The Sun–Moon Secret of Rome

What struck me yesterday were the differences between the Septuagint, the Greek scriptures used by the apostles, and the later Latin Vulgate of the Roman Church. In Genesis 3:15 the Greek says plainly, “He will watch against your head, and you will watch against his heel” ; the victory belongs to the seed, the offspring, clearly pointing to Christ. But the Latin Vulgate changes it to “She shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel” ; suddenly it is the woman herself who destroys the serpent. That one shift opens the door for Mary to be exalted as the serpent-crusher, a role never given her in the original text.

The same happens in Revelation. In Greek we read, “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” It is a cosmic image of Israel, the people of God. But in Latin tradition this vision was narrowed to Mary personally. Once again the woman is clothed with solar glory, enthroned upon the moon, crowned as Queen of Heaven.

Even Daniel is altered. In the Septuagint, Daniel’s visions speak of sacrifice being taken away, but the Latin Vulgate sharpened it to “the perpetual sacrifice”; a phrase that Catholics later linked directly to the Mass itself. Eliphas Lévi, writing as an occultist, explained that perpetual sacrifice is at its root a Saturnian and solar rite, timed to the equinox when the sun enters Aries, the ram. In Babylonian and Egyptian religion these were the very moments of cosmic drama, when sacrifices and mysteries were offered to sustain the order of heaven. The Vulgate’s phrase makes the Catholic Mass look like the continuation of those perpetual equinoctial rites; a solar sacrifice bound to the ram and to the same powers the prophets warned against.

These differences are not minor details. They reveal how the shift from Greek to Latin allowed an entirely new figure and an entirely new cult to be enthroned: Mary as Isis reborn, the very Queen of Heaven whom Jeremiah condemned, and a perpetual sacrifice tied to cosmic sun–moon rites that stretch back to Babylon and Egypt. And it was this realization that made me want to explore further into the original Queen of Heaven: the goddess whose festivals, symbols, and myths still echo in the liturgy of Rome today.

The Babylonians ordered their year by the heavens. Their great festival, the Akitu, marked the New Year in spring. It was held at the first full moon after the equinox, when light and dark stood in balance. In those days the king was stripped of his regalia and ritually humbled, the creation epic of Marduk and Tiamat was recited, and order was proclaimed anew. The Sun and Moon were re-enthroned in their courses, and kingship was renewed. The Catholic calendar carries a striking echo of this rite. Easter is fixed by the same rule: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. For Babylon it was the cosmic reset, for Rome it is the Resurrection. Both are tied to the turning of the seasons and the reckoning of sun and moon.

The Babylonians also lived by the omens of the moon. New moons, full moons, and eclipses were scrutinized by priests of the god Sîn, each shift interpreted as a sign of blessing or disaster. When the moon darkened or reddened, elaborate appeasements were performed, scapegoats sent out, and rituals of purification enacted. Catholic devotion does not use the moon as a calendar in the same way, but the imagery survives in Marian feasts. The Immaculate Conception in December falls at the time of the hidden moon in winter, and the Assumption in August coincides with the bright moons of high summer, long a season of goddess festivals. Mary herself is consistently pictured standing on a crescent moon, crowned with stars, echoing the lunar goddess even as she is proclaimed as the Virgin.

The Babylonians honored the sun-god Shamash as the just judge who upheld truth and watched over kingship. In the Akitu drama the rising of the sun symbolized Marduk’s law renewed and the king’s authority confirmed. Catholic worship places the same emphasis on solar imagery. The Eucharistic host is displayed in a vessel shaped as a golden sunburst, the monstrance, so that the faithful look upon a radiant disc of light. Christ is hailed as the Sun of Justice, and his birth is celebrated just after the winter solstice, replacing the old Roman feast of the reborn sun with the Nativity of Jesus.

There was also the Babylonian sacred marriage, in which the king as Tammuz united with the high priestess of Inanna at the spring equinox. This rite of sun and moon ensured fertility and cosmic order. In Christianity the Annunciation is fixed to March 25, the equinox, when Mary conceives by the Spirit. The union is spiritual, but the symbolism is similar: at the moment of balance between day and night, the divine child is conceived. The monstrance and host repeat the same pattern each Mass, a sunburst embracing a round disk, the cosmic marriage presented on the altar.

