Baptism by Fire

In Acts Paul asks followers of John the Baptist what baptism they 
have recieved. When they answer the Baptism of John, Paul dismisses 
that Baptism saying they had not recieved the baptism by fire and 
the Holy Spirit which he then administers to John's followers. Here 
is where the transferance of John's teaching takes place over to 
Paul's ficitional Jesus, who does nothing, goes nowhere, and 
conveniantly dies, leaving his teaching to Paul after he blinds him 
with a light brighter then any fire, brighter then the sun. Those 
who knew of the true teaching would assume Paul had passed through 
fire and thus was at the core of Jesus' teaching, but there was no 
Jesus, and thus in this article below we get a clearer picture of 
what Paul was trying to oppress and put a stop to, which he 
succeeded in doing.

Jon Presco


http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Phoenician_Origin_ch19.htm 

XIX



"SUN-WORSHIP" & BEL-FIRE RITES IN EARLY

BRITAIN DERIVED FROM THE PH?NICIANS

 

Disclosing Ph?nician Origin of Solar Emblems on

pre-Christian Monuments in Britain, on pre-Roman

Briton Coins, and of "Deazil" or Sun-wise

direction for Luck, etc., and John-the-Baptist

as Aryan Sun-Fire Priest.

 

 

"The Days were ever divine as to the First Aryans." ?EMERSON. 
{Society and Solitude, 7, 137.}

 

"We must lay his head to the East! 

My father [Cymbeline] hath a reason for it." ?Prince Guiderius in 
SHAKESPEARE'S Cymbeline. 

 

"O Sun-God thou liftest up thy head to the world, Thou settest thy 
ear to (the prayers) of mankind, Thou plantest the foot of mankind." 

 

"In the right hand of the king, the shepherd {Siba, disclosing 
Sumerian origin of English word "Shepherd."} of his country, 

May the (symbol of the) Sun-God be carried." ?Sumerian Psalms. 
{S.H.L., 490-491.}

 

"The able Panch [Ph?nic-ians], the Chedi [Ceti or Catti] are all 
highly blest, and know the Eternal Religion ? the Eternal Truths of 
Religion and Righteousness." ?Mahā-Barata. {M.B., Karma Parva, 45, 
14-15, cp. M.B.P., 1, 157.}

 

 

THE "Sun-worship" which we have just seen reflected in the 
prehistoric Stone Circles and Cup-marked script in Britain, that are 
now disclosed to be Ph?nician in origin, leads us to discover still 
further evidence of the Ph?nician origin of the "Sun-worship" in 
Ancient Britain, which was formerly widespread over the land. 

 

This former Sun-cult is attested by the turning of the face of the 
dead to the East in the Stone and Bronze Age tombs?the memory of 
which also in the Iron Age is preserved by Shakespeare in his 
Cymbeline above cited. It is also attested by its very numerous 
sculptures and inscriptions on pre-Christian monuments in Britain, 
besides those of the Cup-marked inscriptions, and of caves and the 
Newton and other widely diffused sculptured stones; by the profusion 
of its symbols and stamped legends on the pre-Roman coins of Ancient 
Britain, by the vestiges of Bel and Beltain rites which still 
survive in these islands, from St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to 
Shetland, and in the "Deazil" or Sun-wise direction in masonic and 
cryptic rites, and in the "lucky way" of passing wine at table, and 
in other ways now detailed. 

 

The Early Ph?nicians were, as leading Aryans, an intensely religious 
people. They made religion the foundation of their state and gloried 
in their knowledge of the Higher Religion, as recorded in their 
Vedic hymns and in their own epic cited in the heading. And 
similarly, even in regard to the later Ph?nicians, it is noted:? 

 

"In every city the temple was the chief centre of attraction, where 
the piety of the citizens adorned every temple with abundant and 
costly offerings." {R.H.P., 320.} 

 

These Early Ph?nicians?contrary to the now current notions of 
popular writers who have confused the real Ph?nicians with the mixed 
Semitic and polytheistic people remaining in the later province 
of "Ph?nicia" after it had been mostly abandoned by the Ph?nicians, 
properly so-called?were monotheists, or worshippers of the One God 
of the Universe, whom they usually symbolized by his chief visible 
luminary, the Sun, as we have already seen established by a mass of 
concrete evidence. 

 

This important fact, now so generally overlooked by modern writers, 
was well expressed by the late Prof. G. Rawlinson in his great work 
on the "History of the Ph?nicians." He says {Ib., 321-2.}:?

 

"Originally, when they first occupied their settlements upon the 
Mediterranean, or before they moved from their primitive seats upon 
the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Ph?nicians were 
Monotheists. . . . It may be presumed that at this early stage of 
the religion there was no idolatry; when One God alone is 
acknowledged and recognized, the feeling is naturally that expressed 
in the Egyptian hymn of praise: 'He is not graven in marble; He is 
not beheld; His abode is not known; there is no building that can 
contain Him; unknown is his name in heaven; He doth not manifest his 
forms; vain are all representations.' " {Records of the Past, 4: 109-
113.}

 

It was this pure and lofty Monotheism of the Early Ph?nicians, 
expressed in their so-called "Sun-worship" or "Bel-worship," which 
they are now found to have cherished down the ages in the 
Mediterranean. From it the early Ph?nician merchant princes derived 
their happy inspiration; they carried it with them as they ploughed 
the unknown seas; they invoked it in their hours of danger, and 
transplanted it at their various colonies and ports of call; and 
they carried it to Early Britain and disembarked and planted it 
along with their virile civilization, upon her soil about 2800 B.C. 
or earlier. 

 

The early Aryans appear at first to have worshipped the Sun's orb 
itself as the visible God. In thus selecting the Sun, it is 
characteristic of the scientific mind of these early Aryans that in 
searching for a symbol for God they fixed upon that same visible and 
most glorious manifestation of his presence that latter-day 
scientists credit with having emitted the first vital spark to this 
planet, and with being the proximate source and supporter of all 
Life in this world. 

 

But at an early period, some millenniums before the birth of 
Abraham, the Aryans imagined the idea of the One Universal God, 
as "The Father-God" behind the Sun, and thereby gave us our modern 
idea of God. This is evident in the early Sumerian hymns, and in the 
prehistoric Cup-marked prayers in Britain; and it is also thus 
expressed in one of the oldest Aryan hymns of the Vedas, in a stanza 
which is still repeated every morning by every Brahman in India, who 
chants it as a morning prayer at sunrise: 


"The Sun's uprising orb floods the air with brightness:

The Sun's Enlivening Lord {Savitri, "The Enlivening or Vivifying 
God." Cp. M.V.M., 34.} sends forth all men to labour." {R.V., 1, 
124, 1.}

 

[p. 265] As "Father-God" and creator and director of the Sun and the 
Universe he was usually called, as we have seen, by the Hitto-
Sumerians Induru or "Indara,"  the Indra of the Eastern Aryans 
and "Indri" of the Goths, and to him most of the Sumerian and Vedic 
hymns, and the Early Briton votive monuments are addressed. 

 

[Thus as Induru (or "Indara") he is regularly called by the 
Sumerians "the Creator;" and so in the Vedas Indra is invoked 
as "Creator of the Sun" (3, 49, 4), "who made the Sun to shine (8, 
3, 6) and raised it high in heaven" (1, 7, 3). He is "Man's 
sustainer, the bountiful and protector," (8, 85, 20), "the most 
fatherly of fathers" (10, 48, 1), "aye, our forefather's Friend of 
old, swift to listen to their prayers" (6, 21, 8). "There is no 
comforter but Thee, O Indra, lover of mankind" (1, 85, 19). Yet so 
specially was his bounty associated with the Sun that he still is 
hailed: "Indra is the Sun" (10, 89, 2).] 

