Sol Invictus....the real meaning of Christmas

The difference between 'El' and 'Al' isn't really a difference at all--these words come from a time when there were no vowels, at all, and so the preference in the vowel sound (necessary in all languages only for the purpose of transitioning between the consonants) depends totally on the speaker--and is related to things like region and culture...

Either way, it was short for 'Eleph' or 'Aleph' which was the symbol of an ox's head

and that's why it means 'god,' and it was just as generic then as 'god' is now in that it means 'highest sovereign' or 'magistrate' (judge).

If God has a name, it certainly isn't 'God.' God is a title, not a name--and every religion has at least one God, some have gods and some have goddesses--and even a Goddess now and then...



[edit on 6/21/2006 by queenannie38]

That makes sense, but the idea of winged angels and serpent demons is very persian/ south asian. I also have to stress the relationship between Mithra and Jesus.

That this whole thread is based on a premise:

That other religions used the 25th of December FIRST, and then the 'birthday' of Jesus was moved to that date.

I'd like to point out a couple of things.

First, that "SOL INVITCVS" was a sythetic religion created in the 3rd century to compete with Christianity. Julian "the apostate" made it the official religion of the empire, and MOVED it's 'birthday of the sun' to December 25th.

Saturanailia was actually celebrated beginning December 12 on the Julian calendar. It may have some connection to the feast day of saint nickalaus . . .

From what I can find, Mithra's birthday was celebrated on or about our January 17.

Now, I know that there are all kinds of secondary that claim that Dec 25 was Mithra's birthday. Yet in about 7 years of searching, I have never found a primary source for this date.

What I did find was that nobody was aware of the "birthday of Mithra" until Edward Gibbon published his anti-Christian "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in 1776. Gibbon was an anti-Christian Deist who blamed Christianity for the fall of classical civilization.

Until I CAN find a primary source, I'm operating on the idea that Edward Gibbon "made up" the date of Mithra's birthday, and put it into his screed against the church.

I may be mistaken, but I have found no evidence in seven years of casual searching.

Interestingly, mithraism became extinct as Christianity came to the forefront. Whole congregations of Mithraists in England and Gaul, especially in the Legions, deserted en masse for the new faith. Too bad we don't have any accounts of why they did this . . . .

Mithraism was highly astrology-oriented, and I have posted elsewhere about the ASTROLOGICAL implications of December 25th, 1 AD:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

None of it matters when one considers the ultimate truth: the whole world started out as babylonians, so what's the difference we expect now? We have but one history to draw upon, the details are the variation, but details are well....just details!

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
That makes sense, but the idea of winged angels and serpent demons is very persian/ south asian. I also have to stress the relationship between Mithra and Jesus.

The origins for all of it is the god/kings of ancient Sumeria! We got the wheel from them, also. And written language (cuneiform). Later this area was known as Babylon, but it all came from the idea of those who fell to the earth from somewhere above in an by unknown means. Fallen angels who became the kings and gods of the civilization they founded, suddenly somewhere in the very distant past, 4 to 6 millenia ago!

QA: Surely man, in preceding sumer, had religious thought and expressed those thoughts though. Perhaps, rather than having a source in sumer from which they dispersed, the common elements in world religions arose before civlization and spread into those regions as man spread into them.

DS: Good points. It calls to mind the (so-called) crucified bacchus. We see it and think "Oh My God!", but, it hasn't actually been shown to have existed before the time of jesus and may just as well support pagan religions adopting christian elements as much as anything.



[edit on 21-6-2006 by Nygdan]

Originally posted by Nygdan
QA: Surely man, in preceding sumer, had religious thought and expressed those thoughts though. Perhaps, rather than having a source in sumer from which they dispersed, the common elements in world religions arose before civlization and spread into those regions as man spread into them.

But what evidence do we have of any civilization that pre-dates Sumer? If there is, I'm not aware, so I'm not saying I am right--just that I've never heard of anything that supports such. Religion is connected to civilization, which is the domain of only the homo- genus, right? Cro-magnon man and the Neanderthal didn't seem to require more than tools for survival, from what has been found that I am aware of.

Oh no, cro-magnon and even more primitive man certainly seems to have had some religious inclinations. And keep in mind that, while the stone tools of things like homo erectus and habilis are preservable, their religious ideas aren't 'fossilizable'.

