Understanding the origins of the inverted cross, a Christian symbol? Or the symbol of the Anti-Christ
Full article found here
Many people including myself promote the use of an inverted cross as a symbol of the rejection of Christ, but more importantly a universal symbol of individualism, intellect and freedom of thought and mind. But Christians and many others say we are wrong or ignorant of its meaning.
For anyone who sports an inverted cross, I’m sure you’ve heard people say a million times something in regards to St. Peter.. but those people don’t really know much about what they are saying.
A symbol of St peter’s will is absolutely the weakest and unfortunately the most common belief & argument brought up when the subject of an inverted cross comes up, when in fact if you really look deep into the St. Peter story, it only strengthens the argument that an inverted cross is a satanic symbol…
Christians claim, “An inverted cross is a Christian symbol and that St Peter was crucified upside down, because he didn’t feel worthy to be crucified the same way as Christ.” They also claim that it has nothing to do with Satanism or the Anti Christ as well as that those who use the symbol in that sense are moronic and don’t understand what it really means. So I’m here today to tell you what it really means, go through the origins and put the bashing from Christians and others to rest.
Although this belief of the symbol being that of a Christian saint is taught within Christianity and Catholicism when you look into it, it literally holds almost no grounds at all.
Actually if you read the any of the original Holy Scriptures it says absolutely nothing about St. Peter choosing to crucified upside down in respect to Christ anywhere, including the bible. You would think if this was truly the case, they would probably want to put that in there.
There are nine separate accounts of the crucifixion of St Peter, but only one account mentioning him not being worthy of Christ. You, may think well ok so it is mentioned somewhere even if only in one out of nine accounts… but you’d be wrong again, since even in the one single account nowhere did it state that his upside down crucifixion was at all at his own request.
The whole statement that St. Peter was crucified upside down by his own requests is something the catholic church has added to the story, possibly seen as reading between the lines.. but is no where officially recorded anywhere at all, and wasn’t added to the story until hundreds of years after the fact.
Roman armies and Christian killings
Although Peter was crucified upside and you may feel like this is an unusual and a note worthy point to recognize, in all honestly it’s a well documented fact that the romans of the time often crucified people in many bizarre and torturous ways with extreme frequency. To understand why this may be, this is where we introduce Emperor Nero into the story. If you know anything about the time period in which the crucifixion of St Peter took place you would also know that at the time the empire was under the rule of Emperor Nero. Nero was the most famed and savage of the Christian killing kings of rome and many call Nero the first persecutor of Christians. He was known for extensively torturing and executing Christians as well as even having captured Christians to burn them in his garden for a source of light at night. Nero harshly prosecuted Christian for crimes often by ordering them to be thrown to dogs, while others were crucified and burned.
Although Nero was a real man, who ruled during the time, Many 2nd- and 3rd-century theologians, among others, recorded their belief that Nero himself would return from death or exile, as “the Anti-Christ.”
The Ascension of Isaiah is the first text to suggest that Nero was in fact the Antichrist. Likewise the Sibylline Oracles, Book 5 and 8, written in the 2nd century, speak of Nero returning and bringing the return of his wrath. Within Christian communities, these writings, along with others, fueled the belief that Nero would return as the Anti Christ. Additionally only fueling theists belief that Nero was or would become the antichrist was that his name transliterated into Hebrew has the numeric value of 666. In Revelation’s narrative, the “mark of the beast” is used to identify the beast’s acolytes.
It is thought that Nero believed that the destruction of Christianity and all Christians would bring peace to the Roman empire, and with this vision, came a symbol of an inverted cross with broken arms. The symbol was used by Emperor Nero in an attempt to suppress the rise of Christianity, slightly ironic since use of an upright cross was not even fully adopted by the Christians for another 2-3 hundred years after Nero’s inverted broken cross.
St peter Conclusion
With Nero’s Symbol against the Christians being an inverted cross during the time St peter was put to death, it only add more credence to the belief that the inverted cross pays far more homage to Nero and his armies then to St Peter or Christ. Saint Peter was crucified upside down at the hands of the roman army, lead by the supposed “Anti-Christ”, not by request of the Saint him self. If the idea that a Christian hating/killing army would allow him pay his own respects to Christ and actually honour those respects wasn’t absurd enough, to believe that this happened when all accounts show no record of it and Nero’s army already had an inverted cross in place to suppress the Christian upraise aaand were in fact known for crucifying people in all kinds of strange ways.. to believe that (for me anyways) is just ridiculous.. but then again I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when the theistic community vastly believes in far more outlandish things then that.
All in all the back story is pretty irrelevant, even if you do or don’t believe the St Peter story symbols are always changing there meaning, and symbols mean different things to different people. In modern society when it comes to people wearing inverted crosses or displaying them in other ways, how many of those people do you honestly believe are using the inverted cross to try to convey that they were unworthy of christ…?? Probably not many at all.. Same sort of thing as the swastika, once one of the most common symbols throughout many cultures symbolizing the sun, good luck as well as many other principals but now is primarily seen as a symbol of racism & white supremacy.. The meaning of symbols change, and their meanings are defined by the different beliefs of those who use them. Get over it.
The meaning of a symbol is only relevant to those who bear it for their perception may be different from your own.
Many people including myself promote the use of an inverted cross as a symbol of the rejection of Christ, but most importantly a universal symbol of independence and freedom. In this day & age this is by far the most common usage of the symbol, regardless of the fact that it does share some minimal usage by the catholic church. And with this ideology stated, this may not be the sole meaning of an inverted cross since it is subjective and varies with your own beliefs but,this idea of individualism, intellect and freedom of thought and mind is the true meaning indented behind my designs for this is what it means to me.
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