Candles

To some extent, the use of candles, lamps and torches serves the same purpose as fires. However, the use of the Christmas Candle (a practise now dying out) and the similar Paschal Candle, still in vogue, points to a somewhat different meaning. These special candles are lit at the commencement of the festival and are made to burn continuously; ill omens are taken from their being extinguished accidentally. Afterwards they are valued as charms and are used in fertility ceremonies in much the same way as is the Yule Log.

Candles are especially used at Christmas. In recent times, as in ancient Rome, they were given as presents. They were carried processionally, and also lit in the windows as well as decorating the fir tree. In Ireland, the Twelfth Night custom was to set a ring of candles in a sieve of oats with one large candle in the centre, and this had its echo in England where bonfires were used instead. In either case, as with a circle of dancers enclosing a single person or bonfire, the symbol is of a dot within a circle which is a sun-god sign.

The religious customs of our own winter festivals closely follow that of the ancients. In Turkey, lamps and candles were lit once a year to the sun god, and in Babylon and Rome torches and tapers were lit before the images of the gods. Wax candles were placed on the altar of Tammuz just as they were on the altar of Saturn in Rome. One historian writes, "on his altars wax tapers were lit because by Saturn men were reduced from the darkness of error to the light of truth".

At the Saturnalia, gifts of candles were made; processions took place where the image of the gods were carried with great ceremony accompanied by priests with wax candles in their hands, followed by youths in vestments singing hymns in honour to the god. The crowds also held wax candles on these occasions.

Although the use of candles was so foreign to the true Church that it was ridiculed in the fourth century by a Christian writer as a useless pagan practise, later on, as the gospel truth diminished, candles were increasingly used to light altars and burn before the various images of the ‘saints’. That the Roman Church saw in this emblem a mysterious meaning is plainly seen in a prayer addressed to God at Easter which offered "the unpolluted sacrifice of the wax Easter candle" as "a great mystery --- .which must needs be extolled with due and deserved praises".

To bring us closer to the heart of this mystery, we must consider another Latin blessing of the Easter tapers, from 1880, which praised the bees which provided the wax: "They bring forth young from their mouths, like as Christ proceeded from his Father’s mouth.. .therefore 0 Lord are such worthy gifts offered upon Thy altar"

Add to this the statement, in 1841, that "the origin of bees is Paradise, therefore the mass cannot be said without beeswax" and the belief that bees possessed a portion of the divine breath which was bestowed upon Adam and Eve in Eden, and we begin to see that it is the bee and its wax which is the important symbol for the initiates of the mystery religion.

The Secret of the Bee

So vital was the use of beeswax to the Roman Church that before the Reformation no abbey or monastery was without its colony of bees and resident Beekeeper. The chief church in Wittenburg was reported to have used 3,000 lbs of wax. Almost as if to excuse this activity, literary parallels were drawn between the humble, industrious and (some said) chaste bee and the monks in their monasteries, or the Church as a whole with the Pope as ‘King Bee’.

Also, the bee was considered symbolic of Christ and Mary, for the bees were said to "produce posterity yet retain their virginity". All of this is a cover for the truth.

The Church was not the only user of beeswax. It was equally prized for he making of votive images in pagan temples. Wax representations of various parts of the body in need of healing were offered before the idol, and it is reported that a soldier wounded in the face by an arrow near Helmston in Sussex made such an offering to Our Lady of Boulogne. As well as this, wax images were, and still are, produced for the purpose of cursing, the little figures being stuck with pins, burnt or drowned.

Not only the wax, but all the produce of the bee was special and sacred, for it was nectar or ambrosia on which the gods dined, and which gave them their immortality. Odin drank mead, which was a fermented honey drink. Zeus was raised on honey in a cave of bees; honey was offered to the gods and smeared on the lips of babies as protective magic.

What, then, is the secret of the bee? It is that the Chaldee word for a bee is DABAR which also means a WORD, (18) thus the bee is symbolic for the Mediator, the Messiah and the Word of God, i.e. that which proceeds from the Father or, in the mystery religions, prophecies and utterances inspired by the devil. The bee is therefore the Antichrist, the counterfeit Word of God, and what it produces is the seducing lies of the devil.

