Easter

Most Christians vaguely grasp the connections between Easter and Passover. What most do not understand are the deep roots both holidays have in paganism and Saturnian symbolism. However, such knowledge serves to explain much of the tradition and ritual surrounding this Christian holiday.

A Christian holiday

Easter celebrates the death and resurrection of the Savior in the meridian of time. Mormons, like the rest of Christianity, see the holiday as a time to remember and reverence that most sacred and remarkable event in all of history.

The entire philosophy of Christianity hinges on the resurrection. Without it, Christianity — and by inference, Mormonism as well — is just another religious philosophy among many. With the resurrection comes the promise that all will rise from the grave, Christ being the first fruits. This concept is at the heart of our religion.

The Passover connection

Easter’s connection with the Passover stems from the fact that the Savior’s crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem took place during the annual Jewish Passover celebration, a juxtaposition that was not lost on the Savior since he clearly chose the time and the place of his own expiation.

Seen from the catastrophist’s point of view, the Passover was a celebration of Israelite deliverance — not just from Egyptian bondage, but the entire planet from planetary catastrophe. Passover was the moment of closest approach between Earth and the comet Venus, hence the term “pass over.” It was the culmination of a series of plagues that afflicted not only Egypt, but also the entire world, according to Velikovsky.

So, too, in Christian eyes, Easter is a celebration of the deliverance of the human race from the bonds of death.

Both Easter and Passover involve the consumption of a ritual meal in remembrance of their deliverance. The Jewish Seder reflects the Lord’s directive that the Israelites eat roast lamb, unleavened bread and bitter herbs. (Exodus 12:8-10.) They do so to remember how they were saved from the plague that took so many Egyptians during the Exodus. The Christian sacrament reflects Christ’s instruction that they partake of bread and wine to remember him and the deliverance from death he has provided. (Luke 22:19, 20.)

A note, in passing

Incidentally, it may be noteworthy, in passing, that there may have been a very practical purpose for the consumption of the Passover meal. If, as Velikovsky suggests, Earth’s atmosphere was supercharged with elements from the tail of the passing comet Venus, then eating bread without yeast and bitter herbs may have served to offset the debilitating physical effects on the human body of those pollutants. If, as this author suggests, the compounds that turned the water red in Egypt were acidic, causing sickness and death in animals and humans, then the basic, alkaline nature of bitter herbs would serve to chemically offset the elevated levels of acid in the body (acidosis).

Additionally, it is well known that certain types of yeast (Candida albicans, for example) in the gut can release toxins that can severely debilitate the immune system. Other types of yeast produce compounds that can cause humans to hallucinate. In this instance, the instructions to eat bread without yeast (unleavened) may have been designed to help the Israelites better cope physically with the temporarily hostile environment created by the extraterrestrial pollutants — eminently practical advice given through revelation from God to Moses. The idea of food as medicine is one that modern science has recently come to recognize, a philosophy that has been at the heart of herbal use and practices since time immemorial.

Eating is a religious experience?

Such ritual meals as Seder, the Eucharist and the Sacrament are also practiced in most pagan cultures. They range, on one end of the spectrum, from consumption of simple foods to cannibalism on the other extreme.

Most animal sacrifice did not consist of cremation, as most moderns believe. Rather, it was, in most cases, a ritual method of cooking and preparing the animal for eating. Our modern, seemingly innocuous and strictly culinary practice of barbequing actually has its roots in cultural traditions of sacrifice. So remember, next time you throw something on the ‘barbie,’ you are practicing the time-honored, ritualistic tradition of sacrifice with its roots deep in antiquity.

Recidivist Israelites, too, adopted pagan eating rituals. "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." (Jeremiah 7:18.)

Note the similarity between the elements of this ritual and the Christian sacrament. They consumed bread and drink in honor of the goddess. It was a ritual meal. These backsliding Israelites prepared cakes and drink to honor their pagan gods, just as we take bread and water today. Such similarities are not coincidental. Christ, on the eve of his crucifixion, obviously turned to a well-established, ancient practice in the Hebrew culture as the basis for his new eating ritual, the Sacrament.

Hot cross buns

Just such a ritual meal is connected with the Christian’s celebration of Easter. Hot cross buns are a lesser, but well established part of this holiday that, doubtlessly, have their origins in pagan antiquity. These loaves were originally marked with horns, the crescent symbol for ancient Saturn, or the cross, the cruciform symbol for the Queen of Heaven, Astarte or Venus. The ancient Greeks also consumed these types of buns in their celebrations of Artemis, Goddess of the hunt (known as Diana to the Romans). And the Egyptians ate a similar cake in their worship of the Goddess Isis. Later, Saxons ate buns that were marked with a cross in honor of Eastre (Astarte). These customs of creating a ceremonial bread or loaf, marking it with the symbol of the goddess, then eating it as part of a festival in honor of that same goddess is an echo of the Israelite practice of making cakes to their Queen of Heaven.

Such universal practices beg the question, where did the human race get the idea that eating something was a sacred practice? The idea that eating should be part of religious ritual may have begun in Earth’s ancient heavens when one planet ‘consumed’ other, smaller satellites. In a later monograph, we will discuss more about sacrificial rituals around the world and the events and beliefs that may have inspired the practice.

A Christian or pagan holiday?

Returning to our Easter theme, it seems rather ironic that this ostensibly Christian holiday is burdened with much of the celebration and ceremony that once attached itself to the ancient cults that worshipped astral goddesses.

We discover, for instance, that the very name of the holiday has its roots in idolatry. Easter is a corruption of the name of the goddess who leant her name to the holiday, Aster or Astarte, as the Greeks knew her. Her Syro-Phoenician counterpart was the goddess Ashtoreth. The Babylonians called her Ishtar and the Romans called her Venus. She was also the great mother goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe, who knew her as Eastre, from whence we get the name Easter today.

The Saturn connection

Surely these ancient goddesses from a variety of ancient cultures all had their origins in the planet Venus that once stood near the Earth in the Polar Configuration because they all share common attributes, history, and iconography. Talbott wrote:

Wherever you find the Universal Monarch (Saturn) you will find close at hand the ancient mother goddess — the goddess whom the Sumerians called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians Ishtar, and the Egyptians Isis, Hathor, and Sekhmet, each with numerous counterparts in their own and in other lands, and virtually all of them viewed symbolically as daughter or spouse of the creator-king, and the mother of another, equally prominent figure.

The Mother Goddess is the planet Venus, the luminous, central orb seen squarely in the center of Saturn and from which radiating streams of material course outward. (Thoth, Vol. 2, No. 8.)

So, we see that the true origins of this most Christian of holidays actually owes its existence to events that transpired in Earth ancient heavens.

The Easter egg

Originally, the egg, now a cultural symbol of Easter, was closely related to the eye symbol — both symbols of this mother goddess, this goddess of fertility anciently. Mythical traditions say that she was born as/or in a celestial egg. Indeed, in the Polar Configuration, Venus’ transformation into the prototypical star — the archetype of all radiant star symbols — began when it took on an ovoid shape, thus forever connecting the goddess with the egg.


It is for this reason that the favored decoration for Easter eggs anciently was a star. Indeed, the very name of this goddess in several cultures, as well as our own, came to mean ‘star.’

Yet, in our culture, stars and the eggs have no discernable relationship. Like so much in mythology, the connection seems absurd to the modern mind. Yet, in ancient myth and tradition they are intimately connected. Only the theory of the Polar Configuration satisfactorily explains their symbolic ligature. Indeed, it not only explains it; it demands it. The star and the egg were two primary aspects or phases in the development of ancient Venus while in the Polar Configuration at the dawn of time.

Dyed eggs, originally colored to match the turquoise color of ancient Venus, were part of the rituals enacted in the Babylonian mystery religions. The variety of colors we see today was a natural, artistic elaboration of the original idea. Such colorfully dyed and decorated eggs were considered sacred because of their symbolic representation of the ancient goddess/planet Venus. They played an integral part of the religious ceremonies in Egypt and the Orient. Dyed eggs were hung in Egyptian temples. The egg was regarded as the emblem of regenerative life proceeding from the mouth of the great Egyptian god Atum because the actual planet Venus so presented itself in the Polar Configuration. Venus (Hathor) was centered on Saturn (Atum), assumed an egg shape that seemed to house the child, Mars (Horus) and then appeared to give birth to Mars.

