Freethought Nation

3 Kings/Orion's Belt & Solstice/Christmas:

We have several threads scattered around the forum on this same topic so, I've merged a couple and organized the links to articles, threads and videos below so everything may be easily found.

http://dec25th.info

A Brief History of Jesus's Winter Solstice Birthday
viewtopic.php?p=22108#p22108

John the Baptist and Jesus' Birthdays
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2327

Was Horus Born on December 25th of a Virgin?
http://www.truthbeknown.com/horus.html

The Star in the East and Three Kings
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/s ... kings.html

Tracking Christmas to pre-Christian and Ancient roots
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... f=16&t=970

When Was the First Christmas?
http://www.truthbeknown.com/first-christmas.html

The Christmas Hoax: Jesus is NOT the 'Reason for the Season'
http://www.truthbeknown.com/christmas.htm

FAQ's: What about December 25th and the winter solstice?
viewtopic.php?p=22583#p22583

The Christmas Hoax: Jesus is NOT the 'Reason for the Season' (Forum Section: Religion, Spirituality & Secularism)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... f=5&t=2968

When Was the First Christmas? (Forum Section: Comparative Religion, Mythology & Astrotheology)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... 944#p21944

Magi, Wisemen or 3 Kings? (Forum Section: Comparative Religion, Mythology & Astrotheology)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... 51&start=0

3 kings and precession of equinoxes (Forum Section: Archaeology, Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... 30&start=0

Star alignment & Christmas (Forum Section: Christ in Egypt)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... 17&start=0

3 Kings/Orion's Belt & Solstice/Christmas (Forum Section: Zeitgeist Part 1 & the Supportive Evidence)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... =19&t=3606

Atheists at Christmas: Eat, drink and be wary (Forum Section: Religion, Spirituality & Secularism)
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... &view=next

Orion constellation video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-d_6A6t29s&NR=1

We three kings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GjJ82EpcGE

Southern Cross at the Winter Solstice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ3pYiQEPk

Christmas: The REAL Reason for the Season?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRcCEZflIP4

Keep the Nativity Scenes at Christmas!
http://www.examiner.com/freethought-in- ... -christmas

Holiday Lights: Forgotten Winter Constellations Now Visible at Night
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/holiday ... 01206.html

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2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Thanks for compiling this information FTL. It's very helpful when debate on this arises on the web. As I look out east over the ocean (the US east coast) I see Orion and Sirius setting up for the winter solstice. The earths axial wobble has an effect on the angle of Orions belt which can be seen by back dating the winter solstice's several thousand years. The alignment of the three stars has been getting more and more verticle. In the future it will reach a maximum position and then began to start moving back towards a more horizontal alignment. But it always points towards the sunrise regardless of the more verticle or horizontal position of the angle of the three stars.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

The meaning of the Biblical reference to the three kings looking past a star in the east to see Christ in the manger can be seen in this picture of the southern sky from 30 degrees north at the March equinox at the time of Christ. The manger is a small group of stars forming a box on the deck of the ark. We see here how the manger motif repeats the idea of the animals in Noah's ark, and the bier carrying the body of Osiris on his boat on the Nile.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

ROFL! That was funny. Thanks for sharing the cartoon of the 3 Wise Women.

_________________
Mriana

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. ~ Gandhi

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Hi

From Star alignment & Christmas

Picture: Orion, Sirius, Argo - Three Wise Men, Star, Manger

Look at the southern sky on Christmas night from any point south of about 30º north latitude. When Orion reaches its highest point, due south, at 11pm, the three stars of Orion’s Belt point east to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Continuing the line past Sirius to the southeastern horizon presents an interesting discovery, the manger of Christ.

Orion culminates, like all stars, at the meridian, the line joining the southern and northern horizons through the zenith. As Orion reaches the meridian, a faint group of stars rises, low in the south from northern latitudes, high in the south from southern latitudes.

This group of stars is little known, and today goes under the name of Vela, the sails of the great ship Argo Navis. Argo Navis was seen as too big for modern astronomy, and was broken up into sails, mast, deck and keel. In olden days Argo was also called Noah’s Ark. It corresponds to a range of mythic sources. Columba the dove flies before Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky after Sirius, in correspondence to the release of the dove by Noah. Argo is known in India as Agastya, the word at the root of the names of the vessels of Gilgamesh, Osiris, Noah and Jason.

From the north, observation of Argo moving across the southern horizon each winter matched closely to the slow rise of Orion over the precessional time scale of the Great Year. Ten thousand years ago, Orion was barely visible from northern temperate latitudes, but due to precession Orion has since moved to its current position at the celestial equator. The high point is reached in 2310, after which Orion will again move southward over the next ten thousand years. This rise and fall of Orion is caused by precession of the equinox, following the Great Year cycle period conventionally 25,920 years or 72 years per degree of arc.