 

It was presumably the re-importation of this Aryan idea of The One 
Father-God symbolized by the Sun, from Syria-Ph?nicia into Egypt, 
which occurred in or shortly before the reign of the semi-Syrian 
Pharaoh Akhen-aten, the father-in-law of Tut-ankh-amen, and whom we 
have heard stigmatized so much lately as "the heretic king" (sic), 
merely because he introduced into Egypt a purer and more refined 
form of Sun-worship over that contaminated with the animal worship 
of the ram-headed god Ammon, which predominated there in his day. 
The Living God behind the Sun, called by him "The Living Aten," is 
usually supposed, materialistically, to designate the radiant energy 
of the Sun in sustaining Life by his beams. But He is referred to as 
the universal creator, a god of Love and "Father of the king," and 
he has "hands," and in his pictorial representation each of the 
Sun's beams ends in a helping hand stretched forth to man. The 
famous sublime hymn to this "God of the Sun," by Aken-aten and 
recorded in Egyptian writing over three centuries before David, is 
generally regarded as the non-Jewish source from which the Hebrews 
derived the 104th Psalm. {Prof. Breasted; and cp. A. Weigall, Life 
and Times of Akhnaton 134, etc.} Now this priest-king Akhen-aten was 
the grandson, son and husband respectively of "Syrian" or Mitani 
princesses?the "Mitani" being a branch of the Hittites and 
his "propagation" of Aten-worship began when he was only 16 years 
old, two years after his marriage to a "Syrian" princess, and the 
Aten symbol was previously used by his mother, also a Syrian, when 
she was regent of Egypt. All the circumstances lead Sir F. Petrie 
and other authorities to believe that this "Aten" Sun-worship, as 
well as Akhenaten's new art, which adorns Tut-ankh-amen's tomb, was 
derived from "Syria," {P.H.E., 2, 210-214.} i.e., Syria-Ph?nicia; 
and that "new" art is seen to be patently Ph?nician. 

 

The later representation of God in human form by the Sumerians and 
some of the later Aryans was presumably led down to by their long 
habit of invoking him as "Father" and "King," and thus conjuring up 
a mental picture of a father and king in human form. Such "graven 
images" we have seen in the Sumerian seals (Fig. 33, etc.); and 
amongst some of the later Ph?nicians (see Fig. 1, p. 2), and on 
Ph?nician coins, (Fig. 64, etc.), Babylonian seals, in Medo-Persian 
and later Mithra cult (see Fig. 10, p. 46), and among the classic 
Greeks and Romans. But the purer "Sun-worshippers" appear to have 
religiously abstained from making graven images of God, as in the 
Ancient Briton coins and pre-Christian monuments, as in our Newton 
Stone; nor is there any reference to such images in the Gothic 
Eddas. Thus the purer Sumerians sing in their psalms: 


"Of Induru [Ia or "Jove"], can anyone comprehend thy Form? 

Of the Sun-god, can anyone comprehend thy Form?" {S. Langdon, 
Sumerian Psalms, 77, where the name is spelt Ea.}

 

On the other hand, the Ph?nicians frequently made statues of 
Hercules, who, Herodotus tells us, was merely a canonized human 
Ph?nician hero, and thus analogous to St. George. They carved the 
image of their marine eponymic tutelary Barati or Britannia on their 
coins (see Fig. 5, p. 9), and elsewhere, as a protecting angel and 
not God. They also carved grotesque little images of 
misshapen "pygmies," which, Herodotus states, they carried on the 
prow of their ships {Herod., 3, 37. H. describes these "pygmies," 
which he calls Pataikoi, as deformed like Vulcan the smith. They are 
believed to resemble the misshapen dwarf figurines of "Ptah, the 
Smith," common in Egypt.}?these were evidently "gollywog" mascots, 
carried perhaps to humour their native crews, who were probably in 
part Pictish pygmies. But these are not figured on the 
representations of Ph?nician ships. 

 

"Bel," or properly "Bil," is the title used for this "Sun" god in 
the Newton Stone Ph?nician inscription, in both its versions?in the 
Ogam the short vowel is not expressed?and this form B-L (i.e., Bil 
or Bel) occurs in late Ph?nician inscriptions elsewhere, {B.P.G., 
20.} as the title of their Father God. And it is the title surviving 
in Britain in connection with the "Bel Fire" rite at midsummer 
solstice. 

 

This name Bil or "Bel" is now disclosed to be derived from the 
Sumerian (i.e., Early Aryan) word for "Fire, Flame or Blaze," namely 
Bil, for which the written word-sign is a picture of a Fire-
producing instrument with tinder sticks. {Br., 4566, and cp. P.S.L., 
58; B.B.W., 2 pp. 99-100. It is also spelt by an analogous sign 
which is pictured by a Fire-Torch (cp. B.B.W., 2, 101).} It is 
defined with the title of "God," as "God BIL of the Sun, Darkness 
and Wisdom"; {Br., 4588.} and the Sumerian word-sign for the "Sun" 
itself is defined in the glosses as meaning "God Bēl," i.e., the old 
Father God of the Sun-temple at Nippur, the oldest Sun-temple in 
Babylonia, and the Bel who in the oldest Sumerian hymns "settled the 
places of the Sun and Moon." {S.H.L., 103.}

 

As this word "Bil," however, is a purely Sumerian (i.e., Aryan) 
word, when the Semites of the Chaldees in Babylonia borrowed from 
the Sumerians the idea of this Father-God, and having no name of 
their own resembling it with the meaning of "Fire" or "Flame," they 
appear to have equated that name to their Semitic word "Bal" 
or "Baal" meaning "Lord, Master or Owner" which they also 
spelt "Bel" and "Bilu"; {M.D., 156-158.} but which possesses no 
suggestion of Fire, Flame or the Sun, like the original Sumerian or 
Aryan word. Yet this Semitic Bēl thus derived from the solar Aryan 
Sumerian Father-God Bil, is often invested with Fire, as the 
paramount god of their Babylonian pantheon. And it was clearly 
through this Semitic form of Bil that the Israelites admittedly 
appropriated his attributes for their later tribal God "Jehovah," 

 

{Thus one of the latest Semitic authorities writes: 

 

"Jahweh [Jehovah] assumes the attributes of the Baals." (J.R.B., 
74). And "The Baals of the Canaanites [i.e., pre-Israelite people of 
Ph?nicia Palestine] we know were personifications of the Sun" (Ib. 
75).} 

 

who is so often described as encompassed by Fire, and as appearing 
in Fire to the Hebrew prophets, and as a Pillar of Fire leading the 
Israelites in the desert; and as "a consuming Fire." {Exodus, 3, 2; 
19, 18; Isaiah, 6, 4; Ezek., 1, 4; Deut., 4, 24.}

 

Now it is of great British and Scandinavian significance that this 
word Bil or "Blaze" or "Flame" gives us still another of those 
radical words that have occurred incidentally and disclose the 
Sumerian origin of a series of words in the English and kindred 
modern Aryan languages. It discloses the Sumerian origin of the Old 
English "Bale" for Blaze, Flame and Fire, the Scottish Bail, and the 
corresponding words in the Norse, Swedish, etc., as seen in this 
equation:? 

 

Sumerian Origin of "Bil" or "Bel" Blaze and Flame Words 

in English and N. European Aryan Languages. 


