Study Group & Bookshop Musings #2
by John Rau
QUESTION - What of the Christmas season?
Response - We could whet our mental appetites and discuss this holy season for hours and hours, and still have much to explore. We can see in the study of early histories (including church fathers, Jerome and others) that December 25th was celebrated by pagans of past times for the rebirth of a “ray” from a sun-god born in human form in a cave. In Syria and Phoenicia this “ray” was named Adonis (lord). In Persia this human incarnation was Mithras, also known as Mitra in India. Born in a cave, the one called Mithras was seen by worshipers as a god who takes on the sins of mankind, and it is reported too that a ritual similar to that of Christian baptism was apparently indulged in by believers. The births of these god-men was celebrated like our Jesus on or around December 25th called both the “Birthday of Mithras” and “Night of Light”. Justin Martyr (2nd century Christian writer) records Mithras was born on the day the sun was born anew, in a stable.
Some Egyptian teachings say that Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, and Horus on the 362nd. On temple walls Isis is made to say “ the fruit (Horus) which I bring forth is the sun”. December 25th was celebrated in Italy as the “New Birth” or “Unconquered Sun”, the Sol Invictus as seen on ancient calendars. Druids lit bonfires marking the rebirth of light. Ancient Anglo Saxons called this time “The night of the Mothers”. G. de Purucker says it is very likely this phrase is connected to “ the Celestial Virgin giving birth to man’s greatest friend and illuminator”. The sun.
We all know that daylight hours gain as our new year unfolds, and we are reminded and asked by Edward Carpenter in his PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS (see his chapter on Solar Myths), to imagine a time when the average person had no access to Almanacs or Calendars. A time when all that “timid mortals” could see was the failure of light and warmth and the sun sinking low in the sky (in northern climes). Further, if we go out next Christmas evening, at midnight, we will see the brightest of the fixed stars, Sirius, afire in the southern sky to the left of the meridian. Due to the Precession of the Equinoxes, this same star, some three thousand years ago was almost exactly on meridian line. Without printed calendars therefore, the arrival of Sirius to the meridian at midnight “became the sign and assurance of the Sun having reached the lowest point of his course, and ....the moment of rebirth,....This then was the sacred hour when in the underworld ( the Stable or the Cave or whatever it might be called )” {the sun having plunged under the earth} a “child was born to be the Savior of men. At that moment Sirius stood on the southern meridian (and in more southern lands....this would be more nearly overhead); and that star-there is little doubt-is the Star in the East mentioned in the Gospels”. Still thinking back in time, while Sirius is at midnight on the Meridian, the constellation Virgo (Virgin) is rising on the horizon. Here we see an astronomical myth/fact of a blazing star pointing to a Virgin in the East, who will soon give birth (sunrise) to a renewed and reborn “sun” god (or son of god) who will save mankind from darkness by gaining in light and delivering a new year filled with gifts of warmth, renewed energy, food and spiritual relief.
One can visualize Virgo giving birth lying on the horizon “out of her side” as in the story of Buddha being born from his mother’s side. Albert Magnus (13th century bishop) has written “we know that the sign of the Celestial Virgin rose over the horizon at the moment we fix the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Born of virgins. These astronomical event-myths and thoughts are noted in many writings and recordings and are also projected Romulus (the founder of Rome and son of Mars), as well as Plato and Krishna among others in worldwide traditions. Our Christmas story appears to be an old one, retold many times throughout history.
QUESTION - So, from a theosophical view, is this Jesus in the Christmas story a “ray” of the sun, or a myth?
Response - Both. Many Theosophists view the one come to be called Jesus as a mythical story built around an historical event. An historical incarnation of an Avatara (Sanskrit = descent, to cross over). A divine “ray” overshadowing a human body. A mystery to be sure. As students of esoteric science and knowledge (Gupta Vidya) we can come to “feel” and to understand and realize the truth of our “inter - relatedness” with all, with our planet and with the solar system in which we live, indeed with even more than that. We give the name of Atman to our “so-called” seventh principle (counting up using a system of seven divisions for the constitution of man). We can say that Atman is a “so-called” seventh principle because we can also see it as the point where all kingdoms are joined as “one” being and therefore we could also think of it as a non-principle if preferred. It is from this Atman, this “oneness”, that Avataras are born. We are taught that there are various grades of Avataras, all of them rare events. Very rare. I repeat, from a core theosophical point of view, they are very rare. (There are some movements in our open and free American culture that claim avatar like humans to be much more regular and ordinary. These casual “avatars” often lead seminars with palms open ready for an exchange of goods and services. Yeah right.)
The teaching concerning great Avataras (such as Jesus) is that these special incarnations come to vitalize a culture, a people, a race, or a continent, a lifewave or a planet. They come to us in natural cyclical intervals to revive teachings of truth to fit in with the then current mind-set. To rescue (from an earthbound perspective) that which has become degraded, or perverted by the material pull of lower spheres, selves and energies. At this our present stage of evolutionary unfoldment we, as a human life wave are deeply immersed in matter (dense light), and have been so for millions of years through a long series of reincarnations as individual rays of the One. All of us, together, as “one being”, operating as millions and millions of individual god sparks. Also, according to ancient calculations (see SD, Vol. #2, pg. 67) delivered through possibly yet another Avatara (sun-god), named Asuramaya, the said receiver of the SURYA-SIDDHANTA (the sun’s astronomy math book) , we, as a lifewave have turned the bend of our descent, and are waxing homeward bound. This to me, in our world of constant material demands and encountered strife is indeed, a comforting thought.
In an often quoted segment of Plato, The Parable of the Cave, Book Seven of THE REPUBLIC, we find “Imagine men living in a kind of subterraneous cave, with its entrance expanding to the light......suppose them to have been in this cave from their childhood, with chains both on their legs and necks”, unable to see the light with their heads unmoved, while a fire burns above and behind them.
Avataras come when karma (action) demands, when various humanities, or portions of the whole, past, present or future, have chained themselves into caves of twisted dogma, greed, low spirits and ignorance. It is said that Avataras come cyclically to influence this world and ourselves as individuals to Try, and to remember, our own divinity. To show us who we are, what we are, where we are, and what we should do as individuals, tribes or masses to get on with our journey. To work on loosening Plato’s symbolic chains fromourselves and our neighbors as best we are able, and face the fire lit way out of our dark caves, collective and personal. To seek truth, and to shun superstition. In the GITA (chapter 4) we hear in the song of Krishna “I produce myself among creatures....whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just”.
The Christmas story, that many of us in the West honor at this season within the spirit of joy, the giving of ourselves and its message of rebirth, family, friends, peace and refreshment is a recurring mythos built around a real and special historical figure, an Avatara of an earlier age.
It seems evident to me that this tale esoterically is truth in story. Truth that allows us tosee and become aware of the path of being, and truth that offers a symbolic method of escape from caves of darkness, for ourselves, and for our much needed awareness of planetary wholeness, universal brotherhood and our collective destiny.