Original: A Religious Magic Trick

A Religious Magic Trick: How Christianity Erased the Divine Feminine and Rewrote History

The Vatican's greatest achievement was making the most successful empire in human history invisible by calling it a church.

The Illusion That Fooled the World

Walk into any Catholic ceremony today and you're watching Roman imperial ritual. When the Pope speaks, more people listen than ever obeyed any Caesar. When Cardinals gather, they represent more wealth and power than the Roman Senate ever commanded. The Roman Empire that supposedly ended 1,500 years ago now rules more souls than any Caesar ever imagined.

But here's the magic trick nobody talks about: Rome didn't just survive—it erased an entire pantheon of divine mothers and rewrote the story of the sacred feminine.

Rome Never Actually Fell

Political Rome (27 BC - 1453 AD): Peak population of 65 million people, confined to specific territories.

Spiritual Rome (476 AD - present): Peak population of 1.3+ billion people worldwide—twenty times larger.

By abandoning territorial empire for spiritual empire, Rome achieved permanent global dominance that no military conquest could match. But to understand the full scope of this transformation, we need to examine what—and whom—they systematically erased.

The Missing Context: A Mediterranean Full of Divine Mothers

Before Christianity Rewrote the Rules

When Christianity emerged, the Mediterranean world was absolutely saturated with stories of virgin mothers giving birth to divine children. This wasn't rare or unusual—it was the dominant religious framework across multiple civilizations:

Egypt (3000+ years): Isis loses her husband Osiris, embarks on an epic quest to resurrect him, conceives divine child Horus through magical union. Every pharaoh was considered the reincarnation of this sun god.

Babylon (2000+ years): The goddess Ishtar has sacred sex with Tammuz, who dies each winter and resurrects each spring, ensuring crop fertility. Herodotus documented temples where women were selected by deities to bear divine children who would become rulers.

Greece: Zeus fathers dozens of divine and semi-divine children through both mortal and divine women. The Adonis myths feature dying-and-rising gods beloved by Aphrodite.

Canaan (pre-Jewish): The Ras Shamra tablets from Ugarit reveal Anat, the fierce virgin goddess of love and war, and her lover Baal, whose death and resurrection control the seasons. Asherah, the divine mother goddess, partners with El as cosmic parents.

Rome itself: Vestal Virgins birth the founders Romulus and Remus through union with the god of fire. The most sacred room in their temple was literally called "the Penis room"—odd for a place where no men were supposedly allowed.

The Pattern Was Universal

Every culture had the same basic story structure:

• Divine Family Trinity: Father god, mother goddess, divine child

• Seasonal Cycles: Death and resurrection aligned with agricultural seasons

• Sacred Sexuality: Divine conception through sacred union (hieros gamos)

• Royal Legitimacy: Divine children become earthly rulers

• Feminine Power: Women as creators, nurturers, and saviors

The Great Erasure Begins

Step 1: Eliminate the Sacred Feminine

Christianity's "innovation" wasn't the virgin birth or divine child—those were everywhere. The innovation was removing women from divine power entirely.

Compare these narratives:

Traditional Pattern (Egypt, Babylon, Greece, etc.):

• Goddess is equal partner with god

• She often saves or resurrects him

• Sacred sexuality creates divine life

• She names and raises the divine child

• Both masculine and feminine forces are necessary for creation

Christian Revision:

• God acts alone, no female consort

• Virgin Mary is submissive vessel, not equal partner

• No sacred sexuality—conception happens without pleasure or agency

• God names the child ("you shall call his name Jesus")

• Mary remains silent and obedient

• Only males can be divine or hold religious authority

Step 2: Reframe Sacred Sex as Sin

Every other Mediterranean religion celebrated sacred sexuality as the force that created and sustained life. The Hebrew scriptures preserve fragments of these practices while warning against them:

• Genesis 38:14: Sacred prostitute (qedeshah - "holy woman") performing ritual duties

• Proverbs 7:8-12: References to sacred sexual rites at temples

• Epistle of Jeremiah 43: Women performing fertility rituals for their gods

Christianity flipped this entirely: sex became the definition of unholy. Men were encouraged to avoid it. Marriage was reluctantly permitted, but celibacy was superior.

Meanwhile, Judaism required marriage and expected regular sexual intimacy. Most other religions celebrated it as sacred. Only Christianity made sex antithetical to holiness.

Step 3: Claim Originality While Copying Everything

Here's where the magic trick becomes audacious. When confronted with the obvious similarities to earlier religions, Christian authorities claimed these older stories were "predicting" Christ.

Imagine plagiarizing a paper and then arguing that the original authors were psychically predicting what you were going to write. That's essentially the official explanation.

The Isis Connection: How Obvious Can It Get?

Isis was everywhere in Rome when Christianity emerged. By 200 BC, her temples dotted the Mediterranean. She was called:

• "Mother of God"

• "Queen of Heaven"

• "Divine Mother"

• "Star of the Sea"

For 200 years after Christianity began, archaeologists cannot distinguish between Isis and Mary on tombstones. The iconography is identical.

Isis temples in Rome received state funding as late as 378 AD—well into the Christian era. The government then spent the next 200 years issuing edicts demanding their demolition, showing how persistent her worship remained.

The Numbers Don't Lie

By 400 AD, there were still:

• 600+ temples to Mithra (Persian sun god) in Rome alone

• Even more numerous Isis temples throughout the empire

• Temples to dozens of other divine mothers and sun gods

The Mediterranean wasn't converting to Christianity because it offered something new—it was being forced to abandon traditions that had sustained civilizations for millennia.

What We Lost: The Real Magic Trick

The Political Dimension

This wasn't just about religion—it was about power. Consider what the divine feminine traditionally represented:

Before Christianity:

• Women could be divine

• Goddesses often ruled over or saved gods

• Queens could inherit and wield absolute power

• Priestesses held religious authority

• Sacred sexuality empowered women

After Christianity:

• No female divinity permitted

• Women cannot hold religious office

• Wives must be "submissive"

• Sex is sin unless for male-controlled reproduction

• Women become property to ensure patrilineal inheritance

The Cosmological Dimension

Traditional religions understood collaboration as the cosmic principle:

• Male and female forces both necessary

• Cyclical rather than linear time

• Death and rebirth as natural processes

• Humans as part of nature, not separate from it

• Multiple ways to access the divine

Christianity introduced separation and hierarchy:

• One male god rules alone

• Linear time moving toward judgment

• Death as punishment for sin

• Humans above nature, granted "dominion"

• One narrow path to salvation

The Modern Consequences

We're Still Living Inside the Magic Trick

When most people today think of "religion," they automatically think of:

• Male authority figures

• Guilt about sexuality

• Separation from nature

• Hierarchical power structures

• Sin and judgment

But these aren't universal religious concepts—they're specifically Roman innovations designed to concentrate power.

The Suppressed Alternative

Imagine if we'd preserved the earlier traditions:

• Religious leadership shared between genders

• Sexuality celebrated as sacred life force

• Seasonal cycles honored rather than ignored

• Collaborative rather than dominating relationship with nature

• Multiple paths to spiritual experience

Why This Matters Today

The Pattern Continues

The same erasure technique used against ancient goddesses continues today:

• Women's contributions to history consistently minimized

• Traditional ecological knowledge dismissed as "primitive"

• Indigenous spiritual practices labeled "paganism"

• Collaborative approaches devalued in favor of hierarchical control

Breaking the Spell

Understanding this history doesn't require abandoning all religious or spiritual practice. It means recognizing that what we've been told is "normal" or "traditional" is actually the result of a specific political project.

The magic trick worked by making us forget there were ever alternatives. Once you see the broader context—the thriving civilizations that honored both masculine and feminine divinity, the sophisticated understanding of natural cycles, the celebration of life-creating forces—Christianity's version starts to look like what it was: a power grab disguised as revelation.

The Choice We Didn't Know We Had

For nearly 2,000 years, we've been told this story represents humanity's highest spiritual achievement. But the archaeological record reveals something different: a rich, diverse, life-affirming spiritual landscape that was systematically destroyed and replaced with a narrow, control-focused alternative.