            Gothic     Norse        Anglo-            Old

Sumer   Eddic      and           Saxon    Scot   English   English

Swede

 

Bil = Baela = Bal, Blis = Bael = Bail = Bele = Bl-aze

B l          Belyse                   Bele               Fl-ash

 ="Blaze ┐                  
Blus                                             Fl-ame
   "Flame ├   = "          =  "         =  "      =  "        Blase
   "Fire"  ┘      & pyre.     "

 

F/n on "Gothic Eddic":  {V.D., 54, 91.}                     F/n 
on "Scot": {J.S.D., 23.}

F/n on "Bl-aze": {This and the corresponding Scandinavian forms seem 
to be a bilingual Sumerian compound Bil-izi?Izi, being another 
dialectic name for the word with the same meaning "Fire," and 
appears cognate with Sanskrit Vilas = "Flash" and the Greek 
Phalos "bright."} 

 

We now see the significance of the name "St. Blaze" for the taper-
carrying saint introduced into Early Christianity as patron of the 
intermediate solar festival of Candlemas Day; and probably also of 
the name "Bleezes" or "Blazes" for the old house on the hillock at 
the foot of Bennachie, commanding a view of the Newton Stone site, 
and possibly the site of an altar blazing with perpetual fire to 
Bel, to whom that stone was dedicated. 

 

The "Bel-Fire" or "Bel-tane" rites and games which still survive in 
many parts of the British Isles are generally recognized to be 
vestiges of a former widely prevalent worship of "Bel" in these 
islands, extending from St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, 
which is now seen to have been introduced by the Ph?nicians, and to 
be a survival of the great solar festival celebrations at the Summer 
solstice. The name "Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine" means literally "Bel's 
Fire." 

 

{"Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine" is defined by old Scottish, Irish and 
Gaelic writers as "Fire of the god Bil or Bial or Bel." Thus the 
Irish king Cormac at the beginning of the tenth century A.D. 
describes "Bil-tene" as Lucky Fire, and defines Bil or Bial as "an 
idol god." (Cormac's Glossary, ed. Stokes, 19, 38); and Keating 
states "Bel-tainni is the same as Beil-teine, that is, teine Bheil 
or Bel's Fire." Its second element Tan in Breton and Tane, Tine or 
Tene, means "Fire" in Scottish and Irish Scottish with variant Teind 
or Tynd, "a spark of Fire " (J.S.D., 38, 564) and Eddic Gothic 
Tandr, "to light or kindle Fire," thus showing Gothic origin of 
English "Tinder." This Tan or Tene seems to be derived from the 
Akkadian Tenū for the Crossed Fire-producing sticks (M.D. 1176) with 
meaning also "to grind [firewood]," ib. The Breton form of the name 
for Bel-Fire of Tan-Heol is the same Tan (Fire) transposed + 
Heol, "the Sun" or Bil.} 

 

The rite of Bel-Fire now surviving in the British Isles is mostly a 
mere game performed by boys and young people on Midsummer eve in the 
remoter parts of the country. On a moor, a circle is cut on the turf 
sufficient to hold the company and a bonfire is lit inside, and 
torches are waved round the head (presumably in sunwise direction, 
see later) while dancing round the fire; after which the individuals 
leap through the flames or glowing embers. 

 

{Such a game was practised in the writer's boyhood in the West of 
Scotland. And Mr. S. Laing, the archæologist, who was born in 1810, 
writes with reference to these Bel-Fires lighted on the highest 
hills of Orkney and Shetland. "As a boy, I have rushed with my 
playmates through the smoke of these bonfires without a suspicion 
that we were repeating the homage paid to Baal." (Human Origins, 
1897, 161.)} 

 

As a serious religious ceremony it was not infrequently practised 
until about a generation ago by farmers in various parts of the 
country and in Ireland, who on the eve of the Summer solstice passed 
themselves, and drove their cattle through [p. 270] the flames 
{Cormac in the tenth century describes two fires for the cattle to 
pass between.} to bring good luck for the rest of the year. {Cp. 
H.F.F., 44, etc.} This clearly shows that it was essentially a 
simple rite of ceremonial Purification by Fire and presumably a rite 
of initiation into the Solar Religion by "Baptism with Fire," with 
the addition of Protection by the Sun as Fire. The fire employed to 
ignite the bonfire was doubtless the sacred Fire produced by 
friction of two pieces of tinder sticks or "fire-drill," as this 
method of producing sacred fire was employed so late as 1830 in 
Scotland, and was formerly common in the Hebrides, {Carmichael, 
Carmen Gaddica, 2, 340; and Martin, Descript. West. Islands, ed. 
1884, 113.} where old customs linger longest. 

 

This appears to be the same rite which is repeatedly referred to in 
the Old Testament of the Hebrews as practised by the pre-Israelite 
inhabitants of Canaan (i.e., Ph?nicia-Palestine), in which children 
were passed through fire in consecration to "Moloch"?spelt Melek in 
the old Hebrew?a name which is evidently intended for the "Meleq-
art" {This name, spelt M-l-q-r-t, is usually considered to represent 
Melek-qart or "King of the City."} title of Hercules in the later 
Semitic Ph?nician inscriptions, as the "Baal of Tyre," and other 
Ph?nician cities; and thus connecting it with the Ph?nicians:? 

 

"And they built up the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and 
daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch [Melek]." {Jeremiah, 
32, 35, and cp. 2 Kings, 23, 10.}

 

But it seems that the Semites of Canaan who adopted the externals of 
the Sun-cult of their Aryan overlords, had in their inveterate 
addiction to bloody matriarchist sacrifices, human and other?
practices also formerly current amongst the Hebrews {W. R. Smith, 
Relig. of Semites, 1889; H. L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, 
Lond., 1909, for sacrifices of first-born, etc.} ?sometimes actually 
burned their children to death in sacrifice, in their perverted form 
of worshipping Bil or Bel. {2 Kings, 17, 31; 21, 6. Ezekiel, 16, 21; 
20, 26, etc.} Now this sacrificial perversion of the simple and 
innocuous Bel-fire rite appears also to have been prevalent in 
Britain to some extent amongst the aboriginal Chaldees, who were 
also, as we have seen, addicted to human sacrifice in their Lunar 
cult of matriarchy with its malignant demons, under their Druid 
priests. Thus they changed the date of this Bel-Fire festival from 
the Midsummer solstice to their own May Day festival of their Mother-
goddess on the First of May, which began their lunar Vegetation 
Year. Thus we have the vestiges of this sacrificial so-
called "Beltane" rite surviving in Britain on May Day with the 
ceremonial sacrifice of a boy victim by lot. 

 

[This sacrificial May Day "Beltane" rite seems, from the numerous 
accounts of its wide prevalence up till a few decades ago, to have 
been the more common, as the Aryan element is so relatively small. 
After cutting a circle and lighting the bonfire and torches, a cake 
is made of oatmeal, eggs and milk and baked in the fire, and divided 
up into a portion for each boy, one of the cakes being daubed black 
with embers. The pieces are then put into a cap, and drawn 
blindfolded, and whoever draws the blackened piece is the "devoted" 
person or victim who is to be sacrificed to obtain good luck for the 
year. This "devoted" victim is, of course, nowadays released or 
acquitted with a penalty, which is to leap three times through the 
flames.] {For details and refs. see H.F.F., 44, etc., 336.} {{See 
also the film The Wicker Man (British Lion Film Corp., 1973) with 
Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.  ? JR, ed.}}

 

It was possibly, I think, the eating of the body of the human 
victims thus sacrificed by the Druid Chaldees on May Day, as a 
sacrament, which forms the basis of the historical references by St. 
Jerome and others in the early centuries of our era to the 
prevalence of cannibalism amongst savage tribes in Britain.

