Note 106 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

It would appear, too, that in the mysteries of the Saviour Gods not only a crucified aspect of the God but a simulation of that on the part of the devotees was customary. Osiris was actually represented in crucifix form;106 and in the ritual the worshipper became “one with Osiris,” apparently by being “joined unto the sycamore tree.”107 When, then, in the Epistle to the Galatians108 we find “Paul” addressing the converts as “those before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth (προεγράφη) crucified,” and declaring of himself:109 “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,” we are at once pointed to the Syrian practice of stigmata, which appears to connect with both Osirian and Christian usage. In his remarkable account of the life of the sacred city of Hierapolis—a microcosm of eastern paganism—Lucian, after telling how children are sacrificed with the votive pretence that they are oxen, records that it is the universal practice to make punctures in the neck or in the hands, and that “all” Syrians bear such stigmata.110 One of the principal cults of the place was that of Attis, the castrated God of Vegetation, in whose mysteries the image of a youth was bound to a tree,111 with a ritual of suffering, mourning, resurrection and rejoicing. As Dionysos was also “he of the tree,” it is not improbable that he, who also died to rise again, may have been similarly adored. On the other hand, the representation of the Saviour Prometheus suffering in a crucified posture tells of an immemorial concept.112