The real magic trick wasn't making Rome disappear—it was making us forget that human spirituality ever offered anything else.

What would our world look like if we remembered?

The Ras Shamra tablets still exist. The Egyptian temple walls still bear their inscriptions. The archaeological evidence fills museums worldwide. The only thing that's invisible is our willingness to see the pattern.

Rome's greatest magic trick was convincing us this erasure was divine will rather than imperial strategy.

But magic tricks only work as long as the audience doesn't know how they're done.

Original:

The Vatican's greatest achievement was making the most successful empire in human history invisible by calling it a church. They didn't inherit Roman power - they preserved it, perfected it, and globalized it. The empire that supposedly ended 1,500 years ago now rules more souls than any Caesar ever imagined.

Rome never fell.

Some people say it had two end dates, in 476 or 1453 AD. But even those are debatable.

We can look into these dates to see where the Empire went, and we will, but we can also understand its survived, in some way or another, where it transformed into different terms, and survives today in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Various Fall Dates

1453 was just the date that Rome’s second capital fell, which was considered the Empire. But even then, there was still a Holy Roman Empire in Europe, that did not include Rome. The second capital in Constantinople is more important to the Roman Empire than modern conception gives it, being the capital for 1,000 years while the Roman one held more importance for only 400 years. After Constantinople, the Church was its own thing, and my argument is that it effectively took on the Role of Empire, in whatever name we want to give it. The city pleaded to SOMEBODY in Rome for help with they were losing to the Muslim Turks, but that was the Pope, not a king or Emperor, at the seat of what used to be the Roman Empire a thousand years prior.

So let’s step back: Constantinople was the Roman capital that survived when the western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. It was in Constantinople where most everything was happening the next thousand years, though Rome existed as a city among other Italian cities. Constantinople housed the libraries and scholars, and sat closer to their aims of expansion. It also sat between the Mediterranean Sea and India and Turkey and Asia and the Middle East and Israel- it was along this trade route that allowed it to flourish- and what caused disaster that made everyone look for land to reach India after- Vasco de Gama going south around Africa to find India, Columbus to sail west to find what he thought were “Indians” in America, and shiploads of people searching for a Northern Route past the north pole for the next 500 years.

Rome was the place for vacations that only half the Roman Emperors visited, after its fall in 476 AD.

When Constantinople fell in 1453, "Rome" itself was just a city within the some Italian States, ruled by the Pope. The Pope had been the effective ruler of Rome since around the 700’s AD. Much of Italy was fragmented into competing city-states and kingdoms (like Greece had been).

Here is where it gets really confusing: The Holy Roman Empire still existed in 1453 and claimed to be the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, though it was primarily Germanic and bore little resemblance to the original Roman Empire. However, Rome itself was not part of the Holy Roman Empire - it remained under control of the Pope. When you watch shows about Constantinople’s fall, as seen on Netflix, you see please to Rome for aid, which never came, and when ships were sent, it was too late. This was Rome, but not the “Roman Empire” anymore. There was no unified Roman power left. The name carried weight, and they had ships they could send, but the names of everything were very fluid. The Holy Roman Empire did not even include Rome!

So the Roman rule never ended, it just transformed.

Every time you see a Catholic ceremony, you're watching a Roman imperial ritual. Every time the Pope appears in public, you're seeing the last Caesar. When the Pope speaks, more people listen than ever obeyed any Caesar. When the Vatican issues policy, more territory is affected than Rome ever controlled. When Cardinals gather, they represent more wealth and power than the Roman Senate ever commanded.

• Political Rome (27 BC to 1453 AD): had a peak population of 65 million people, its favorite land conquered by the Ottomans, then retreated to its Roman backup, where half the Caesars never stepped foot.

• Spiritual Rome (476 AD - present): has a peak population of 1.3+ billion people (about 20x), found all over the world.

By abandoning territorial empire for spiritual empire, Rome achieved permanent global dominance that no military conquest could match. The Roman Empire succeeded beyond its wildest dreams

It’s even in the name: "Roman Catholic Church", with a rigid hierarchy that reaches up to the Pope. And guess what? No sole Roman ruler could be Queen. And no Pope can be a woman. That is something that was strange to much of the rest of the world. There have been many Queens in power, and the history of this is quite amazing- like in China, after a female queen for 50 years (Wu Zetian), the next generation saw extreme women hatred, including binding of the feet. We see political swinging back and forth that reveals a larger pattern- one of equality in control that lets women in, then violent sparks of egoism that bring all of civilization down a peg, like a child having a temper tantrum. Brute force is needed over conversation.

The Roman Empire was dominated by male emperors (though some women like Livia and Agrippina wielded enormous behind-the-scenes power). There were some exceptions in the broader Roman world, in further off territories of client kingdoms and later periods.

The rulers of the church have always been male - aside from one (possibly real) Pope Joan, who everyone thought was a man, until she became pregnant and was killed. There are no women in the church boss seat because of interpretations of holy books that say god chose a son to inhabit earth- soooo that means god cannot go into a woman’s body, even if they wanted to. Right there- I would challenge the interpretation that god can do whatever he'/she wants, unless they are saying they could never do it again, meaning they are NOT all powerful. Ha.

But we see a shift. In today’s freedom and access to information and communication, modern Catholics often disagree with Vatican positions, unlike Roman subjects who faced death with any questioning. Many people do face social and political damage by speaking up differently than the accepted rhetoric. Most people feel the need to say one thing or another- or risk votes, or position to gain funding in scientific institutions.

This made me curious, does the Vatican associate itself with the Roman Empire?

What the Vatican Says About Its Origins

Walk into St. Peter's Basilica today and the official narrative is breathtakingly simple:

The Vatican Version:

• 33 AD: Jesus appoints Peter to leader his followers, tell his tale

• 64 AD: Peter dies in Rome, buried on Vatican Hill

• 313 AD: Constantine legalizes Christianity, builds first St. Peter's on top of existing pagan sacred space

• 476 AD: Western Empire "falls," Church continues in Constantinople

• 800 AD: Pope crowns French King Charlemagne, "restores" Western Empire, as officially under Church authority

According to the official Catholic explanation, the power of the pope traces back to what the Church considers Jesus's hiring of Peter.

Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus tells Peter: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

The Catholic Church interprets "this rock" as referring to Peter himself (playing on his name, which means "rock" or "stone"), making him the foundational leader of the early church.

Rocks used to be quite sacred in ancient times- tops of mountains bringing us close to heavens, and even a holy rock in Rome and Bethlehem found on coins in the center of sacred rooms of major temples. Some interpret this to being meteorites that were quite scary, and fell from the heavens in fiery fury.

These objects falling from the sky with fire and thunder would have been terrifying and awe-inspiring - obvious signs of divine intervention to ancient peoples- were all likely meteorites.

• The Kaaba's Black Stone in Mecca,

• The stone of Cybele brought to Rome,

• Various "bethels" (literally "house of god" stones). Notice the name: “Bethlehem”??

When a new pope is elected, the doctrine says he literally receives the same divine authority Jesus supposedly gave to Peter.

The pope apparently cannot make a mistake, for his voice is "ex cathedra" (from the chair). Just a reminder, the hieroglyph of Isis, the Egyptian goddess that was VERY popular in Jesus’ time in Rome, was literally the seat of a throne. She was literally called "the throne" - representing the divine authority that legitimized any Queen or King’s rule. (the word Pharaoh does not imply a gender). The "chair of divine authority" was already a powerful concept in the Roman world through Egyptian influence (and seen in more downstream places as well).

Early Christianity may have absorbed and reframed existing Mediterranean concepts of divine authority - sacred stones, divine thrones, and the idea that certain seats or objects could channel divine power. If we really want to have a real debate, we need to look at the rich story that predates christianity and saw female concepts as central to divine creativity- with her body as the thing that creates and nourishes life. We need women AND men to make babies. No man can do it alone. No sole creator- a combination of forces- a collaboration is needed. An ecosystem is needed. We are NEVER in isolation. You need breath, food, and to procreate, we need to make “love”.

And this Isis remained as well, she just transformed into Mary. For 200 years, it is impossible to distinguish if she is Isis or Mary on grave stones.