The Easter rabbit

In addition to the egg symbol, the Norse goddess of fertility, Ostara, whose name was clearly a derivative of Aster or Astarte, was connected to the hare. This connection was a later one, unique to the Norse culture, which probably stems from the well-known fecundity of rabbits.

Three other seemingly disconnected traditions of Easter further connect the holiday to pagan practices and ultimately to the Polar Configuration: the woman’s Easter bonnet and special holiday dress as well as the Easter parade.

Easter bonnets and finery

Festivals that celebrated the ancient star goddess, Venus, were ideal occasions for women, who sought to emulate the goddess, to adorn themselves as the goddess herself. The bonnet worn today is a distant replication of the hat, hair dress or crown worn by the goddess in heaven.


Older, more customary variants of the bonnet draped a veil across the face, also a feature of the ancient sky goddess. LDS temple-goers will recognize the validity of this tradition and its connection to temple ritual and furnishings. The dress, usually white, was designed with symbolic significance relevant to the ancient appearance of Venus and her role as a fertility goddess. Thus, anything that enhanced the gender specific attributes of a woman was employed to demonstrate her procreative role. Indeed, the more elaborate, yet accurate, the duplication of the symbols/appearance — because the symbols of the goddess were representations of what she looked like in Earth’s ancient heavens — the greater the identification of the individual with the mother goddess, imitating her essential aspects. Thus, a practice that had deep religious significance in antiquity has come to be a mere fashion statement today. Such is the dilution of the original concepts and practices over time. Yet, the themes persist in our cultural traditions, outliving, by far, the knowledge and understanding they were meant to convey.

The Easter parade

Parading up and down the streets, carrying an effigy of the god or goddess upon their shoulders, the ancients moved from one strategically sited temple location to another to re-enact the mythical movements of their deity in the heavens anciently. In many cultures — especially the Egyptian — these portable shrines were set in replicas of boats, carried on long, stout poles that could be borne by several carriers. It is the image of the god or goddess, sitting in a celestial boat, that we commonly see in ancient Egyptian art. It is for this reason that we apply the term “float” to our modern version of these icons that move along city streets in modern parades. They were originally boats; so calling them floats is natural.

Additionally, it is the reason the term “ark” was applied to the most sacred object in Judaism, the Ark of the Covenant. It was applied to the conveyance that bore tablets containing the Ten Commandments and other artifacts of the Exodus.
Thus, the Easter parade is a modern counterpart of this ancient practice. Once again, our culture maintains the practices or traditions instigated in Earth’s ancient skies with no concept or grasp of their origins or original meanings.

Christian hypocrisy

Ironically, modern Christians, who seem so determined to avoid any suggestion of paganism or cultism in their religions, who vociferously denounce the paganism of Christmas and Mormons as cultists, have enthusiastically embraced the paganism of Easter.

Latter-day Saints, too, fail to recognize the astral traditions in our culture and religion, yet it should not be so. Joseph Smith and the prophets that succeeded him sought to connect us to our ancient past and the traditions handed down through cultural transmission. Sadly, we Saints discarded our understanding of these things in favor of the Christianized customs and practices of the American culture. Yet, like our Christian cousins, our traditions, our temples and our scriptures are filled with the evidence from the past of their true cosmological nature.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2002

Doomsday Anxiety

A fear of the end of the world, a sort of ‘doomsday anxiety,’ may be the source of the resistance nearly all Latter-day Saints demonstrate when confronted with the planetary catastrophe scenario of the last days, prophetic imagery and ancient history taught in these pages.

It is a syndrome that afflicts everyone to one degree or another.

The answer to many gospel questions

Given the ability of the catastrophe scenario to explain so much — the imagery found in the scriptures and modern revelation, the iconography of modern temples, the mythology, religion and traditions of every ancient culture, as well as that of our own, and the seemingly extravagant statements of Joseph Smith that find meaning only when placed in the planetary catastrophe scenario — one would think that the Saints might rush to embrace these concepts.

But, just the opposite is true. Their reactions range from confusion to apathetic disbelief to overt skepticism or even outright antagonism.

Unwarranted reactions

Otherwise rational and thoughtful Mormons exhibit abnormal responses to these ideas. Most become uneasy when these concepts are introduced into any discussion. They are clearly conflicted emotionally about the concepts that confront them. Others seem to have difficulty following the concepts and quickly become distracted. Still others see no relevance to the gospel and soon lose interest or become bored.

A psychological cause?

It may seem odd to suggest that all these are emotional reactions, yet they mirror the reactions listed by psychologists for victims of amnesia when they are confronted with a painful truth or reality. Velikovsky, a psychologist by training and profession, saw these as forms of amnesia because the range of reactions is the same.

The Latter-day Saints’ resistance to concepts that they should otherwise easily recognize as invaluable aids to their gospel study and comprehension is puzzling. The natural assumption that these reactions are the result of exposure to unfamiliar ideas that seem illogical at first glance may be unsound. It may be precisely because they are too familiar that individuals react as they do.

The explanation may lie beyond the veil.

First of all, it’s worth noting that logic always takes a back seat to emotional, internal conflicts. Psychologists tell us that powerful emotional reactions always trump clear-headed thinking. It is for this reason that people who are normally clear headed and logical will act irrationally in certain situations. The heart rules the head, as folk wisdom tells us.

Let’s look at this carefully.

Knowledge from the preexistence

Numerous general authorities have described the process of conversion to the Restored Gospel as a “remembering” of the things we knew in the preexistence. Every human being who came to this world learned those gospel truths in that premortal epoch.

At birth, a veil of forgetfulness hid that knowledge and those experiences from our conscious thought. But it is our individual dedication to those innate principles acquired in our preexistence that make each of us what and who we are. That’s why we are drawn by an emotional bond or component to those principles and truths.

Knowledge is blocked, but emotions come through

The knowledge gained in our prior existence is inaccessible to us, due to the veil. But the old spirit within us, which has been in existence forever, reacts to that knowledge, producing emotions in us that we, in turn, act upon. For example, we are emotionally drawn to the plan of salvation because it is familiar to our spirit, while our conscious mind sees only a new and unusual concept.

This accounts for the reactions of investigators to gospel principles. We often refer to it as revelation from the Spirit. But it may be that it is simply that eternal part of us that recognizes the truths of the gospel and reacts to them. Thus, the spirit within us is confirming to us that what we are seeing and hearing is the truth.

Of course, the positive reactions vary in each individual, running the gamut from “whisperings of the spirit” to overwhelming “hit over the head” responses. The workings within us we call “conscience” or “intuition” are most likely of the same nature.

Positive for the good, negative for the bad

For those spirits who have innately followed those preexistent precepts and who therefore wish to embrace these recognized truths and conform their life to them, the experience is affirmative. Encountering the truth once again in this life is a confirming, uplifting experience accompanied by strong, positive emotions. They want to know more; they instinctively recognize the value of the gospel as their one, sure guide, as they learned in the preexistence.

For those who find their behavior in this world is at odds with those preexistent precepts, who have deluded themselves by suppressing their spirit’s urge to act circumspectly, who have systematically denied the warnings of their spirit called “conscience” and who wish to continue to indulge in the worldly lusts and pursuits they find so attractive, such an encounter with truth provokes a violent, negative reaction within them, ranging, as we have seen from confused indifference to outright anger. Hence, they seek to destroy the message by attacking the messenger. Many prophets have lost their lives due to these negative responses manifest by large, wayward segments of the human population in all ages.

As with the gospel, so with prophecy

These same principles apply when individuals are exposed to the concepts of planetary catastrophe.

During our preexistence, we all saw the way these events played out in other creations. We all vicariously experienced what would surely occur on the world we would one day inhabit. Thus, we had a firsthand knowledge of the nature and extent of what we might one day encounter in mortality.