The Old Testament prophetess Deborah takes her name from this word, though she spoke from God, and the priests and priestesses of old were called Melissae or Essenes (bees). Artemis herself was called a bee, and Demeter was addressed as ‘Pure Mother Bee’. The priestess of Apollo at the Delphic Temple was called the ‘Delphic Bee’ and the bee was also the symbol of Diana and Ceres, supposedly because of its virginity. In India and China, too, the gods are depicted as bees.

The Inspirational Bee

One interesting, if enigmatic, story tells of the ‘honey-whip’ of the twin Indian gods of light, which bestowed ‘life’s breath’ and ‘forceful speech’ on those it touched. This speaks of the inspirational power of the bee, and the similar remark above attributing a portion of ‘divine breath’ to the paradise bee seems to show a recognition of the original source of all life and inspiration (for the word ‘inspiration’ means literally to draw in breath).

The bee and its produce has long been recognised as inspirational, for the poets and singers of old were said to have been touched by ‘the spirit of the skilled bee’ and the gods sent bees to the lips of those whom they inspired, or anointed their mouths with honey. In this hymn to Hermes we see the bee priestesses in action:

"What time they fed on honey fresh, food of the gods divine,
The holy madness made their hearts to tell the truth incline,
But if from food of honeycomb they needs must keep aloof,
Confused they buzz among themselves and speak no word of sooth."

Another myth of the bee which confirms its origin as the word of the antichrist is that of its birth, for it was commonly believed that bees were produced from the carcass of the bull. (19) The bull, as previously shown, represented the Prince, the Mighty One. The Egyptians held the bull most sacred and the bull-god Apis itself had a miraculous birth by fire from heaven, and it was considered to embody the soul of Osiris. (The Latin word for bee is APIS)

The bee is also associated with the lion, for the Messiah is the Lion of Judah, (Rev 5,5) but satan also is likened to a roaring lion (20) in search of prey in 1 Peter 5,8.. Thus the lion symbol was a powerful one for those who knew its meaning.

On a jasper cameo, the lion is shown with a bee in its MOUTH. (Remember, DABAR means "word".)

Samson’s riddle of the lion and the bees (Judges 14) should have appealed to those who worshipped Astarte, (21) and we can perhaps find a Christian allegory here, for Samson unaided slew the roaring lion and from its carcass took the food of the gods which gave immortality, and out of the LION of Judah came the WORD of God; out of His death came eternal life for man.

Because of these symbolic meanings, the bee has been used as an emblem by those who wish to associate themselves with the antichrist and Mystery Babylon. The tomb of Childeric I (d.482) the son of Merovee, from whom the Merovingian kings descended was found to contain not only artefacts of sorcery but no less than 300 bees of solid gold. Later, Napolean had his robes made of Merovingian green and covered with the golden bees. It has been suggested, furthermore, that the French fleur-de-lis was originally a bee symbol.

One of the paintings that hints at the occult secrets of the Merovingian bloodline (22) is ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ by Guercino, and it shows a skull on which rests a bee. The title, it has been suggested, is an anagram for "Begone! I contain the secrets of God".

Candles at Christmas

Among the lesser known candle celebrations of Christmas time are Christingle and St. Lucia Day, both becoming more popular. Christingle was a pagan festival of light which was first ‘christianised’ in Protestant Moravia in the eighteenth century. The ceremony is centred on an orange pierced with a lighted candle, said to be a symbol of the sun but more likely signifying the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and the enlightenment or Word of satan. This festival has now been revived by the Church of England Children’s Society and is used as a way of raising money for charity.

St. Lucia Day (the name means ‘light’) was similarly created by the Church to fit in with an existing festival. Lucia’s day is 13th December, and in Sweden it is known as Little Yule. Before the Gregorian reform of the calendar, her day was the shortest of the year, the true solstice. On this day, a Lucia Queen is chosen. She is dressed in a white dress with a red sash and is crowned with a coronet of twigs containing candles. Like the May Queen, Lucia visits each house in the parish with her attendants, boys in red beards carrying torches or candles. The houses and public buildings are ablaze with illuminations, and in Sicily the day is kept as a fire festival with the usual dancing around the bonfire.

