Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [123]
As the cock who announces the risen savior, Peter is associated with the sign of Aries, when the sun overcomes the night and starts its journey to fullness.
The Sacrifice of the Sacred King
The gospel story is basically yet another remake of the ubiquitous ancient sacred king drama and sacrifice already mentioned. This myth and ritual was common around the Mediterranean both at the purported time of Jesus and long prior, including in Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, the Levant and Egypt. As we have seen, the story was originally allegory, representing the celestial bodies and natural forces, but it became degraded as it was enacted upon Earth, with the solar hero who gives his life to the world represented by an actual flesh-andblood sacrifice.
The sacred king drama is a scapegoating ritual in which the evils of the people are placed upon the head of a person or animal, such as a goat, often by shouting at him as he is paraded through the streets. Dujardin describes the scapegoat ritual:
The sins of the community are magically reassembled in the person of the god, in slaying the god one is rid of the sins, and the god returns to life freed from the sins.67
Dujardin further relates the typical "scapegod" drama, which involved either an actual king or a proxy, criminal or otherwise:
The god is anointed king and high-priest. He is conducted in a procession, clothed in the mantle of purple, wearing a crown, and with a sceptre in his hand. He is adored, then stripped of his insignia, next of his garments, and scourged, the scourging being a feature of all the analogous rites. He is killed and the blood sprinkled on the heads of the faithful. Then he is affixed to the cross. The women lament the death of their god . . . This happened at the third hour-namely, at nine o'clock in the morning. At sunset the god is taken down from the cross and buried, and a stone is rolled over the sepulchre.... Many of the sacrifices of the gods took place in the springtime, such as the death and resurrection of Attis, and conform to the gospel tradition which places the Passion of Jesus at the time of the Jewish Passover.68
During the sacrifice, the sacred king's legs may be broken, but the highest sacrifice-that for sin-atonement-calls for a blemish-free victim; thus, it is written that Jesus was spared this mutilation, so that "scripture might be fulfilled." At times, the victim was slain by having his heart pierced by a sacred lance; at others, he was wounded by the spear and left to die in the sun. Often it was necessary for the victim to be willing if reluctant, like Jesus. Sometimes the victims, who could also be unwilling prisoners of war, were given a stupefying drug such as datura or opium, the "vinegar with gall" or "wine with spices" given to Jesus.
This drama also served as a fertility rite, and the god-king was considered a vegetation deity. After his sacrifice, his blood and flesh were to be shared, sometimes in a cannibalistic eucharist and usually by being spread upon the crop fields so that they would produce abundance. In some places such ritual sacrifice was done annually or more often. Thus, it has never been a onetime occurrence in history, 2,000 years ago, but has taken place thousands of times over many millennia. As Massey says:
The legend of the voluntary victim who in a passion of divinest pity became incarnate, and was clothed in human form and feature for the salvation of the world, did not originate in a belief that God had manifested once for all as an historic personage. It has its roots in the remotest part.69
The sacred king drama