So, when a comet appears in the sky or the sun is darkened in an eclipse, that part of us that is eternal, our spirit, recalls that these are earmarks of great planetary disasters. Even when someone begins to rehearse the imagery of such events, we can become uneasy, and we are filled with dread — an emotion we could not experience in the preexistence, but which is endemic to our present condition.

This is the doomsday anxiety syndrome.

Attack the messenger if you don’t like the message

The connections rehearsed by this author in his books, articles and in these pages — stories of planetary catastrophe in ancient history, cultural tradition and ritual, gospel symbolism and the language of the prophets — evoke the same reaction.

Some few embrace the information because it “rings true.” Others, even some who have wholeheartedly embraced the Restored Gospel and its marvelous truths, have a negative reaction — not because they aren’t good people, but because they subconsciously fear that the planetary catastrophe scenario might suddenly hurdle them out of their comfortable, safe existence into a scene of chaos, unimaginable destruction and even death. Unconscious of the deep motivation for their feeling, they recoil from both the message and the messenger as powerful emotions arising from within their spirit work to block the reality of what they are seeing or hearing by creating a confusion of thought, denying the truth in all of it or reacting angrily to it. Depending upon the individual, they display the spectrum of familiar responses psychologists expect to anything the individual sees as profoundly fearful and unthinkable.

Mankind in amnesia

These are the classic reactions of an amnesiac. The one thing an amnesia victim cannot deal with rationally is a confrontation with the reality that was so painful, the truth that his or her mind blocked out entirely. They are in denial. In fact, when seen in this light, we discover that denial is simply a more mild form of amnesia.

But whether you call it denial or amnesia, the results are the same: The individual cannot rationally confront and deal with something because powerful emotional forces absolutely prevent it.

Rather than seeing the reaction of most Saints to this topic as an irrational quirk of the human species, it should be seen as a perfectly normal response in an eternal being, and it serves to explain why otherwise prudent and rational Mormons suddenly exhibit signs of denial that run the gambit whenever the subject of planetary catastrophe emerges as it relates to the gospel.

Remembering means acting out

This amnesia-like behavior alone explains the proclivity of the human race to incessantly and compulsively rehearse the dramas and symbols of the planetary gods in literature, art, architecture, religion and drama. Psychologists are well acquainted with the emotional phenomenon. Children, for example, will repeatedly act out some traumatic event in their play activities, rehearsing one aspect or another of the trauma in a range of behaviors that vary from simply odd to very self destructive, depending upon the severity of the original ordeal. This explains why Aztec priests would cut the hearts from their sacrificial victims and present them as offerings to placate their vengeful planetary gods. It explains why all our holidays and festivals — Halloween, Christmas, New Year, May Day and Easter, all copies of ancient celebrations — religiously preserve the symbols, rites and rituals of cosmic upheaval.

It is no exaggeration to say that we, like our ancestors are obsessed with these things without recognizing their origins or their true meaning. Like amnesiacs, we act out or fears in self-destructive ways. Instead of acknowledging to ourselves the ugly, fearful truth, we find ways to sublimate the emotions of fear and anxiety these festivals memorialize, choosing instead to embrace them as joyous or celebratory occasions in keeping with our near total denial of their true meaning. Thus, every such festival has it rituals, which are ceremonies, rites, practices and customs that rehearse the symbolic elements of the catastrophe that initiated the festival.

Hiding the truth in plain sight

All this is a way to act out our deepest fears without once confronting the truth behind the festive facade. These holidays and festivals are like hideous monsters that we have festooned with flowers and decorative treatments to completely hide the ugliness, so we can pretend there is nothing ominous or fearful there. But, it continues to repeatedly manifest itself.

Ironically, modern, orthodox science represents the ultimate intellectual manifestation of such denial. First, science totally rejected religion, the primary guardian of the ancient knowledge of planetary catastrophe and its principle vehicles for transmitting that knowledge down through the ages: the scriptures and temple worship. Then, it banned all ancient tradition as fabrication and folly, replacing it with its own doctrine of denial: Empiricism — if you can’t see it happening now, it never happened. In fact, one might characterize the empirical method as the most certain way to avoid the truth, positing a myriad of “theories,” a kind of “scientific mythology,” rather than acknowledging the unthinkable.

The flawed notion that archaic memories of universal catastrophe were nothing more than exaggerated accounts of local disasters, as scientists and scholars have steadfastly declared, is unsupportable — another attempt at denial. Consider the profound nature of these past events.

A review of our traditions of doomsday

The world-ending catastrophe remembered by Nordic cultures gave rise to the prophetic vision of Ragnarok — the destruction of the world in a rain of fire and stone. In this vision, the great serpent Jormungand rises from the waters of the deep and attacks, spitting its fiery venom upon the world. A battle ensues between gods and giants. Odin’s dark angels, the Valkyries, ride their steeds across the sky, their golden hair streaming behind them. The walls of the heavenly city Asgard fall down, and the celestial bridge of Bifrost dissolves in flames.

A much earlier account of universal disaster, preserved by the Greek poet Hesiod, described the “clash of the Titans.” On one side, the leader of the Titans was the god Kronos, the original ruler of heaven, on the other, his own son, Zeus. Their war in the sky brought the world to the edge of complete destruction.

“For a long time now, the Titan gods and those who were descended from Kronos had fought each other, with heart-hurting struggles, ranged in opposition all through the hard encounters,” wrote Hesiod. The upheaval lasted for ten years, culminating in a heaven-shattering conflagration, when the whole world shuddered beneath the thunderbolts of the gods. The celestial combatants “threw their re-echoing weapons and the noise of either side outcrying went up to the starry heaven as with great war crying they drove at each other.”

No wonder the human race declines to acknowledge the reality of such prodigious destructions. To eyewitnesses of these events, “it absolutely would have seemed as if Earth and the wide Heaven above her had collided, for such would have been the crash arising as Earth wrecked and the sky came piling down on top of her, so vast was the crash heard as the gods collided in battle….” Huge thunderbolts flew between the celestial combatants. The roaring wind and quaking earth brought with them electrical discharge, causing a great dust storm on the Earth, “with thunder and with lightning, and the blazing thunderbolt, the weapons thrown by great Zeus” in the heavens.

Of course, the scriptural equivalent of these traditions is the battle in heaven where Michael and his archangels struggled to save all creation from Lucifer, the dragon, and his minions — the same imagery the prophets use to typify the rebellion that took place in our premortal existence.

Doomsday anxiety, the worldly view and the LDS view

The worldwide doomsday theme has no roots in familiar natural events. Therefore, we cannot ignore the direct implication: The myths arose as imaginative interpretations of extraordinary, destructive occurrences suffered by all. If mankind’s doomsday anxiety was provoked by events no longer occurring, the conventional historians’ dismissive approach to the subject must be counted among the greatest theoretical mistakes in modern times, born of profound denial.

So, too, it would be an oversight to dismiss the Saints’ disdain for this subject as benighted ignorance and not recognize it for the natural reaction that it is.

While the doomsday anxiety phenomenon is otherwise difficult to explain, it is quite understandable and logical in the context of LDS doctrine. As with most of the important questions in life, we now see that there is a clear answer in the revealed gospel.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

The Origin of the Sacrament

Mormons partake of the Sacrament in remembrance of the Savior’s sacrifice for our sins. These are a precious few moments in which we can reflect upon and ponder what he accomplished on our behalf.

All Christians, no matter how they celebrate the expiation of Christ, recognize the instigation of that ordinance by the Savior during the Passover (Pesach) in Jerusalem just prior to his crucifixion.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.
And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:26-28.)

If they pay attention in classes, Latter-day Saints will have learned about the historical roots of Passover in the events of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, which included a hastily consumed meal that came to be known in Jewish tradition as Seder.

Since Seder includes the ritual consumption of certain foods, it seems appropriate that Christ would choose that occasion to instigate another eating ritual to encourage his followers to recall his primary mission to Earth: the resurrection of all and salvation for those who seek it.

Looking deeper into the past

Christians believe that the Sacrament originated with Christ. Hence, no investigation of the ordinance goes beyond that point.