Our own Church festival, Candlemas, is a reminder of the ‘purifying’ flames in which the ignorant idol worshippers offered their children, for it is now supposed to commemorate the purification of the Virgin and the entrance of Jesus, as the Light, into the Temple. It falls on -the day which the ancients called Imbolc, the feast day of Brighid, whose name means ‘Exalted One’, the goddess of fire and fertility and forerunner of the Virgin Mary.

The distinctive rite of Candlemas is the blessing of beeswax candles which are then distributed and lit and carried in procession to symbolise the coming of Light into the world. The similar Roman custom has already been noted.

The Freemasons, too, attribute the origins of their cult to the coming of light, for they date their beginnings from Anno Lucis, the Year of Light. Not only does the candle directly signify the light, but the beeswax it contains shows that the light it holds up is no less than the word of satan, for he knows and corrupts the text which tells us "The entrance of your word gives light" (Ps 119)

Yuletide Greenery

The materials used for decoration at the Winter Solstice have always been evergreen, for these seem to speak of everlasting life, of light in the darkness and a return from death. Holly, ivy and mistletoe are especially sought after though other evergreens are used.

Like the Yule Log, the evergreens of Christmas have long been prized as emblems of fertility and good luck and their true meaning has been obscured. The Church, although vainly protesting against the pagan associations of such greenery, was not able to prevent the people adorning their houses with laurels, green trees and such like, and in the l5th century it was said that, "every-man’s house, as also parish churches, were decked with holme, ivy, bays and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green."

Well before the festival we know as Christmas began, the idol-houses of the pagans of Europe and Asia were decked with evergreens for their winter festival, and in Rome laurel and bay were used as decorations and green garlands were made and worn. The original gifts given at this time were twigs and branches from the sacred groves and when, later on, more general gifts such as honey, candles and lamps and gold and silver were given, the word ‘strenae’ (twigs) was still used for them.

The Kissing Bough

Before the advent of our Christmas Tree, a kissing bough was commonly made from a double hoop or wreath of evergreens looped with ribbons and decorated with gold and silver baubles, red apples, candles and mistletoe. The candles, like the Yule Candle, were lit on Christmas Eve and made to burn throughout the festival. The mistletoe was the most important part of the kissing bough, indeed, it was often called ‘the mistletoe’. It is also reported that twin dollies were placed in the branches of the kissing bough.

The symbolism of the twin hoops and twin dolls of the kissing bough, and also to some extent the meeting of lips beneath the mistletoe is one of the union of opposites, a cornerstone of pagan beliefs worldwide. Ever since the casting out of satan from heaven, he has sought to return there, uniting his evil with God’s goodness. So, in mythology, twins represent light and darkness, good and evil, heaven and earth in eternal enmity. Osiris and his slayer, Set were twins; so were the Scandinavian gods Baldur and Loki. Cain and Abel are seen as twin brothers in mythology, as are the archangels Lucifer and Michael.

The Kissing Bough dolls cannot fail to remind us of the May Doll which is placed in the green May wreath. In fact, there is more than a slight resemblance in celebrations at Christmas to those in Spring, for the purpose is the same.

In 1779, a gentleman visitor to Kent wrote that a curious custom occurred there involving the burning of two effigies, the Holly Boy and the Ivy Girl. This took place on Shrove Tuesday, and in Norwich on the same day a man called King Christmas would ride the streets on a decorated white horse proclaiming "myrth, disportes and plays" for everyone.

Holly

Holly is popularly taken to be a male emblem, and symbolises the sun god in his death and resurrection. The name may have been ‘The Holy’ at one time, and even ‘The Babe’, for the Hebrew for Baby is OLAL. (23) It was certainly known as a sacred plant long before the birth of Jesus, for it was used to adorn the head of Saturn during the Saturnalia in Rome.