 

The sacred fire for igniting the fire-offering to Bil or Bel, as the 
God of the Sun, was generated by the Early Aryans and Ph?nicians by 
the laborious friction of two tinder sticks or fire drill, the 
oldest method of fire-production. This generation of the sacred fire 
by friction of two tinder sticks was also the method employed in 
Britain down to the Middle Ages, for preparing the "Perpetual Fire" 
in shrines, and for the special "Need-Fires" in cases of dire need 
from plague, pestilence, drought or invasion and also presumably for 
lighting these Bel-Fires. The repositories for these 
sacred "Perpetual Fires,'' thus generated, still exist in Britain in 
some of our churches?in Cornwall, Dorset and York?in the so-
called "Cresset-stones," some of which are placed in lamp niches 
furnished with flues, as pointed out by Dr. Baring Gould, who 
remarks that in the early centuries of our era, on the introduction 
of Christianity, "the Church was converted into the sacred 
depository of the Perpetual Fire." {Strange Survivals, 120.} And as 
showing conclusively that the "Need-Fires" lit in Bel-Fire fashion 
by the friction of the two tinder sticks were pagan, their lighting 
was expressly forbidden by the Church in the eighth century; and the 
Church "New-Fire" was transferred to Easter Day, to adapt it to the 
re-arranged Christian dates, and was obtained by striking flint and 
steel. "But the people in their adversity went back to their old 
time-honoured way of prepaying their sacred fire by wood friction in 
the pagan (Bel) fashion." {Ib., 122.} And it is significant to 
notice that St. Kentigern or St. Mungo (about 550 A.D.), the patron 
saint of Glasgow and bishop of Strath-Clyde down to the Severn, and 
whose many churches still bear his name in Wales and Cornwall, is 
recorded to have produced his sacred fire-offering by friction with 
two sticks. These medieval British doubtless derived their knowledge 
of generating this sacred fire from the ancestral descendants of the 
Ph?nician Part-olon and Brutus and his predecessor Barats, just as 
the Ph?nicians had generated their Perpetual Fire in the temple of 
Hercules at Gades (Cadiz), the penalty for extinguishing which was 
death. {C.A.F., 7.}

 

The truly solar character of the proper Bel-Fire festival of the 
Aryans to whom animal sacrifice was abhorrent, is seen not only from 
its date being at the Summer solstice, but also from the use at that 
festival of a wheel symbolizing the Sun, which they rolled about to 
signify the apparent movement of the Sun, and that the latter is 
then occupying its highest point in the zodiac and is about to 
descend; and, significantly, this Wheel is also rolled about at 
Yuletide, the old pagan Fire-Festival at the shortest day, i.e., the 
Winter solstice. {Durandus on Feast of St. John, H.F.F., 346.}

 

In the Christian period, this pagan Bel-Fire festival of the Summer 
solstice was early adjusted to Christianity by the Roman Church, for 
proselytizing purposes, making St. John the Baptist?who, we shall 
see, is represented in art as carrying the Fire Cross, whose 
priestly father offered simple Fire-incense offerings in the temple, 
{Luke, 1, 9.} and who "came to bear witness of The Light" {John, 1, 
7.} ?the patron saint of the old pagan Bel-Fire festival and 
transferred the Bel-Fire festivities to the eve of St. John's Day, 
the 24th of June, when they are still, or were until lately, 
celebrated in many parts of England, {Details in H.F.F., 346, etc.} 
as well as in Brittany and Spain, {Ib., 348-9.} also former colonies 
of the Ph?nicians. 

 

This fact of the association of the Bel-Fire rites with John-the-
Baptist suggests that the latter, who bears an Aryan Gentile and non-
Hebrew name, was himself an Aryan Gentile and of the Fire-Cross 
cult; and this seems supported by many other facts, presuming Gothic 
affinity, which require mention here. His initiatory rite of Baptism 
is wholly unknown in Judaism, whereas it is a part of the ancient 
ritual of the Sumerian and Aryan Vedic and Eddie Gothic Sun-cult, 
wherein Baptism is called by the Goths Skiri (or "The Scouring") 
which is radically identical with the name "Śakhar" applied to it by 
the Sumerians. 

 

{Śakhar (Br. 5082, and Sakar (Br. 4339). The founder of the 1st 
Sumer dynasty about 3100 B.C., who uses the Swastika and figures 
himself as a Fire-priest, often records his presentation of a "Font-
pan" or "Font of the Abyss" (Abzu-banda) to different temples which 
he erected (Thureau-Dangin Les Inscript. Sumér, 17, etc.) Sargon I. 
about 2800 B.C., as high-priest who uses the Swastika, describes 
himself as "water-libator" and devotee Nu-iz-sir (="Nazir") of God?
"the Śakhar (or Baptist) Lord" (C.I.W.A., 3, Vol. 4, No. 7). And 
John-the-Baptist was also a "Nazir" or consecrated devotee (Luke i. 
15, and cp. Numbers vi, 2 f.).}

 

And John-the-Baptist is called "Skiri-Jōn" by the Christian Goths of 
Iceland and Scandinavia; {V.D., 550.} and "Purification (by Water) 
Day" was officially called in Scotland, down to the reign of James 
VI., "Skiri-Thurisday." {J.S.D., 486.} Moreover, the father of John-
the-Baptist was a Fire-priest, 

 

{He offered simple Fire-incense in the temple "in the course of 
Abia" (Luke i, 5.) Ab, the 5th month of the Syrio-Chaldean calendar, 
was devoted to the worship of Bel the Fire-god, and was called by 
the Sumerians "Month of Bil or Gi-Bil" (?Gabriel). Br. 4579, 4587; 
Meissner 3101, or "Month of making Bil-Fire" (Br. 4621).} 

 

and presumably a Gentile, and his name "Zacharias," which has no 
meaning in Hebrew, is apparently the Sumer title of 
Śakhar "Baptist," with the personal affix aś or "one," corresponding 
to the English "ist." 

 

The presence of Gentile Sun-priests in the temple on Mt. Moriah at 
Jerusalem is explained by the fact that, besides the name "Moriah"?
which is recognized as meaning "Mount of the Morias or Amorites" 
{Encycl. Biblica., 3200.} ?that temple, long before the occupation 
of Jerusalem by David and its rebuilding by Solomon, was a famous 
ancient Sun-temple of the Hittites or Morites. Ezekiel 
says, "Jerusalem, thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an 
Hittite." {Ezekiel, 16, 3 and 45.} And Jerusalem, the "IRUSLM" of 
the Hebrews, was already "a holy city" under that non-Hebrew name, 
and called by its Hittite king about 1375 B.C. (i.e., over three 
centuries before the time of David), in his still existing original 
official letters, "The city of the Land of Urusalim, the city of the 
Temple of the Sun-god Nin-ib-u-śu" {Amarna Letters found in Aken-
Aten's archives. AL(W) 183, Berlin No. 106, lines 15, 16. Text 
reads: "Al mat U-ru-sa-lim-u ki, al Bid an Nin-Ib-u-śu mu."} ?
wherein the latter part of the name (Ib-u-śu) appears now to 
disclose the title of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
the "Ibus" of the Old Testament Hebrew, the "Jebus-ites" of our 
English translation. 

