The Non-Christian Cross / An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion

by John Denham Parsons

was evidently one form or other of the solar wheel of the Gauls, plus the politic loop to one of its spokes, which Constantine and his Gaulish warriors are said to have seen above the meridian sun, with the divinely written legend ΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΩ ΝΙΚΑ, By this conquer, attached. For though that miraculous symbol is referred to as a "cross," the Monogram itself was so referred to; and Eusebius, after telling us that the Christ appeared to Constantine and commanded him to make a military standard for the Sun-God worshipping Gauls, "With the same sign which he had seen in the heavens," expressly describes this as composed of "Two letters indicating the name of the Christ, the letter P being intersected with X at the centre." And on this particular Labarum of Constantine, as on the majority of the Labara represented upon his coins, the

was the centre of a circle or circular wreath, like the spokes of a wheel.[⁵⁵]

In any case the fact that the symbol

was a Pagan one centuries before the Christ is said to have made it a Christian one for the Sun-God

worshipping Gauls to follow on to victory, coupled with the facts that they are said to have seen it above the mid-day sun, and that it was admittedly a politic adaptation of the Solar Wheel, show us how much Eusebius and other Christian chroniclers both invented and suppressed, and also how largely the influence of Sun-God worship permeated and moulded our religion.

In this connection it may be noted, as a curious fact rather than as evidence, that according to some authorities the so-called Monograms of Christ were in earlier ages Monograms of the Sun-God Osiris.[⁵⁶] Also that both Socrates and Sozomen tell us that when the temple of the Sun-God Serapis at Alexandria was pulled down, the symbol of the Christ was discovered upon its foundations and the Christians made many converts in consequence a somewhat significant statement.

Moreover we are told that upon every Dies Solis, or in other words upon that day of the week which throughout the Roman Empire was held sacred to the Sun-God and throughout

Christendom is called Sun-day, Constantine made his troops, assembled under what was admittedly a solar symbol, recite at a given time, which was probably dawn or mid-day, a prayer commencing "We acknowledge thee to be God alone, and own that our victories are due to thy favour."[⁵⁷] Who could this God have been but the Sun-God, seeing that it was to the Sun-God that Constantine upon his coins ever attributed his victories? And what is more likely than that, wishing to take a friendly view of the deity worshipped by their supporters the Christians, it was as conceiving the Christ to be but the latest addition to the many conceptions of the Sun-God, that Constantine altered the solar symbols of his troops into the so-called Monograms of Christ, and that his troops accepted the alterations?