Here is a quick summary, with more in articles, like Sacred Sex, developing the idea of divine birth and what it all means. We have to understand Isis to understand Mary.

As a little girl, I remember watching movies like “Hocus Pocus” where the witches desired a girl to be a “virgin”, and I remember asking my mom what that meant, and why that mattered. I don’t think she ever gave me a satisfactory answer. I don’t think most Christians can. We can only understand this idea in context with other religions Christianity is based on.

Pretty much every religion has a central idea of fertility: a natural law of the land that associated land with humanity. If we are fertile, the land will be too. We want food, plants, and humans, to keep making babies, essentially. We are a mirror of the plant life that keeps us alive. Without babies, we die. End of story.

There was also this idea of sacrifice. We have to go here to understand the reason for emphasis of virginity. The act of sacrifice was a very ancient practice that saw the energy of life in a newborn as the most precious. Egyptians said they were among the first of the Africans to abolish the practice. They prided themselves on NOT doing it- though in their 3,000 year empire, there are a few documented cases. They do, however, have multiple examples of King sacrifice: where the king was expected to kill himself ritually, as he aged, so he could be replaced with a younger bloodline whose fertility would mirror fertility of the land.

Later civilizations, thankfully, substituted the act of sacrifice for animals, then plants, then for prayers. We can thank the Jews for geniously swapped these sacrifices of humans for prayers. They considered themselves seperate from their Canannite ancestors (separated only by 400 years living in Egypt then coming back), ancestors who were famous for their sacred prostitution, as well as sacrificial customs. As were the Minioan Crete Greeks, who had strong contacts with others around the Mediterranean. Sadly we do have skeletal evidence of this, and it tends to match with times of environmental instability, meaning they tended to do it in times of hardship- like natural disasters and famine, and when the earthquakes were increasing just before the major Mount Thera eruption that wiped them out- and erased the earliest Greek writing for 800 years, from its Linear A form which has never been deciphered, to the later Linear B form we see in the Mycenean Greeks around 800 BC.

The Jews even have a specific story where a Jewish man named Jacob is confused, and almost sacrifices his son for his god, but God intervenes in the last second to say, “Oh no, we don’t need to do that anymore. You can kill a ram instead.” Then Rabbinic Judaism adapted and allowed for animals, then prayers to represent giving back to this divine natural force- returning some form of life to help bring energy to this generation of life.

But the Christians went backwards in time, and civilization, and brought the idea of sacrifice of children back. While some argue he was a grown man who sacrificed himself, the word “sacrifice” is used here, often without context. The fact that the term is used at all, and often, suggest exactly what people at the time would have understood it to mean. And it comes back to this concept- appeeseing the gods by giving some alternative form of life. It was about giving up something you cared deeply about, so the gods could do something for you in return. And in the Christian story, we can interpret this idea of sacrifice in one of two ways: either god sacrifices his son, by allowing him to come to earth in human form, knowing he will die, or that Jesus chooses to be sacrificed. Either way, I see some major issues with either argument. One, that if god has to sacrifice his own son, that means there is something outside of god’s control. It would mean there is some other force, possibly another god, he sees as greater than himself. And if this were true, I choose to see it as here we see the missing divine female, his ex-lover, the mother goddess, who is not so happy with him).

Or second, if Jesus is doing the sacrificing of himself, this makes even less sense. His death was a roman punishment, for committing a Roman crime, and he was killed by a Roman person, after undergoing Roman trial. The Jewish people themselves had little to do with ANY of it. Later interpretations say he was killed by Jews, but this makes no sense. Even if they had sway in the judgement part of it, or revealing Jesus to the authorities for breaking the law, they had no final say in anything. They were abiding by strict roman law, following strict Roman policy that was enforced to keep jewish people out of power, for fear of their rising up (which was happening a lot, for good reason). No matter how harsh the law, it was just that- the law. And Jesus lost his temper, acted out, which was illegal, and was punished for it according exacly to the law at the time. Sacrifice was never even an option for him. He was killed by Romans, per Roman custom of crucifixion (which was QUITE common, hence the rising up of many rebellions), after Roman trial and Roman judgement, according to Roman law.

Okay, so that helps us understand the idea of sacrifice, what does that have to do with virginity? The same sweet, sacred energy of babies can be found in the women, who have yet to birth those babies. They were seen as divinely powerful, for their potential in creation. Egyptians have many different stories about this, from the idea of virginity that comes back with every rising sun, as well as stories of gods impregnating women without their consent, or even knowledge. And they are not the only cutlures with these kinds of stories. Christianity’s is not much different- there is a god, who chooses a girl too young to be of age of consent, and as her boss and authority figure, supposedly ASKS her to have his child, but does not want to take part in the sex ordeal. When we look back to how the Christians explain it, there is a divine voice, a moment of consent (not an explicit yes, but some sort of nod on Mary’s part), then an angel coming to her telling her what she should name her child. As a mother of two, this would be particularly frustrating. (Fine, I’ll become a mother for you, but I can’t even pick the name?). “Behold, you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” The only thing strange about this story is the LACK of sex. Christians very much wanted to AVOID sex, simply because all the more important religions before it saw it as central. It put too much power in women’s hands (and bodies), and they were very much about men being the center of it all. Has anyone seen a live, natural birth, and given all credit to the man? It just makes no sense. And more importantly, how could they politically follow a man’s bloodline, to decide on the next king, if they could not be sure who the father is of his own children? How could he know who his child is, without strictly controlling who the woman slept with? How would he know who to pass on all his plundered treasures to, if he does not control his woman, and fence her onto his property, never to talk to any other men? This was their solution. Make the woman subservient, silent, obedient, and able to be a mother without the pleasure of sex- then tell her the pains of labor are punishment for Eve wanting to take a bite out of the fruit from the tree of wisdom. It is all about the men wrestling power away from the divine feminine.

Virginity was seen to hold the same power as young babies as being essentially adored and full of potential energy.

To bring all this into context, we also have to see how at least 4 other Mediterranean cultures already understood and used the concept of virgin mother Queens before (and at the same time that) Christianity did. There was this idea of “divine sex”, in order for the gods to be reincarnated as living children, to grow into living gods themselves. Just most of the gods were known for having sex with the women, whether divine or not. But not always- some strange species. like vultures and mushrooms, have strange evidence of what was seen as birth without intercourse. And this idea intermingled with the divine conception- even Alexander conceived from a “snake bite” of a god, while laying next to her husband, just 333 years before Christ, and quite strong in memory.

• Herodotus describes a custom of the Babylonians, with a chapel in a tower, adorned with a couch next to a table of solid gold, where a woman is selected by the deity from all the people of the nation, to live in this chapel, and become the mother of his divine child. The Chaldean priests affirmed this with the scholar in 425 BC. The deity supposedly enters this temple, and spends the night on this couch. Babylonian cuneiform texts confirm this tradition, with the goal of creating a divine child to be the next ruler.

• Also in Babylonian epics, the goddess Ishtar has sex with the sun god Tammuz, who then dies and falls into the underworld, when winter descends on earth. He then is resurrected and the plants revive in spring.

• Zeus rapes over 36 women, both divine and mortal, creating a whole pantheon of gods, some human, some partly-human, and some fully gods.

• Isis in Egypt loses her husband, goes on an epic adventure in all the land to find him, and brings him back to life enough to create a baby with him. Her divine conception matches to the rising and falling of the Nile river. Their child, Horus-Ra (whose name is preserved in our word horizon, and Ray of the sun, as well as reign of a pharaoh), is the sun god reincarnated in each succeeding pharoah. This divine child can be male or female, making every child divine. But those who happen to be born on the sun’s birthday are especially special, and have better ability to lead the storyline as a living god. There would, therefore, have been great effort to try to conceive a child in spring, so they would be born on the winter solstice- exactly as we see as copied and played out later with Mary and Jesus. Of course, Mary is both mother and lover/contemporary, just as Isis is, pending the story.

• A temple in Luxor of Egypt preserves a story of the divine conception of Amon-hotep III by a virgin and the sun god. “He [the god] has reincarnated himself in the royal person… his loveableness penetrated her flesh, Amon-hotep is the name of the son in your womb. My soul is in him, and he will rule the land like the sun.” (Again the god claims naming abilities just like Jesus).