 

{Similarly, in the other Amarna reference to this temple AL(W) No. 
55 (Brit. Mus. 12) l. 31, the word read "Nin-ib" is followed 
by "buz." "Ib" and "Nin-ib" are defined as the Sun-god Uras (Br. 
10480, etc.). "Ib" also means "enclosure," temple (Br. 10488 and 
M.D. 1146) and "seer or priest " (Br. 10482). Ib-u-śu thus could 
mean "Temple priest of Winged Sun." "Ib-uś" is also defined as Ib 
+ "Thresher-of-Corn" (Br. 10491 and 4713) and the Jebusite king had 
his threshing floor on Mt. Moriah (2 Sam. xxiv, 16, etc.).} 

 

This Hittite (or Jebusite) king of Jerusalem, who is regarded as a 
kinsman of the Aryan Kassi princes of Babylonia, {Kassi princes were 
staying with him and he defended them: AL(W), 180 II. 32, etc.} bore 
the Gentile name of Erikhi or Urukhi-ma, {The first element Eri or 
Uru is the Sumerian for "man or hero" (Br. 5858) and thus disclosed 
as Sumer source of Greek  'Eros, Sanskrit and Latin Vir, Gothic Ver, 
Anglo-Saxon Were and English "hero."} and was obviously a Sun-Fire 
worshipper. In his official letters to Aken-Aten, to whom he was at 
the time tributary, he addressed that Sun-worshipping Pharaoh, who, 
it will be [p. 275] remembered, called himself "Son of the Sun," 
as "My Sun, the great Bil Fire-Torch." {AL(W) 181, (184, etc.). 
Berlin text, l. i, reads Zal-ia gi-Bil ma wherein Zal = Sol or Sun, 
and ma = Sumerian source of English "my."} 

 

The Israelitic occupation of the Sun-temple and its court on Mt. 
Moriah, from about 1012 B.C. onwards, was evidently only a joint 
one, shared with the Jebusites, Hittites and Amorites of Palestine 
and their descendants. Shortly before his death about 1015 B.C., 
King David, we are told, purchased from the Jebusite king of 
Jerusalem, Araunah (whose name is in series with that of Urukhi 
and "Uriah the Hittite"), a site on "the threshing place" of that 
king, "where the angel of the Lord was," in order to build there an 
altar. {2 Sam. xxiv, 16-24. The Revised Version translates the text 
literally as "all this did Araunah the king give unto the king."} 
That spot was thus outside the Jebusite temple itself, as 
sacrificial altars were in the open air. It is noteworthy that "the 
angel of the Lord" was already there before David obtained a part of 
the site; for it is significant that the "Sun-god" Nin-ib is 
otherwise styled "Taś," i.e., the Hitto-Sumerian Archangel of God 
and the "Tascia" of the Briton coins and monuments, as we have seen. 
We thus have confirmation through the Old Testament tradition of the 
existence of this pre-Israelitic temple of the Aryan Archangel of 
God on Mt. Moriah, as recorded in the original contemporary letters 
of its pre-Israelitic king. And David's great fear of that angel {1 
Chron. xx, 15-30.} is explained by the latter being the Hittite 
tutelary of Jerusalem and Palestine which David had invaded. 

 

The temple which Solomon began to build on Mt. Moriah about 1012 
B.C., and which was built mainly through the agency of Ph?nicians 
from Tyre, was presumably merely the rebuilding of the old Hittite 
Bil or Bel shrine, and continued to be shared by the Jebusites, of 
whom we are informed that "the children of Judah could not drive 
them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at 
Jerusalem unto this day" {Joshua xv, 63; Judges i, 21.} ?i.e., until 
the date of compiling the Old Testament, about the 6th century B.C. 

 

The Solomon temple had for its porch the characteristic Ph?nician 
pillars of the Bel Sun-temple, it was consecrated by "Fire from 
Heaven," {2 Chron. vii, 1.} it contained images of the Sun, {2 
Chron. xiv, 5; xxxiv, 4 and 7, Revised Version.} and of Sun-horses, 
{2 Kings xxiii, 11.} and it and its court continued to be used, more 
or less, for Sun and Bel worship down to the period of its 
destruction about 580 B.C. 

 

[Solomon worshipped "Baal" {1 Kings xi, 5.} as well as Iahvh?
and "Baal" is used in the Old Testament occasionally as a title of 
Iahvh or Jehovah. {Hosea, ii, 16; Jer. xxxi, xxxii.} He set in the 
porch the two colossal pillars of the Ph?nician Bel temples under 
their Ph?nician names, and supposed to represent the Ph?nician 
deity. {1 Kings vii, 21. These two pillars are described by 
Herodotus, ii, 44. They bore the Ph?nician names of "Buz-Iakin" 
(Boaz-Jachia). Cp. Encycl. Biblica, 4933.} About this time "the 
Children of Israel served Baal;" {Judges ii, 11-13.} and fifty years 
later a successor, Ahab, "served Baal and worshipped him," {1 Kings, 
xvi, 31.} so that there were only "seven thousand in Israel, all the 
knees of which have not bowed unto Baal." {Ib. xix, 18.} Twenty 
years later Ahaz, with his high-priest Urijah, placed an altar of 
Baal of Ph?nician pattern in the temple and erected "Baal altars in 
every corner of Jerusalem." {2 Chron. xxviii, 24; 2 Kings xvi.} Two 
centuries later, Manasseh placed Baal altars and vessels for Baal 
worship inside the temple; {2 Chron. xxxiii, 3; 2 Kings xxi, 3; 
xxiii, 4.} and Bel and Sun-worship still were practised in the 
temple and its courts about the time of its destruction by 
Nebuchadnezzar, about 580 B.C., as recorded by Ezekiel.] 

 

The Sun-worship in the temple, as described by Ezekiel, is 
especially significant. He refers to a non-Judaist image at "the 
door of the gate of the inner court where was the seat of the image 
which provoketh to jealousy," {Ezek. viii, 3, etc.} and he calls it 
by the name used by the later Ph?nicians for their image of Melqart 
and Resef (Taśia). {C.I.S.T., 88, 2, 3, 7; and 91, 1. This "Salmu," 
properly Sumerian "Salam," is especially applied to Sun-god. M.D., 
879.} He further says: "In the inner court of the Lord's house, at 
the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, 
were about five and twenty men with their backs to the temple of the 
Lord and their faces towards the East, and they worshipped the Sun 
towards the East." {Ezek. viii, 16.} And here it is important to 
note that the sacred place of the Sun-worshippers was in the court 
inside the porch, on the flat top of the sacred mount of their 
ancestors, and outside the Jewish sanctuary containing the 
tabernacle and ark, which for them was defiled by its bloodshed meat 
offerings. 

 

Similarly, in the new temple, rebuilt by the Sun-worshipping Cyrus 
the Medo-Persian, as "The house of God of Heaven," and begun about 
535 B.C. {Ezra, i, 2, etc.; vi, 4, etc.} ?for which services he was 
affiliated to Iahvh as "The Messiah" or "The Lord's anointed" 
{Isaiah xlv, 1 and cp. xliv, 28.} ?Bel worship appears also to have 
been practised, more or less. {Ezra ix, 1 etc., about 450 B.C. Hosea 
ii, 16, etc., xiv, 3; and later books Amos to Malachi. Antiochus I. 
about 250 B.C. set up an altar to Jupiter (1 Maccab. i, 23, etc., 
and Josephus Ant. xii, 7, 6).} And significantly in Herod's new 
temple, which was still in course of building when Christ began His 
ministry, {John ii, 20. It was not completed till 62-64 A.D. Encycl. 
Biblica, 4948.} there was an outer court inside the walls of 
the "temple" enclosure, called "The Gentiles' Court," {Enc. Bib., 
4945.} thus recognizing the right of access for Gentiles (Fire-
worshippers?) to a part of the summit of the sacred mount of their 
Aryan ancestors. This Outer Court was presumably the part of 
the "Temple" in which the father of John-the-Baptist performed 
his "course of Abia," and the part frequented by Christ. 

