In A.D. 313, the Roman Emperor Constantine, recognised Christianity as acceptable as the official state religion, not because the Roman Empire was taking a new direction in its thinking, but evidence suggests they had no choice. It did so as the empire would have fallen as sure as night becomes day due to the surge from the people demanding religious freedom and the de-criminalisation of Christianity. The Empire had no choice but to recognise Christianity, and certainly did not want to do so. This can be seen where only around 25 years earlier, Emperor Diocletian, a sun-worshipping pagan, had attempted to have all Christian writings destroyed and banished from Rome. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity is extremely suspect at best due to the fact he too was a sun-worshipping pagan, and had ‘been initiated into a Sol Invictus [‘the Invincible Sun’] cult’, and that all his life he ‘acted as its chief priest’.[1] In the Pagan Mystery Religions the emperor was seen as a God, and the early Christians would not recognise any Caesar as God. This was seen as a great threat to the Roman Empire as an institution, as if the idea spread the emperor would lose control of the people. The Caesars had been trying to destroy Christianity for over 200 years and failed so they were left with no choice but to come up with a different plan.[2] Constantine was not baptised into Christianity until the year 337, when he was on his death bed ‘and was apparently too weakened or too apathetic to protest’. In A.D. 321, an official edict by Constantine ordered that Sunday, ‘the venerable day of the sun’, would replace Saturday as the Lord’s sanctioned day of rest, which originally had been the Christian/Judaic day of rest according to the instructions given to Moses by God in the book of Exodus. It was also in the era of Constantine that the Roman authorities changed the celebration of Jesus’s birthday to December 25th to pander to Sol Invictus, and their festival Natalis Invictus, which celebrated the birth or rebirth of the sun, coinciding with the winter solstice.[3] According to Manly P. Hall, the sunburst ‘embroidery on the back of the vestments of the Catholic priesthood signify that the priest is also an emissary and representative of Sol Invictus’.[4] The Druids also celebrated the birth of the Sun god on the 25th of December.[5] This further merged the ancient pagan mystery religions with Christianity, which under the Council of Nicea in A.D.325 cemented the Roman regime in place with a ‘politically desirable’ fusion of both doctrines, and a ‘concentration of power in ecclesiastical hands’. It was Constantine, the pagan sun-worshipper who firstly ‘installed the bishop of Rome in the Lateran Palaces’.[6] This would never have happened without Christianity being severely watered down to pander to the religion of the elite. In 1923, one distinguished author wrote that:

‘Every pagan nation had (and has) not only its state religion, but another into which the philosophic elect alone have gained entrance. Many of these ancient cults vanished from the earth without revealing their secrets, but a few have survived the test of ages and their mysterious symbols are still preserved’.[7]

[1] Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, pp.399-402

[2] The Crusaders, Alberto Part 5 – Four Horsemen, 1985, Chick Publications, p.10

[3] Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, pp.399-402

[4] Manly P. Hall, ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’, p.143

[5] Manly P. Hall, ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’, p.46

[6] Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, p.403

[7] Manly P. Hall, ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’, p.39,