THE FALSE GOSPEL IN THE STARS
PREPARING THE WAY OF THE ANTICHRIST
. . .and the False Prophet and 10 kings downsized to 7 and. . .
PISCES
THE TWO FISHES
“In the House of Pisces there are two fishes, one moving toward the center of the circle toward Pole-star; the other swimming in the path of the ecliptic (the sun's path). The two fishes are united by a band securely tied around the tail portion of the body of each fish. The band is also attached to the back of the head of Cetus, the Sea-Monster, and Aries, the Ram (or Lamb), has his paw across the bands that connect the fishes...
“In Pisces these fishes are a representation of the Church. They were indeed a symbol of Israel thousands of years ago... In ancient Egyptian language this constellation was known as Pi-Cot Orion or Pisces Hori, which means 'The Fish of Him Who Comes'...” (D. James Kennedy) (872:17)
“Despite its corporate image, Disney...artists still amused themselves by inserting hidden symbolism in Disney products... The Little Mermaid was a spellbinding tapestry of spiritual symbols so specifically goddess-related that they could not be coincidence.
“When Langdon had first seen The Little Mermaid, he had actually gasped aloud when he noticed that the painting in Ariel's underwater home was none other than seventeenth-century artist Georges de la Tour's The Penitent Magdalene — a famous homage to the banished Mary Magdalene — fitting decor considering the movie turned out to be a ninety-minute collage of blatant symbolic reference to the lost sanctity of Isis, Eve, Pisces the fish goddess, and repeatedly, Mary Magdalene. Little Mermaid's name, Ariel, possessed powerful ties to the sacred feminine and, in the book of Isaiah, was synonymous with 'the Holy City besieged.'” (The Da Vinci Code, p. 262)
Virgo and Pisces are opposite signs on the Zodiac. Occultly, they represent two opposing streams of Christianity—the feminist Gnostic tradition which is vying to overthrow traditional, doctrinal Christianity, which Gnostics scorn as “patriarchal.” Ean Begg, author of the Cult of the Black Virgin, unveils the esoteric meaning of the two fishes, which swim in opposite directions, as symbolizing the conflicting streams of Gnosticism and true Christianity.
“Virgo as the opposite sign to Christian Pisces, represents its beloved ideal, its bride and the reflection of the blind-spot in its soul. To Albertus Magnus it was Christ's rising sign. The literalization of the virginity of Mary, like the literalization of Eve's role as the wicked temptress of Genesis, broke the heart of Christianity and works of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary have still not wholly healed the wound.” (272:139)
Gnostics dismiss the literal interpretation of Scripture to advance their own private interpretations, a practice that is proscribed by II Pet.1:20-21. "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Having disallowed Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden and jettisoned the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, Ean Begg proceeded to impose a private interpretation of the woman of Revelation 12 as Virgo and Mary Magdalene, the Mother Goddess of the Cathar cult.
“So, if a troubadour sings of his wife and his mistress, he may well be referring to the Church of Rome and Catharism. She is nagging and dangerous, this Lady, Rome, and one should not eat her meal (i.e. the Eucharist). Amor, the dark mistress, hidden underground, is the true source of light and inspiration...
“Thus the dichotomy of the virgin and the whore, the good mother and the witch, continues to gnaw like an unresolved canker at the soul of modern man. The author of the Book of Revelation suffered severely from this split. The Great Woman of Heaven, the sign Virgo, the Holy Spirit and Mary Magdalene, brings forth a son who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron. She is at war with her neighbouring constellation of Hydra, the adversary of Hercules in his Cancer labour, associated here with the Great Whore of Babylon, who holds a golden cup 'full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication'.” (272:139)
In the stained glass window of French Cathedral of Chartres (below), the Piscean fishes are swimming in opposite directions, which is meant to illustrate the opposing streams of Christianity symbolized by the sign of the fish. The Cathar heresy, which took root in the south of France, venerated Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus Christ. In Catharism, the Magdalene represented a concept of femininity that was in direct contradiction to the purity of Biblical womanhood. The Black Virgin derives from the pagan myth of the Mother Goddess, Isis, whose son was the pagan Christ, Horus. Later derivatives of the mother-son archetype are seen in Greek mythology, where Aphrodite and Eros become a pair of fishes.
