- Good evening, and welcome to the second part of our interview with Dr. Charles Finch on the Egyptian origin of Christianity.

In this segment, we ask Dr. Finch to explain the concept of the celestial cross.

- Most of what we know about the gospel history and representation of the story of Jesus has celestial or astronomical correspondences or antecedents.

Even the phenomenon of the cross and the crucifixion has astronomical relationships.

And if I may just show this diagram, if you can focus in on it, I'll try to hold it as steady as possible and explain astronomically the phenomenon of the celestial cross and the celestial crucifixion.

Bearing in mind that Jesus, like Horus, is a form of the sun, or if you wanna put it the other way, the sun is a form of Jesus the Christ.

Now, this line represents the celestial equator, and that's what I've got written here in kind of crude lettering, celestial equator.

What is the celestial equator?

The celestial equator is the Earth's equator that is extended outward into space infinitely.

Now remember, it's kind of at an angle here, because the Earth axis is tilted at a 23 1/2 degree angle.

So therefore the equator comes out kind of at an angle like this.

That's why it's kind of in a diagonal shape like this.

So this is the celestial equator seen from the point of view of this observer, which is an extension, a infinite extension into space of the arc of the equator, of the Earth's equator, just extended into space.

This line represents the ecliptic.

Now, what is the ecliptic?

The ecliptic is the apparent path of the sun as it moves from the winter solstice on the 21st of December to the summer solstice on the 21st of June.

I say apparent path of the sun because it's what the sun appears to do as we look at it.

Obviously, we are rotating around the sun.

The sun isn't moving around with regard to us, we are.

But when we look at the sun, it appears to move from, in the period of six months, from a low point in the winter solstice to a high point in the summer solstice.

Okay?

So the sun here in the winter solstice is at its nadir, at its lowest point.

Therefore, in the cave, born on December 25th out of the cave or in the cave of the virgin who is on the horizon, that's the constellation of Virgo, slowly moves, and at the vernal or spring equinox, it crosses the ecliptic, excuse me, crosses the celestial equator.

At that point, you have a celestial crossing.

That is the equinox, the day when day and night are equal.

And after the equinox, or at least the spring equinox, day begins to exceed that of night.

So here you have, interestingly enough, a passover that is the sun on the ecliptic path passing over the equator.

And you have a crossing, that is the sun crossing the celestial equator.

So right at this point where I've got it right here, that is the point of crossing, IE, the point where the sun is, figuratively speaking, crucified.

Now, the crucifixion and the Passover are equinoctial festivals.

They happen right at the equinox, okay?

And in fact, I think our Easter is generally the first full moon after the equinox.

But it is a festival that relates to this crossing of the sun.

So the crucifixion of the sun, Jesus, happens not only on Calvary, on Earth, it happens on Calvary in the heavens.

And in fact, to even lend a more interesting parallel, a more interesting analogy.

Now, the word calvary is a Latin word, which is calvarium.

The calvarium is the skull, okay?

Allegorically speaking, the equator can be figured because it stands as an arc out into space, the arc of the skull or the arc of the calvarium, IE calvary.

It is also a mount, a mountain because of this arc spinning out the space.

So right here, right here at the spring equinox, where the sun in its ecliptic path crosses the equator, you have a crucifixion of the sun on the Mount Calvary, mount of the skulls in the heavens.

- Okay.

Whew, we got another one for you.

(Listervelt laughs) The solar character of Jesus in connection with the Palm Sunday procession of Jesus into Jerusalem.

Can you tackle that one?

- Yes.

(Listervelt laughs) I think that is actually one of the most beautiful and sublime of the symbolic imagery that relates to the celestial character of Jesus, Jesus the Christ.

On Palm Sunday, a week before Easter, he mounts the back of an ass and is led into Jerusalem, excuse me, with palm strewn in front of him.

Now, the ass has a couple of different characters and manifestations in Egyptian mythology or Egyptian religion.

In one character, the ass is a personification of the sun god Ra, the sun god Ra.

In one representation, he has shown pulling the boat of the sun god Ra across the heavens.

In another manifestation, he has the disc of the sun right in between his ears.

And so he is one of the forms of the sun god Ra.

So again, we come back to this solar manifestation.

Jesus mounted on the ass therefore identifies him again with the sun as Ra.

Now, the palm, the palm, the plant, the palm leaf, if you know what the palm leaf like, it has a lot different fronds that kind of come off of it.

And they're generally about equal length on both sides of the stem.

