp. 44 ff). D’Alviella (ERE, ibid.) considers this emblem to be clearly solar. A statuette of a Gaulish deity, Sucellus, discovered in France in Côte d’Or has a tunic covered all over in crosses. He holds a mallet which symbolises the thunderbolt and a jar or olla in the other hand (see Renel Religions de la Gaul avant le christianisme, Paris, 1906, pp. 252-257).
America
The cross is found also in Mexico, Peru and significantly in Central America. There they allude to the four winds which are the source of rain. In pre-Columbian America, it was a wind rose. Thus, among the Toltecs, it symbolised the god, Tialoc, who dispensed the celestial waters (see A Réville Religions du Mexique, Paris, 1885, p. 91 & Eng.tr.). Réville holds the Mexican cross to be the tree of fecundity or the tree of life. In the ruins of Palenqué, a bas-relief has been found:
representing persons in the act of adoration before a cross on which rests a fantastic bird, more or less resembling a parrot (ERE, op. cit., p. 325).
D’Alviella says of this that:
Perhaps this was the symbol of the god Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent), who himself also according to Réville, stands for a god of the wind (op. cit., p. 82, see also Thomas Wilson The Swastika, 1896, pp. 933 ff. Spence (Cross (American)) notes the use of the world tree which appears here as it does in shamanism generally, ibid., p. 330).
The Dakotas also used the cross to represent the four winds (ERE, ibid., fig. 8) and as such this appears to have been a symbol of shamanism. The American cross may have assumed a solar or stellar character from shells found in the mounds of New Mexico (ibid., figs. 9 & 10; see also Spence, ibid.).
China
The early symbolism of the cross was expressed in the Chinese ideogram of the word for earth which is an equilateral cross within a square. D’Alviella quotes Samuel Beal (Indian Antiquary, 1880, p. 67) that:
there is found in China even the dictum ‘God fashioned the earth in the form of a cross’
and goes on to note the curious analogous symbolism in the writings of the theologian Jerome on the cross:
(Com in Marcum) what is it but the form of the world in its four directions? [Ipsa species crucis, quid est nisi forma quadrata mundi?]. The east is represented by the top, the north by the right limb (looking from the cross), the south by the left, the west by the lower portion (ERE, op. cit., p.326).
It is unlikely that the Chinese ideogram was borrowed directly into Christianity in Jerome’s structure but, rather, it is more probable that the shamanism involved in the Chinese structure had penetrated all the systems.
The Enclosed Sun Cross
David Talbot (The Saturn Myth, Doubleday, NY, 1980) notes in Chapter 6 The Enclosed Sun Cross, the sign as occurring in many nations from Egypt through the Middle East to India and China; from Crete to Scandinavia; from Alaska to South America.
The enclosed sun cross appears to represent the four rivers of paradise. The Bible refers to this as the river which went out from Eden and parted into four heads. Tradition has it that the four rivers flowed in opposite directions. The tradition is found among the Navaho Indian narration of the Age of Beginnings. This tradition is also found in the story of the Chinese Paradise of Kwen-lun. The four rivers also appear in the Hindu Rig Veda, and the Vishnu Purana identifies the four streams as the paradise of Brahma at the world summit. They, too, flow in four directions (Talbot, ibid.). This story is found among the Iranian myths concerning the central font of Ardi Sura, and is the Sea of Life of the Siberian Kalmuks. The Mandaeans of Iraq maintain the same tradition as Genesis; as the Babylonians also spoke of the Land of the Four Rivers.
The home of the Greek goddess Calypso, in the navel of the sea, also had the central fountain from which four streams emanated in opposite directions.
The Scandinavian Edda speaks of the origin of the world’s waters in the spring Hvergelmir in the land of the gods. The Slavs had them originate from the magic stone Alatuir in the island paradise of Bonyan. Talbot notes that Brinton finds the four mystic rivers among the Sioux, Aztecs and Maya as Fornander discovered them in Polynesian myth (Talbot, p. 121).
Few, if any, of the nations possessing the memory can point to any geographical source of the imagery. Thus, when the Babylonians invoke Ishtar as Lady, Queen of the land of the Four Rivers of Erech, or when the Egyptian text at Dendera celebrate the four Niles at Elephantine, the imagery is of an ancient mythology with no actual reality in the geography surrounding them. Talbot holds that the reason for the disparity between the mythical and terrestrial landscapes is that the four rivers flowed, not on our earth, but through the four quarters of the polar “homeland” (Talbot, p. 121). Talbot (ibid.) holds that for every dominant myth there are corresponding signs. The sign of the four rivers is the sun cross and the enclosed sun cross,
the latter sign illuminating the former by showing that the four streams belong to the primeval enclosure. Issuing from the polar center (i.e., the central sun), the four rivers flow to the four corners of Saturn’s Earth (emphasis added).