  • I guess the Romans hoped, and truly believed the Egyptian stories could never be recovered to reveal these intense similarities. The language would be forgotten until 1823. But so many similar stories existed that it is hard to believe nobody would remember forever! Or the similarity gave them fuel for people to believe, then later generations tried to wipe the connection. Regardless, few Christians/catholics today are told of these similarities.

• Akenhaten in 1600 BC made his family seen as the divine incarnate, most importantly, this included his daughters

• Old Testament stories (Genesis 38:14, Proverbs 7:8, 12) and the non canonical Epistle of Jeremy Verse 43 preserve similar ideas. These biblical passages preserve fragments of ancient Near Eastern sacred sex practices. The Hebrew scriptures preserve these references primarily as warnings against such practices, reflecting the Israelite struggle against Canaanite religious influences that persisted throughout their history.

  • Genesis 38:14 describes Tamar disguising herself as a "sacred prostitute" (Hebrew: qedeshah) by the roadside to deceive Judah. The term qedeshah literally means "holy woman" or "consecrated one," suggesting ritual rather than commercial prostitution.

  • Proverbs 7:8-12 warns against the "strange woman" who lurks at street corners and doorways, described in language that echoes both adultery and cultic prostitution. The passage mentions her "catching" men with her attire and behavior, possibly referring to ritual garments or practices.

  • The Epistle of Jeremiah (verse 43) explicitly describes women in Babylon sitting by the wayside, waiting to be chosen by passersby for sexual rites in honor of their gods. This appears to describe a fertility ritual where women would engage in sacred sexual acts as part of religious observance.

• Egyptians would play out a whole drama where the king wore a mask to “become” a god, and have sex with their Queens in the most sacred rooms of the temple. The goal would be to ensure the god was invoked during conception, so the child would be divine, and a reincarnation of the god.

• African virgins were ritually wed to the python god

• Incan virgins married the sun god

• Sumerian Kings were thought to be offspring of a virgin and the god Tammuz, and were called “little gods”.

• Ras Shamra documents unearthed at the city of Ugarit (Syria) reveal a drama from the Canannites (pre-Jewish people). These cuneiform tablets from 1400 BC tell a story of a young goddess Anat, virgin goddess of love and war (like Aphrodite later), and her lover, Baal, and their stories of death and resurrection that match with the seasons on earth. Anat plays a crucial role as a fierce warrior goddess, who embarks on an epic and violent quest to retrieve her lover. Her ferocity in battle and her devotion are seen in other goddesses like Aphrodite and Astarte. She is also known as Athirat and Asherah, the goddess who the Jews of the Old Testament keep condemning, and complaining that people will not stop worshipping. Anat, Astarte/Ashtoreth, and Asherah/Athirat are all separate goddesses in Ugaritic, whose attributes and stories became blended as traditions spread, ultimately becoming indistinguishable from one another

• Asherah/Athirat appears in Ugaritic texts primarily as El's lover and a mother goddess, "Lady of the Sea." El is referred to as the father of the gods, and Asherah as the mother of the gods - together they head the divine pantheon. She's sometimes called "the Progenitress of the Gods" (Qaniyatu Ilima). The Ugaritic texts don't provide us with detailed romantic narratives, but imply them with their royal titles, as mother and father of the other gods, and referenced as lovers. Their relationship appears to be one of equals, making political decisions together, like when and where to build palaces. Younger gods had more dramatic conflicts recorded. El and Asherah represent the older, more established divine order - they're the cosmic parents whose relationship has already been established rather than something that needs to be narrated. Their stable relationship may represent a union that represents cosmic stability, leaving their children to play out dratic narratives in story.

• The Adonis myths (later Greek but with Semitic origins) feature a dying-and-rising god beloved by Aphrodite

• Even the Vestal Virgins in Rome may have been isolated because of their divine bloodline. Their sexuality to be strictly controlled, since whoever would be born would be king. This memory may have been later forgotten, as Romans would record discussions of why the Vestals had to remain virgins. But we see in the story of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, that their mother was a Vestal Virgin, a daughter of the King of Alba, who had sex with the god of Fire. Another King, Servious Tillius was also born of a Vestal Virgin named Ocrisia, who was conceived by the “phallus of the flame.” And the most sacred room of the Vestal’s temple was literally called “the Penis room”. Odd for a place where no men were allowed. Later vestals were considered as married to the god of fire. Any messing around would mess up the whole genealogy of kingship!

• "Sacred marriage" (hieros gamos) between deity and worshipper, often enacted through sex IN THE TEMPLE, was a widespread ancient Near Eastern practice.

The mythological patterns of sacred birth, fertility of people aligned with cycles of the earth, and resurrection were remarkably persistent, influencing religious thought across the Mediterranean world still today.

The comparison of this divine family with the sun helped explain to ancient people about the changing of the seasons. Sometimes the crops have to die so they can be reborn later. We see this explicitly in the story of Demeter and Persephone, and many others. The whole Jesus story was matched perfectly to align all these ancient stories to winter, sun triumphing over darkness, and conception AND rebirth happening in spring- when we have an equality in masculine and feminine forces with equal light and dark hours in the day- a perfect time to align and create life together.

Egyptian Religions in Rome

The Egyptian religion of Isis (and Serapis, often together) seems to have entered Rome around 200 BC, just a couple hundred years after the Greeks made up Serapis as a Greek/Egyptian hybrid god (by the Greek Ptolemies after Alexander in Egypt). Isis and this new Serapis were the most popular, Serapis being a Greek/Egyptian hybrid with Isis/Osiris forming the second part of the name. We see both Isis and Serapis mentioned by two inscriptions discovered on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, mentioning priests of Isis Capitolina. [per the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum].

An early Temple of Isis and Serapis dating to about 200 BC was discovered in 1861 in an insprictption along the coast of Sicily, Italy. One specific site was discovered under the church of San Pancrazio in Tauromenium (Sicily, Italy), no surprise here- churches LOVED usurping existing holy sites, posting their own flag on top.

Two inscriptions from 200 B.C. were found in the Isiac temples of Delos (Greece) and Philae (Egypt). By 140 BC, sanctuaries could be found in Campania and Lazio of Italy. A Serapeum in Puteoli is attested in the Lex parieti faciendo, in 105 B.C. Cicero mentions another Serapeum around 100 BC in Syracusae. Two more are found in Pompei, showing her presences across the blue waters of the big sea in Rome, Greece and Egypt, all at the same time.

The people of Pompei seemed to like the idea of resurrection from the African religion, in securing the life after death for its followers. Isis saved souls, and was able to heal in this life and the next. She was associated with Justice, as well as fertility, and love. She could be associated with the Roman Artemis or Diana when emphasizing family, chastity. While other times, she was embraced as Venus/Aphrodite and Hathor as more sexual, powerful, and potentially destructive.

Isis and Serapis were known as “very personal gods constantly cose to their faithful followers.” The Is- names (Isiac) containing remnants of her sound spread all over Rome in this period, in the same locations that her religion spread privately. The popular image of the Madonna, as Isis, nursing her baby Horus (Harpocrates) was reflected in the abundant proliferation of her images as the Isis Lactans (Isis breastfeeding). At Pompeii and Ostia, she had a greater presence than Serapis, found in many different scences, preserved by the volcanic eruption, images not able to be destroyed deliberately later. In Pompeii, we see a frozen snapshot in time, her museum, the Iseium with a prominant painting of Isis in the center, with Serapis on the side as a kind of prince lover. On a lamp found in Puteoli, shaped like a ship, from the ceremony called the “Voyage of Isis”, probably performed every March, she stands as a queen with her husband and child. The support Isis saw from the common people, plus the loathing shown by the Senate, show the kind of power she had. She also had paralleled success among the aristocrats, and distinguished Roman families (Scipios, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius (80-63 BC).

Cassius Dio reports that in 53 BC the Senate ordered the destruction of all private shrines inside the pomerium dedicated to Egyptian gods, meaning they must have been in there! A new temple to Isis was voted to be constructed in 43 BC. Just 15 years later, Augustus shows repressive measures against Egyptian religions, followed by those of Agrippa in 21 BC, and Tiberius in 19 AD. People continued to love her until Emperor Justinian closed her temple in Egypt in 543 AD.