What most Christians and Latter-day Saints do not know is that the origins of the Sacrament, like most Christian conventions, are to be found much further back in time, in ancient custom and tradition. In fact, there is credible evidence that its roots go much deeper into ancient tradition than most consider. This evidence points to the source of such rituals in the heaven-spanning specters that once dominated Earth’s skies.

As it turns out, the scriptures tell us of a ritual meal consumed by idolatrous Israelites that is clearly a prototype of the Sacrament, leading to the surprising conclusion that the Savior borrowed a custom or tradition that was already ancient in his day, and then adopted and adapted it to use as an ordinance.

To understand the ancient origins of the Sacrament, we must go back in time to the reign of judges in Israel after the conquest of Canaan and the Philistines by Joshua’s armies.

Shortly after Joshua’s death, the Israelites began worshipping the gods of their neighbors. In Judges we read:

And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:

And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.

And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. (Judges 2:11, 12, 13.)

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not him. (Judges 10:6.)

Here we have an unequivocal statement that the Israelites adopted the idolatrous worship of neighboring cultures. Indeed, one might argue that they never actually abandoned the beliefs and practices that they learned while in bondage in Egypt.

Even though the generation that followed Moses out of Egypt had long passed away by the era covered in Judges, the text clearly indicates that they passed on to their children a tendency to accept idolatrous beliefs and practices, suggesting that vestiges of idolatry bridged the gap from one generation to another, down through the ages.

On the earth, as in heaven

Of course, we’ve learned elsewhere that those idolatrous traditions were based entirely in ancient astral events. They were symbolic of things that were once seen to happen in Earth’s tumultuous skies.

More specifically, we know that Baal (Apollo) was Mars and Ashtaroth (Ishtar, Aphrodite) was Venus, the two primary actors in the Polar Configuration.

These idolatrous practices flourished over time to become an integral part of Israelite culture. Indeed, they endured on into the epoch of the Israelite monarchy where Yahweh was no longer revered as the only god. In fact, he was worshipped as one of many gods.

For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father.

Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon.

And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. (1 Kings 11:5-8.)

And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile. (2 Kings 23:13.)

Thus we see that the customs, rituals and practices attendant to the worship of those idols was fully integrated into Israelite culture for many generations, insomuch that they became an indistinguishable part of the religion Moses had originally given them.

We see the pervasiveness of such practices many generations later in events recorded by the prophet Jeremiah.

Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.
Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. (Jeremiah 7:16-18.)

The Lord condemned Israel through Jeremiah for their perfidy. In addition to practicing the abominable ritual of child sacrifice to the heathen god Moloch, Jeremiah’s account explains that they worshipped “the queen of heaven,” making “cakes” and “drink offerings.”

The queen was a star and a planet

This Queen of Heaven that Jeremiah despised was none other than Ashtoreth, mentioned in the quotes from 1st and 2nd Kings. She was the great star goddess (Venus) of antiquity, the mother of the son (Mars) of god (Saturn).

As an aside, it is worthy of note that the Roman Catholics adopted the imagery of the Queen of Heaven for their worship of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. In that role, she is an ideal fit for all the imagery and veneration of her prototype in nearly every ancient culture since they all had an equivalent goddess they worshipped as the Queen of Heaven and the mother of god, whether she was called Ashtoreth, Ishtar, Isis, or some other title. Thus, when Christianity was taken to other “gentile” cultures, they readily accepted the Virgin Mary imagery. This was even true for Mesoamerican peoples such as the Inca, Maya and Aztecs.

A ritual meal

Of particular interest in our quest to understand the origins of the Sacrament is the practice of making cakes and drink offerings mentioned in the preceding verses.

In the following verses we learn that in spite of Jeremiah’s pleas to abandon such rituals, the people vowed to continue them because they were traditional.

Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying,

As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee.

But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.

But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.

And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? (Jeremiah 44:15-19, italics added.)

These cakes and drinks they made were not simply used as an offering placed upon some alter or set aside in a shrine. They were ultimately consumed ritually, just as were all the animal sacrifices of the Israelites.

As is the case for all such rituals or rites, they were done to recall some aspect of the ancient configuration that once stood above the Earth.

Hot cross buns and the Queen of Heaven

Another curious connection to these rites is found in European pre-history. When the northern tribes of Israel ultimately migrated into Europe, they took these traditions with them. So it should not surprise us to learn that the traditions of many European cultures preserve vestiges of these practices.

Our holiday now connected with the Savior’s resurrection, Easter, is just such a tradition. It began as a celebration, a holiday (holy day) consecrated to the Queen of Heaven: Aster, Astarte, Ishtar or Ashtoreth. One custom connected with that holiday is the making of hot cross buns. In effect, buns were made that bore the image of the goddess, which was a cross.

The cross placed on the hot cross buns is the same image that history tells us was placed on the cakes made by the women of Jerusalem in the Jeremiah text. Not only that, the European tradition indicates that those cakes were made to be eaten, just as are their equivalents today. The cross was the explicit ancient symbol of the star goddess since she ultimately assumed the form of the cross in heaven. The “cakes” or buns were made in the image of the goddess.


Here we see a discharging Venus forming four arms or streams, setting behind the darker orb Mars and in front of the larger face of Saturn. This is the archetypal image replicated in the hot cross buns of Easter.

Learning the lessons of history

So, we learn yet another connection of the idolatrous practices of the ancients to our modern cultural traditions which serves to demonstrate how pervasive and enduring are these traditional practices. Just as with the Christmas traditions — in fact, the traditions of all holidays (holy days), which all harken back to celestial events — they endure in one form or another in contemporary culture, even after memory of the origins are long lost and forgotten in hoary antiquity.

And so it was with the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the great star goddess of antiquity. When the ancient Israelites ate the cakes and drank the drink offering, they made a covenant to remember her, to recall how she brought the heavens to life and lit the Earth with her glory, as well as nurturing the child (Mars) she bore. Cakes and beer or wine were chosen because those were ultimately the edible fruits of the Earth over which Venus ruled. Hence, she was the prototype of Mother Nature as well.

She was called the Queen of Heaven for good reason. Sumerian texts tell of her “terrifying glory,” invoking Inanna (Venus) as the goddess of “the Light of the World”, “the Amazement of the Lands”, “the Radiant Star” and “Great Light.” They depict the goddess “clothed in radiance,” saying that the world stood in “fear and trembling at [her] tempestuous radiance.”

So, when the Savior wished to initiate an ordinance that would remind his followers of his role as Redeemer and “light of the world,” the thought of adopting this ritual to the light goddess naturally came to him. Not only was the ritual customary in his culture, making it an easy transition for his followers, he must have known that similar customs in other cultures would pave the way for adopting the ritual among converts to the ‘new’ religion, Christianity.

Supportive of this thesis is the fact that the cross once seen in heaven emanating from the sky goddess became the principle symbol of Christ in the emerging Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religions. Clearly, converts from paganism to Christianity had no problem with applying both the cross symbol of their sky goddess and the ritual meal commemorating her to the worship of the real Son of God, the Savior in their new religion.

When we take the Sacrament, we covenant to remember the Savior and the role he plays in creation and more particularly in our redemption. He chose to have the bread represent his body and the water to represent his blood, a logical and natural adaptation of the original offering to the meaning of the Christian Sacrament.

Thus we see that the archetypal ordinance, the predecessor of the Sacrament, served the same function in the religions of all ancient cultures as it does in Christianity.

Learning new lessons from the past

Such knowledge teaches us many things. We learn that our practices and beliefs are not that much different from those of cultures we have heretofore seen as strange and esoteric, completely unrelated to the gospel. We see that the gospel can easily be adapted to the traditions of almost any culture because its rituals arise from common roots in ancient celestial events and conditions. Indeed, one may say that all gospel ordinances came into being in a similar manner and for similar reasons.

We learn that Christian ordinances serve to connect us to our ancestors in a very intimate way, even though they may have been somewhat altered and misapplied by less enlightened cultures. We learn that the Savior found nothing improper in borrowing those traditions and adapting them to correct religious practice in order to make it easier for the wayward human race to embrace his gospel and its ordinances.

