Religion in the Heavens; Or, Mythology Unveiled in a Series of Lectures

by Logan Mitchell

The Spaniards, in their murderous invasion of Mexico and Peru, were astonished to find there the whole machinery of Christianity; but the priests and the court of Spain smothered the fact as much as lay in their power. The immaculate conception was in full force, by a Virgin of Peru becoming pregnant by the Sun; the cross was the principal emblem, and had been sacred from time immemorial: one of their Trinity was crucified upon a mountain, between two thieves; and also in the sky or heavens, where the serpent (not the boar, as in the case of Adonis, see Lecture II.) is depriving him of the organs of generation.* Here is an astro-fable, known positively to have existed in Syria, and even among the Jews, long anterior to the present version of Christianity; and, therefore, when the early Christians carried over their religion to America, they must have been wicked enough to carry over also the whole of the heathen mythoses of Africa and Asia. The Spaniards had likewise the mortification to find the resurrection of the crucified Savior, after three days; the ascension through the clouds, and that his return was expected, to save the human race.

* The serpent being an adverse, or winter constellation, it
is almost needless to observe that this allegory points to
the sun's being deprived of his generative powers, while the
winter constellations are in the ascendant.

There is no accounting for these astronomical fables, being found in the new world, and their indisputable identity with those of the old, but in the one clear solution, of there being, in remote antiquity, one universal solar mythos, or fabled history of the planetary system, in which the sun, under a thousand different appellatives, as redeemer or savior, and as the grand ruling principle of the whole, was the chief object of adoration. This mythos is still prevalent, though abused for the most atrocious purposes.

With respect to the color of gods in the most ancient times of Paganism, there is ample proof remaining that it varied according to the color of the people who cultivate the sciences for the time being. That men with complexions perfectly black, such as the Hindus, the southern Arabians, and the Ethiopians,* were formerly the depositaries of the sciences, perhaps exclusively, is proved by monuments found throughout.

* In very ancient maps, Ethiopia extended east of the Red
Sea, to the banks of the Euphrates, including all southern
Arabia; and if the Ethiopians originally advanced from India
into Africa, and founded Egyptian Thebes, we may well
suppose that their empire reached to the Indus. This opinion
is corroborated by that of Sir William Jones, who says that
in very remote times, a nation of people who were blacks,
the seat of whose empire was in or near ancient Sidon, ruled
ever Egypt and all Asia. If this was the nation spoken of by
Sir William Drummond (on zodiacs), according to him, the
science of astronomy was at least as well known amongst
them, as it is in modern times.

Near the city of Benares, in India, are astronomical instruments cut out of the solid rock of a mountain, and formerly used for making observations; but these are so exceedingly ancient, that it is said, the Brahmins of the present day do not understand the use of them.

India and Egypt. The knowledge of the great truths of astronomy seems to have been as full and perfect in those times as it is now; and as that science, in the hands of skilful god-makers, has supplied emblem gods for the adoration of the ignorant, in all religions whatever, we cannot wonder that these personifications of natural objects should take the sable color of the priests who invented and deified them. The great Sphinx, supposed to be one of the oldest as well as most wonderful of these Egyptian monuments, is a Nubian Black.* At the time the new version of Hindu superstition spread itself in western Asia and Europe, under the name of Christianity, its machinery was kept out of sight in the archives of the priests; and, as its derivation was known to themselves alone, they did not then deem it indispensably necessary to change the color of their eastern deities; but adopted both Chrishna and his mother, in their sable Gentoo complexions; and, in after times, it was found no easy matter to get them whitewashed. But as these disagreeable facts will raise the angry bristles of the Christian fanatic, it is necessary to support them by the most profoundly learned authorities on the subject.

Mr. Higgins says:—"On the color of the gods of the ancients, and of the identity of them all with the god Sol,** and with the Chrishna of India, nothing more need be said." The reader has already seen the striking marks of similarity in the history of Chrishna, and the stories related of Jesus in the Romish and heretical books. He probably will not think that their effect is destroyed, as Mr. Maurice flatters himself, by the word Chrishna, in the Indian language, signifying black, and the god being of that color, when he is informed of what Mr. Maurice was probably ignorant, that in all Romish countries of Europe, in France, Italy, Germany, etc., the god Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant god in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black.

* This accounts for the oracle at Dodona being, according to
Mr. Potter, a black dove.
** The complete identity of the ancient religions of the
Brahmins, the Magi and the Druids (solar adoration), "has
been satisfactorily established by Vallency, Wilford, Davis,
and Maurice." Pliny, alluding to the Druidical religion of
Britain, in his time, says:—"Britain at this day celebrates
the magic rites with so many similar ceremonies, that you
might suppose them to have been given them by the
Persians."—Nat. Hist.

If the reader doubts my word, he may go to the cathedral at Moulins; to the famous chapel of the virgin at Loretto; to the church of the Annunciata; to the church of St. Lazaro; or the church of St. Stephen at Genoa; to St. Francisco, at Pisa; to the church at Brixen, in the Tyrol; and to that at Padua; to the church of St. Theodore, at Munich; in the two last of which the whiteness of the eyes and teeth, and the studied redness of the lips are very observable; to the church and to the cathedral of Augsburg, where are a black virgin and child as large as life; to Rome, to the Borghese chapel Maria Maggiore; to the Pantheon; to a small chapel of St. Peters, on the right hand side on entering near the door, and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches, in the countries professing the Romish religion.