“In Greek mythology, Pisces is associated with the great beast Typhon. This fearsome creature belonged to the earlier age of the Titans, and was a terrifying force even for the greatest of the gods. At one time Typhon attacked Mount Olympus, abode of the gods. To escape from his wrath, each deity took the form of an animal. Zeus himself, shifted into the likeness of a ram. Aphrodite, and her son Eros, escaped the beast by transforming into a pair of fish and swimming away into the Euphrates river. The goddess Minerva placed the image of the fishes in the heavens so that the event would not be forgotten.” (Earthlore)
Pisces zodiac symbol in stained glass,
Chartres cathedral of France“In Lady of the Beasts: The Goddess and Her Sacred Animals, Buffie Johnson relates the various motifs associated with legend of the Greek goddess and her son: “In his Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts that Aphrodite and her son, Eros, were transformed into fish during their flight from Typhon... Another view sees the fish [Pisces] of the Zodiac as male and female twins, the offspring of Aphrodite and Eros. A stained glass Pisces appears at Chartres, that magical cathedral...dedicated to the Virgin whose son epitomizes Pisces.” (141:94,247)
Recall that the son of the Mother Goddess was the reincarnation of her departed husband, who was her twin. Whatever the theogony of Pisces, the theme of duality is central: the good god versus the bad god. In Buffie Johnson's statement above, the son epitomizes Pisces which, by extension, would mean that the two divergent streams of Christianity represent two different Christs who are in conflict with one another. Fred Gettings elaborated on the two versions of Christ and the dual streams of Christianity in The Secret Zodiac:
“In the Christian zodiac, as in the pagan zodiac, the two fishes of Pisces appear to be associated with the idea of the spirit and soul. Certainly the two fishes are linked together by the cord which they each hold in their mouths, and certainly this relationship of the two tied fishes was interpreted by alchemists and the later Rosicrucians in terms of spirit-soul dualities. What was later called the 'silver cord' was in medieval star-lore usually called 'Nodus' or 'Nodus Coelestis', the heavenly thread...” (911:28-9)
Based on the so-called “Christian zodiac,” Fred Gettings concludes that the Church has misunderstood the nature of the spiritual body of Christ.
“Whatever prevarications modern theologians may issue, the fact remains that the essential message of the Christian doctrine is that Christ became man, died, and then returned to life in the Resurrected body, into what is widely believed the early church called the 'Augoeides'. The fact that the nature of the resurrected body was misunderstood relatively early in the history of the Church is of no real concern here, though it is perhaps worth noting that it is in the true understanding of the nature of this spiritual body that esotericism and Christianity are likely to find a fruitful meeting point in the future.
“Christ descended into the earthly body [of Jesus], and sacrificially gave His blood for the healing of the Earth and man. After His death, He resurrected and returned to live within the Earth [Typhon] until the end of the world itself. It is this central teaching (of the incarnation of a god) which is continued within the framework of the other zodiacal symbol, Taurus.” (911:43)
Occultists believe that the nature of the resurrected body is better elucidated by magicians like Aleister Crowley and Bulwer Lytton than the Bible:
“AUGOEIDES: From Greek meaning 'light vision' or 'bright shape', refers to the luminous nature of the higher self. The Causal or Egoic Body. First used by Iamblichus. In Crowley's case this was the mysterious Aiwass. In Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni it is rendered as the 'Higher Ego'. The knowledge of the Augoeides is one of the major goals of the magician. (See HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL).” (912)
“When magi speak of 'the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,' they refer to that particular manifestation of spirit which is their own experience. The principle is the same, whether it is the great Aumakua of the Hawaiian Hunas or the visitation of the Archangel Gabriel for someone in our culture. The purpose of M/magic(k) is not worship, but transformation. And the purpose in evoking the Holy Guardian Angel is to obtain information that is essential to the work of transformation. (See AUGOEIDES.)” (912)
Note Gettings' prediction that traditional Christianity will eventually arrive at the esoteric (Gnostic) understanding of nature of the resurrected body of Christ, that is, transformation” with the help of angels, rather than physical ascension by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the quest for the Grail, which is immortality, based on the false belief that man is a fallen god. Aleister Crowley’s system of Thelema illustrates the Gnostic journey from the material into the spirit realm by means of an alchemical wedding assisted by the Augoeides, i.e. union between a man or woman (initiate) and a fallen angel (devil)!