Thus, the concept embodied in the Genesis story (Gen. 2:10), whilst having a specific geography attributed to the four rivers, also represents a basic theme of the rivers of living water which flowed from the central source which was God through His morning star which at that time was Satan.
Thus, the central source which supplied the lands of Africa as well as the Tigris and Euphrates had a spiritual significance which has been attributed to the Babylonian religious system down to Ishtar and on to the Egyptians as well as throughout the world via shamanism as it was developed from the central system. The Babylonian system was, in essence, Animism (see Budge Babylonian Life and History, 2nd ed., London, 1925).
Thus to the ancients, the four corners of the world had a specific cosmological meaning which referred not to geography but to the map of the celestial kingdom. Talbot quotes O’Neill as one of the few scholars to recognise this quality of the mythical “four corners”.
It results from any full study of the myths symbolism and nomenclature of the Four Quarters that these directions were viewed in the strict orthodoxy of heavens mythology, not as the NSEW of every spot whatever, but four heaven-divisions spread out around the “pole”.
The sun-cross ... as the symbol of the four quarters, belongs to the central sun. In sacred cosmography the central position of the sun god often becomes the “fifth” direction. To understand such language, it is convenient to think of the mythical “directions” (or arms of the cross) as motions or flows of energy. From the great god the elements of life flow in four directions. The god himself, who embodies all the elements, is “firm,” “steadfast,” or “resting”; his fifth motion is that of rotation while standing in one place.
The “directions” can also be conceived as regions: the central (fifth) region and the four quarters spaced around it.
This is why the Pythagoreans regarded the number five as a representative of the fixed world axis. The Pythagorean idea clearly corresponds with the older Hindu symbolism of the directions. In addition to the standard four directions, Hindu doctrine knows a fifth, called the “fixed direction” the polar center (Talbot, pp. 122-123).
Talbot also identifies this idea with China and also in Mexican Nahuatl symbolism with five as the number of the centre (ibid.).
Thus, we are dealing with a very serious form of idolatry in the symbolism of the cross as a representation here of sun worship.
It must also be recalled that this process of the four divisions of the celestial system is represented not only by the division of Israel into the four groups of three tribes around the tabernacle as typified by Numbers 10. It must also be understood that the very symbols used to denote these tribes, such as the Bull (of Ephraim), the Lion (of Judah), the Serpent/Eagle (of Dan) and the Aquarian Man of Reuben, are themselves representative of the divisional symbols of the Covering Cherubs of God’s Government, represented in Revelation 4:7-9. These Lion-headed, Bull-headed, Eagle-headed and Man-headed creatures are the four archangels, the Seraphim or Covering Cherubs of God’s Government. Thus, by the appropriation of the symbolism to sun worship, we are seeking to transfer the centrality of the authority of God the Father to the Man-headed Cherub who was Azazel, now Satan. The sun cross is, thus, the symbol of the rebellion. This cross symbolism is then transferred into various aspects of idolatry and is then imported into Christianity with further idolatrous consequence.
The Ankh Cross
The Ankh or Handled Cross
The handled cross (or cross potencée) is in the form of a T produced by suppressing the upper limb of the Latin cross (which we have seen in the sun symbols derived from the Chaldeo-Assyrian systems). The sign is attributed magical virtue even today. This sign, called the Tau cross from the Greek letter tau, derives from the veneration of the Egyptians from their pre-historic days to the handled cross or key of life which is a cross potencée surmounted by a handle forming the symbol known as an Ankh (see ERE, fig. 11).
The Ankh is seen, from most ancient monuments, in the hand of a god, priest or king (D’Alviella, ibid.) and with the goddess Sekhet (Cath. Encyc., Vol. IV, p. 518).
Budge notes the names of the serpents which guarded the corridors in the kingdom of the god Seker. These are nine in number which equates with the gods of the shamanic ascent. Of these, the first, third and ninth derive their names from the use of Ankh. Ankh is the second hieroglyph for Narti-ankh-em-sen-f the first named serpent, or the first for Ankh-em-fentu and Ankh-em-beu-mit for the third and ninth serpents (see Budge The Book of the Dead, Arkana, London, xcv f).