Isis temples appear in Rome at least by the time of Cleopatra visiting Julius Caesar around 40 BC. This was in the 100 years before “Christ”, a time when it would have been expected and normal for people to be already worshipping the “Mother of God” and the Queen of Heaven” as Isis/Ishtar/Easter/Aset/Astarte/Astorath/Inanna. And not just veneration, but true devotion. The first epic poems were by women authors with women as the heroines: as in those in Babylonia written by Enheduanna, about Inanna. Then we have the Isis adventures in Egypt for her to save her husband, Osiris. This is not weak submissive women, but those in power, being the ones to save the day, then birthing the child sun god. Everything about Christianity existed, with subtle differences based on climate and culture. Christians explain this, not outright, but when asked, that it was “predicting” Christ. As if, if you were caught plagiarizing, you said the other authors predicted what you were gonna write. Let’s see if that argument flies. That should be an SNL skit.

There is even a connection with Isis to “Mother Goose”: an Italian ship-owner named Paul sailed to Puteoli with a vESSel named the Dioscuri. Isis Dioscuri (the saviors) was the name given to her as a guardian of ships and sailors. This particular vase had a figure of a little goose painted on it, a bird sacred to Isis, painted in gold on the stern of the ship, with a name of the goddess on either sides of the prow. Isis was important to merchants since before Alexandrian times, as the protector of the ships. She had known names in this early time frame as Isis Epikoos (of ready help), Isis Pelagia, Isis Euploia (of fortnuate sailing), and Isis Pharia, a name that links her to the infamous Pharaos lighthouse of Alexandria. Traders and priests brought knowledge of her to various ports around the Mediterranean, particularly to Rhodes, a Turkish sea port that knew Isis even before Alexander bridged the Greek and Egyptian worlds in 330 BC. The city of Rhodes would later build the Sun statue of Apollo to remember Egypt’s coming to the rescue when Seleucid pirates came to sack her city around 200 BC. In between those dates, the Ptolemeic ruler in Egypt sent an envoy to Rome in 273 BC, offering friendship, making an introduction to Egyptian deities extremely likely. (Let’s not forget both Ptolemy and Seleucid were descendants of Alexander’s generals, just fighting for pieces of Alexander’s territory, united for only such a brief time until the great General/King/Pharaoh died at just 32 years old. Julius Caesar would later cry at how much Alexander had done at a younger age).

Egypt was the main source of grain for Rome, and its harbors were all embellished with very detailed administration created, and mill houses built (later abondoned) to aid in the grain dole, only while Rome had Eygpt under its claws. Ostia was a main Italian port that felt the Egyptian religion of Isis strongly, and I would even venture to bet that the name itself was a derivation of her own name: from Aset, Isis’ Egyptian name. The Ostian ship owners established a Serapeaum, unearthed in Ostia as the finest example of its kind in the Alexandrian (ie Egyptian/Greek world).

The close relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra from one side, and the hatred and revenge appeals by the Romans towards Cleopatrs on the other, including the Senate seeing her as an enemy of Rome (while being the mother of three sons from their Roman Emperors), tell us that Egypt had a strong influence on the minds of the people. Whether they loved or hated them, they for sure knew of them and their customs. Based on the acceptance of the Isis religion, they seemed to be in awe of them, at the very least; For her glory, grain and gold. Her fertility of the land equated to the fertility of Cleopatra herself, portrayed as a living embodiment of Isis, mother of twins in an age when child mortality rate was around 50%. She named her twins with Emperor Marc Antony as Selene and Helios: the Sun and the Moon. She literally birthed the sun and the moon. Her son with Julius Xeasar was seen as divine, and the living embodiment of Zeus-Ra-Ammon, the sun god, in the era JUST before Jesus was reborn as the sun god incarnate 40 years later. Cleopatra even brought this son of Caesar to Rome in 46 BC, where his father would see him for the first time. Caesar erected statues to Cleopatra as the new queen and living Isis, IN ROME. He used a personal seal bearing the image of his own goddess, Venus, to whom he vowed a temple if he could beat the general Pompey in battle, then also built a temple for Isis in Alexandria, Egypt, as the goddess of victory: Isis Victrix. Caesar even declared Cleopatra a “friend and ally of the Roman people” and had a bronze statue of her built in the same yar next to that of his goddess Venus, in the temple of Venus Genetrix on the Campus Martius in Rome, as a goddess. Yes- this would have been strange to have a gold statue of a foreign goddess next to a native Roman one. This would have been a well thought out political, as well as religious, act, that mirrored Egyptian and Hellenistic (Alexandrian) custom. It also would appear he may have truly loved her, and their son. Marc Antony would later legitimize Caesar’s son as his own, and heir to both Royal thrones, as well as his own sons with the same queen.

Romans were not so comfortable with the idea of Rulers as also being Gods, though there would be at least 30 later Roman emperors who would be called divine (while living or dead). Later statues of Venus in Rome would inherit the Isis crown as her own. Romans were very particular of their city being a Republic- not a Kingdom, and not one governed by a God. It was this kind of claim for authority that got Julius killed. But it did not stop Alexander, Marc Antony, or many others, for that matter, from attempting the same. Such a strong woman in power, alone would make the Romans uneasy, let alone one from a competing Empire. Later Senators would not even be allowed to visit Egypt without being explicitly allowed to, for fear of them trying to rase an army against Rome. Cleopatra was in Rome when Ceasar was killed in 44 BC, managing to escape and make it back to Egypt after 2 years living with the dictator (but not officially Emperor, a term that would be reserved for all the other rulers after him. Funny enough: neither Caesar nor Antony were titled Emperor. Augustus made a character attack against them for their supposed seeking of wanting to be sole ruler, though he himself would take on that title as Emperor: the sole ruler.

Not all of the Roman senators were convinced that Cleopatra, rather than Augustus (Octavian), was the real enemy of the free Republic. The Romans thought that Antony was going to give away their city to Cleopatra and move the seat of Power to Alexandria, Egypt. (They ended up moving it instead, anyway, to Constantinople, but only there because there was less of a threat of the people there rising up against Rome. This is also why Senators of Rome were not allowed to visit Egypt without explicit approval). In Augustus’ later biography was called Res Gestae Divi Augusti (literally “the achievements of the Divine Augustus”). He literally called himself Divine here. He took on the role that would make him divine, the same exact idea that got Julius and even Marc Antony killed- for making the Senate subservient to him. In it, he said that “all Italy demanded me as their leader in the war in which I was victorious at Actium [against Antony and Cleopatra].”

Marc Antony was seen as possibly indulging in some curious African customs suggesting he was a god, just as Julius and Alexander had done. At Ephesus, Egypt in 41 BC, he was hailed as the god Greek God of fertility: Dionysios. We even have recorded that Cleopatra presented herself in a sexy dress as Aphrodite in Tarsus. Dio Cassius later says the thing that upset the Romans the most was rumors of Antony posing for a picture together with Cleopatra, with himself as Osiris, and her as Isis. They complained even walked behind her carriage, wearing foreign dress, and holding Egyptian weapons, seen as stripping him of his identity as a Roman.

When we look at the Middle Eastern view of Cleopatra, we see a much different picture painted of her. While Romans focus so much on her sexuality and looks, Arab scholars treat her as a scientist, researcher, scholar of math and language. They do not mention her looks once. The difference is the political and cultural climate. The Arab world was very comfortable with a female ruler. Rome was not. And we, as westerners, received the teaching that treated her as a pretty play thing. We even see the Arab world as negative to female freedom today, but really, that is only due to more recent, and fringe, misogynistic interpretations of old scriptures, just as Christianity still is. We have swung back, but in a very superficial sense. We have built some better things on top of scar tissue, but we have way more to dig to see the original scar, and better yet, before the scar. The future does not mean a repeat of the past, it could mean a synthesis of science and comparative religion to see where we benefit from a new telling of the interpretation of the divine that coexists with nature’s seasons, as well as our own. The real downstream effect today is how children have been pushed aside as literal property of a man, little people to be exploited, and the modern family unit is what suffers. Both parents expected to work, in isolated environments needing to pay for everything, including care that used to come from a more communal environment. We have a long way to go. But there is hope!