Well, that is one of the symbols or images of the equinox.

Why is it the symbol of the equinox?

Because the equinox is that day on which day and night are of equal length.

So the palm with its equal branches or fronds coming off the stem is an image of the equinox.

So Jesus mounted on the ass is being led to the scene of his ultimate crucifixion, just like the sun is being led, so to speak, to its crucifixion as symbolized by the palms on the equinox at the vernal equinox.

- Okay.

- Now there's another part, however, to that.

The symbolism of Egyptians was absolutely fascinating because it operated on a number of different levels.

One level on which it operated was that another aspect of the ass is that it was identified with Set.

It's interesting that the ass could represent or could be the symbol of two entirely opposing forces or two entirely opposing gods.

Ra the sun god, of course, is a benevolent deity.

Set is a personification of evil.

And yet the ass in the Egyptian conception in one respect could be Ra, but in another respect, it could also be Set or what we would later call the Semitic Satan.

Jesus perched on the back of the ass is a symbol, therefore, of the triumph of the sun or the triumph of good over evil, Set the ass being evil, Jesus the sun being good, or the triumph of the sun over darkness.

Set is a symbol of darkness.

So the ass as a symbol of Set is therefore also a symbol of darkness.

So the sun perched on the ass is a symbol of the triumph over darkness.

- So do we lose the meaning in the Bible by just seeing it as Jesus on an ass?

- Yes, I would have to say so, most assuredly.

I think we lose so much of what's written in the Bible and in the New Testament when we don't understand the deep layers, the deep layers of symbolism that undergird the story or the drama, the often beautiful dramas.

They're often beautiful stories and episodes depicted in the Old and New Testament.

Unless we understand the layers of symbolism that form the foundation of these stories and allegories that teach great truth, then yes, they become just nothing but pretty little stories without any real meaning.

We don't understand why these things happen.

We just accept them and believe them, and they have no meaning to us apart from that.

- Now even the cross, the Christian cross, you say, has its roots in the Egyptian- - Oh, unquestionably.

The Christian cross is derived from the Egyptian ankh, A-N-K-H, which I wish I had a description of it, but basically it's a cross with a circle on top.

Now, what that does, or what that represents is a union of masculine principles and masculine and feminine principles in one symbol.

Now, the Catholic church uses the ankh as a symbol, and the ankh became one of the earliest forms of the cross.

Another form of the Egyptian cross was what we call the Tet cross.

The Tet cross.

Now, the Tet cross was also considered the backbone of Osiris, the backbone of Osiris.

Now, one of the things I think we mentioned earlier is that Osiris was also the god of resurrection.

He is the first deity in the Egyptian pantheon who rises from the dead.

That is why he was so popular.

That's why he maintained his hold on the Egyptian people for 4,000 years or more, because he was their hope for resurrection, for life after death, for eternal life was to be found in Osiris.

So he was the god of resurrection and judge of the dead, lord of eternity.

Now, I have to finish this thought to explain what the Tet means.

Every year during what we call the Set festival, and it escapes me just exactly when they did this, when the Set fest took place, but the most solemn rite was the erection of the Tet cross, which was a symbol was setting aright or setting upright the backbone of Osiris.

Therefore, a symbol of standing upright is a symbol of resurrection.

So setting up the cross is a symbol of resurrection.

Now, the other thing that the cross is, or the Tet cross, is it also stands for those who have crossed over.

That is, those who have crossed over the river.

That is, those who have crossed over to the other side.

So the symbol of resurrection and those who have crossed over to the other side immediately takes our attention to Calvary, where the erection of the cross on the crucifixion represents the impending resurrection of Jesus as Christ, also represents Jesus after having gone across is resurrected by having his backbone, so to speak, stood up aright in the form of the cross in the crucifixion on Calvary, so that the symbol of the setting upright of the Tet is recreated when they set Jesus up on the cross.

Because that was absolutely imperative for the process of resurrection to occur, which happened, of course, on Easter Sunday.

- Now, you use the term Osiris, Set, Isis, Horus.

A lot of people in the audience viewing this conversation might not understand that these were divine figures, if you will, developed by Black people.

How do you feel about that kind of ignorance today in 1985?

- Well, I think I would answer this question by saying that the mental abasement of any individual or group of people has to be predicated on a loss of their understanding of their history.

Okay?

A friend of mine has said that one of our problems that we face today is that Black people, as a group, generally seem to think that their history is bounded by a 500 year circle, beginning with 1492, the Colombian voyages to the New World.