Thus, the hue and cry among Christians and some Mormons that holidays like Christmas and Easter — even Halloween — are pagan rites, and thus beneath our dignity as followers of Christ and worthy only of our contempt, is flawed. These are valid traditional celebrations that have been adapted as Christian holidays.

Borrowing: a time honored tradition

Moreover — and perhaps the most important lesson we should learn from all this — when Joseph Smith borrowed the vestiges of ancient temple rites and ritual from Masonry, the only institution on the American frontier in the early 1800s that retained some semblance of those rites and ordinances and adapted them for use in LDS temples, he was merely following the Savior’s pattern in such things.

This also partially explains the presence of idolatrous icons all over modern LDS temples, including the statue of the Greek Aphrodite that stands watch over the veil in the Celestial Room of the Salt Lake Temple.

Such issues are only a problem for those who do not understand the origin and purpose of such practices or icons and the methodology that allows their adoption and adaptation as necessary or useful. When seen in the revelatory light of a proper view of history, there is no need for concern or anxiety at these measures.

Now we can see them in their true role as cultural traditions meant to remind us of things our culture has forgotten, vestiges of a past that entirely elud us today. Their whole purpose is to help us recall our past, one most Saints seem intent on ignoring even though their founding prophet did all he could to resurrect that knowledge.

Modern ignorance

The ancients would surely be appalled at our ignorance and disregard for the messages they labored to communicate to us down through the ages by means of the symbolism in their texts and the iconography of their sacred temples, tombs and monuments. Given that the true gospel was restored via revelation to Latter-day Saints in this dispensation, our present level of ignorance places added condemnation upon us.

If we forget their origins and true meaning, which most of us have, then these ordinances are only harmless, if somewhat meaningful, rituals. But when we study our past and learn its lessons, these practices serve to immeasurably enrich our lives and further our commitment to our religion and our Savior while connecting us to the beliefs and traditions our ancestors embraced.

This is the primary benefit of learning truth, the correct version of the present, the past and the future—as the Lord put it to Joseph Smith, “things as they are, as they were and as they are to come.”

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

Daniel and the Polar Configuration

There are a number of scriptural stories that are clearly Saturnian in nature. That is, knowing the myths and traditions spawned by the Polar Configuration of planets in antiquity allows us to recognize when the prophets used that same imagery in their accounts. Indeed, we find indications that most of the prophets, if not all, were shown the appearance of the planets in Earth’s ancient heavens. Their response to what they saw in vision was uniformly enthusiastic.

The first example is that cited in "Kolob, the God Star," analyzing the Pearl of Great Price, and more specifically the vision in Abraham. The polar configuration was the primary feature of his vision. This appears to be the case in the Old Testament book of Daniel as well.

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

In Daniel, chapter 2, we find that King Nebuchadneaazar has a dream that leaves him “troubled.” While he cannot remember the dream, he is certain that if one of his sages can refresh his memory, that same person will certainly know the interpretation of the dream.

The wise men (Chaldeans) were at a loss. They had no idea what the king had dreamed, much less the interpretation thereof. What is more, they asserted that no one should be expected to know the dreams of another. When the king heard this, he became furious. He threatened to kill them all.

At this point in the narrative, the wise men seek out Daniel, who appeals to the king for more time to divine the dream and its meaning.

We pickup the account in verse 19.

Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his:

And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.

I think thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we desired of thee: for thou hast now made known unto us the king’s matter. (Daniel 2:19-23.)

The prophet’s common vision

Daniel’s enthusiasm comes from more than simply learning in vision of the king’s dream. His euphoria likely stems from the fact that he was shown the Polar Configuration in vision and recognized it as the source of all religious tradition. The evidence of this is in Daniel’s words to King Nebuchadnezzar, as we shall see shortly.

Note Daniel’s reference to the change of times and seasons in the above verses. One of the most profound differences between the world at Daniel’s time (our time as well, in fact) and the Patriarchal Age was the radical change in the heavens and the earth. The contrast between the two ages was so dramatic that the Apostle Peter was later to write “the old world that then was … perished.” (2 Peter 3:5.)

This radical change necessitated a whole new way of calculating the day of the year and the time of day. While in the heavens, Saturn and its appendages were the equivalent of a celestial clock and calendar. Instead of looking at one’s watch, as we do today, the ancients had only to glance at the heavens in order to determine the time of day. Many ancient monuments were constructed after the collapse of the polar column in order to record the passage of time, using the periodicity of the new heavens, yet employing the symbolism of the old Saturnian system. Stonehenge, for example was both a celestial observatory and a circular calendar. And because it preserved the time keeping elements of the ancient Saturnian system, it was also a sacred place, fit for rites and rituals — a temple, in other words — connected with both the old and the new heavens.

Hence, the ongoing debate about whether sacred compounds like Stonehenge are calendars to mark the passage of time, observatories to track the motion of the sun, moon and stars, or sacred compounds for religious rites and rituals is truly futile. Such sacred sites served as all three at once! (Notably, modern temples serve these same three functions.) Indeed, the very layout of modern timepieces reflects the circular arrangement of the ancient Saturnian system, as do monuments such as Stonehenge.

Seasons, as we know them, were nonexistent in the Saturnian Age. When seasons began, after the polar configuration seemingly exited the heavens, the calendar became a vital necessity for tracking the seasons and marking the passage of time. Thus, it was natural and proper for Daniel to attribute the change of the “time and the seasons” to God and the vision he had just seen.

Saturnian traditions revealed in a dream

Daniel ultimately reveals to the king a rather interesting narrative that bears scrutiny in light of what we know about ancient Saturn and the Polar Configuration of planets.

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee and the form thereof was terrible.

This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,

His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33.)

This description matches the appearance of the Polar Configuration during the phase that gave rise to the celestial, heaven man, angel or god standing upon the Earth and answers to the archetypal symbol of Saturn’s crescent as outstretched arms, Venus in the center of Saturn as the head, Mars at the top of the polar column as the chest or heart, and the column itself as the belly and lower limbs.


Here we see an Egyptian version of this image.


This is the Babylonian version of the same astral image.


This is an artist rendition of how it appeared above the Earth in the ancient heavens.


This is the same image that the apostle John declared to be an angel of God. It is also likely that this is the image that is referred to in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 133, verse 18 wherein the Lord is made to “stand upon the mount of Olivet and upon the mighty ocean, even the great deep, and upon the islands of the sea, and upon the land of Zion,” a remarkable feat for a man (even a resurrected god), but an accurate description of the ‘heaven man’ image. (Incidentally, this speaks volumes about events that will be seen to occur in the last days as described in this remarkable revelation to Joseph Smith.)

Note that each segment of the great image described by Daniel was said to be of certain elements: head of gold, beast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. This is clearly an indication of the appearance, brightness and color of each element of the Polar Configuration that gave rise to the ‘heaven man’ image.

The brightness of this apparition was said to be “excellent,” and its form “terrible.” All the elements of the Polar Configuration were in this specific alignment or arrangement at only one time during a 24-hour period: at the time we call midnight. At the point in the day/night cycle, the entire configuration became astonishingly bright, much like today’s moon rising in a blackened sky at midnight.

The celestial stone

But there is yet more to the king’s vision as described by Daniel.

Thou sawest til that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.

Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:34-35.)

These verses describe the metamorphosis of the heaven man image. While it is unlikely that this event saw the dissolution of the Polar Configuration, which event came much later in its career, this was a notable state in the long evolution of that peculiar arrangement of planets. Ultimately, at the end of the Saturn epoch, Saturn and its satellites did vanish into the darkness of space, “that no place was found for them.” Therefore, the statement is correct, but not chronological. In the meantime, the configuration continued to evolve into many other forms before its final dismemberment. Evidence of the continued evolution is in the narrative itself, as we shall see.

The stone that “was cut out without hands” was Mars. In the early stages of the ancient configuration of planets, Mars appeared to be in the center of Venus, which appeared to be in the center of Saturn. It had remained stationary relative to the other visible planets while Venus underwent many dramatic changes before returning to a more stable position. (See "The Saturn Epic: In the Beginning.")

