Gerald Massey's Lectures - Society in evolution - Awardspace

on the third day following the crucifixion. In the Acts he is not "taken up" into Heaven
until the fortieth day, or after forty days! Such serious discrepancies as these are forever
irreconcilable as history, but they are found to contain the very facts that reconstitute the
Mythos.
The resurrection of Osiris at the Autumn equinox was lunar; at the vernal equinox it was
solar. After he was betrayed to his death, when the sun was in the sign of Scorpio, he rose
again on the third day as Lord of Light in the moon, or as Horus, the child of the mothermoon.
The solar resurrection was at the vernal equinox when the sun entered the first of
the upper signs and Orion rose. This time it was in the character of the second Horus, the
adult of 30 years; and this second resurrection followed the forty days of mourning for
the suffering God which were celebrated in the Mysteries, and survive in a Christianized
form as our Lent. And just as the myth of the double Horus in the two characters of the
child of 12 years, and the adult Horus of 30 years, has been continued in the Gospels to
furnish the two phases in the life of Jesus, so have the two different resurrections with
their correct dates been applied to the Christ made historical.
Thus interpreted by means of the Mythos these two versions of one alleged fact tend to
corroborate my explanation already made that the two different dates for the crucifixion
given in the otherwise irreconcilable accounts belong to the luni-solar reckoning in the
same luni-solar myth. In Egyptian the signs of a half-moon and fourteen days are
identical; and in the dark half of the moon Osiris was torn into fourteen parts. Therefore
the 14th of the lunar month was the day of full moon. Whereas in the soli-lunar month of
thirty days the 15th was the middle of the month. Now the crucifixion or the crossing at
Easter was and still is determined by the day of full moon. This will be on the 14th of the
month of twenty-eight days in the reckoning by the moon only, but on the 15th of the
month according to the soli-lunar reckoning. The 14th of the month would be the lunar
reckoning of Anup = John, and the 15th that of Taht-Mati = Mathew in the two forms of
the Egyptian Mythos. Both reckonings were extant in two different cults and both were
separately continued by the Eastern and Western Churches for the one day of the
crucifixion. Both cannot be historically correct, but they are both astronomically true.
Both could be made to meet at a given point in the total combination which was
determined by the conjunction of the sun and moon at the equinox as the day of full
moon. But the two different dates for the mid-month remained, and these are represented
by the traditions of two different dates for the crucifixion. Both the lunar and the solar
dates could be utilised by the Mythos, in which there were two crucifixions and two
resurrections, though these will bear witness for the single fact of the historical
crucifixion. As we have seen, the two ascensions of Osiris on the third day and at the end
of forty days, have been preserved, and are repeated as historical transactions. Two
different Crosses were also contained in the Christian Iconography as the cross of
Autumn and of Easter; and although we may not be able to show two crucifixions in the
Canonical Gospels, nevertheless the total matter of the Mythos is there. When Jesus was
led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and to suffer during forty days, we
have the parallel to the struggle between Osiris and Sut, which was celebrated during the
forty days of mourning in the mysteries. Moreover, there were two days of death or
crucifixion kept in Rome until the present century, when the dead Christ used to be laid
out and exhibited on the Thursday before Good Friday; and two days of resurrection were
also celebrated in the two Sabbaths on Saturday and Sunday. As the Apostolic
Constitutions show, both of these days were continued for the two weekly holidays of the
Christians, Saturday being the day of rising again on the 7th day of the week in the lunar
cult; Sunday, the Sabbath of the 8th day, according to the solar resurrection. Such are the
fundamental facts; and, to my thinking, they are of sufficient force to cleave the
Canonical history right in two, each half being then claimed by the Mythos. Here, as
elsewhere, the Mythos does explain the fact, but only by abolishing the history. From