“To accomplish the holy wedding we must move up the tree from the 10th sphere of Malkuth towards the 6th sphere of Tiphareth where we can find some assistance for our journey. Each of us has an angel and a demon, uniquely our own. The demon tempts us with material desire, but the angel holds the key back into heaven. Sadly we cannot see the angel, but there lies a visage in Tipareth, also known as beauty. Tipareth is the center of the macrocosm, the greater world, and through it one can make contact with the angel, the augoeides (though it should be understood that the domain of the angel is above the Abyss)...
“If the aspirant is so inclined they may choose to take the Oath of the Abyss. Here it all gets laid on the line. In the wedding between the aspirant and the angel - the princess and prince - this is when the vows are made...
“The consummation of our alchemical marriage is the union of the new king & queen, now embodied by Chockmah and Binah. Hadit and Nuit; The Whore of Babalon mounts the Great Beast of Chaos. This imagery might be shocking to some but understand that it is, in fact, not derogatory but symbolic of the most high & holy act of Creation. This is the full realization of divinity, gently fading into the Absolute in one eternal moment. It is the engine of creation, for the union of the new king & queen produces two more offspring - a son & daughter - who will eventually replace their parents on the throne and continue the cycle. Thus, life continues unbroken, not through the death and resurrection of the old Aeon of Osiris, but through our marriage to the holy spirit of life and the redemption of our material selves into the kingdom of heaven. Matter, once fallen, is spiritualized and made holy in the image of the Absolute.
“The vast mythologies of our species are, in the end, all different lenses looking at the same central Truth, the light held in the center of a diamond. What Thelema and much of the western canon tells us is that heaven is on earth, that we are all gods and goddesses containing the whole of creation in every cell, and that creation itself - the material world - is not corrupt or fallen but remains the Eden it was. It is only us who have fallen by our own descent into duality and our ignorance of the light.”
In Gnostic occultism, man is a god in the same way Jesus was a god, albeit an Ascended Master who was sent to earth to help mankind realize their inner divinity. The false Christ (of Gnosticism) comes “spiritually ” to incarnate the chosen vessel, who is then called “the Christ.” In Gnostic teaching, Jesus became “the Christ” for the Age of Pisces when he was incarnated by “Christ.” Moreover, according to the Gnostics, Jesus did not ascend to Heaven after his resurrection but returned to the Middle Earth (Hell). This counterfeit Jesus was portrayed in Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, in which there was a resurrection but no ascension.
THE TWIN MESSIAHS
Gnostics claim to venerate Jesus and John the Baptist as the ‘twin messiahs.’ As Jesus was the “Christ” for the Age of Pisces, John, the Gnostic Christ, will incarnate another messiah for the Age of Aquarius. This is the reason all Grand Masters of the Prieuré de Sion take the name of John (Jean). The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail disclosed that for some time there has been in existence an esoteric papacy as well as the exoteric papacy of the Roman Catholic Church:
“After 1188 [the Prieuré de] Sion is said to have chosen a grand master of its own, the first of them being Jean de Gisors. According to the 'Prieuré documents' every grand master, on assuming his position, had adopted the name Jean (John)--or, since there were four women, Jeanne (Joan). Sion's grand masters are therefore alleged to have comprised a continuous succession of Jeans and Jeannes, from 1188 to the present. This succession was clearly intended to imply an esoteric and Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps opposition) to the exoteric one based on Peter.