Now it was Mars’ turn to become unstable. Mars exited its apparent position in the center of Venus and began to ‘wander’ or ‘descend’ without any apparent outside intervention. Thus, it was said to have been “cut out without hands.”

As Mars appeared to descend, it seemed to grow larger because it was, in fact, moving toward the Earth along the shared axis of rotation. Thus it seemed to ‘descend’ and ‘grow’ at the same time. By the time Mars reached the position shown in Figure 1, the ‘pillar’ or ‘mountain’ appeared between Earth’s northern horizon and the approaching Mars. Thus, in Daniel’s depiction, the “stone” became a “great mountain.”

The plasma stretching between Earth and Mars, Daniel’s “mountain,” now appeared to form a skirt about the legs of the heavenly apparition, while Mars was seen as the torso. The crescent on Saturn formed the outstretched arms of the figure with Venus as the head. (See the above illustrations.)

The plasma in the pillar (skirt/mountain) must have been spectacularly bright and colorful, as pictures from the Hubble telescope have shown in other such plasma structures in our galaxy. Thus, earthly spectators assigned the colors of various metals to the “image” to describe its wondrous appearance. Daniel’s account merely repeats those cultural traditions of the colorful image.

But, as Mars continued its descent and growth, the mountain appeared to collapse and the grouping seemed to come apart. Thus, in Daniel’s account the stone “smote the image upon his feet, that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.”

Mars continued its apparent descent as it approached Earth along the common axis of rotation until both the polar column and Mars appeared to be a literal appendage or “mountain” on Earth’s northernmost horizon. Or, as Daniel told it, “… the stone … became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”

As Mars and the polar column approached most closely to the Earth, the ground beneath the feet of onlookers began to quake, furthering the impression that an impact of some kind had take place. Hence, they had the idea that the stone “smote” the image. Darkness shrouded the Earth and the great cities fell, lending yet more weight to the idea that the image had been destroyed as well.

When the darkness dissipated after an indeterminate length of time, Earth’s inhabitants saw the polar configuration once again. However, Mars had begun to withdraw from its former proximity to the Earth. A new phase of the Saturnian configuration had begun.

The interpretation

Of course, Daniel gave an interpretation of the dream.

This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.
Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.

And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beast of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. (Daniel 2:36-38.)

In antiquity, the role of the monarch was clearly defined by Saturn traditions. He was god’s agent on earth, the successor to the original, celestial monarch, Saturn. Any interpretation of dreams that involved that heavenly prototype of all earthly kings would, by necessity, follow that concept. Daniel indulges in neither flattery, as some have suggested, nor exaggeration to ingratiate himself to the king by referring to Nebuchadnezzar as the gold head. He was merely articulating cultural tradition.

Daniel follows that pronouncement with an explanation that each of the other parts of the image represents four subsequent kingdoms, each inferior to the one that immediately precedes it. Apparently, the idea that the whole of civilization is deteriorating is not new to our time. Representing mankind in a long, downward spiral, except where God intervenes through his prophets, is the entire message of the scriptures.

“… on earth as it is in heaven.”

Note that this is an instance of how one time celestial objects were employed to give order and meaning to earthly events and conditions. It is an example of imposing the heavenly order of things on the earthly, a commonly used device in antiquity.

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (Daniel 2:44.)

The analogy of earthly kings and kingdoms is made complete in Daniel’s exposition. It is the kingdom of God that, like the celestial stone, shall roll forth and consume all others.

Here we see the power of analogy at work. The evolving Polar Configuration is made to depict the world and the kingdom of God. As the prophets attempted to convert the ‘pagans,’ they were forced to use the religious traditions of those same people to teach gospel principles. What better way to change hearts and minds than to put a unique twist on that which is familiar and comfortable to your audience?

“If it works, use it,” seems to be the rule. This can be seen in the teachings of virtually every prophet, including the Savior’s use of parables. It is why most of the scriptures, the gospel, temple ritual and temple iconography has pagan roots. It was the pagans, with their obvious Saturn traditions, that the prophets were sent to convert.

Of course, there is inherent danger in this practice: Later generations might mistake the symbols and imagery used as teaching tools for the real thing. Additionally, converts may retain their beliefs in pagan traditions even after converting to the gospel. This is the drawback or downside to using symbolism at all, from whatever source.

Joseph Smith emphasized the validity of the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. He let Daniel’s interpretation stand, adding only that the church he founded was the beginning of the kingdom that would consume all others seen in Daniel’s vision. All the brethren since Joseph have taught this same thing.

More dream symbolism

In chapter 4, the king has another dream with a new set of symbols.

Thus were the vision of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great.

The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth:

The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. (Daniel 4: 10-12.)

The heavenly tree was only another expression of the polar configuration, the pillar being the trunk of the tree and its branches being the crescent in an inverted position from that of the heaven man.

This was the appearance of the polar configuration at midday in the ancient, day/night cycle.


Though we do not readily recognize it as such, it was the principal symbol for an ancient cult that worshipped trees or worshipped in groves. The Israelite prophets called it Asherah (Ashtoreth), and they condemned its worship. (See "Temple Symbols and Christmas.")

Still more symbolism

Yet another dream in chapter 7 introduces us to yet another set of symbols. These are four beasts. Notice the remarkable similarity between these beasts and those listed in Ezekiel 1:10 and Revelation 4:6,7. It seems clear that the ancients frequently associated beasts with several aspects of the Saturn configuration.

There is a clear difference between Daniel’s beasts and those of Ezekiel and Revelation. It appears that the visions in Ezekiel and Revelation deal with the daily cycle of the Polar Configuration with each of the four beasts representing the four primary points of the compass. These originate in the four principle positions of Saturn’s rotating crescent in a 24-hour period—midnight, morning, midday, and evening. Coincidentally, Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the four beasts he found on the Egyptian papyri is the same: These four beasts represent the four cardinal points of the compass. The vision of Daniel deals with four primary stages during the evolution of the Saturnian configuration of planets. Hence, it’s use of the symbolic number four, personified in the four beasts. (See "The Eagle, the Bull, the Lion and the Man.")

A multitude of traditions

Thus we see that understanding the early history of our planet and its unique heavenly manifestations is vital to understanding the prophets because they taught the lessons of the gospel with traditions and stories — myths, if you will — that originated in the Saturnian congregation of planets as they metamorphosed over time as well as the plasma constructs that emerged between planets. These archetypes evolved into a multitude of icons and images in every ancient culture, becoming the basis for legends of epic dimensions.

The lesson to be learned here is that we should not mistake imagery for reality. We would do well to use our newfound knowledge to enhance our understanding by separating the planetary traditions from the lessons they were designed to teach.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2000

Symbolism and Creation, Part 1

In my view, when we fully grasp the story the ancients recorded for us, we begin to see clearly for the first time what in scripture is symbolic and what is literal. Most often, we find out that our perception had to be flipped nearly 180 degrees. What we saw as symbolic turns out to be largely literal, and what we thought to be literal turns out to be mostly symbolic. From that perspective, we have as much to learn about the gospel from its symbolism as we do from its literalism, another concept that completely eluded us before.

At one time, we spent all our effort trying to understand the literal while almost completely ignoring the symbolic. Yet, given the sheer weight of symbolism in scripture, one has to wonder how we managed to avoid it so completely? It must be meaningful or God and his prophets would not have put it there. Remember, Joseph said that God would give no revelation without also providing the key to understand it. It’s my experience that we’ve had the keys before us since early in the restoration. Our failure was to not recognize them for what they are.

