The Meaning of The Christ

Mithras, Capricorn, and the Sacredness of Suffering.

Glossary of Terms

Myth: A story — not an untrue one — just a story; A scheme or plan; a dynamic plan of development; a map of something; the bare bones, in story form of the basic components of human behavior and experience

Collective Unconscious: A collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with and that is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience

Psyché: Greek., ‘breath’ ‘life breath’; cf. Lat. anima; 'totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious'

As a child I didn’t celebrate Christmas.

I grew up in a non-denominational Christian home that attended church on Saturday instead of Sunday and that celebrated all the Jewish holidays found in the book of Leviticus — like Rosh Hashanna, Yom Kippur, and Succot.

I had, in retrospect, a very psychedelic childhood that made me obsessed with the question of how we make meaning as human beings. It gave me an inside-outsider relationship with Christianity, Judaism, and culture in general and it cultivated in me a love for anthropology, psychology, and other inquiries into what it means to be human.

Growing up, we viewed mainstream Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter as pagan, backward and primitive, relics of an ancient Rome mired in idolatry and darkness. Emperor Constantine, the first roman emperor to convert to Christianity, took these pagan rituals and syncretically transformed them into Christian symbols.

We prided ourselves on being folks who didn’t celebrate those pagan holidays. We followed the real Jesus, practiced precisely how he practiced, and we were justified in calling ourselves the true followers, unlike the heathen masses who didn’t know what they were doing.

Since coming into my own and thinking deeply about what kind of relationship I’d like to have with the Divine, I’ve crafted my own personal relationship with spirituality. I have a deep and rich spiritual life. I chant every morning for half an hour and sing a daily blessing to welcome the day’s journeying. It is my own kind of “call to prayer”; it is very lit and it sustains me.

I honor all my ancestors, both those who are monotheistic and those who were animists. Each of these impulses, each of these ways of relating to the great Mystery of Being are in me and I am so grateful to be the carrier of such a rich heritage.

Today, I relate to the Christian story mythologically and depth psychologist Liz Greene’s definition of myth is apt here. (See glossary above.)

A myth is not a story that is untrue. It is a story that is deeply and profoundly true and one that reveals “the bare bones in story form of the basic components of human behavior and experience.”

One of my old church’s objections to Christmas was that it was obviously tied to other non-Christian cultural celebrations like the cult of Mithras, a sun god worshipped in ancient Rome, whose birthday was, allegedly, December 25th, and whose customs were later folded into what is now called Christianity.

But as I have grown I think this objection is silly and it reflects an atomized, isolated, and therefore false sense of reality.

I did not give myself my name; It is a greek name in origin and one that was made up thousands of years ago. I ate food today that was picked by farmers in distant lands and foreign cultures, farmers whose names I will never know and who I will never meet. I am, quite literally, in-formed by people whose culture, language, and way of being is not mine. So are you.

We all live in a dialogical web, a conversation that is being constructed by ourselves and by others and not just others who are alive today but by others who used to be. We are shaped by our ancestors and always will be. This is true of all customs, creeds, religions and faiths, including Christianity. This is not bad nor is it impure. It is beautiful and it is worthy of celebration.

In ‘The Religious Case Against Belief’, James Carse writes,

“In attempting to say who Jesus is, the best we can do is to utter words provoked by the collective attempts to do so over the centuries-- a choral work we cannot possibly translate back into a few phrases, any more than we can assume that a concert is adequately described by its listing in the program, or that a painting is interchangeable with its title.

Reading the program or the museum's catalogue, we have no notion of what actually was performed or displayed. We can extend the metaphor: a literal reading of the Bible amounts to little more than what we learn from a concert program, or even the score. It is the symphonic whole that bears the meaning that nothing less can remotely capture.”

Mr. Carse is correct, and for me, depth psychology is one of the few ways of seeing that has come the closest in capturing this symphonic truth.

Depth psychology, whose patron saint is Carl Jung, regards the human psyche as real, and regards religion as a way of living that takes the reality of the psyche seriously and sincerely. Religion is not a commentary on the physical world, though the two are always, of course, in conversation with each other, informing each other, and shaping each other; this is part of the symphonic whole.

In the world of the psyche, myth is a pattern in the collective unconscious of the human species, so the fact that one can find elements of the Christian story in other cultural myths is to be expected and it is an affirmation of its profound truth, namely that human wholeness can only be found through the acceptance of suffering.

I remember reading The Essential Jung back in 2020 and having this revelation. If elements of Mithra — an ancient Roman sun deity whose birthday was celebrated every year around the winter solstice and, curiously, often on December 25th —can be found in Christmas, it is not because Christas is “pagan” but because the “moral” of Christmas is that it is only in darkness and through the acceptance of darkness that light comes. This is a perennial truth.