And that beyond that, there is nothing, there's only darkness.

And so by nature, therefore, when you're cut off from the root sources of your present and therefore of your future, individually or collectively, there's nothing to happen except for a kind of individual as well as mental collective amnesia, which is really a collective form of death.

So that an understanding of these things that I have been talking about to me is akin to resurrecting the Tet cross, is akin to setting the cross upright, because that is the image of resurrection.

Now, many in the audience might think that the things that I'm saying, which are very challenging, very disturbing, very threatening even, are turning Christianity upside down on its head.

Now, that's not what I'm seeking to do.

I'm seeking to stand Christianity right back up on its feet where it belongs.

And by setting it up on its feet akin to setting up the Tet cross, the real act of resurrection and reviving collectively and individually will begin to occur.

- You say that there are not only... Or that not only are there parallels between the Egyptian religion and the later Christian religion, but that a Nigerian deity warrants attention.

What about that, please?

- Okay, let me kind of say more clearly what I'm...

If I haven't said it from the outset, I don't think there's merely parallels.

I think there's an ontological relationship.

- What does that mean?

- That is that there is a direct causal relationship between what I call the Kemetic or Egyptian religious ethos and Christianity.

That certainly, if you look at the earliest, Christianity's earliest form was a, to my estimation, a Kemetic religion.

And so it's not just that there are interesting parallels.

I think that there is a direct etiological, if I may use a medical term, I am a physician by trade.

Etiological meaning causative relationship.

- That's still bad for my audience.

(laughs) Go ahead.

- Etiological meaning causative relationship between the Kemetic or Egyptian.

- [Listervelt] It's not just a coincidence.

- It's just not a, no, or just interesting parallels.

That there is a, you know, there is a direct road beginning in the Kemetic experience, and I wouldn't even say culminating in Egypt, but certainly, I mean, Christianity, but certainly finding a flower in Christianity, at least from the point of view of the development of Christian religion.

I don't think the culmination is over yet.

That's why I say that.

Anyway, yeah, West Africa is also extremely fascinating from a couple standpoints in that 95% of the peoples of African descent in this country, in the western hemisphere, came from West Africa.

But (indistinct) has shown, again, a close linguistic, ethnic, metaphysical, and cultural relationship between the Kemetic phenomenon of the Nile Valley and most of your important West African peoples.

And indeed he says that your most important West African peoples originated in the Nile Valley.

And so brought the whole Kemetic cultural baggage to what we call West Africa, including the Dogon, the Wolof of Senegal, the Dogon of Mali, the Yoruba of Nigeria, the Akan of modern day Ghana, the Fon people of what today we call Dahomey, so that those people have carried the survivals out of the Kemetic phenomenon and had reimplanted them in West Africa.

If you look at the Yoruba religion, fascinating from a number of standpoints, it's interesting to focus in on the history and story of Shango.

Shango, among other things, is the Yoruba orisha, orisha meaning god.

Well, it can mean god deity, but it's also in the sense of ancestor deity as well.

There's a certain element of ancestor worship or ancestor veneration in that too.

But the orisha or god Shango, he is the god of thunder and lightning, the personification of the storm of thunder and lightning.

Shango apparently was a real historical personage, as by the way, Osiris was supposed to have been, who lived and reigned as a king in the very early part of the history of the kingdom of Oyo, O-Y-O, Oyo, which is the original Yoruba kingdom in what is today modern western Nigeria.

Now, Shango in the course of his reign ran afoul of his people, was driven out of his kingdom, and ended up, there are variations of the myth, ended up getting hanged, okay?

When he was hanged, he went down into the bowels of the earth and then he was resurrected, climbing up on a chain to the heavens where he became a god.

And his personification is the ram.

Now, what does this have to do with the Egyptian, or excuse me, the Christian story?

Well, Jesus too was the king.

He was styled, at least by his followers, the king of Israel.

He too ran afoul of his people.

He too was hanged.

You know, we generally think of Jesus as being crucified in the Roman fashion on a cross.

But if you look in the acts of the apostles, and also I think in the various letters of St. Paul, you will find that in the New Testament, they say that Jesus was actually hanged from a gibbon, like a common criminal, just like Shango was.

He was buried and descended into hell or into the underworld like Shango.

And then he rose again from the dead and ascended to heaven like Shango did.

And there he became seated at the right hand of the Father and resumed his divinity, so to speak, as did Shango.

One of the images, one of the symbols of Jesus, was the ram.

Or no, he was called the lamb, the lamb and the shepherd.