And while all of it is vital to us in our quest to understand the past and the scriptures, the most important element is the “local principle,” as presented by Kip Farr, a researcher and scholar who coined the term. That is, what we read in the scriptures in general, and Abraham in particular, that God has revealed to his prophets about the heavens pertains only to our small corner of the universe: our solar system. Kolob and the other celestial bodies are not found in distant parts of our galaxy, as most Mormons assume. What is recorded there tells the story only of “this creation,” (See Moses) not all the creations of God. This is a vital key. Kolob, was and still is right here in our planetary neighborhood, masquerading as a mere planet in our time. All ancient cultures revered it as the “God Star,” Saturn, though it was given a multitude of names—some descriptive, some titular. Hence, we find the descriptive, Semitic name “Kolob”—which probably means something akin to “Heart Star”—applied to it in the Pearl of Great Price. Even the names the Israelites used lead us to that conclusion. El or Elohim, usually referred to by historians as a Canaanite god because they fail to recognize that many of those “Canaanites” were actually Israelites, was connected to the planet Saturn. In fact, several ancient sources affirmed that the Israelites worshipped the planet Saturn. Even the name “Israel” (yis-ra-el) means something akin to “People of Saturn” or “Saturnians.”

From a gospel perspective, we can explain that circumstance by noting that when the Israelites strayed from the teachings of the prophets, it was to follow the customs and traditions of their neighbors, who were idolaters. But they didn’t have to depend on other cultures for that tendency. The progenitors of the Israelites, the Hebrews and their forefathers before them, experienced the actual events that gave rise to those idolatrous symbols and practices in all ancient cultures. Except for the prophets, to whom the true nature and order of the heavens was revealed as it was to Abraham, the rest of the Hebrews created their own traditions to retain the memory of the original heavens and Earth that once existed and what they saw and experienced in the pivotal time period when all that changed.

Naturally, those traditions paralleled those of their neighbors, who experienced the very same events. The names changed, but the stories, traditions and rituals created to remember those ancient times became part of their culture, and history tells us that they retained those traditions down through time, even though they might have repented of their idolatrous ways. It was perfectly natural that the prophets draw upon that ancient tradition to teach the gospel in their day and age, whenever it might be. Joseph Smith, a thoroughly modern man, still employed those ancient traditions and symbols.

Thus, a widespread, cultural tradition filled with imagery and ritual based on the ancient order of the heavens was preserved, even though later generations hadn’t a clue as to what it all meant. Ancient and modern historians readily identify the Israelites as Saturn worshippers when, in fact, they simply employed Saturn symbolism and ritual to teach gospel principles and out of respect to the cultural traditions of their forefathers.

We, today, in fact, do exactly the same thing. All our holidays (holy days) are celebrations of astral events, most of them Saturnian. Our Christmas celebration is a full-blown example, since everything from Santa Claus to the Christmas tree draw on celestial symbolism born in the original, Saturn-dominated heavens. The quintessential modern temple, in Salt Lake, is replete with Saturn symbolism—including Saturn Stones, which were originally intended to be displayed as a planet with two rings around it at the top of the buttresses on the south wall only so one had to face north, the ancient location of Saturn in the heavens anciently, to see them. Moreover, the Big Dipper on the temple’s west wall is strategically placed so as to point to the pole star, Polaris, the exact location of Saturn in Earth’s ancient skies. (This confirms that modern prophets knew precisely how to employ such symbolism correctly. It’s not mere decoration nor is it haphazardly applied.) Critics have and will continue to insist that Mormonism is a cult, in part because of our prophets’ affinity for using planetary symbolism, a practice most often associated with paganism in the Christian mind. Yet, with all that, we do not consider ourselves Saturn worshippers. It’s just part of our tradition.

Nowhere is this key more pertinent than in the creation story and God’s revelation of the cosmos to Abraham.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2008

Temple Symbols and Christmas

There is very little about Christ in Christmas. It’s more about Santa Claus, gift giving, decorated Christmas trees and colorful lights than remembrance of the Savior’s birth.

Perhaps that’s because Christmas is a holiday largely based on what most would call pagan festivals. In fact, it’s likely that Christians appropriated an ancient, cross-cultural tradition for our Christmas celebration that predates Christ by centuries, if not millennia.

Christ was not born in December. We learn from modern revelation that he was actually born in April. (See Doctrine and Covenants, Section 20.)

The idea to celebrate Christmas on December 25 originated in about the 4th century. The Catholic Church, based in Rome, wanted to eclipse the festivities of the original pagan religion of the Romans called Saturnalia. It was their preeminent holiday, a midwinter celebration of the birthday of their sun god, Saturnus. Church leaders decided that in order to alter pagan beliefs, they had only to superimpose the birth of the Christ child on the pagan celebration. So, they instituted the Mass of Christ or Cristes Maesse in Old English — Christmas.

In fact, there are an abundance of pagan midwinter festivals from cultures and religions the world over.

Special sanctity was attached to the period of the winter solstice in most traditional societies of Europe even before the introduction of Christianity in the first millennium A.D. The cult of the tree was especially prevalent among the early Celtic and Nordic peoples of Europe. Centuries ago in Great Britain, the Druids used holly and mistletoe as well as evergreens as symbols of eternal life during mysterious winter solstice rituals. They would also place evergreen branches over doors to keep away evil spirits. According to the Roman sources, the Celts of Gaul and Britain worshipped in groves of trees. When Europeans adopted Christian traditions, they created a blend of their winter solstice celebrations with that of the Catholic Church.

So, the roots of Christmas and its symbolic trappings lie deep in pagan cultural traditions, practices and beliefs, not in Christianity at all. This admixture of traditions — part Christian, part pagan — has created the hodgepodge holiday we know today.

For those reasons, many Latter-day Saints disapprove of the “worldly” trappings of Christmas. But that distaste may not be justified.

In an astonishing irony, a close look shows us that the iconography of latter-day temples — the Salt Lake Temple being the quintessential example — echoes the traditional, symbolic trappings from hoary antiquity that are now part of our Christmas celebration, validating symbols like Santa Claus and the Christmas tree.

The basis for this claim becomes clear when we look for indications of our Christmas traditions in numerous ancient cultures and then connect them with the symbolism found on the exterior walls of the temple in Salt Lake City.

So, let’s review the origins and history of today’s Christmas.

The controversial Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt), claimed that the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt first formulated the religion and mythology of a polar god, which tradition then spread from Egypt to the rest of the world. This may have been the starting point for our Santa Claus, a magical individual who lives at the North Pole. Additionally, ancient Egyptians treasured and worshipped evergreens. When the winter solstice arrived, they brought green date palm leaves into their homes to symbolize life's triumph over death.

Later, the Greeks memorialized the winter solstice with Kronia, a festival recalling the Golden Age, ruled by Kronos, another polar god and the father of Zeus.

Following the Greeks, the Romans adopted the same festival, the predecessor of modern Christmas-tide, renamed it Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, their father-god and equivalent of the Greek’s Kronos. They decorated their houses with greens and lights and exchanged gifts. They gave coins for prosperity, pastries for happiness and lamps to light one's journey through life. They decorated their trees with bits of metal and candles in honor of their sun god.

Trees — especially the conifer or evergreen — were objects of sacred significance in many ancient cultures. The Norse religion involved worship in sacred groves, which were trees planted to simulate the walls of a temple. This connects the tree to temple building traditions. Indeed, nearly all temples, ancient and modern, are adorned with gardens, as is the case on Temple Square.

The Canaanites, too, had sacred groves for worship, and the disobedient nation of Israel adopted this form of worship at the outset of their wanderings out of Palestine.

"For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree." (1 Kings 14:23. See also 2 Kings 17:9, 10.)

"Then shall ye know that I am the Lord, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols." (Ezekiel 6:13.)

We learn also that Israel’s neighbors practiced a custom startlingly similar to our practice of putting up Christmas trees. "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (Jeremiah 10:2-4.)

This passage also alludes to the belief in ancient cultures that the tree was symbolic of something cosmological or sky-based. The mention of the "signs of heaven" in the above verse is our clue. As with so many ancient religious or sacred symbols, the "celestial" or "heavenly" tree was an integral part of archaic cultures' star worship.

In Norse mythology, the great ash tree, Yggdrasil, connects the underworld and heaven with its roots and boughs. It’s also called the World Tree, which many ancient cultural traditions remember and reverence, that links heaven and Earth and shelters all the world. The mythical world tree was said to grow from the Earth’s pole and spread its branches among the stars. This "celestial tree" or "tree of life" — a term familiar to Latter-day Saints — was central to astral worship, as Jeremiah pointed out. It’s also the reason we put a star at the top of our Christmas tree.