The wide acceptance and popularity of the Egyptian religions in Rome created a real threat to Rome. The religions appeared widely acceptable, with simplified access to the divine: worship of the sun and family units. Octavian spread the fear that this would all cause for excesses and immoral behavior, since Egypt had so much food and gold, making them seem totally irresponsible and short sighted. But look who had the longer empire, and who was able to prosper on their own land. It was not the Romans. The Romans REQUIRED others to feed them, relying on the grain dole, and pillaging other states to fill the treasury. Their funds depended on conqureing others. It was the definition of a parasitic state. Egypt, on the otherhand, was independently wealthy, and the people liked to stay home and enjoy what they had, with focus on taking care of the land that was expected to last them until the end of time. This was, in fact, a totally different world view from the Romans. This is the same argument the church would later use against Epicureans in Greece: that the excesses of happy people would lead to their downfall. They made people who lead satisfying lives (not even extravagent ones, when you look at the real words they say), as if they were lazy, fat and laying around reading poetry instead of preparing to fight to gain more territory. The thing Romans were most afraid of was men committed to their family over state. Everything was about the army first. Family second, when it seemed the middle class could use support there. Religions that put emphasis on family and land and stability were not what they were looking for. And our modern world has taken on this Roman way of life: profit first. Treasure first. Men must be removed from the birthing room because their testosterone drops and they would be less likely to want to leave to fight someone else’s battles. Sure, we need to protect ourselves, and always need an army (maybe, if the world stays divided on the same topics like religion and abusing of natural resources), but in reality, our children are better off with their fathers in their lives. We are all better off without nuking eachother to death. Mothers need things to do besides raise children. We all deserve to have an individual identity, with connections to family as well as ability to learn and grow and adapt and find inspiration in things besides work and fighting. Romans did not like literacy- they took on the Greek custom reluctantly. They liked to paint Greeks as slothenly feminine people who liked to drink and write poetry all day. Rome liked to fight. They had more land to try to get. They were pillaging pirates, an angry group of men with weapons. They may have done some things right, specifically like the idea of the Senate, but Rome as a Republic was very short lived. The senate turned out to be often corrupt. At its best, it allowed for sons of Senators to watch their fathers debate on the Senate Floor. But even Pliny talks of this only as a sad memory that no longer existed, right around the turn into the Christian era. If we truly put children first, if we cared about the future of the land and ourselves 7 generations down, the Roman model is not the right choice to idolize.

The Roman Senators used popular religions as playing chips on a board for personal gains. One year building temples, the next destroying them. Training priests, then crucifying them. Creating, then destroying images of the divine. The first followers of Isis in Rome appear to be the lower classes, from slaves and merchants and sailors, those of more humble origin, whose belief in Isis brought a sense of calm and happiness than any of the Roman gods. Later elite and educated classes may have followed due to the greater theological depth, backed by thousands of years of Egyptian and African and Middle Eastern practical use of her religion. Or they saw her as a key to reaching a larger group of people that could be used to unite and create a stronger power base. Epigraphic sources show that the only a minority of followers of Isis in Rome were foreigners. Most were locals, and citizens. There were pockets of density spread across the Roman world. We do see Egyptians and Ethiopians in Rome, and Greeks coming from Egypt, and we see an image in the Herculaneum of many officials with dark skin. 100 years before Jesus’ time, the director/dictator Sulla was taken by the charisma of the eastern gods.

“It is said, also, that to Sulla himself there appeared in his dreams a goddess whom the Romans learned to worship from the Cappadocians,⁠14 whether she is Luna, or Minerva, or Bellona.” -Plutarch, 100 AD, reporting the vision that inspired Sulla to attack Rome, with a Roman army, upset at another man taking control. He actually attacked Rome twice, in 88 BC, then again in 83 BC, then ruled as dictator, and eventually retired in Campania, where he spent his final days writing his memoirs.

As early as 58 BC, the Senate ordered the expulsion of Isis and Sarapis priests and the destruction of their altars on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. We do not have evidence of when they were erected. 10 years later, more shrines of Isis were destroyed, possibly because of Pompey’s death in Egypt. Then we get to Augustus in 28 BC who also banned Isis Worship, again without success, since the government would continue to give orders to destroy her temple for another 600 years.

Also in that first hundred years BC, the years before Christ, inscriptions are found of Pastophori, (notice the “ast” sound of aset?), priests devoted to Isis, who would be widespread in the first and second centuries after Christ. They were described as carrying small handheld statues of Isis while walking in procession. In their Egyptian origins, Pastophori were "porters of the holy shrine", carrying the pastos or sacred shawl that veiled the shrine of the god. In the Roman world, their role appears to have evolved, becoming religious leaders of Isis communities. They chanted sacred music in the temples and drew aside the pastos to reveal the deity to the people. Daily rituals included adorning the goddess's statue with jewelry and clothing. If these priests for Isis existed, scholars explain their must have been some kind of sanctuary for their services to their goddess in Rome earlier than mentioned in history books. A later historian, Apuleis around 160 AD, wrote these priests were instituted during Sulla’s reign, confirming this idea the sanctuary would have been there before 82 BC, when he attacked it (the second time), and had all the male residents put to death. During the Roman civil wars, Sulla’s army attacked the city of Praeneste. After his victory, Sulla helped rebuild the temple of Fortuna, which had mosaics of Alexandrian (Egyptian) Nile valley and symbols associated with Isis. Scholars estimate the mosaic as part of the floor was built from 125 to 110 BC. It contains exotic animals, Greek/Egyptian Ptolemeic scholars, and African hungers. The massive temple built for Fortuna and Isis spans a mountainside, built with Roman cement or pozzolana, and remains a rare example of an intact pagan temple complex. Livy (59 BC -17 AD) described Praeneste's importance and that Roman commanders consulted Fortuna before launching their campaigns in the First Punic War (264-241 BC), meaning she may have had a devoted center as early as 260’s BC. During the First Punic War in 241 BCE, Roman commander Lutatius Cerco wanted a verdict from Fortuna at Praeneste to reveal whether he should act. Cicero reported that Carneades was sure that “at no other place had he seen more fortune than at Praeneste” (Book II, 41.87). The temple sits at the top of a mountain, and faces southwest towards the Mediterranean and oversees a broad valley which made any sacrifices or ceremonial fires visible from far away. The town was periodically caught up in civil wars since control over mountainous Praeneste meant dominance over the route south of Rome.

The Sanctuary's origins were as a temple dedicated to the goddess Fortuna Primigenia (the firstborn), was sculpted holding the child Jupiter, similar to Isis and Horus, and later Mary and Jesus. Emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 AD) built a residence in the town but grew to fear the oracle's power. The presence of wealthy Romans led to the expansion of the temple structure and its continuing decoration with Egyptian motifs. It was transferred to being Christian in 274 AD, with the celebration of a new Saint Agapitus around 400 AD. In the early Church, the title of "saint" was often bestowed upon those who died for their faith. I think it can be interesting to learn the details: Agapitus was a young man, possibly only 15 years old, who happened to be part of a royal family line, killed for his belief in Christianity. He was condemned to death for his religious beliefs in Rome, taken to the city arena to be thrown to wild beasts, but the animals refused to harm him. The Roman soldiers beheaded him instead. The protection from the animals was a key factor in his sainthood. He became connected to the goddess temple, as many of the goddesses are known for command over wild animals. The current cathedral of Palestrina, which is dedicated to Saint Agapitus, was built into the ruins of a temple, perhaps dedicated to Jupiter (the sun of the goddess Fortuna). The appearance of Saint Agapitus when I research the Isis/Fortuna temple isn't accidental- it reveals the Church’s strategy to transform powerful sacred sites into their own narratives, trying to remove the original sacredness. The Temple of Fortuna Primigenia was incredibly significant. It was a massive complex visible from Rome 22 miles away, and drew in a massive number of pilgrims to Rome. The landscape itself was Christianized, as prominent features were rededicated to Christian saints. The choice of Saint Agapitus for this site was strategically brilliant: he was a child, innocent, and could be easily associated with the motherly and protective aspects of Isis and Fortuna already known for this location. The fact that he was a local and from a noble family only helped everyone’s appeal for the young boy. The only group it does not look good for is the Roman emperor who could be so cruel for a child’s choice in religion (as if they really have an opinion at that age anyways). Converting people is hard: asking them to abandon everything they know. The genius of christianity was to use beloved sites, in the exact way they were already used to. They also left us breadcrumbs to the real reason people were drawn to these locations in the first place, giving us a much deeper religious tradition than Christianity ever could. The Temple of Fortuna/Isis represented everything Rome feared about Egyptian religion: family-centered spirituality, female divine power, prosperity without conquest, and most dangerously, "men committed to their family over state". By placing a young male martyr's story there, the Church could redirect that spiritual energy toward Christian themes of sacrifice for faith rather than family-centered prosperity. When you research powerful pagan sacred sites, you'll often find these "replacement" saints - it's evidence of the Church's systematic campaign to transform and erase, rather than simply destroy. But today’s science and technology brings us to a deeper religious consensus by being able to research our shared past. My interest in history, and education in science allows me to feel more deeply connected to a shared spiritual link beyond modern religious structures.

