THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 20

THE EXTERNSTEINE BAS RELIEF: AN EASTER SKY PORTRAIT DEPICTING THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CROSS FOR THE PAGAN IRMINSUL?

Although the “Descent from the Cross” relief at Externsteine has been variously dated, I believe there is some truth to the notion that the small, bent-over tree to the left of the Cross does indeed represent the pagan Irminsul.

It occurred to me to view the relief as a portrait of the sky on Easter.  Using my computer astronomy program (Cybersky), I entered the coordinates for Externsteine and then searched randomly for Easters from the 9th to the 12th centuries (for the relevant Easter dates according to the Julian calendar, see http://5ko.free.fr/en/easter.php?y=12).  One thing that immediately became obvious is that my hunch appears to be correct: the carving depicts the victory of Christianity over paganism in a very unique way.

When looking at the relief, notice that the dragon, symbolic of Satan here, is found just under the ground or horizon.  His head is to the right, his tail to the left, and his midst is coiled about Adam and Eve.  Above the dragon, and thus above the horizon in the sky, is the Cross.  To the right of the Cross, but down low, bent over in defeat, is the small tree.  The sun is to the extreme left, on the end of the arm of the Cross, while the moon is to the extreme right, on the other end of the Cross.  On the left arm of the Cross, towards the center, sits a man holding a banner, at the end of which is a star/planet that stands just to the right of the Cross’s upright, and over the middle part of the right arm of the Cross.

When we look at the full sky for, say, Easter dates in the 12th century, with ‘North’ at the bottom, we notice immediately that there are a significant number of such Easters on which Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda, the head and tail of Serpens/the Serpent, are just below the horizon.  Rising up vertically in the sky and stretching from north to south, but bowed slightly to the west, is the Milky Way.  The ecliptic or path of the planets forms a cross-arm to the Milky Way, running in the usual east-west direction.  Down low and just to the right of the Milky Way, at almost exactly halfway between the horizon and the “right arm” of the Cross formed by the ecliptic, is Polaris, the Pole Star.

Although I have not bothered to run however many hundreds of Easter dates that might be necessary to find the right combination of heavenly elements to match the Externsteine relief, it is obvious that as Christ is being lowered from the Cross – something that happened in the evening, when the sun set - that the Sun on the extreme left hand side of the carving must be viewed as being on the western horizon.  The moon, therefore, is rising above the eastern horizon.  And what of the star or planet being held over the middle section of the Cross at the end of a banner?  This can only represent the INRI the Romans supposedly hung at the top of the Cross over Christ’s head (‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’).  As the king planet has always been Jupiter, I assume that the planet designated on the carving must be Jupiter.  Venus as Evening Star is a less desirable candidate, but cannot be ruled out.

If I’m right about this – and the actual sky of the time fits the relief too well for this all to be mere coincidence – then the Christian Cross is being identified with the Milky Way.  And this Milky Way sky tree is being shown as having supplanted (pun intended) the earlier pagan sky tree, which was a true axis mundi that rose from the center of the earth (North Pole) and terminated in the sky at the north celestial pole or Pole Star.