To Norsemen, sprigs of evergreen holly symbolized the revival of the sun god Balder, who was originally the familiar Baal, sky god of the Old Testament.

Also in the Old Testament, trees are associated with the ancient Canaanite religion devoted to the mother goddess Asherah (Ashtoreth, Ishtar, "star"), which the Israelites, intent on establishing their monotheistic cult of Yahweh, sought to suppress. The cult celebrated Asherah and her consort Baal in high places, on the tops of hills and mountains, where altars dedicated to Baal and carved wooden poles or statues of Asherah (also translated as grove, or wood, or tree) were located.

The significance of trees in ancient Assyria, the acknowledged home of Ishtar or "star" worship, is shown in the numerous reliefs of winged deities watering or protecting sacred trees. Sacred trees, or trees of life, were associated in Ancient Assyria with the worship of the god Enlil, yet another sky god.

So, our Christmas tree has a long and ancient tradition.

The evergreen Christmas tree also represents "World Tree" or "World Axis." The "Star of Guidance" that crowns the Christmas tree is also related to the North Star, Polaris. This natural compatibility of Christmas celebration with late December and beliefs about the evergreen tree, the North Pole, and the spirit called Father Winter, which survives in today’s Santa Claus, are evolutions of ancient tradition.

Notably, the six primary spires on the Salt Lake Temple are the symbolic equivalent of our Christmas tree. A round ball, the equivalent of a star on our tree, tops their conical shape.


Indeed, one of them bears an angel in place of the star, just as do many of our Christmas trees.


Just as the image of the star and the angel are interchangeable in ancient traditions, so too in modern Christmas tree decoration and temple iconography.

In Europe as well as in Asia, the Sacred Tree was considered to be the living image of the axis mundi or "Axis of the World," a figurative or imaginary still point or vertical shaft around which the world turns.

The North Star, Polaris, is the celestial placeholder for that sacred spot in the sky. It’s the only star in the sky that never moves. Throughout the night and year, all the stars move in circles around Polaris, called the pole star since it is located directly over the Earth’s north pole. As the night progresses, the stars will slowly move from east to west, circling around the pole star, due to the Earth’s rotation. Hence, all ancient cultures held that spot in the sky as sacred.

They also associated the pole star with the World Tree or Tree of Life and the central axis of the universe. In tradition, the top of the World Tree touched the North Star. This is the true meaning of the star on top of the modern Christmas tree, and also the reason that Santa makes his home at the North Pole in Christmas tradition.

In South Asia, traditions concerning the enchanted World Tree or World Axis have taken somewhat different forms. And yet, despite the differences, certain common patterns persist. The sacred tree, the vertical World Axis or stambha or stupa and the generous spirit from the far north are all features of pan-Indian culture that derive, most probably, from the same traditional sources as those of Western cultures.


The precedence of the cosmic center among the great ancient cultures has been noted and documented by many scholars. Almost a hundred years ago, William F. Warren, in his groundbreaking work, Paradise Found, identified the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god of ancient races. "The religions of all ancient nations ... associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it."

In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O’Neill (Night of the Gods) asserted that mankind’s oldest religions centered on a god of the celestial pole.

Latter-day Saints should note that, in keeping with ancient astral tradition, the constellation Ursa Major or Big Dipper, the traditional locator for the Pole Star, is depicted on the west wall of the Salt Lake Temple where it is positioned so as to ‘point’ to the northern sky and the polar star, Polaris.


Also seen immediately above these star stones are the Saturn Stones, circles with a ring.

This is no mere oddity or casual coincidence. As Nibley pointed out, the temple is an earthly replica of the heavens. It puts the uniquely modern temple squarely in the heart of ancient tradition — especially Christmas tradition. Certainly, it speaks to the reverence which modern temple builders placed on the star Polaris and its traditional role in ancient cultures worldwide.

Though it may seem completely odd to us, the Romans, who called themselves "Saturnians" and celebrated Saturnalia at the winter solstice, also placed their god Helios at the heavenly pole where Polaris now sits. In their pantheon, Helios was called the central sun, the axis of the celestial revolutions. But, Helios was also called Saturn.

All Greek astronomical traditions agreed that their god, Kronos, was originally the planet Saturn. What is now the sixth planet from the Sun stands at the center of the Greek paradise myth. According to their traditions, Kronos, the planet Saturn, ruled the heavens for a period, presiding over the Golden Age, then departed as the heavens fell into confusion.

Likewise, the Assyrians placed their central sun, Shamash, at the pole. But, they also asserted that Shamash was Saturn.

A stunning example of the polar Saturn is provided in Chinese astronomy, where the distant planet was called “the genie of the pivot” (Santa Claus?). Saturn was believed to have his station at the pole, according to the eminent authority on Chinese astronomy, Gustav Schlegel. In the words of Leopold deSaussure, Saturn was "the planet of the center, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of heaven."

Finally, the Egyptian god Atum-Ra was said to be a central sun, standing atop the world pole. But, their traditions also depict Atum-Ra as Saturn.

As peculiar as this tradition of Saturn at the pole may appear to us, it has been acknowledged by more than one authority, including Leopold de Saussure. The principle also figured prominently in the recent work of the historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana and the ethnologist Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet’s Mill. According to an ancient astronomical tradition, the authors suggest, Saturn originally ruled from the celestial pole.

It is also known that Latin poets remembered Saturn as god of "the steadfast star," the very phrase used for the pole star in virtually every ancient astronomy.

Manly P. Hall, noted authority on ancient belief systems wrote, "Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children of men a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name of Santa Claus."

Santa Claus, descending yearly from his polar home to distribute gifts around the world, is a muffled echo of the Universal Monarch, Saturn, spreading miraculous good fortune. But while the earlier traditions place this sky god at the celestial pole, popular tradition now locates Santa Claus at the geographical pole — a telling example of originally celestial gods being brought down to earth.

The origin of Santa Claus imagery can be readily seen in Egyptian religious art. Atum/Ra, the god of the north, stands in his celestial boat, bark or ark, pulled across heaven by servants or souls.


The Egyptian image metamorphosed over time and across several ancient cultures to become, in Nordic cultures, the old man of the north, Santa Claus, pulled in a sleigh by reindeer.

It is at this point that these ancient traditions most specifically intersect with modern temple symbolism.

Most Saints know of the Sun Stones depicted on the Salt Lake Temple. Given the traditions of the Egyptians, Assyrians and the Romans, it seems likely that those Sun Stones, like the Big Dipper, were placed there in recognition of the ancient traditions, which declared that a "sun" was once positioned at the celestial pole.

Additionally, most Saints are unaware that there are Saturn Stones in the Salt Lake Temple. The original architectural renderings of the building by Truman O. Angel, clearly depicted a planet with two rings around it at the top of each south wall buttress.


Note that there is no such symbol on the Salt Lake Temple as it was finally erected, as we see it today. Instead, a repeated symbol (called a 'frieze' in architecture) of a circle with a ring around it (the traditional symbol for Saturn) was installed to replace the original icon. This circle frieze can be seen on the parapet stringcourse, immediately below the three towers at each end of the temple, and is still referred to in LDS literature and tradition as Saturn Stones.

Just as the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans worshiped a central sun that we, today, can identify from cross-cultural comparisons as Saturn, the various 'stones' on the Salt Lake Temple also celebrate that connection, once again correlating temple iconography with ancient, traditional symbolism that gave rise to our Christmas traditions.

It’s no stretch to see that modern prophets would employ the ancient, traditional symbolism of antiquity on a modern temple. The fact that they would properly use the traditional, sacred, religious icons from the past serves to strengthen Joseph Smith’s and Brigham Young’s claims to being prophets of God.

So, what should we make of Christmas with all its pagan symbolism and motifs? If modern prophets chose to memorialize the symbols of ancient traditions in latter-day temples, then who are we to reject those same symbols and traditions in our Christmas celebration?

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005