We do know, irrespective of whether or not pre-sapiens had religious thought, that early sapiens did, as evidence most spectacularly in the 'cave cathedral' art of europe, the goddess and god figurines found all over the world, even, controversially, the ritualistic ararngement of bear bones (and, even MORE controversially, neanderthal bones) in caves.

The formation of the city, with its temple as its center, didn't arise out of no-where, there was a long history, at that point, of religious thought, rites, rituals, personalities, etc.

Originally posted by Nygdan
The formation of the city, with its temple as its center, didn't arise out of no-where, there was a long history, at that point, of religious thought, rites, rituals, personalities, etc.

Ah, yes, I see what you are saying and you are totally right. These things I did not know, except for the mother earth figures found in old old places the archeologists dig...

And I think this is the 'crux' of the matter, my friend:

We do know ... that early sapiens did, as evidence most spectacularly in the 'cave cathedral' art of europe, the goddess and god figurines found all over the world,

That's it!!! Thanks, Nygdan!!!!

Originally posted by queenannie38

Originally posted by Nygdan
QA: Surely man, in preceding sumer, had religious thought and expressed those thoughts though. Perhaps, rather than having a source in sumer from which they dispersed, the common elements in world religions arose before civlization and spread into those regions as man spread into them.

But what evidence do we have of any civilization that pre-dates Sumer? If there is, I'm not aware, so I'm not saying I am right--just that I've never heard of anything that supports such. Religion is connected to civilization, which is the domain of only the homo- genus, right? Cro-magnon man and the Neanderthal didn't seem to require more than tools for survival, from what has been found that I am aware of.

I assume that you mean "civilization" in the sense of "citified; living in cities."

Cro-Magnons buried their dead, and covered them with the little blue flowers called "bachelor buttons" in America. They also, as Nygdan said, arranged bones of humans and bears in geometric patterns.

Sumer dates back to ~3500 BC. But so does Egypt; and Egyptian religion was quite different from Sumer.

Also, there were cities going back to ~8000 BC, with different religious artefacts (different from each other as well as from Sumer). The cities of Catal Huyuk in Turkey, Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus river valley, and Jericho.]

Additionally, the Inca and Mayan cultures developed religious complexes with no contact to Sumer at all, until post-columbian contact.

Ditto every tribe on the planet, from Australia to the American plains to the Siberian plains, religion has been one of the universals of human social behavior until quite recently.

.

We've definitly taken a (delightful) digression away from Sol Invictus! Well worth it in this instance I beleive!

Here is a page that covers many of the topics brought up, in the context of the formation of Sol Invictus (or at least, the Sun as god)
freehost16.websamba.com...

Interesting to see how the roman calender was structured to maintain ancient pagan beliefs. Completely astronomical. Sunday...it's right in front of my eyes. 7th day, the pagans worship the sun. Holy Sabbath yes..but not because God put down his paintbrushes and decided to rest.

Sun isn't 'sun' in Latin.

Originally posted by StreetCorner Philosopher
Interesting to see how the roman calender was structured to maintain ancient pagan beliefs.

Funny you'd see it that way. As a matter of fact, the original Etruscan astrological calendar was tortured be successive Roman emperors for purely political motives. Eventually, interest in astronomy waned in Rome, possibly in part because their calendar (like the Egyptian, and our own) ended up with no connection to observatonal astronomy at all.

January, like other roman months, originally had 29 days

February was originally a planting festival, but got moved earlier and earlier in the year, to make way for the political months. It also was of varying length from one year to the next, depending on how far the Roman calendar was out of whack with the actual seasons.

July was given 2 extra days, and renamed by Julius Caesar, when he reformed the calendar.

August was the new name for the sixth month, when Emperor Augustus added new calendar reforms, and decided HE needed a month, too. He also wanted as many days in his month and Julius had received for his month.

September is supposed to be "seventh-month," in Latin, but of course it became the 9th month, after the emperors started fiddling around. Likewise "December" was the 10th month, but became the 12th.

Every "reform" caused all the calendars to lose several weeks while the reforms took affect. This is why calculating the exact date of ancient events so difficult, such as the "ides of March" in 52 BC, when Julius was murdered.

Originally posted by StreetCorner Philosopher
Completely astronomical. Sunday...it's right in front of my eyes. 7th day, the pagans worship the sun. Holy Sabbath yes..but not because God put down his paintbrushes and decided to rest.

