The cross has been appropriated by Christian ecclesiasticism as the unique and distinctive emblem of its faith. Yet in the iconography of the catacombs no figure of a
man on the cross appears during the first six or seven centuries of the era! Instead there are all forms of the cross except the one which is claimed to be the very basis and origin of the religion itself. The cross of Calvary was
not the initial, but the final form of the crucifix. The cult that now buttresses its authenticity upon the historic Calvary presents not a single reproduction of its crucified Redeemer in its symbolic art during the first six or seven centuries! According to Massey the earliest known form of the human figure on the cross is the crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great to Queen Theodolinde, now in the Church of St. John at Monza;
while no image of the crucifix is found in the catacombs at Rome earlier than that of San Siulio belonging to the seventh or eighth century. In the earliest representations of the Trinity made by Christian artists, the Father and the Holy Spirit, the latter being feminine in the form of the Dove, are pictured beside the cross. A Christ, and him crucified, is utterly absent. Not the Crucified, but the cross, is the primary symbol of the Christian faith. Yet that same cross is pre-Christian, is a pagan and heathen symbol. For centuries the cross stood for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living thing. Crucifixes have been found in Christian churches antedating the fourth century, with a human figure nailed or bound in the conventional way; but the figure is not
that of Jesus! It is that of Orpheus! In Christian imagery the Lamb was the usual figure on the cross, when a sacrificial victim was added to the bare cross emblem. But it appears that about the end of the seventh century it began to be felt that the alleged historical life of the personal Christ was in danger of being lost amid the mass of symbolic representations and the multiplicity of Messianic and sun-god characters which were current in most countries as the heritage of pagan symbolism. In order, then, to focus emphasis upon the uniqueness of the Christian Jesus as the physically crucified one, it was decreed by the Council of Trullo, or the Quinque Sixtum, in the reign of Justinian II, that in future the figure of the real historical Jesus should supersede the astrological sign of Aries "in the image of Christ, our God." "He shall be represented in his human form, instead of the Lamb, as in former times" (Cited by Didron:
Icon. Chret., pp. 338-9).
In the eighth century Adrian I, Pontiff of Rome, in a letter to Barasius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, voiced the opinion that the time had come for the Christ to be no longer portrayed as the Lamb:
http://pc93.tripod.com/lostlght.htm
When the
Ritual expounds that the womb of Nut (nature) is filled with the seed of the spirit to which she is to give birth, the passage gives us the one central clue to full comprehension of the whole structure. It is found in the word "seed." Here is indeed our Ariadne thread by which to reach understanding. The entire scope and full force of the meaning can not be seen without viewing it through the analogy of the function of the seed in relation to its parent tree or plant. The ark
is the seed of life. The analogy must be drawn in full.
Life, as said, ceaselessly alternates shuttle-like between the two nodes of manifestation and withdrawal, activity in matter and rest in spirit. From the heart of invisible being it issues forth to express its creative pleasure in building the universe. But it operates rhythmically in cyclic
rounds, for it is never static; and its periodic activity is focalized in time, and runs its course to an end, at which the forms built up to express its nature are dismantled and vanish away.
The Hindu Trinity expresses aspects of truth that the Christian Trinity has never conveyed. There was Brahma, the Creator, and opposite him Shiva, the Destroyer; and between them Vishnu, the Preserver of the eternal balance between them. The vast and vital function of Shiva has not been given due place in theology. Life has power to build forms, but if it did not also have power to destroy them, it would have to remain forever prisoner to its own formations! Nothing would be worse than that it should have to live eternally in the forms it first built. There could be no evolution. Life’s power to destroy a present construction and build a "more stately mansion" for its dwelling is its guarantee of advance to more abundant richness.