 

The word "Temple" in our English translation of the Bible is used in 
different senses, and for different words. It is used for the Hebrew 
words for "Palace," "The House," "House of God or of Iahvh," which 
variously designated the smallish building in the centre of the 
great court, enshrining the ark in a dark chamber, surrounded by 
cells for offices, the storage of vessels, furniture and treasures. 
It was not a place of worship, in the sense of a meeting-house of 
worshippers. "The small size of the Temple proper is accounted for 
by the fact that the worshippers remained outside, the priests only 
went within." {Cambridge Companion to Bible, 153.} The altars were 
in the court in the open air. "In this great or outer court the 
prophets generally addressed the people, as also did our Lord on 
many occasions; and even this court is termed 'The House of the 
Lord,' and is 'The Temple' in the New Testament." {S. Lee, Hebrew 
Lexicon, 636, cp. Jer. xxvi, 2 and 2 Kings xi, 13.} It must 
certainly have been this outer court of "the temple" which Christ 
called "My Father's House," from whence he drove out "the sheep and 
the oxen, and he poured out the changer's money, and overthrew their 
tables"; {2 John ii, 14-15. The word used in the Greek text here, 
translated "temple," is 'ieron, i.e., "holy or sacred thing," and is 
seldom used for a temple building (cp. Liddell & Scott, 727); 
whereas in verses 19-20 the word for "temple" is naos, the classic 
word for a temple "building."} for neither religiously nor 
physically could these have been within the temple-house proper. It 
was "in the presence of all his people in the courts of the Lord's 
house" that David paid his vows {Psalms cxvi, 19.}: "For a day in 
thy courts is better than a thousand." {Ib. lxxxiv, 10.} And it is 
to be noted that the gateway on the N. side?i.e., where the non-
Judaist Ph?nician "image of jealousy" was formerly located?was 
called "The Gate of Sparks," and it had an upper chamber. {Encl. 
Bibl., 4946, the word is Nisus.} This was possibly where the father 
of John-the-Baptist performed his Fire-offering course in "The month 
of Making Bel-Fire"; and the simple burning of incense is repeatedly 
referred to in the O.T. as the usual form of Baal worship. 

 

The Cross-sceptre or staff traditionally carried by John-the-Baptist 
was also an especial emblem of the "Sun-god" Nin-ib of Jerusalem. 
As "Son of God" that "Sun-god" is given in the Sumerian the synonym 
of "God of the Cross + ," {Br., 11096.} wherein that Cross in the 
form of St. George's Red Cross is defined as "Wood-Sceptre," 
also "Fire" and "Fire-god" under the name of Bar or Maś {Bar = Gi-
Bil or "Great Fire-god " (Meissner, 998); also Baru, a priest 
(Meissner, 994), thus defining the Sumerian priest as "the carrier 
of the Bar or Wood-Cross."} (i.e., the English "Bar" and "Mace"). 
There were thus very real, although forgotten, historical reasons 
for the crusaders seeing visions of St. George's Red Cross upon the 
battlements of Jerusalem beckoning them on to rescue this old 
ancestral Aryan shrine from the Saracens. Indeed, it now appears as 
if the numerous commands by Christ to his hearers and disciples, 
each to "take up his Cross and follow Me," 

 

{Matt. xvi, 24, etc. The word used here for cross is stauros, 
usually employed in classic Greek for a stave, or wooden bolt, 
cognate with Gothic stafr or staff, sanskrit stavara, "firm." It 
seems cognate with the Akkad word for this + sign Śadadu, defined 
as "The Wood of Winged God, the Light Red Cross" (Br. 1800).}

 

were references to the visible, Fiery Red Cross sceptre-symbol of 
the Sun-cult of the One Father-God of the Hittite temple of 
Jerusalem, the symbol carried by John-the-Baptist who baptized 
Christ, and not an anticipation of the Crucifix. {The same Greek 
word stauros is used for the Crucifix in the New Testament.} And 
Christ baptized "with Fire." {Matt. iii, 11.}

 

This now suggests that not only the Cross-carrying John-the-Baptist 
and his father, the Fire-priest Zacharias, but also Christ of 
Galilee of the Gentiles, were Gentiles of the Aryan religion of the 
One and Only Father-God with his symbol of the Sun Cross, and its 
associated rite of Baptism, and whose ancient Aryan shrine was at 
Jerusalem. This appears to explain the anti-Judaist teaching of 
Christ and John the Baptist, and why Christ and the father of John, 
as well as his earlier priestly namesake, were slain by the Jewish 
priests. {Matt. xxiii, 25; 2 Chron. xxiv, 20; G .L.S., Novr. 148 on 
Zacharias and cp. Enc. Bibl., 5373 for refs.} It also seems to 
explain the visit of "the wise men from the East" to Jerusalem, at 
the Nativity of Our Lord. The persons generally called "wise men 
from the East" were, we find, as corrected in the Revised Version of 
the New Testament, "Magi," {Matt. ii, 1.} a term solely used for the 
priests of the Sun and Fire-cult; and this name is obviously derived 
from the Sumerian Maś, as "bearer of the Maś or + Cross." Moreover, 
the related words translated in our English version "from the East" 
occur in the original Greek text as "from Anatolia" {'Apo anatolōn. 
Yet anatolē, literally "Rising up," especially of Sun, is used 
sometimes poetically for "East."} ?Anatolia being the middle part of 
Asia Minor, including Cappadocia, the old homeland of the Hittites 
and their Sun-cult, and the traditional home of St. George and his 
Red Cross. 

 

[p. 280] It is also noteworthy that the traditional place to which 
the infant Christ was carried in the Flight to Egypt was the great 
Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, or "The House of the Ph?nix"?the 
resurrecting Sun-bird of the Ph?nicians and the Ancient Egyptians, 
to the north of Cairo. {Herodotus ii, 73.} And there, to the present 
day, is "The Virgin's Tree" and "The Virgin's Well," where, by the 
tradition of the Copts, one of the oldest sects of the Early 
Christians, the Virgin and Child with Joseph rested in Egypt. 

 

{Baedeker's Lower Egypt, 333; Lunn, Mediterranean, 1896, 251. The 
ancient sycamore is about 250 years old, and replaced a former old 
sacred tree, and was railed in by the late Empress Eugénie at the 
opening of the Suez Canal. The Ph?nix Sun-bird was supposed to 
appear every morning to the faithful on the top of the sacred Persea 
tree there (B.G.E. ii, 97, 371).} 

 

This, again, appears to connect Christ with the Aryan Sun-cult. 

 

Racially, also, we are informed that the Virgin Mary was "the cousin 
of Elisabeth, {Luke i, 36.} the mother of John-the-Baptist," and 
that Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron." {Luke i, 5.} 
Now "Aaron," latterly used as a generic term for the priesthood in 
Jerusalem, is shown by leading biblical authorities to have been "a 
name extremely probably absent altogether from the earliest document 
of the Hextateuch in its original form, and apparently introduced by 
the editor" {Enc. Bibl. 2.} scribes later. This raises the 
possibility that the name AHRN, as "Aaron" is spelt in the old 
Hebrew, is really derived from the name of "Araunah," the Jebusite 
king and evidently priest-king of the Sun-temple at Jerusalem; for 
the Hittite kings were usually priest-kings, and the title Ibus 
or "Jebus-ite," we have seen, implied priesthood. That name, 
commonly rendered "Araunah," is spelt in the old Hebrew variously as 
ARUNH, AURNH, ARNIH, and ARNN. The statement, therefore, that 
Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron," might mean that she was a 
descendant of Araunah, the Hittite or Jebusite priest-king of 
Jerusalem, and that her cousin Mary, the mother of Christ, was also 
in the royal line of descent from the pre-Israelitic Aryan king of 
Jerusalem. Such a descent would account for the repeated references 
to the Jewish fears that Christ claimed a temporal kingship as "King 
of the Jews" (? Jebus) in Jerusalem.

