The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps
ORIGIN OF CROSS AS DIVINE SYMBOL 201
millennium b.c. downwards ;1 and it thus becomes evident why it is called ‘ The Red Cross of St. George of Cappadocia,” as it was “ The Fire Cross’’ of the Hittites, whose chief centre was Cappadocia. It was very freely used also, as we have seen (Fig. 12, p. 49 and Fig. 46), by the Aryan “Cassi ’ Dynasty of Babylonia from about 1800 to I100 B.C., decorated by borderlines as their emblem for the Sun and its God It was ordinarily called “The Wooden Bay or Mas,” that is, literally, in English, ‘““ The Bar or Mace (in sense of a sceptre),’ and thus discloses incidentally the Sumerian origin of those two English words; and it is figured as a sceptre in the hand of the Sun God in early Sumerian sacred seals. It was also called Piv with meaning of “ Fire,’"? thus disclosing the Sumerian origin of our English words “ Fire’’ and ‘“ Pyre,” Gothic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Old English Fyr “ Fire’”’ and the Greek « Pye
This form of the True Cross, which occurs on so many pre-Christian monuments in Britain,* is called by modern ecclesiastic writers ‘‘ The Greek Cross,’ merely because it was adopted by the Greek Christian Church about the fifth century A.D. as the form of the Christian emblem for their converts in the old Gothic region of Byzantium, who had been using this Gothic Cross as their sacred emblem from time immemorial. And it is noteworthy that the Greek Church, as well as the crusaders later, continued to use this cross in its old original Catti or Gothic sense, as a simple symbol of Divine Victory and not as a crucifix, never representing any body thereon ; but, on the contrary, they usually colour it red, its original colour, as the red or fiery Cross of Fire.
The origin of this earliest form of the True Cross, I find, was the crossing of the twin tinder sticks used for producing by their friction the sacred fire, symbolizing the Sun’s Fire. And this same process, which is still used for fire-production by primitive tribes in India, America, etc., at the present
1 See illustrations in W.S.C., W.S.M. and H.H.S. 2Br. 1724. *See numerous examples figured in $.S.S. for Scotland ana W. L.W. for Wales. There is no corresponding work for England.