You're a Christian and it's Sunday morning. Like countless millions you put on your Sunday best and go strolling down the street towards your neighborhood church to praise the Lord. But, just like those countless millions, you haven't the foggiest idea from whence came all those symbols and trappings that adorn your faith. Come all ye faithful, loosen your ties, unsnap your girdles and sit down for a few because yours truly is about to spill the beans on yet one more thing that you've never heard in church!
Towering over just about every Christian church on the planet one will find a magnificent steeple pointing to the heavens on high. If you're like most Christians, you've probably never given this symbol of Christian churchosity (yes, I that's a made-up word) a second thought. But just imagine for a moment some non-Christian asking you what that erect pointed thing had to do with Jesus Christ? How would you answer? Likely you'd run to your minister who in turn might sputter something along the lines that the steeple directs people's attention to God in heaven as they enter his sanctuary (at least that's the explanation on Symbols in Christian Art and Architecture's website. Although that reply might have an odd bit of truth laced about it, it's not the whole story by a long shot.
The fact is that the story of the Christian steeple doesn't begin with Jesus or his apostles; nor does it find its origins in Judaism, Christianity's predecessor. Nope! Forget Jesus here because those pointy things atop our churches were around before the bible was even a gleam in the eye of the Jewish priest who scribbled the first verse of Genesis!
In the fifth millennium BC a people in Mesopotamia, called Sumerians, were busy putting together the first bits and pieces of what now passes as civilization. By 3000 BC they had a thriving metropolis—well, at least it was thriving by the standards of the time. As is peculiar to all "civilizations," such things being composed of superstitious idiots, the founding fathers of Sumer didn't fail to incorporate gods, priests and houses of worship in their new utopia—putting one in mind of Voltaire who once wryly observed that "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In other words, to hold sway over a bunch of quarrelsome nincompoops, one needs to convince them that certain men act on the orders of a divine boogeyman who is ready and willing to smite all non-believers!
Now what shape do you suppose those first holy houses took? Well, since this article is focused on steeples, then you're probably guessing that the first holy houses were steeple-tower-like structures. If that's your guess, then you're at least partially right. Called ziggurats, or gateways to the gods, these sometimes rectangular, sometimes oval-shaped holy houses of worship wound their way toward the heavens wherein the supreme gods dwelled.1 Whether or not they were originally intended to be phallic in appearance remains debatable. They certainly were mountain-shaped, and we can make a connection to phallicism there since many of the primitive Mesopotamian deities were phallic gods who dwelled on mountains. Thus it is entirely possible that the ziggurat employed double imagery. Whatever the truth of their design, there is no denying that ziggurats, like later Christian monasteries, were principally the dwelling places of the priests who conducted all sorts of "godly" rites therein—like sexual rites and feasting on the food and animal sacrifices squeezed from superstitious moronic believers. And there is no denying that certain archeological features of the ziggurat were incorporated into later temple designs throughout the Middle East.
Now, let's hit the fast-forward button and skip over a lot of boring stuff here. Pressing play, we've stopped at a time in history where we find these towering ziggurats dotting the landscape of all Mesopotamia—especially in Babylon where the most famous ziggurat of all was rising to the heavens. Now you all know that tale, since it has been a favorite of bible classes for the past 2,000-plus years: A character named Nimrod built a ziggurat known as the Tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar, which sorely displeased the Lord who put an end to the whole thing.
Since the tale of Babel and Nimrod has been tossed out the window in my Genesis study, we won't waste any more time on it here, except to relate that Nimrod has been identified by some with the Assyrian King Ninus, who married the legendary Queen Semiramis, and around whom a myriad of sexual myth has been woven. What is certain of this time period comes from historian Albert Champdor who writes that "Of all the lofty monuments of Babylon, the towering 'Ziggurat' must certainly have been one of the most spectacular constructions of its time, rising majestically above its huge encircling wall . . . Around the vast square, chambers were set aside for pilgrims, as well as for the priests who looked after the 'Zigguarat.' Koldewey called this collection of buildings the 'Vatican of Babylon.'"2
Although to the Christian mind an upright tower constructed to the glory of a god might seem benign, the fact is that these towers had an underlying vulgar connotation—at least it was vulgar by today's prudish religious standards. This is because a central feature of pagan mystery religions was human reproduction, and hence a strong symbolism centered on human reproductive organs. Since we're talking male dominated religions here, phallicism was a key in both symbolism and ritual in the old mystery religions. However, our focus here is not a full exploration of primitive quack religions—even if they do include exaggerated penises, vaginas, breasts, copulations and assorted sex orgies—but the upright symbolism of an erect male penis pointing to the heavens, or more precisely, pointing to the sun.
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