“One major question, of course, was which John. John the Baptist? John the Evangelist--the 'Beloved Disciple' in the Fourth Gospel? Or John the Divine, author of the Book of Revelation? It clearly seemed to be one of these three because Jean de Gisors in 1188 had purportedly taken the title of Jean II. Who, then, was Jean I?” (31:159)
The secret societies' also feign devotion to John the Baptist and John the Evangelist to conceal their true religion of gnostic occultism. Albert Pike divulged this secret Johannite Church in Morals and Dogma:
“An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal hostility against an Order that has existed for centuries in despite of its anathemas, and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome. It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, the audacious conjectures from the simple facts.
“A power that ruled without antagonism and without concurrence, and consequently without control, proved fatal to the Sacerdotal Royalties; while the Republics, on the other hand, had perished by the conflict of liberties and franchises, which in the absence of all duty hierarchically sanctioned and enforced, had soon become mere tyrannies, rivals one of the other. To find a stable medium between these two abysses, the idea of the Christian Hierophants was to create a society devoted to abnegation by solemn vows, protected by severe regulations; which should be recruited by initiation, and which, sole depositary of the great religious and social secrets, should make King and Pontiffs, without exposing it to the corruptions of Power. In that was the secret of that kingdom of Jesus Christ, which, without being of this world, would govern its grandeurs.
“This idea presided at the foundation of the great religious orders, so often at war with the secular authorities, ecclesiastical or civil. Its realization was also the dream of the dissident sects of Gnostics or Illuminati who pretended to connect their faith with the primitive tradition of the Christianity of Saint John. It at length became a menace for the Church and Society, when a rich and dissolute Order, initiated in the mysterious doctrines of the Kabalah, seemed disposed to turn against legitimate authority the conservative principle of Hierarchy, and threatened the entire world with an immense revolution.
“The Templars, whose history is so imperfectly known, were those terrible conspirators. In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in the East, among whom were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens, consecrated themselves to religion, and took an oath between the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to that of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed objective of the Templars was to protect the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places: their secret object was the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by Ezekiel.
“This re-building, formally predicted by the Judaizing Mystics of the earlier ages, had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs of the Orient. The Temple of Solomon, re-built and consecrated to the Catholic worship would become, in effect, the Metropolis of the Universe; the East would prevail over the West, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople would possess themselves of the Papal power...
“The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his Order, was not exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. There existed at that period in the East a Sect of Johannite Christians, who claimed to be the only true Initiates into the real mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They pretended to know the real history of Yesus the ANOINTED, and, adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the tales of the Talmud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels are but allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that the world might be filled with the books that could be written upon the words and deeds of Jesus Christ; words which, they thought, would be only a ridiculous exaggeration, if he were not speaking of an allegory and a legend, that might be varied and prolonged to infinity.
“The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their Secret Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of Christos, Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have succeeded one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers. He who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the Temple, claimed these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he knew HUGUES DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his successor.
“Thus the Order of the Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings, and the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism was vested in its chiefs. For Saint John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current translation of his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied that Christ was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of that Evangel.
“The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in profound mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect orthodoxy. The Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order: the Subalterns followed them without distrust.
"To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need to fight, to establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic dogma, were the object and means proposed to the initiated Brethren. The Papacy and the rival monarchies, they said to them, are sold and bought in these days, become corrupt, and tomorrow, perhaps, will destroy each other. All that will become the heritage of the Temple: the World will soon come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers and Masters of the World.
“The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations, had two doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was Johannism; the other public, which was the Roman Catholic. Thus they deceived the adversaries whom the sought to supplant. Hence Free-Masonry, vulgarly imagined to have begun with the Dionysian Architects or the German Stone-workers, adopted Saint John the Evangelist as one of its patrons, associating with him, in order not to arouse the suspicions of Rome, Saint John the Baptist, and thus covertly proclaiming itself the child of the Kabalah and Essenism together."
“[For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics, degenerating afterward into those heretical forms which Gnosticism developed, so that even Manes had his followers among them...]” - 155:814-817
According to Albert Pike, the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, “The Templars...had two doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was Johannism; the other public, which was the Roman Catholic. Thus they deceived the adversaries whom the sought to supplant.” Here is a evidence that the Roman Catholic Church is a front for the Merovingians. (For more evidence, see: Mystery Babylon: Catholic or Jewish?)
In Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century, authors Marjorie Reeves and Warwick Gould wrote that the Gnostic messiah as St. John (Fr. Jean), the Apostolic successor of St. John the Divine would replace the Pope (the Apostolic successor of St. Peter) and deliver mankind from the bondage of mortality into the realm of the spirit:"
"In the Illuminist group at Avignon we also find echoes of Roquetaillade's programme of schism, followed by the triumph of the Angelic Pope and World Emperor in the regeneration of society...
"More generally, the Illuminist groups caught on when, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, aspirations for a 'new religion' flourished and visionaries sought through mystical channels the key to their own future role...
"Ballanche, with his friend Roux Bredin, revitalized the Illuminist group in Lyons, using the language of their cult freely. Two common symbols of this typical cult are significant for us: the repeated references to the expected 'Evangile du Saint-Esprit' or 'révélation de la révélation', and the cult of 'St Jean' as the prototype of the new apostles. Amongst Illumines of Copenhagen Christ's words in John 21:22 were taken to mean that in some mysterious sense St John was still on earth.
"Like others, Schelling saw St John as the apostle of the future. In concord with Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist in the Old Dispensation, he placed Peter, Paul and John in the New, representing the three stages in the Christian Church. Peter was the apostle of the Father, Paul of the Son, while John was the Apostle the Spirit who was leading mankind into the full truth of the future. The first stage was that of Catholicism, the second of Protestantism but the third will be the perfect religion of mankind." - 256:56-7. 62-3
Ean Begg stated in The Cult of the Black Virgin that the Merovingian veneration of John and Jesus is merely an occult blind for their worship of the pagan gods who rule at the summer and winter solstices respectively:
“Despite the divinity of Christ, it was John who remained the master, whose knowledge was greater. Estoerically, John and Jesus, born at the poles of the year [summer/winter solstices], symbolize our two natures, mortal and immortal, like Castor and Pollux.” (272:7,124)
In Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were Apollo and Hercules, the twin sons of Jupiter, king of the gods. Moreover, Begg avers that ‘John’ is the French variant of the bisexual Roman god, Janus/Dianus [Diana] (p.7) and Alexander Hislop has disclosed in The Two Babylons a yet more esoteric interpretation:
“The name of John the Baptist…in the sacred language adopted by the Roman Church, was Joannes. To make the festival of the 24th of June, then, suit Christians and Pagans alike, all that was needful was just to call it the festival of Joannes; and thus the Christians would suppose that they were honouring John the Baptist, while the Pagans were still worshipping their old god Oannes, or Tammuz. Thus, the very period at which the great summer festival of Tammuz was celebrated in ancient Babylon, is at this very hour observed in the Papal Church as the Feast of the Nativity of St. John. And the fete of St. John begins exactly as the festal day began in Chaldea.” (p.121)
Students of Scripture may recognize Oannes as the Philistine god, Dagon, but may not realize that this fish-god is also the ‘beast that rises out of the sea,’ in Rev. 13:1. Dagobert’s Revenge identifies Oannes as ‘Lucifer’ whose fallen angels sired a race of giants, the Nephilim, in Genesis 6:
“...Dagon or Oannes, a half-human, half-fish combination who was known as the ‘Lord of the Flood’...was said to rise out of the sea every day to teach his secret knowledge to those who followed him. He is mentioned in Samuel, Chapter 5, when the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant and place it in the Temple of Dagon. Two nights later, ‘Dagon was fallen upon is face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.’ It is this character upon which Satan or Lucifer is based, but the physical description attributed to him applied to an entire race of ‘gods’, or as they were described in the Bible, Nephilim, or Fallen Angels, the ‘Great Old Ones’...”
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose… There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Gen. 6:1-4
Oannes was the same fish-god described in Bloodline of the Holy Grail as the ‘mysterious sea-beast’ which sired Merovee, the Frankish king who founded the Merovingian dynasty. For this reason, the Merovingian dynasty were designated “Fisher Kings.”