But Sunday isn't the Jewish sabbath. Saturday is. Jesus rested (in the tomb) according to the gospels. He jumped up and got busy on Sunday, the first day of the new week.

In Iceland, the days of the week are referred to by number (i.e. like "firstday, secondday, etc.") in the native language, to avoid using the pagan names for those days.

I think the French Revolution tried the same thing, for rationalistic, non-religious reasons. But their calendar reforms fell victim to the Reign of Terror.

That, and the fact that their plan included a TEN DAY WEEK (!)

They were trying for a metric calendar. Funny though; the working people didn't think much of that.

Originally posted by dr_strangecraft

That this whole thread is based on a premise:

That other religions used the 25th of December FIRST, and then the 'birthday' of Jesus was moved to that date.

I'd like to point out a couple of things.

First, that "SOL INVITCVS" was a sythetic religion created in the 3rd century to compete with Christianity. Julian "the apostate" made it the official religion of the empire, and MOVED it's 'birthday of the sun' to December 25th.

Saturanailia was actually celebrated beginning December 12 on the Julian calendar. It may have some connection to the feast day of saint nickalaus . . .

From what I can find, Mithra's birthday was celebrated on or about our January 17.

Now, I know that there are all kinds of secondary that claim that Dec 25 was Mithra's birthday. Yet in about 7 years of searching, I have never found a primary source for this date.

What I did find was that nobody was aware of the "birthday of Mithra" until Edward Gibbon published his anti-Christian "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in 1776. Gibbon was an anti-Christian Deist who blamed Christianity for the fall of classical civilization.

Until I CAN find a primary source, I'm operating on the idea that Edward Gibbon "made up" the date of Mithra's birthday, and put it into his screed against the church.

I may be mistaken, but I have found no evidence in seven years of casual searching.

Interestingly, mithraism became extinct as Christianity came to the forefront. Whole congregations of Mithraists in England and Gaul, especially in the Legions, deserted en masse for the new faith. Too bad we don't have any accounts of why they did this . . . .

Mithraism was highly astrology-oriented, and I have posted elsewhere about the ASTROLOGICAL implications of December 25th, 1 AD:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sol Invictus is not a religion. It's a pagan ceremony conducted on that first day of winter. Im sorry I missed your old thread...sometimes, the searches come up empty. Mithraists had to be pagans of course...all these names should be filtered down to their basic form.

Sol Invictus isn't a god in Mithraism.

There is only Physics now folks. Only physics. Im ignorant to these religions. I can't possibly go back in time and divert my attention to a primitive form of truth scripture. Im sure it's all quite interesting though. But it's like going back to film cameras, when we now use convenient digital.

Originally posted by StreetCorner Philosopher
There is only Physics now folks. Only physics. Im ignorant to these religions. I can't possibly go back in time and divert my attention to a primitive form of truth scripture. Im sure it's all quite interesting though. But it's like going back to film cameras, when we now use convenient digital.

That is unless we find out who the 'gods' truly were, then it's like going forward into unfound territory.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420

Originally posted by StreetCorner Philosopher
There is only Physics now folks. Only physics. Im ignorant to these religions. I can't possibly go back in time and divert my attention to a primitive form of truth scripture. Im sure it's all quite interesting though. But it's like going back to film cameras, when we now use convenient digital.

That is unless we find out who the 'gods' truly were, then it's like going forward into unfound territory.

Humans trying to explain God, is like a fish trying to explain the water around it and the meaning of his environment.

Science agrees that the Gods are a communal commitee. Between the quasars of all throughout the solar system, or perhaps reaching the outskirts of our galaxy. Black holes? supernovae and cosmic neutrino waves. It's both matter and energy. Spirit and Body...trapped energy. One might say God is a combination of the Cosmos' method to keep everything automated. Order.

Catholocism would agree with this also. not the huge percentage of the people who follow it, but the astronomers and physicists that work for the Vatican. Top technology posessed by the Vatican when it comes to scientific research. Whoever disagrees Im sorry to say is a fool. I know of Cathedrels with Huge observatory decks.

A communal commitee. Like the cells that make you. The trillions of them working to keep you automated. But of course all in theory. Besides the info about catholocism. That is fact.

[edit on 6/25/2006 by StreetCorner Philosopher]

I just meant the old school gods were probably aliens, blown out of proportion.