Note 9 — VI THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

Again, in the Church of the first century, at Easter, a lamb was solemnly slaughtered upon an altar and its blood collected in a chalice.9 Accordingly in the early days of Christianity the comparison of Christ with the light and the lamb was a very favourite one. Above all the Gospel of John makes the widest use of it. As had already been done in the Vedic Cult of Agni, here too were identified with Christ the creative word of God that had existed before the world—the life, the light, and the lamb. And he was also called “the light of the world” that came to light up the darkness ruling upon the earth, as well as “the Lamb of God, who bore the sins of the world.”10 And indeed the Latin expression for lamb (agnus) also expresses its relation to the ancient Fire-God and its sanctity as a sacrificial animal. For its root is connected with ignis (Scr. agni, the purifying fire, and yagna, victim), and also, according to Festus Pompeius, with the Greek “hagnos,” pure, consecrated, and “hagnistes,” the expiator.11 In this sense “Agnus Dei,” the Lamb of God, as Christ is very frequently called, is in fact nothing else than “Agni Deus,” since Agnus stands in a certain measure as the Latin translation for Agni.12 But in India at the so-called Hulfeast, at the spring equinox, a ram (lamb) used to be solemnly burnt as an expiatory victim representing Agni. The “crucifixion” of Jesus, as will likewise appear, is in a certain sense only the symbol of the burning of the divine lamb, which by its death redeems man from sin. In both cases the lamb refers to the lamb of the Zodiac, the constellation of the Ram, into which the sun enters at the time of the spring equinox, and with which consequently, in accordance with the astrological way of looking at things, it is blended, and which is as though burnt up by it. Thus were completed the victory of the Sun Fire (Agni) over the night of winter and the resurrection of nature to a new life, this cosmic process finding its reflection in the sacrifice upon earth of a lamb (agnus).