What a beautiful awe-inspiring teaching! For me this context makes the twinkling lights of the season take on deeper meaning.

And, as many esoteric takes on the Christian story have suggested, the proper relationship to such a worldview is not necessarily to worship the Christ but to become him; to imitate him; to train yourself through enough discipline and fortitude to bear your own suffering the way Christ carried his cross. If you do this, you will be redeemed.

It is hard for me to communicate exactly what I feel into words here, so I will now turn to Liz Greene for help. As mentioned earlier, Liz Greene is a depth psychologist but more excitingly, she is an astrologist. Now, If you read that and just cringed, try to perceive astrology through the lens of myth, not as something false but as a symbolic map pointing to a deep pattern of individuation, integration and wholeness in the human psyche.

Okay. That’s enough stalling on my part. The following snippet comes from a text called The Jupiter/Saturn Conference Lectures by Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo. It has brought me much joy and I hope it brings you joy too this holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone, and happy new year to you and yours!

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The following snippet is taken from Chapter 3, The Myth of the Individual Journey by Liz Greene. It is about Capricorn, whose season we are now in. This is relevant because Jesus Christ is a Capricorn, hehe. What is the meaning of this? Let us now turn and see:

“There are a number of mythic themes which one can attach to Capricorn. One that seems particularly applicable for me is the aspect of the Christian myth which is called the Crucifixion. The entire theme of the descent of spirit into material form and its bondage and suffering there are connected to Capricorn. The despair of Christ on the cross and his cry, ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken me,’ are, I feel very important insights into Capricorn’s psychology. All the mythic themes of imprisonment and voluntary bondage, the taking on of the burden of worldly life, are connected to Capricorn.

There is a willingness to undergo these things because there is a sense of duty, a need to serve something. Like Leo, I think Capricorn deals with the father-son relationship. But Leo is trying to find the creative father who is his source. Capricorn, I believe, fights the father because he is bound to serve him, and must rebel and can be beaten to his knees and learn humility before he and the father can be united.

This theme of bondage and the heavy prison of body and matter and material responsibility, seems acceptable to Capricorn only as long as there is some sense of its purpose. But there is always a moment when the sense of purpose is lost. The entire drama of the crucifixion is meaningless without the despair.

There is no sign as prone to depression as Capricorn, because that crucifixion is enacted over and over again in life. [emphasis: mine]

One takes on the labour because one is seeking to serve some guiding principle or ethical code. It could be called religious belief, or duty to family or country, or whatever. In the end it’s a belief in the logos, the patriarchal spirit. The service is undergone willingly, but then there comes that moment, which may be several years long, when the sense of faith in the conviction or ethical code or spirit collapses.

Everything seems meaningless and pointless and the thing one thought one was serving has gone, leaving only blackness. In alchemical symbolism they talk about the base matter as Saturn, which must be cooked in the alembic until it turns black and starts to stink. This stage of despair and depression is a prelude to the release of the spirit, and the forming of the philosopher’s stone.

There is a very deep religious drive in Capricorn, although the sign is usually too hard-headed and pragmatic to admit this in mystical terms. So they talk about duty.

The burial or entombment is another motif which is connected with Capricorn. This is a Christian image, and also an Egyptian one. The god Osiris is dismembered by his evil brother Set. His sister and wife, Isis, gather the pieces together and then mummify him. Eventually he is resurrected. This theme predates Christianity by several millennia.

The experience of entombment and waiting silently, whether its behind a stone or wrapped in mummy bandages, is peculiarly Capricornian. Capricorn begins with the winter solstice, when the sun is at its weakest and the day is shortest. Many early religions used this time of year to celebrate the death of the old year and the seed of the new one. So Capricorn is a period of death and gestation prior to rebirth. Many solar gods and heroes are born at the winter solstice. The birth of Christ is the most recent. But Mithras is born at the winter solstice too, and so is King Arthur.

The winter solstice is the longest, darkest night of the year, and the Capricorn monster — the seagoat — eats the dying fragments of the waning old year.

The new beginning is still entombed in the monster’s belly, like Jonah is entombed in the belly of the whale. In the midst of this depression and darkness a seed begins to sprout. In the moment of despair on the cross, humanity is redeemed, because at that moment God becomes human and truly suffers.

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Thanks for reading my latest piece! Bookclub continues this week with the third installment of Robert Bly’s ‘A Little Book on the Human Shadow.’ I’ll be reading TO YOU so you don’t have to read the book beforehand.

You can learn more about the book here and you can sign up for our third virtual meet up here. It’ll be on the 26th of December at 7pm est. I hope to see you there. :)