Wednesday
Here’s a lovely end-of-the-year poem that gets at how multiple cultures have used religious symbols to capture the triumph of life over death. The occasion is Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape King Herod’s massacre of the innocents, but Christianity is far from the only religion to find significance in the darkest days of the year. In fact, Christianity borrowed freely from a multitude of religions to capture the immensity of the occasion.
Scott Bates imagines the Holy Family traveling through the lands of the Zoroastrian god Mithra (god of light) and Dionysus (earth god), two gods who show up in the nativity scene as the ox and the ass. They then reach Egypt, which includes two sky gods, the falcon god Horus and the goddess Hathor, either Horus’s mother or consort and daughter of the sun god Ra. She is also known as the “sovereign of the stars” and is connected with the star Sirius. (Think of role played by Bethlehem’s star.)
Jesus’s family also travels beneath gaze of the sphinx of Gizreh, who guards the realm of the dead, and past a temple of Isis, a fertility goddess associated with the dove (also a nativity scene participant) who is connected with women and children. In other words, we see represented the polarities of sky and earth and death and life.
The journey into the west has mythic resonance in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, where pilgrims in search of sacred texts would undergo suffering to achieve wisdom. The flight to and return from Egypt also echoes Judaism’s account of the Israelites’ journey there under Jacob and their return under Moses.
I’m not sure of the significance of the unicorn in the final line but it may have to do with Christianity’s insistence that there is only one god. All religions draw on other religions, however—it’s called syncretism—even the ones that claim to have a monopoly on truth. In my opinion, to think of Mary as a Hathor or Isis figure and of Jesus as a solar god doesn’t detract but rather adds to the power of the nativity story.
For me, the poem captures the mystery of this time of year. The days may be short, but we are promised new life. It’s a vision that should enthrall us all:
Flight into Egypt
The falcon’s eye above the pyramid
Moves with the weary travelers far below,
The queen, her consort, and the solar god,
As through the desert on their beast they go
Beneath the sphinx of Gizeh guarding the dead,
Past Isis in her temple nursing her child,
Her silver serpent turning his diamond head
To see them riding westward, into the wild
Land of Mithra and Dionysus, far
From the stable and the kings of Behtlehem,
No dove above them like a guiding star--
But Hathor on the horizon watching them,
Her forehead crowned with stars and double horn,
As they ride towards her on their unicorn.
Other Scott Bates on Christmas’s syncretistic origins
A Solution to Nativity Scene Battles
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nativity