The Sanctuary's most beautiful relic, the Nile Mosaic, was originally laid on the floor at the ground level of the temple's grotto, and portrays life along the Nile at flood stage with its banks filled with people including Egyptian hunters and Macedonian soldiers. The polychrome mosaic is nearly 6 x 4 meters in size and features a variety of wildlife including rhinos, crocodiles, a gerenuk, fish, and birds, each identified by name in Greek letters. In its original placement it was flooded over with flowing water and a parallel mosaic, the Fish Mosaic, of which only a fragment remains. Comparisons have been drawn between the Sanctuary of Fortuna and the Egyptian Temple of Hatshepsut as well as the setting of the Pergamon Altar.

Pergamom would be later referenced in the Bible as the site "where Satan has his throne", which leads us to imagine it was an ancient important woman later demonized. This site was in Turkey, but had major links and royal marriages with Egypt. The site of the early settlement was high on a cliff to the north of the River Caicus, easily defending the city’s trade nearby. There is strong evidence for earlier Hittite settlements here, prior to 800 BC, and it was with the Hittites ahat Egypt made the very first international peace treaty known. Prince Pergamus, grandson of the hero Achilles, came to the city and after winning a battle, claimed the city as a prize. They would later have their own Library of Pergamom which would rival that of Egypt’s Alexandrian Library. As many copies of books were made at the library, Egyptian papyrus became a valued commodity, but, since Alexandria was not especially interested in providing a rival library with materials, Pergamon took up making their own parchment (not inventing it, but perfecting it).

Romans developed a mixture of limestone and volcanic ash called pozzolana, which is both light and strong. One of the earliest buildings to use this Roman cement was the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, and the strength of the mixture is testified by its resilience on the site two millennia later. Another feature of the site is its massive foundations and stone walls that run almost 3 miles, constructed of gigantic, precisely fitted polygonal stones. They were known as “cyclopean walls” because their size led to the assumption only the Cyclopes (one-eyed giants) could have set them in place. Gradually the original name of Praeneste was transformed to Palestrina, and by the late 1500s CE, the residents of the town had begun to encroach upon the Sanctuary of Fortuna, building right up to it, and decorating their own homes with the ancient statues. So much of the area was covered that the original structure was no longer visible. Architectural historians attempted to understand the structure, including Andrea Palladio (1580 AD), who visited the site in an attempt to reconstruct how the Sanctuary might have once appeared.

In 1944 AD, World War II threatened the sanctuary and entire city. The Barberini family who then owned the property, desperate to protect the Nile Mosaic, ordered it to be sawn into pieces and trucked to a safer location. A few days later much of the town was destroyed along with the Barberini museum. In an ironic twist, the bombing destroyed most of the houses of Il Borgo, which raised the question of whether to rebuild after the war or to excavate the site and uncover the Sanctuary of Fortuna. Three years later, a team of architects began to remove tons of rubble, and started to reveal the structure. The Sanctuary of Fortuna and its surviving relics were purchased by the Italian government, and in 1954 CE, a new national museum was opened which encompassed the entire site. You can watch a youtube video of the site here.

The presence of the mosaic in Praeneste is considered evidence of Roman fascination with ancient Egyptian culture and art during the 1st century BC. The Alexandrian influence is evident in its style and content, which some scholars suggest may even depict rituals related to Isis and Osiris.  Comparing this site to Egypt, we can see some architectural and phonetic patterns that reveal a stronger link with Egypt than ever suspected.

Some scholars have suggested that the design of Hellenistic (Greek/Egyptian) terraced sanctuaries was based on Egyptian prototypes The Dynamics of Ritual Space in the Hellenistic and Roman East. Queen Hatshepsut’s temple and the Isis/Fortuna temple inRome are both built with a design featuring 3 grand levels, adorned with columns, exactly in the same pattern. They were both integrated into mountain cliffs, where the main shrine was cut into the rock. Each level is accessed by huge processional ramps. But the Egyptian model had been built 1,500 years earlier.

The goddess names reveal an even deeper pattern: the same divine feminine principle, associated with thrones, fertility, protection, and cosmic order, spread across the entire ancient Mediterranean under slightly different sound variations but maintaining that core "As/Es/Is" phonetic signature.

This suggests that what you're seeing at Palestrina isn't just Roman adaptation of foreign influences - it's the continuation of an ancient sacred technology that encoded both architectural and linguistic formulas for accessing divine feminine power. The sound patterns may have been considered as important as the physical temple design for creating the proper spiritual resonance.

There is an interesting memory of Egyptian architectural influence preserved in the Greek myth of Amphion... this is how Thebes was constructed (PDF) Egyptian Cultural Identity in the Architecture of Roman Egypt (30 BC-Ad 325). (There is a city named Thebes in both Egypt and Greece, with scholarly implications of phonetic connections).

Temple of Hatshepsut

One of the duties of the rulers of Egypt was to build national religions monuments to the gods. They were experts in grand building and design, engineered to preserve the memory of their rulers as gods for eternity, keeping them immortal with the saying of their names and images. The fact that their influence survived not only in Egypt, but in copycats of construction and sound patterns across the world only testifies to their talent and reputation and popularity.

Contrary to the view so often held, the great monuments of Egypt were not built by Hebrew slaves nor by slave labor of any kind. Skilled and unskilled Egyptian workers built the palaces, temples, pyramids, and obelisks as paid workers. They found artistic expression through monumental construction and engineering projects that would last thousands of years. Just the planning for the material itself requires massive technical understanding, unique to every site. Among all the temples and pyramids, the one dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut (1458 BC) at Deir el-Bahri stands out as one of the most impressive. Her temple seems to be modeled after another temple, one dedicated to the very first King of Egypt, one considered possibly legendary. The royal would not actually be buried in the complex, but in a tomb cut into the rock of the cliffs behind it. The entire structure was designed to blend organically with the surrounding landscape and cliffs, exactly like we see in Italy.

As a woman in a traditionally male position of power, Hatshepsut understood she needed to establish her authority and the legitimacy of her reign in much more obvious ways that her predecessors and the scale and elegance of her temple is evidence of this. Hatshepsut was elevated to the position of God's Wife of Amun, the highest honor a woman could attain in Egypt. Hatshepsut and Thutmose II had a daughter, and the same man fathered a son with his second wife Isis. Hatshepsut became regent when Tut II died, controlling the kingdom until his son (of Isis) came of age. She ruled as sole pharaoh. Her reign was one of the most prosperous and peaceful in Egypt's history. There is evidence that she commissioned military expeditions early on and she certainly kept the army at peak efficiency but, for the most part, her time as pharaoh is characterized by successful trade, and a booming economy. Her expedition to Punt seems to have been legendary, bringing in exotic goods from deeper Africa. This area seemed to have deeper religious significance also: the Punt Colonnade related her glorious expedition to the mysterious place was known as the 'land of the gods', which the Egyptians had not visited in centuries. The exhibition showed her interest in reviving the traditions and glory of the past. This leads one to believe more ancient ways would have set the example of a female leader as normal and totally acceptable. Punt was known to the Egyptians since the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 - c. 2613 BCE) but either the route had been forgotten or Hatshepsut's more recent predecessors did not consider an expedition worth their time. Hatshepsut describes how her people set out on the trip, their warm reception in Punt, and makes a detailed list of the many luxury goods brought back to Egypt: spices, gold, animal prints. “Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning,” In her own words.