The Egyptian ritual year was woven through with festivals of Osiris (the solar lord who dies and rises) and Isis (the lunar mother and queen of heaven). When placed beside the Catholic calendar, the parallels become stark: Christ carries the solar role of Osiris, and Mary takes on the lunar mantle of Isis.

In Egypt the greatest Osiris festival fell in the month of Khoiak, around the time of the autumn planting season. Clay figures of Osiris filled with grain were buried in the earth, watered, and then sprouted; dramatizing his death, burial, and rebirth as vegetation and as the returning sun after its waning. Mourning women wailed for the dead god, then rejoiced at his resurrection. The Catholic calendar preserves this cycle in the Passion of Christ at springtime, but the imagery of death, burial, and return to life echoes directly. Every Easter candle lit at the vigil carries the same message that the solar god who sank into darkness has returned in glory.

Isis was celebrated at multiple festivals through the year. The Navigium Isidis in early March marked the opening of the sailing season: her statue was carried in procession to the sea, crowned with a crescent, flanked with stars, and hailed as the mistress of the waters. This date falls very near the Catholic Annunciation on March 25, when Mary conceives the Christ child at the balance of equinox. Isis as lunar mother conceives the divine Horus at this season; Mary as lunar virgin conceives the Son of God in the same springtime.

Another Isis festival came at midsummer, often in July, tied to the rising of the star Sirius and the flooding of the Nile. This was Isis as celestial queen, commanding fertility and waters. The Catholic Assumption of Mary into heaven is set on August 15, at the same high summer season, when ancient Mediterranean peoples long honored the heavenly virgin. Mary’s imagery as crowned queen lifted to heaven mirrors Isis enthroned after Osiris’ death, ruling from the sky and nourishing the world.

The Osiris cult also preserved a ritual of lamentation in which Isis and Nephthys were depicted as mourning the dead god, calling him to return. Catholic Good Friday and Holy Saturday services are framed by Mary’s sorrow, the Mater Dolorosa at the tomb, and then her rejoicing at the dawn of Easter. The feminine lunar figure mourning the slain sun-god appears in both traditions, only with names changed.

Eliphas Lévi’s, merge Osiris with Saturn ; the devoured sun, the hidden god of time and sacrifice. In that sense, Osiris embodies the perpetual sacrifice at the equinox, bound to cosmic cycles. This overlays onto the Catholic doctrine of the “perpetual sacrifice of the Mass.”

Egyptian temples dramatized the marriage of Isis and Osiris as the joining of moon and sun, their union producing Horus the child of light. Catholic liturgy presents the same formula through symbol: the round white host as lunar disk set within the golden solar monstrance. The faithful kneel before this union and receive its “child” into themselves as communion. The myth of Horus’ birth is retold as Christ born of Mary at Christmas, which in the Roman calendar was deliberately fixed at the solstice, when the sun begins its return.

When traced across the year, Isis and Osiris festivals align with Catholic Marian and Christ feasts: Osiris’ burial and rebirth with Easter, Isis’ spring procession with the Annunciation, her summer enthronement with the Assumption, her mourning with Mary’s sorrows at Holy Week, and the cosmic marriage with the Eucharist itself. Both systems turn on the same cosmic poles — sun and moon, death and rebirth, union and child — re-enacted to renew the world.

The Sun and Moon Behind the Veil

Eliphas Lévi taught that true magic was the harmonization of opposites: the Sun, symbol of will and spirit, and the Moon, symbol of imagination and nature. Their union gives birth to the Child, Horus, who represents enlightened consciousness. In Egypt this was Osiris and Isis producing Horus; in the esoteric West it was recast as the formula of initiation. What is rarely acknowledged is how closely this same structure has been embedded, almost invisibly, inside Catholic ritual and devotion.

The most obvious emblem is the monstrance and host. The host itself is a perfect white disk, symbol of the Moon. It is set inside a golden, radiant monstrance, shaped as a solar burst. When lifted on the altar, the congregation gazes at the union of Sun and Moon. This is not merely decoration: it is the central rite of Catholic worship, the elevation of the wafer at Mass. To those who see beneath the surface, it is a continuation of the ancient sun–moon mystery, disguised as the body of Christ.