I mention these details of the period of precession because the cycle of the stars is encoded into the myths of the Ark in an intriguing way. A person’s life is about 72 years, or one degree of precession. Using the ancient sixty base numbering system for geometry and time, there are 50 arc seconds of precession each year, matching to the 50 oarsmen who rowed with Jason to the Golden Fleece, and with Gilgamesh in his Epic. The 50 oars of the Argo are the 50 arc seconds of precession each year.

Back to the manger. If Argo is reconstructed with Canopus as its prow, the building on the deck equates to the manger. The story of Noah’s Ark, with animals two by two, is thereby recapitulated in the story of Christ, with the animals in the stable around the manger matching the animals on the ark. The building on the deck of the ark also is a good candidate as the stellar representation of the coffin of Osiris, sailing down the Nile each spring. Against the as above so below dictum that is central to Osirian cosmology, the physical boat on the river is mirrored precisely by Argo in the heavens behind the boat at the southern horizon. Each spring equinox, Argo has precessed by 50 arc seconds. Over the thousands of years of Egyptian civilization, the gradual movement of Argo across the southern meridian at the spring equinox, following Orion at the winter solstice, would have been recorded by the stellar magi.

Just as the Greeks put Hercules and Andromeda in the sky, here we see the story in the stars of baby Jesus with the three wise men and the star in the east. The three wise men, Orion’s Belt, journeyed from the east by rising each winter night in the east. As they reach their destination, the highest point, due south, a line through them to Sirius points out the position of the manger rising at the south eastern horizon.

Reasons why this simple explanation has been forgotten include the antipathy to pagan star worship by Christianity, and the fact that Argo is not fully visible from Europe. The Argonautica explains that the Argo lost its prow ornament as it crossed the Hellespont. The Greeks imagined Argo in the sky as moving backwards, even though a simpler rendering of the constellation puts Alpha Carinae, Canopus, as the prow star.

The Eurocentric cultural processes that determined legitimacy of intellectual discussion led to severe neglect of the ancient southern myths. Indeed, the whole Osirian mind remains under heavy suppression. My view is that Greek logic defined its assumptions in hostility to Asia, which they saw as mystical and imprecise, through the lens of war with Persia. Just as Asia is the source of Wotan’s Norse Gods the Aesir, the word Asia is very close to the Egyptian words Osiris and Issa.

Western antipathy to all things oriental goes back to this Greek prejudice against Egyptian religion, even while accepting parts of it in the Mysteries. Only when Egyptian religion was subordinated and incorporated into Christianity could Greek thought accept Egyptian concepts, in fragmented and distorted form, rather like how Argo has been broken up and reversed in direction in modern star maps.

The story of Argo is a parable for the world. Argo unites the mythology of India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and the Bible, but such unity of cosmic vision was not acceptable for literal historical faith. Nor was the myth of Argo acceptable for the arrogance of European logic, and it had to be broken up and reversed. Just as Horus brings Osiris back to life, we see here in this perennial observation of the babe in the manger rising in the eastern sky at Christmas that the cosmic basis of the story has been suppressed but has an inner eternal vitality.

It's very helpful when debate on this arises on the web. As I look out east over the ocean (the US east coast) I see Orion and Sirius setting up for the winter solstice. The earths axial wobble has an effect on the angle of Orions belt which can be seen by back dating the winter solstice's several thousand years.

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jimmight

When looking into Zeitgeist's claim about three kings/wise men/whatever visiting Horus, all I could find in the source book was a reference to stars pointing at other stars, which has absolutely nothing to do with actual physical men visiting Horus on the day of his birth. Wouldn't that make the Zeitgeist claim false?

^No, it sounds like you're just trying to easily dismiss it.

First off, the Horus myth is not about "real men" in the first place. It's stellar and agricultural oriented. The three men-like figures depicted in the nativity of the Horus King are in reference to stars. The point is that so are the three kings/wise men/magi in the Jesus myth.

We're not comparing "real men" with "real men" and neither is ZG, we're comparing one mythological motif with another.

There happens to be a long list of links at the top of this very thread if you're honestly interested in further research...

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Well, that's not a dichotomy given that the Egyptians believed that the stars were embodiments of the "souls", or b3w(Bas), of both the gods and the deceased kings who had been resurrected and transfigured into gods.

But more to the point about three kings adoring the infant Horus (called Harpocrates by the Greeks), this seems to be implicated on the following magical gems pictured below. They depict Harpocrates/baby Horus arising out of a blooming lotus that is stationed within a barque. To the left are always three falcons, one of the major symbols of the kings of Egypt as well as of Horus himself (obviously), Horus being the god of kingship, the living king being believed to be the embodiment or avatar of Horus.