The red berries of the holly are of particular importance, for they signify not only the sun (as do the gold baubles on the tree and kissing bough,) but also red drops of blood. The blood, however, is not that shed by Jesus, but that of the satanic messiah at his death, which was said to stain the river Adonis red at the time of his festival in Phoenicia. The red anemone was said to have sprung from his blood, and the red rose was sacred to the virgin mother goddess, who stained it with her blood as she hastened to her dying lover/son. (This is why the red rose is the symbol of love to this day).

As ever, the meaning of the colour red, universally used as a magic charm and healer, has been lost after centuries of ritual and custom. It was red-haired men that were sacrificed to Osiris in Egypt, and it was red-haired puppies that the Romans used. Today, the red-haired ‘first footer’ of New Year is either a bad omen or a symbol of good luck, depending on the area, but still singled out as special. This is partly because red was the colour of fire and the setting (dying) sun. Lucifer himself is the fiery serpent, or ‘red dragon’ (Rev. 12:3) for this is the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘seraph’.

Also, remarkably, the Hebrew word for red is ‘adam’, the same word used in Genesis one for ‘man’ and ‘earth’, for Adam was formed out of the red clay of earth. (24) The Antichrist is the epitome of fallen man (his number is six, the number of man) and identifies himself with the original man of sin, Adam. Thus, red is particularly used as a magic colour, and the devil himself is often pictured as being red.

Ivy

Ivy is the female emblem, the counterpart to the holly. As the red berries of the holly point to Adam, so the Ivy is Eve, the word coming from the Hebrew ‘IVI’ for ‘life’. The leaf of the ivy is heart-shaped, and this provides another strong link between the one who bore the Seed (Eve, Semiramus, Isis, Ishtar, Venus etc.) and the evergreen decorations of her special festival, the festival of the birth of the Seed. Today, in the Roman Church, the worship of the Sacred Heart’ is as popular as ever, but the Babylonian ‘sacred heart’ was the infant deity as worshipped in the arms of his mother, and the word ‘heart’ was ‘BEL’ in the Chaldean language.

Ivy was particularly sacred to the gods, especially to Bacchus (Dionysus), Apollo, Attis and Osiris - all representations of the dying god. Cupid, the infant son of Jupiter, who is therefore the ‘god of the heart’ as shown above, is pictured here surrounded by a wreath of ivy.

The Bacchanals, the frenzied worshippers of Bacchus, ate ivy and were intoxicated with the plant, and it was held so sacred in Rome that the priest of Jupiter was not allowed to touch or even to name it. Ivy was also sacred to Attis, and his eunuch priests were tattooed with a pattern of ivy leaves. Osiris of Egypt was associated with the ivy and it was called his plant. Although Dionysus was a god of wine and of the pine tree, the ivy and the fig tree were especially associated with him, and in the Attic town of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy which was revered as the god himself.

What, then, is the meaning of the ivy? Why do we see it woven into garlands to adorn the gods and the heads of his worshippers? Once again, the mystery religion of Babylon was wound even into this humble plant, for its name in Greek was KISSOS (a name given to Bacchus) and this is the name CUSH as pronounced by the Greeks.

Cush, of course, was the father of Nimrod (Genesis’10,8). Nimrod, then, was the ‘branch of Cush’ or the ‘branch of ivy’. Furthermore, the headband of ivy so prominent in worship was "Zeira Kissou" which has a double meaning, for it is not only the ‘circlet of ivy’ but the ‘seed of Cush’. When Nimrod was put to death, and satan worship persecuted, it continued to influence the people under such symbolism as the ivy branch and the red holly berry.

Mistletoe

Not many would deny the magical and pagan associations of the mistletoe bough. Even devout believers who are happy to set up a Christmas tree and burn a Yule Log will nevertheless do not permit mistletoe in the house. It has been banned as a decoration in churches, with the notable exception of York Minster where a branch was laid on the high altar at Yuletide until recent times.

Perhaps, in this country at least, we still dimly recall that the Druids worshipped the mistletoe branch and made it a central part of their winter celebrations. They hailed the plant as a universal healer and charm, and it was placed on their altars at the winter solstice where two white bulls were sacrificed.