 

{The references to Jewish rites of circumcision, etc., in regard to 
Christ are not necessarily historical but possibly additions of 
later Jewish convert copyists for proselytizing purposes. They do 
not appear in Mark; the earliest and most authentic of the gospels. 
The Davidic genealogy also, which differs widely in its two versions 
in Matthew and Luke, refers only to Joseph, who is represented as 
not being the father of Our Lord.} 

 

The location of the holy family in Nazareth of "Galilee of the 
Gentiles" is also suggestive of Gentile and Hittite relationship. 
Nazareth is near and almost overlooked by the mount, the scene 
of "The Sermon on the Mount," which is still called, from its double 
peak, "The Horns of the Hittites." Gentilic Galilee was the scene of 
most of Christ's preaching. Here he selected his disciples, most of 
whom, besides Bartholomew, we shall find bear Aryan Gentile names, 
as did John-the-Baptist, and his father Zacharias, the Bel-Fire 
priest. 

 

Resuming now our survey of the Bel-Fire rites in ancient Britain, we 
find that one of the earliest or earliest of all centres in Britain 
for these ancient Bel-Fire rites was at the ancient Ph?nician tin-
port itself in Cornwall, or "Belerium," as the Romans called it. 
That tin-port, St. Michael's Mount, rising as a spiry islet, and 
natural temple, off Marasion with its Stone Circle, and connected 
with that town at low tide, was formerly called "Din-Sol" or "Castle 
of the Sun."

 

{It is called "Din Sol" in the Book of Landaff (C.B., 1, 4; and 
L.H.P., 91). Din is Cornish for the Cymric and Scottish Dun, "a fort 
or town" (as in "Dun-Barton"), and is the Gothic Eddic Tun, "an 
enclosure or dwelling," and thus the Gothic source of the 
English "Town," from Sumer Du (Du-na) "dwelling, mound" (Br. 9579, 
9591). Sol is the Cornish and Gothic Eddic for "Sun" (also in 
Latin), which is now disclosed to be derived from the Sumerian 
Zal, "The Sun."} 

 

Its old sacred character is also reflected in its Roman title 
of "Forum Jovis" or "Market of Jove," as Bel we have seen was Ia 
or "Jahveh," and he was usually called "Jove" (or Jupiter) by the 
Romans in their eastern provinces and elsewhere, where the Bel cult 
was prevalent; and the thunderbolts which they put in the hands of 
Jove were of crackling tin, possibly with reference to that 
Ph?nician metal. The Fire festivals surviving, or till recently 
surviving here and in Cornwall generally, are held on the eve of St. 
John the Baptist's Day, and are significantly associated especially 
with the tin mines worked by the ancient Ph?nicians. 

 

["The boundary of each tin mine in Cornwall is marked by a long pole 
with a bush on the top of it. These on St. John's Day are crowned 
with flowers. It is usual at Penzance to light fires on this 
occasion and dance and sing around them. {H.F.F., 347.} 

 

"Still to this age the hills around Mount's Bay are lighted at 
Midsummer eve with the bonfire, and still the descendants of the old 
Dunmonii wave the torch around their heads after the old, old rite." 
{L.H.P., 15.} And similarly in Devon, etc., etc. {H.F.F., 44, etc., 
347, etc.}] 

 

The Stone Circles, which we have seen to be early Ph?nician, also 
appear to have been especial sites of these Bel-Fire rites, and for 
the production of the sacred Fire. {For Circles at Stennis, Merry 
Maidens, etc., L.S., 191, etc.; and D. MacRitchie, Testimony of 
Tradition.} And we have seen that these rites were latterly held 
within a circle cut on the turf, which suggests that the Stone 
Circles were thus used as Sun temples. And we have found that 
the "Cup-mark" inscriptions on circles and their neighbourhood are 
prayers of the Sun-cult. 

 

Altogether, the Ph?nician origin and introduction of the Bel-Fire 
rites into Britain, as part of the old "Sun-worship," thus appears 
to be clearly established. 

 

The Sun-wise direction of walking around a sacred or venerated 
person or object in the direction of the hands of a clock or watch, 
in the direction of the Sun's apparent movement in northern 
latitudes, from east to west, is admittedly part of the "Sun-
worship" ritual. It is inculcated in the old Aryan Vedic hymns and 
epics for respect and good luck and is called "The Right Way" 
or "Right-handed Way" (pra-) Daxina, the "Deasil" or "Right-hand 
Way" {Or Dessil, in Gaelic Deesoil, Deisheal, J.S.D., 150. The root 
of these words is Da, "the right hand" in Sumerian.} of the Scots, 
who call the opposite direction "Withersins" or "Contrary to the 
Sun," which is considered unlucky. This sun-wise direction is that 
in which the votaries are usually figured walking on the old 
Sumerian sacred seals in approaching the enthroned "Sun-god"; and it 
is the direction in which all Indo-Aryan votaries approached and 
passed Buddha, and in which Buddhists and Hindus still pass their 
sacred monuments, as opposed to the disrespectful and unlucky way of 
the devil-worshippers in the contrary direction. This Sun-wise 
direction and its solar meaning as "The Right Way" were commonly 
practised and well-recognized formerly in England, as evidenced by 
Spenser in his Faery Queen, when he makes the false Duessa in her 
enmity to the Red Cross Knight and Fairy Queen emphasize her curse 
by walking round in the opposite direction:? 

 

"That say'd, her round about she from her turn'd, 

She turn'd her contrary to the Sunne, 

Thrice she her turn'd contrary, and return'd, 

All contrary: for she the Right did shunne." 

 

It is still practised in Britain in masonic ritual and by 
superstitious country folk in walking round sacred stones and sacred 
walls supposed to possess lucky or curative magical virtues. It is 
the "lucky way" of passing wine at table. And it is the direction 
adopted by the Sumerians and all Aryans and Aryanized people for 
their writing, as opposed to the Semitic or Lunar style, in the 
reversed or retrograde left-handed direction. 

 

This Sun-wise or "Right Way" was the direction in which the Fire was 
carried and the circumambulation made in the Bel-Fire ceremonies. 

 

[Thus, in recording the practice of this "Dessil" in the Hebrides, 
Martin states "there was an antient custom to make a fiery circle 
about the houses, corn, cattle, etc., belonging to each particular 
family. A man carried fire in his right hand, and went round, and it 
was called Dessil from the right hand, which is called Dess." And he 
adds that Dessil is "proceeding sun-ways from East to West." 
{H.F.F., 175.}] 

 

Solar symbols in Ancient Britain are also especially profuse and 
widespread on the pre-Roman Briton coins, pre-Christian monuments 
and caves, although they have not hitherto been recognized as of 
solar import. On Early Briton coins the very numerous circles (often 
arranged in groups like cup-marks) sometimes concentric and rayed, 
along with wheels and crosses, spirals, single-horse sometimes with 
horseman, hawk or eagle, goose, winged disc, etc. (see Fig. 44), now 
disclosed to be purely solar symbols, have not hitherto been 
recognized as such, but are described by numismatists merely 
as "ring ornaments, annules, pellets or rosettes of pellets" and the 
rayed discs as "stars," and regarded apparently as being merely 
decorative devices, and without symbolic meaning. {E.B.C., 46 and 
58, etc., passim; and numismatic works generally.} And the horse and 
horseman type, although invariably represented single, and not in 
competition nor with chariots, are fancied to be horse and chariot 
racing in Olympian games borrowed from Macedonian coinage, 
notwithstanding that the latter is devoid of the Briton associated 
solar symbols. 