Secret societies picked up the same pattern openly. The Golden Dawn dramatized Osiris as the Sun, Isis as the Moon, and Horus as the risen initiate. Crowley proclaimed the Aeon of Horus, born of Nuit and Hadit, a union of night and solar fire. In these societies the formula is admitted as magical; in the Church it is performed as liturgy. But the structure is identical: the union of solar and lunar powers, producing the child of consciousness.

When Catholics bow before the monstrance, they are adoring the Sun embracing the Moon. When they crown Mary with stars and set her upon the crescent, they are venerating Isis. The child she presents is not only Jesus but the eternal Horus, the solar child born of lunar mystery. To ordinary eyes it is worship; to the initiated it is the oldest magic, hidden in plain sight.

When seen in sequence, Mary’s feasts mirror the Moon’s phases and the Sun’s solstices and equinoxes. December 8 is the dark new moon, December 25 the reborn Sun, February the waxing light, March the equinox full moon, August the ripened full moon, September the new moon of harvest.

It is the same solar–lunar formula: the Sun provides the turning of the year, the Moon provides the phases and fertility, and their union produces the Child. The Church has woven this cycle into its liturgical calendar under Marian names.

The Queen of Heaven Unveiled

The prophets of Israel spoke without hesitation: when the people turned to Egypt for protection, when they bowed before the rites of her gods, it was whoredom. Ezekiel’s Septuagint thunders, “You played the harlot with the sons of Egypt, great of flesh, and multiplied your fornications to provoke me to anger” (Ezekiel 16:26). Again he says of Jerusalem, “She multiplied her whoredoms, remembering the days of her youth, in which she committed fornication in the land of Egypt” (Ezekiel 23:19). Hosea joins him: “Rejoice not, O Israel, as the nations do, for you have gone a whoring from your God” (Hosea 9:1). Jeremiah names the goddess directly: “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods” (Jeremiah 7:18). In the Greek scriptures that the early church read, this Queen of Heaven was not Mary but a pagan goddess, the lunar mother whose cults intoxicated whole nations. Again and again, the prophets warned: do not marry the God of Israel to Egypt’s mysteries. Do not put Isis in the sanctuary.

The Greek Bible holds to this line even in Genesis and Revelation. In Genesis 3:15 the Septuagint says of the serpent: “He will watch against your head, and you will watch against his heel.” The pronoun is masculine; it is the offspring, not the woman herself, who strikes. But in the Latin Vulgate a single word is altered: ipsa conteret caput tuum — “she will crush your head.” With that, Mary is placed where Christ alone stood. Painters follow suit, and Mary is crowned with stars, standing on a crescent moon, heel on the serpent. A mistranslation becomes an icon, and an icon becomes a doctrine. The woman of prophecy, clothed with the sun and standing on the moon, is no longer Israel or the Church; she is personalized into Mary, given the very titles the prophets condemned, Queen of Heaven and Lady of the Moon.

Revelation unveils its end. The Greek text of Revelation 6:12 says: “The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood.” Sackcloth was woven from goat’s hair, the emblem of Osiris the dying sun, the goat-headed Baphomet. The moon as blood is the Queen of Heaven filled with the blood of the saints. Later John sees her unveiled: “The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints” (Revelation 17:4–6).

The Vatican itself makes no secret of its allegiance. In the square rises the obelisk, the stone shaft of Osiris (Saturn). In the Vatican gardens stands the colossal bronze pine cone, the ancient emblem of the pineal gland, the third eye that promised men they would be as gods. The obelisk is the solar phallus, the pine cone the awakening of hidden sight. Together they mirror the same formula proclaimed at the altar: Sun and Moon joined, promising higher consciousness, promising illumination. It is the serpent’s first lie, set in marble and bronze: eat, partake, open your eye, and you will be as gods.

Thus the pattern is exposed. The Greek scriptures warned Israel against Egypt’s cults and never gave Mary the serpent’s head or the moon for her throne. The Latin church shifted the text, crowned her with stars, enthroned her on the crescent, and placed the sunburst around the wafer. Her feasts march with the moon, her titles match the goddess, her image is the old Isis reborn. The faithful believe they worship the Mother of Christ; in truth they venerate the Queen of Heaven whom Jeremiah cursed, Isis in Christian garments, Babylon drunk on blood. And in the moment of consecration, when the Sun embraces the Moon, they receive not Christ but the mark of the beast, the false light that blinds, the old gnosis of the serpent that ends in destruction.