It has been thought that this veneration of the plant was because of its relative rarity, especially when found growing on the oak. The oak tree, the tree of Thor (Zeus) was the sacred tree of the Druids, whose worship took place in groves of oak. The Hebrew word for the oak is ALLAH, (one ancient name for the moon-god, who is perfectly honoured by the moon-shaped mistletoe fruit) and this perhaps explains its particular place in worship.

The sight of the mistletoe still miraculously green despite the frosts of winter, and hanging rootless between heaven and earth on the sacred tree, was a joyous sight to the Druids, who would carefully and with much ceremony cut down the plant with a golden sickle on the sixth day of the full moon nearest to New Year.

There is an obvious allusion here to the Branch of God, who hung on the tree and gave Himself for the healing of all. This is borne out by the Sanskrit translation of the word mistletoe, which is rendered Mas=Messiah/ Tal=Womb or Pit/ Tu= motion from or to, that is, The Messiah from the womb/pit.(25)l

The mistletoe is the plant of the moon. Its round pearl berries are the moon and its name was Soma, All-heal, which is the Indian name of the Moon-god. Also, interestingly, this is the name of the inspirational divine food of the gods in that country. The golden sickle with which it is cut down resembles the moon and its special feast is one of the full moon.

All over the world, the mistletoe has gained a reputation for healing, fertility and good luck (26). It is worn as a magic charm, in Africa for instance, and in France and Germany it was a remedy for epilepsy and barrenness, and it gave protection against lightning and witchcraft. In Austria, It was laid on the threshold to prevent nightmares, and it was fed to cows in England at New Year to protect the calves and to promote a good milk supply for the coming year.

J.G. Frazer concludes that mistletoe is the famous Golden Bough of Aenaes, the Greek hero, who used it to open the gates of death and immortality.

One Teutonic god who is especially associated with mistletoe is Balder, the son of Odin, whose name means 'seed of Baal' (Baal-zer).

This god, like the others of his type, met a violent death but in a curious way. Balder having had a premonition of death, his mother Frigga asked all things on earth to swear never to harm her son, but she omitted to ask the mistletoe. Loki, Balder's evil brother, had the mistletoe fashioned into a dart and had it aimed at Balder, who died amid the usual great lamentation we have dome to expect in these myths. He was launched out to sea on a boat and was subsequently rescued (resurrected) from the Underworld. [Almost identically to Osiris.]

This strange use of mistletoe for a deadly weapon may hide, once again, the truth of the Nimrod story, for another Norse tradition speaks of a magical sword being used to slay Balder, and the name of this sword was Mistillteinn. This is much more in keeping with the parallel stories of the death of the ‘saviour’ god.

The mode of death in many legends was beheading with the sword. In some, the god was struck by lightning (Orpheus, Zoroaster and Phaethon, for example) and in others he was wounded by a boar. However, there is a link between all three, for the Hebrew word for sword is ‘baraq’, which is ‘brightness’ or ‘lightning’ as used in Job 20,25 and Ezek 1:13, and also the word for a boar, ‘chazir’ is very similar to that used for lightning in Job 28:26 - ‘chaziz’. The Celts, too, seemed to recognise this similarity, for they called fire "the boar of the woods".

Another link, this time symbolic, between the modes of death is that the boar carries its tusks or ‘horns’ in its mouth, and therefore symbolises strength in the mouth, eloquent speech or powerful words. That the god was wounded, or in some myths killed, by a boar suggests that he was, in fact, overpowered by the word of God in the mouth of His prophets, and this is the fate in store for the future Antichrist, the descendant of Nimrod, whom the Lord will "slay with the breath of His mouth".

Both the judgement of Jesus and the prophetic rebukes of His two great prophets of the end times are spoken of in terms of fire from the mouth (Ps 18:8 and Rev 11,5) yet in the description of the final judgement, Jesus is described as having a "sharp sword" that proceeds out of his mouth to slay his enemies and to ‘strike the nations". So, the end of the Antichrist of old was, and that of the future will be, by the ‘boar’ of the Word, by the fire of God and by the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Continue to Part Four