Sun cross (the “crucified sun”)

The sun cross is the intersection of astronomical cycles that Johannes Tausen presents as a key to religious symbolism: a figure linking the sun’s movement through the sky with the cross, crucifixion, and resurrection. His account turns a simple geometric pattern into a theory of shared religious origins, while the reactions of Carl Mørck and Assad keep the lecture’s confidence in view without endorsing its claims.

Astronomical Definition

Tausen begins with two cycles. Across the year, he explains, the sun moves through the zodiac in a great ring; each day, the Earth’s rotation produces a smaller cycle marked by sunrise, zenith, sunset, and nadir. He associates these points with the solstices and equinoxes: midsummer and midwinter, spring and fall. Drawing axes between zenith and nadir and between ascent and descent, or, in astronomical terms, between the solstices and equinoxes, produces a cross across the sun’s circles. Tausen identifies this figure as the sun cross, also called the “crucified sun.”

The term therefore names both a shape and an interpretive scheme. Within Tausen’s account, the cross is not an isolated religious emblem: it is produced by the intersection of celestial cycles, and its meaning comes from the sun’s position within those cycles. He says the figure can be found carved in rocks from prehistoric times and treats it as a foundation for religious ideas that take the sun and zodiac as their point of origin.

The Cross and the Cycle of Resurrection

Tausen applies this astronomical model to Christian symbolism. He describes the darkest days of the year, December 22, 23, and 24, as the sun’s lowest point, a period that people in the north once experienced as death because they did not know whether the sun would rise again. In his reconstruction, the constellation Crux appears clearly around December 22, and the sun remains beneath it for three days before beginning to move north again. The sun cross thus becomes an image of apparent death followed by return: the sun, which Tausen treats as divine, hangs beneath the cross and is then “resurrected.”

He extends the parallel to Jesus Christ and other sun gods. In a further symbolic reading, Jesus’s head, the corona around it, and the cross behind it resemble the sun cross of the zodiac. Tausen interprets Jesus as a giver of life and a figure of light opposing darkness; he also proposes that the crown of thorns corresponds to the shadow cast when sunlight passes through treetops. These are Tausen’s explanations of religious imagery, presented as part of his theory rather than as conclusions independently established by the scene.

Place in the Lecture

The sun cross condenses Tausen’s broader claim that religious narratives repeatedly translate celestial patterns into stories about gods and saviors. He argues that the sun’s life-giving qualities made it a representative of the Creator, and that myths across different religions transformed the sun and the signs of the zodiac into divine figures. The cross matters in this account because it joins astronomical observation to a narrative sequence: darkness, waiting, and renewed light.

The lecture’s reception introduces a counterpoint to its sweeping synthesis. Carl Mørck answers the initial explanation with a dry reduction of the daily cycle to morning, noon, evening, and midnight, and later finds the material strange to absorb. Tausen himself acknowledges that the argument is difficult even for him as a theologian and man of faith, describing the lecture as a concentrated version of a series of talks. Assad’s skepticism, conveyed through his composed expression, leaves the claims suspended between earnest exposition and doubt. The sun cross consequently functions both as the centerpiece of Tausen’s theory and as a measure of how far his astronomical readings ask his listeners to follow him.