 

The circle symbol for the Sun's disc was early used by the 
Sumerians, as we have seen, in their cup-mark script, and it is one 
of the common ways of representing the Sun in the Sumerian and Hitto-
Ph?nician seals. In these seals the Sun is also represented by the 
dual and concentric circle, rayed circle, petalled and rosetted 
circles, spirals and swastikas, precisely as we find it figured in 
all these conventional ways in the Early British coins. {See 
Sumerian and Hitto-Ph?nician originals in D.C.O.; W.S.C., etc.} 

 

The equivalence and interchange of these various conventional ways 
of representing the Sun are well seen in the series of Briton coins 
here figured (Fig. 44). 

 

It will be noticed that the Sun above the Sun-horse is figured as a 
simple disc or the dual Sun-disc (corresponding to "cups") in b, 
rayed in a, rosetted as circles around a central one in c, as a 
wheel with 2 concentric circles and spirals in d, as circled disc 
with reversed or returning swastika feet and concentric circle with 
spirals in e, and as Sun-hawk with the dual Sun-disc in f. In g and 
i the upper Sun symbol is 8-petalled, rayed, and the horse tied to 
one of the Sun-discs and in i the horse is reversed with 
the "returning' Sun; whilst in h the single Sun-disc is borne by the 
Sun Eagle or Hawk with head duplicated to picture the "returning" 
Sun. In c, moreover, is seen the legend Aesv, [p. 285] spelt in 
other mintages Asvp, etc. {Asvp, Eciv, Eisw, see E.B.C., 385-6, 389, 
410, and C.B.G., 1, lxxxix.} which significantly is the Vedic 
Sanskrit name for the Sun-horse, now found to be derived from the 
Sumerian word for "horse." {Sumerian Ansu (or AS ?), "a horse," 
Akkad Sisū, Br., 4986, and Pinches Signatures, 5, col. 3, where it 
means "ass."} No more 

 

 

 

[for graphic see GRAPHICS FOLIO]

 

FIG. 44.?Sun Symbols: Discs, Horse, Hawk, etc., on Early Briton 
Coins.

(After Evans) {E.B.C., Plates: a, Pl. 411; b, 5, 14; c, 15, 8; d, 
14, 3; e, 14, 1; f, 14, 6; g, E., 2; h-i, E., 4.}

 

Note varied forms of Sun's Disc above horse, as circle, rayed, 
wheel, spiral, swastika, winged Disc. Also Cross in a, Horse tied to 
Sun in g and i and the legend Aesv, the Vedic name for Sun-Horse. 
And in a the Sun-horse leaps over the Gate of Sunset, as in Hittite 
Seals, see Fig. 37.

 

 


complete evidence, therefore, could be forthcoming for the solar 
character and Hitto-Sumerian origin of these emblems on the Ancient 
Briton coins. The interchangeability of the Sun's vehicle seen in 
the British coins, etc., as Horse (Asvin), Deer (or Goat), Goose, 
and Hawk or Falcon is voiced in the Vedas, and often in dual form:? 

 

"O Asvin (Horse) like a pair of Deer 

Fly hither like Geese unto the mead we offer . . .

With the fleetness of the Falcon." ?R.V. 5, 78, 2-4. 

 

The Deer, Goat and Goose, symbols associated with the Sun by Hitto-
Sumerians and Ph?nicians, and on Briton coins, etc., are seen in 
next chapter. 

 

This solar character of these devices on the Early Briton coins is 
still further seen in the specimens in Fig. 67. p. 349. The Sun is 
borne on the shoulders of the Eagle or Hawk, which in the third 
transfixes with its claws the Serpent of the Waters or Death. In the 
second the winged horse is tied to the Sun and is passing over the 
3 "cup-marks" of "Earth" (or Death). And on its obverse is the 
legend Tascia, the name of the Hitto-Sumerian archangel of the Sun, 
as we found in the cup-mark inscriptions in Britain and in the Hitto-
Sumerian seals and amulets from Troy; and in the name of the Sun-
temple in Jerusalem. It is a very common name on the Briton coins, 
as we shall see. This name "Tascia" thus connects the Briton coins 
and Cup-marks directly with the Hitto-Sumerian seals and the amulets 
of Troy. 

 

The Sun-Horse, figured so freely on the Briton coins, does not 
appear on Early Sumerian or Hittite seals, where its place is taken 
by the Sun-Hawk or Eagle. But it appears later and on Ph?nician 
coins {For the galloping horse on Ph?nician coins of Carthage and 
Sicily, sometimes with Angel and Ear of Barley, see Duruy, Hist. 
Romaine, 1, 142, etc., and P.A.P., 1, 374.} and on the Greco-
Ph?nician coins of Cilicia from about 500 B.C. (see Figs. later), 
and on archaic seals from Hittite Cappadocia. {C.M.C., Figs. 141, 
148.} This horse is presumably the basis of Thor's horse (or 
Odinn's) of the Goths and Ancient Britons-on which Father Thor 
himself as Jupiter Tonans, The Thunderer, with his bolts, latterly 
rode, and he is so figured riding on early Briton monuments. 

 

The traditional worship of "Odinn's horses" still persists in some 
parts of England?for example in Sussex, where I observed bunches of 
corn tied up to the gables of several old timbered cottages and 
steadings, and was told that it was to feed "Odinn's horses" as a 
propitiation against lightning bolts. Offerings of grain to Indra's 
Sun-horses are repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic hymns; and the 
horses are invoked also in prayers as the vehicle for Indra's 
visitations:? 


"They who for Indra, picture his horses in their mind,

And harness them to their prayers, 

Attain by such (pious) deeds an (acceptable) offering." ?R.V., 1, 
20, 2. 

 

The Sun-horse of the Ancient Britons is also the source of the 
modern superstition regarding the good luck of finding a horse-shoe 
pointing towards you?on the notion that it might have been dropped 
by Odinn's horse. 

 

The Spirals also, which are found on British coins (as in Fig. 44, 
etc.), on Bronze Age work and on prehistoric monuments and rocks in 
Britain, and usually in series of twos, are already found in 
Sumerian, Hittite and Ph?nician Seals, and as a decorative device on 
vases, etc., in old Ph?nician settlements in Cyprus and Crete and 
along the Mediterranean. Yet the meaning of this spiral does not 
appear to have been hitherto elicited. It is now seen by our new 
evidence to represent the dual phases of the Sun of the Sumerians. 
The right-handed or westward moving spiral represented the Day Sun, 
and the left-handed or eastward moving spiral represented 
the "returning" Sun at Night?as we have already seen illustrated 
through the Sumerian cup-marks, with standard Sumerian script and on 
the amulets of Troy. The concentric "Rings," which have usually a 
radial "gutter," and are often arranged in twos and sometimes 
threes, now appear to be merely an easy way, by means of 
the "gutter," of giving the effect of a spiral. 

 

And so widespread was "Sun-worship" formerly in Ancient Britain, and 
so famous in antiquity were the Ancient Britons as "Sun-
worshippers," that Pliny remarks that the Ancient Persians, who are 
generally regarded as the pre-eminent Sun-worshippers of the Old 
World, actually seemed to have derived their rites from Britain. 
{Nat. Hist., 30.}

 

These further facts in regard to the source and prevalence of "Sun-
worship" and Bel-Fire rites in the religion of the One God in Early 
Britain furnish additional proof that these elements of the Higher 
Civilization and Religion and their names were introduced into the 
British Isles by the Aryan Barat Catti, or Brito-Ph?nicians. 

 

 


FIG. 44A.?St. John-the-Baptist with his Cross-sceptre or Sun-mace.

(After Murillo.)






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