And that is cognate symbolism.

Cognate, when I say, is related symbolism to the fact that Shango was the ram.

Now, so we find in two entirely different places, separated by time and space, that is historical time and space on two different parts of the world almost, similar stories relating to a divine, a god man, a man god, okay?

To say something further interesting about West African religious symbolism that sort of sheds light on the nature of the cross, it is interesting that among West African peoples and in their religion, and this, by the way, has survived in Haiti among the practitioners of voodoo.

By the way, it's not just black magic.

Let me disabuse your viewership of that altogether.

Voodoo is just not black magic and sorcery.

It is a religion, a valid religion.

Candomble in Brazil, Santeria in Cuba, where the crossroads is considered a awesomely divine place because the crossroads, and by definition the cross, is that point in which human and divine meet.

It is that point where the human, the spiritual and the material come together, where the human and divine come together.

So again, this shows you, or I think this reflects on the nature of Jesus who is both human and divine, particularly on that cross, when his humanity and his divinity come together in emerging or in a apotheosis unlike anything that ever happened to him before, almost or even since, in his post-resurrectional phase.

That symbol of him on the cross says everything about him.

Everything.

If you have nothing else before that episode of being crucified or nothing after, that is enough to sustain an entire religion, that symbol of being on the cross and crucifixion, because it means about 10 different things, not the least of which there is where the human and divine come together as a unity.

And that is reflected in the African, particularly the West African conception of the cross.

And it's also reflected in the Kemetic Nilotic conception of the Tet cross, as we mentioned before.

- In the gospels, Jesus is said to have restored a blind man's sight.

You cite an earlier parallel.

- Yes.

Like I said, I think you could easily go through the entire New Testament and line by line show where there were parallels in a previous episode or a previous element of the Kemetic religion of the Nile Valley, and show that there's a relationship.

Horus, in his fight with Set.

Remember we talked about the war or the combat between Set and Horus, as Horus was trying to avenge his father by defeating Set.

In the course of his battle, he loses an eye, he loses an eye, and therefore becomes the blind Horus.

Excuse me.

Horus has a number of different aspects or manifestations.

One of these is as the blind Horus.

Well, the way in which his blindness is healed is that Thoth, again, the messenger god, the sort of angel Gabriel of the ancient Egyptians, takes some spittle, rubs it in some dirt.

In fact, I don't even think he rubs in dirt.

I think he just takes a spittle and rubs it over the eye and therefore restores the sight of Horus, okay?

This image of the spittle having divine magical powers is very, very, very ancient.

And indeed, to kind of digress a little bit, if you look at some of the origins of some of the other Egyptian deities, you will find that the god Ra, you know, isn't Ra.

It's... Oh my goodness, excuse me.

It's one of the creator deities, and it's escaping me right now.

He gives birth to the divine twins, Shu and Tefnut.

The way in which he gives... Now, Shu is the god of air.

The way in which he comes into being from his divine creator is that the creator sneezes, therefore expels air and the god Shu is created.

Now, it's interesting to note that the word Shu, which is Egyptian, sounds like a sneeze.

- Yeah.

- The word- - A-Shu.

- A-Shu, exactly.

(Listervelt laughs) His twin, who is his sister, but also his consort, is Tefnut, and she is spat up.

I mean, he spits and she becomes the goddess of moisture.

Now, if you look at the Egyptian transliteration of the word Tefnut, it looks like the way in which you would describe the act of spitting.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that this notion that the spittle itself has divine or numinous or magical qualities and properties is very, very ancient.

It goes back to the very sources of Egyptian religion.

And again, we find it in the New Testament.

- Okay, another example, the deaf and dumb man.

- Yes.

One of the things that you find in the opening of the mouth ceremony is the dead person re-obtaining the word, because the word becomes the image of life.

Now, we heard about how Jesus restores hearing to the deaf man by rubbing his ears and opening up his ears, and also by giving him the word.

This concept of the word, again, goes right back to the very sources of Egyptian religion because the word is what brings all life, all creation into existence.

Now, that being the case, when a man dies, he is said to be dumb.

That is, deaf and dumb.

That is, without the word.

Now, the crossed mummy that we talked about, the anointed mummified resurrected one, is spelled this, K-R-S-T.

If you transliterate it directly.

Compare this to the Greek word for the anointed resurrected one, Kristos, which gives us our word Christ.

So again, you take our word Christ, which means the anointed one, the resurrected one, it goes right back to the Egyptian origin KRST.