“Despite the carefully listed genealogies of his time, the heritage of Meroveus was strangely obscured in the monastic annals. Although the rightful son of Clodion, he was nonetheless said by the historian Priscus to have been sired by an arcane sea creature, the Bistea Neptunis..
“The Sicambrian Franks, from whose female line the Merovingians emerged were associated with Grecian Arcadia before migrating to the Rhineland. As we have seen, they called themselves the Newmage – ‘People of the New Covenant’, just as the Essenes of Qumran had once been known. It was the Arcadian legacy that was responsible for the mysterious sea beast – the Bistea Neptunis – as symbolically defined in the Merovingian ancestry. The relevant sea-lord was King Pallas, a god of old Arcadia... The immortal sea-lord was said to be ‘ever-incarnate in a dynasty of ancient kings’ whose symbol was a fish – as was the traditional symbol of Jesus.” (pp.166,175)
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Rev. 13:1-2
In his blasphemous book, The Real Meaning of the Zodiac, D. James Kennedy stated: “In Pisces these fishes are a representation of the Church.” Fred Gettings associated the fish emblem with the so-called “Christian zodiac,” which the Neo-Platonists based on the pagan Zodiac.
“In the Christian zodiac, as in the pagan zodiac, the two fishes of Pisces appear to be associated with the idea of the spirit and soul... Whether this Neoplatonic notion did influence the symbolism of Pisces or not, the spiritual nature of the fishes was adapted by the medieval image-makers as relating very distinctly to the spiritual nature of Christ. In any case, from the earliest times, Christ had been linked with the image of the fish. The drawings of fish in the catacombs were symbols for Christ, and a whole battery of more or less esoteric interpretation was erected to account for this symbolism. A sample of this esotericism, derived from a Sibylline prophecy, is set out in the notes on Augustine's acrostical treatment of the fish...” (911:28-9)
Christians have been badly misinformed that the fish symbol represents Christ and His followers because they are “fishers of men.” This pagan emblem, which derives from the pagan zodiac, found its way into the Catholic Church via St. Augustine, a Neo-Platonist. Augustine attempted to justify the adoption of elements of pagan worship in the Church's syncretism, thereby Christianizing pagan practices, emblems and even pagan deities. Augustine wrote concerning the fish: “If you combine the initial letters of the five Greek words, which are Iesous Chreistos Theou Uios Soter, Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour, they make the word ichthus, meaning fish, and the mystic meaning of this noun is Christ, because He had power to exist alive, that is, without sin, in the bottomless pit of our mortal life, as in the depths of the sea.”
In The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop stated that Jesus Christ “began to be popularly called ICHTHYS (or ICHTHUS), that is 'the Fish', manifestly to identify Him with Dagon...[and] that Icthus, or the Fish, was one of the names of Bacchus.” Dagon was the Philistine Fish-deity and Bacchus was the Greek name for Tammuz, the Babylonian Sun-god. Making an artistic representation of the fish for religious reasons is forbidden in the Book of Deuteronomy.
“Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.” (Deut. 4:15-19)
Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”
NOTES
The race of Atlantean demi-gods are believed to have relocated to the constellation of Orion following the Deluge; "...the Hindu Varuna, the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek Ouranos, are all symbolized by Orion..." (767:165-6)
"Through the power of the Christ Pisces, we have been carried out into the world of stars and zodiac, into the realm of the spiritual, from which we ourselves (as spirits) have descended to the Earth. According to the mediaeval cosmoconception, it is the realm to which we shall ultimately return after death, where we shall find 'life even in death'. (911:42)
"One of the most remarkable acrostics was contained in the verses cited by Lactantius and Eusebius in the 4th century, and attributed to the Erythraean sibyl, the initial letters of which form the words 'Iricrovs Xpioros 9eoO wos crconvp: "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour." The initials of the shorter form of this again make up the word ix^us (fish), to which a mystical meaning has been attached (Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 18, 23), thus constituting another kind of acrostic." - The 1911 Edition Encyclopedia: http://78.1911encyclopedia.org/A/AC/ACROPOLIS.htm