All three levels of her temple exemplified the traditional Egyptian value of symmetry. The whole temple complex was built into the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri and the Sanctuary of Amun – the most sacred area of the site – was cut from the cliff itself. The Royal Cult Chapel and Solar Cult Chapel both depicted scenes of the royal family. The Birth Colonnade told the story of Hatshepsut's divine creation with Amun as her true father. Hatshepsut had the night of her conception inscribed on the walls relating how the god came to mate with her mother:

“He [Amun] in the incarnation of the Majesty of her husband, the King of Egypt [Thutmose I] found her sleeping in the beauty of her palace. She awoke at the divine fragrance and turned towards his Majesty. He went to her immediately, he was aroused by her, and he imposed his desire upon her. He allowed her to see him in his form of a god and she rejoiced at the sight of his beauty after he had come before her. His love passed into her body. The palace was flooded with divine fragrance.” (van de Mieroop, 173)

As the daughter of the most powerful and popular god in Egypt at the time, Hatshepsut was claiming for herself special privilege to rule the country as any man would.

Throughout Hatshepsut's reign, Thutmose III, (her stepson from her late husband), had been given supreme command of the military. In c. 1457 BC Thutmose III led his armies to victory at the Battle of Megiddo, a campaign possibly anticipated and prepared for by Hatshepsut, and afterwards her name disappears from the historical record. Thutmose III had all evidence of her reign destroyed by erasing her name and having her image cut from all public monuments. He then backdated his reign to the death of his father and Hatshepsut's accomplishments as pharaoh were ascribed to him. To erase one's name on earth was to condemn that person to non-existence. In ancient Egyptian belief, one needed to be remembered in order to continue one's eternal journey in the afterlife. Although Thutmose III seems to have ordered this extreme measure, there is no evidence of any enmity between him and his step-mother, and significantly, he left relatively untouched the story of her divine birth and expedition to Punt inside her mortuary temple; only public mention of her was erased. This would indicate that he did not harbor Hatshepsut any ill will personally but was attempting to eradicate any overt evidence of a strong female pharaoh. Thutmose III had replaced her images with his own, and buried her statues.

Akhenaten, a later pharoah would defile her image further, in 1336 BC. He had no quarrel with Hatshepsut as a female pharaoh (he had made his daughters capable of ruling under divine protection); his problem was with her god. He wanted a monotheistic Egyptian faith, and had it for just 17 years. The only difference was the main sun god was now the Aten, instead of the Amen. Although Hatshepsut's temple (understood by Akhenaten to be that of Thutmose III) was allowed to stand, the images of Amun were cut from the exterior and interior walls. Hatshepsut's name remained unknown for the rest of Egypt's history and up until the 1850’s AD. Broken monuments and statues had come to light earlier, but, at that time, no one understood how to read hieroglyphics. In 1799, Napoleon made a 3 year exhibition to Egypt, but was defeated by the Ottomans, then quickly defeated by the British. In the next 20 years, the world would be obsessed with cracking the code. A french linguist was able to do it in 1823, and the world flooded with interest in reading the language of the gods. Champollion was able to visit Hatshepsut's temple, and was mystified by the obvious references to a female pharaoh, who was unknown in history. His observations were the first in the modern age to inspire an interest in the queen who, today, is regarded as one of the greatest monarchs of the ancient world. Her mummy would later be found and identified due to matching teeth, and she was seen to have lived until 50 years old, dying of the possible complication of the dental extraction. Her temple was so magnificent, that many would try to copy, and take credit for he work, and reign. There is, in fact, no other Egyptian monarch except Ramesses II (1213 BC) who erected as many impressive monuments as Hatshepsut. Although unknown for most of history, in the past 100 years her accomplishments have achieved global recognition. No king, or kingdom, could erase her memory.

Now Back to Isis…

Isis was honored in both halves of the broken Roman empire. She was even accepted in places that were barely Roman: even among the rebellious “Germanic” peoples of later Britain and throughout Gaul (Much of France and central Europe). We see other foreign sun gods important in Rome, like Mithra, the sun gond, but this was restricted to the upper class Romans. The religion of Isis was truly universal.

This is all important, because this shows that not only did the story of Rome continue after the empire fall, the story had already existed in the concious of the people for thousands of years BEFORE the empire existed. All of christianity was based on existing stories, Extremely popular at the time. Those Inanan epics? They most likely gave us our word for “annual”, and were widely popular during the time of Abraham, written in his hometown. Considering Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all children of Abraham, this becomes an extremely important point.

These stories are important, because they tell us what a virgin mother actually means in context. They tell us about sacrifice, and who and why would do it, and what it meant for people who did, and did not do it. We see that this story was not alone, and had much more context than we are given. We see how little of the big picture we were given, like an extremely edited clip of a much larger epic, totally blown out of proportion as original and mistranslated where women are the only ones not divine. Women WERE the creators of life. They were the nurturors of life. Sure, men gave the seed, but without a woman, he is hopeless and alone. It took 4 years for Romans to have a city all to themselves until they realized they needed women- and we can read about their Rape of the Sabine Women, written within the story of the foundation of Rome. This is what context christianity started- one where the woman had to be removed from power, controlled, and property (land, women, and children) were all in the hands of men. THIS is the only unique thing about Roman Christianity from all the other religions floating around it at the time.

Even judaism required marriage, though they, at this point, were quite male centered. Women were central to family life at least. In Rome, women were play things, and were tried to be removed from the story compeltely, making sex an UNsacred act. Judaism REQUIRED marriage, and gave expectations of regular, daily, sex, if possible. Christianity made sex the definition of unholy. They encoraged men to try to avoid sex. Everyone else was making the middle class happy by encouraging families, with children aligned with the beauty of the sun. Rome was breaking this tradition, saying only men could be divine. Only men could practice. Only men, and men alone, were the creators of life. How did that work for Rome? Within 4 years, they had to come down from their drunk stupor and reframe. We are still allowing Christianity to keep its story alive with our own passivity, and passing down of the same story we never asked for more details of.

These stories of sun gods, and sacred sex creating life were not the minority. By the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400’s AD, there were still over 600 temples to Mithra (the Persian sun god) just in Rome alone- but this was for just for him (Mithras). Isis temples were far more numerous. We only have base numbers, and expect there to have been more than we have evidence for today.

Her only issue, from the perspective of Rome, was that she was too popular. In 378 AD, public Rome state funds were spent on building her temples, and within 2 years, edicts started requesting their demolition. And these had to continue for another 200 years, showing how popular she was. The fact that the church has to keep distinguishing “veneration” from “worship” is the idea that is so innate within us that we DO believe in the holy mother, if we believe in anything at all. It just does not make sense without her.

Her numbers and appeal began to mount a serious threat to Christianity. It became a problem of the chicken and the egg, when in all the prior elder and more developed religions, it was the family unit that was celebrated: a cyclical event of love (creating life), birth, growth, death and rebirth. It was always three: a mother, father, and a divine child. Sometimes they were shown like the three of the 3 parts of the day: sunrise, noon, and sunset, as birth, growth and death. Other times they were a single human in those stages, others were a larger story of generations. It was an idea of continuity and reflection on multiple levels. Christianity wanted us to focus on one specific generation for all time. Forget that a woman could ever be born or be divine. Forget that gods had been raping human women for generations already, and this god just did not want sex, only asked a pre-teen girl to have his child instead. Nevermind that everyone else around the Mediterannean WAS WORSHIPPING a female as divine, AS THE SUN GOD HERSELF incarnate, along with her child, who was both child and later main hero, as that child moved through the phases of life.

The magic trick was forgetting the bigger picture of everything else that was going on at the time.