There are always three falcons, and as you can see on gem "A.", these falcons are each bearing a hedjet crown, the crown of Upper Egypt, indicating kingship. So here we have the infant Horus accompanied by three symbolic "kings". We also see Horus accompanied by three scarabs, three rams, three uraei, and three crocodiles, all of these animals are also symbols of the kingship of Egypt, and all are here depicted in triads, so clearly the number three is being given conspicuous significance here and is not just some arbitrary detail thrown out there to fill up space.

As scholar Dr Pieter Johannes Sijpesteijn wrote in his article Remarks on Some Magical Gems in Aegyptus
Anno 69, No. 1/2 (gennaio-dicembre 1989), pp. 119-121:



On gem "B." only the uppermost falcon is wearing the crown, but notice what is above its head.

A star.

So obviously here these three symbols of the king are not only being associated with the infancy/birth of Horus, but they are also being associated with the appearance of a star.

Everything seems to be lining up so far.

We see the star again with the three falcons in gem "C.", and this time both the uppermost and the middle falcon are wearing crowns, and this time it is the deshret crown of Lower Egypt.

No crowns on the falcons of gem "D.", though nevertheless, like the other animals, they are still well known symbols of kingship, and are still in a triad, and still accompanied by a star. No Lotus this time either.

Gem "E." has all three of the falcons bearing deshret crowns and again we see the star.

In Gem "F." we have some interesting additions. Again we have three deshret crowns making the falcons three symbolic kings, and this time we have Horus surrounded by four stars, and beneath his barque, three stars.
It is conspicuous that we have three stars, again keeping up the significance of the number three here.
Perhaps the four stars surrounding Horus, given their positions, are alluding to the four cardinal points of heaven & earth, East, West, North, and South.

But that much is purely speculation on my part, and that only assumes the four are distinct from the three and not part of a group of seven, perhaps indicating Pleiades or something like that.

Anyway, the point is, here we do have some strong evidence indicting a motif of the infant Horus (Harpocrates) being signified by a star and three "kings" or three symbolic kings.

Hello Truth Seeker, welcome to the forum.

Your question here is a really good one, because it illustrates common misconceptions about the nature of religion. Before Christianity, religion was understood in primarily symbolic terms. So for the Egyptians, the sun was manifest as different Gods at different times of the day, Horus at dawn, Ra at noon, etc. As Christianity wished to use religion as an instrument of political influence in the context of the upheaval and war brought by Rome, this symbolic approach was seen as insufficient, and the Gospels claimed instead that various symbolic myths referred to actual historical events in the imagined life of Jesus Christ. So the Zeitgeist claim is that the Jesus story is false, and is a fictional retelling of the older symbolic stellar story.

One of these symbolic Gospel myths, drawn from the Horus story, was the wise men visiting the infant Christ. There actually was no Jesus Christ, so the point of the Zeitgeist comparison to Horus is that the fictional biography we have in the New Testament is actually based on older natural myths. One of these myths is the idea of three kings visiting the baby Horus.

In my post above, I include a star map with Orion at its high point at Christmas time, as viewed from the latitudes of Egypt and Israel. The really interesting thing to my interpretation is that as Orion appears to travel from the east each year, first a star in the east comes into view (Sirius) and then at midnight a group of stars rises in the shape of a manger, with three stars lined up at its head. This observation of the Christmas stars stands in direct correlation to the traditional myth of the three orient kings worshipping at the manger of Christ.

Since ancient myth so often used stars as its template, this looks like a perfect example. However, it is unknown today. This could be for two main reasons - the manger stars are invisible from Europe as they are too far south, and there were systematic efforts in Christianity to eradicate and suppress all traces of natural myth from the Christ story.

Just as the Egyptian hieroglyphics were completely forgotten for more than a thousand years, so to we should expect that detailed stories from Egypt were also forgotten, especially when these stories touched on secret matters of religion which were unacceptable to Christian dogma. It is now possible to start reconstructing possible sources for the Christian myths, as long as we start by recognising that conventional ideas about Jesus are unscientific and therefore untrue. Natural explanations are far more coherent and sensible, even though they prove the church to be delusional on massive scale.

So what I'm understanding is we're comparing two myths, one involving stars that symbolize wise men, and the other involving wise men in the flesh? That still seems different to me, and makes the tone used by ZG seem misleading.

"In the flesh" means it was actual history, not a myth. But it was not actual history. The Bible is wrong.

The Gospel incarnation story is made up. There were no "wise men in the flesh". The story was invented on the basis of various inputs, such as the Egyptian myth of three kings at the birth of Horus. In Egypt there are pictures of three kings with baby Horus. These three kings are just as much "in the flesh" as the Bible kings (remembering the Bible does not even say there were three). Both relate to cosmic archetypes, but exactly what the detail of the star stories might be remains speculative. My view is that the manger is seen in Argo, the constellation of Noah's Ark.

Yeah, that would my question too, why consider Matthew's "wise men" to be "in the flesh"? The majority of biblical scholarship does not consider the motif to be historically reliable.