Wounded by a spear, dedicated to Odin
I myself to myself.”
The hanging of the sacrifice to the cross also occurred in America prior to its discovery. Müller[[549]] mentions the Fejervaryian manuscript (a Mexican hieroglyphic kodex), at the conclusion of which there is a colossal cross, in the middle of which there hangs a bleeding divinity. Equally interesting is the cross of Palenque;[[550]] up above is a bird, on either side two human figures, who look at the cross and hold a child against it either for sacrifice or baptism. The old Mexicans are said to have invoked the favor of Centeotls, “the daughter of heaven and the goddess of wheat,” every spring by nailing upon the cross a youth or a maiden and by shooting the sacrifice with arrows.[[551]] The name of the Mexican cross signifies “tree of our life or flesh.”[[552]]
An effigy from the Island of Philae represents Osiris in the form of a crucified god, wept over by Isis and Nephthys, the sister consort.[[553]]
The meaning of the cross is certainly not limited to the tree of life, as has already been shown. Just as the tree of life has also a phallic sub-meaning (as libido symbol), so there is a further significance to the cross than life and immortality.[[554]] Müller uses it as a sign of rain and of fertility, because it appears among the Indians distinctly as a magic charm of fertility. It goes without saying, therefore, that it plays a rôle in the sun cult. It is also noteworthy that the sign of the cross is an important sign for the keeping away of all evil, like the ancient gesture of Manofica. The phallic amulets also serve the same purpose. Zöckler appears to have overlooked the fact that the phallic Crux Ansata is the same cross which has flourished in countless examples in the soil of antiquity. Copies of this Crux Ansata are found in many places, and almost every collection of antiquities possesses one or more specimens.[[555]]
Finally, it must be mentioned that the form of the human body is imitated in the cross as of a man with arms outspread. It is remarkable that in early Christian representations Christ is not nailed to the cross, but stands before it with arms outstretched.[[556]] Maurice[[557]] gives a striking basis for this interpretation when he says:
“It is a fact not less remarkable than well attested, that the Druids in their groves were accustomed to select the most stately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity they adored, and cutting off 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 in the bark in several places was also inscribed the letter Τ (tau).”[[558]]
“The tree of knowledge” of the Hindoo Dschaina sect assumes human form; it was represented as a mighty, thick trunk in the form of a human head, from the top of which grew out two longer branches hanging down at the sides and one short, vertical, uprising branch crowned by a bud or blossom-like thickening.[[559]] Robertson in his “Evangelical Myths” mentions that in the Assyrian system there exists the representation of the divinity in the form of a cross, in which the vertical beam corresponds to a human form and the horizontal beam to a pair of conventionalized wings. Old Grecian idols such, for example, as were found in large numbers in Aegina have a similar character, an immoderately long head and arms slightly raised, wing-shaped, and in front distinct breasts.[[560]]
I must leave it an open question as to whether the symbol of the cross has any relation to the two pieces of wood in the religious fire production, as is frequently claimed. It does appear, however, as if the cross symbol actually still possessed the significance of “union,” for this idea belongs to the fertility charm, and especially to the thought of eternal rebirth, which is most intimately bound up with the cross. The thought of “union,” expressed by the symbol of the cross, is met with in “Timaios” of Plato, where the world soul is conceived as stretched out between heaven and earth in the form of an X (Chi); hence in the form of a “St. Andrew’s cross.” When we now learn, furthermore, that the world soul contains in itself the world as a body, then this picture inevitably reminds us of the mother.
(Dialogues of Plato. Jowett, Vol. II, page 528.)