The story of paganism begins after Noah’s flood with his son Ham and Ham’s grandson Nimrod. The flood came about because the people on earth were continually evil so God killed everyone who didn’t get into Noah’s ark. This left a very strong impression on Noah and his descendants (the Patriarchs) that God wasn’t someone to be messed with and that He should be obeyed and worshipped.
However one generation down the family tree starting with Noah’s son Ham, people started rebelling against God’s laws again and the guy who really got things going was Nimrod. We pick up the story in Gen 10:8-12:
Cush (Ham’s son) begot Nimrod, he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar (Babylon). From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).
The key here is the cities Nimrod built – Babel (eventually the tower that ended up scattering mankind was built here – the centre of Babylon) and Nineveh the capital of Assyria. So two of the greatest Old Testament empires were started by Nimrod.
Initially Nimrod was everyone’s hero. After the flood there was real danger at night of being attacked by wild animals so the man who invented walled cities was very popular. He also was a great hunter which helped his popularity. What is less well known is that he invented warfare, the organising of men into armies, the subjugation of other peoples and he was one of the first kings after the flood. He was the first to carry on war with his neighbours and “Ninus the king of the Assyrians” conquered all nations from Assyria to Lybia, as they were yet unacquainted with the arts of war (Ninus likely to be Nimrod).
Nimrod didn’t like the restrictions of God’s laws and so invented his own gods – the worship of the celestial beings (astrology). He also brought moral depravity back into vogue and mixed it in with his pagan religion making both him and his religion extremely popular (not to mention he and his henchmen subjugated all who got in his way).
He had such an influence that all kings wanted to mimic him and be a hero too. Hence the Egyptian empire’s leader was called Pharaoh (which is ancient Egyptian for “hero”). Leaders the world over learned the trick of mixing themselves into religion to establish their power over the people. Even Caesar made himself out to be a god under Roman convention.
Shem (one of Noah’s other sons) was a God fearer and was most concerned with the depravity of his great nephew Nimrod. Egyptian records say Shem entered into a conspiracy with seventy two of the leading men of Egypt who got Nimrod into their power, put him to death, cut his body into pieces and sent the different parts to many different cities as a warning of what would happen to those who didn’t follow God’s laws. This sent reverberations throughout paganism. Suddenly it had to go underground to survive and so the “mystery religions” were born.
Legend also has it that Nimrod’s widow Semiramis, finding herself without a man or a job was about to lose all her power and position. Something had to be done. People knew the story of Adam and Eve and what God had said about redemption after the fall in Gen 3:14-15:
So the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
People understood that the devil’s bruising of the Seed’s heel meant the devil would kill the coming Saviour and that the Saviour would then somehow get victory over the devil and “bruise his head.”
So needing a kingdom and a throne, Semiramis and her priests concocted a story that Nimrod was the saviour of mankind (after all he had built cities which saved them from wild animals and he had “saved” them from God’s moral laws) and that Shem was the serpent who had bruised his heel. Semiramis then advised that Nimrod wasn’t dead but was now residing as the sun god and by a ray of sunshine he had impregnated her and her son was going to be Nimrod reborn (renamed as Tammuz)! His coming would bring an end to the serpent and all his restrictions and mankind would be free once again. And voila a counterfeit pagan gospel was born thousands of years before Christ.
The people so adored their heros (and given they claimed to be kingly gods anyway), it wasn’t long before legends of the gods were created to retell the stories of these people of old. After the dispersion from the tower of Babel the Semiramis immaculate conception story and associated secret mystery religions were carried across the globe. The “mother and child” started appearing in Egypt with Osiris represented as at once the son and husband of his mother Isis. The goddess and her son appeared in Babylon (Rhea the great goddess “Mother” and her son Tammuz), also in Assyria, India (Isi and Iswara), China (Shing Moo), Asia (Cybele and Deoius), Rome (Fortuna and Jupiter), Greece (Ceres or Irene and Plutus), Thibet, Japan and even South America! Secret societies like the Freemasons trace their beliefs back to the building of the tower of Babel (though they’ll tell you they originate from the building of Solomon’s temple because Babel doesn’t suit their narrative so they keep it a secret). Many secret societies and pagan religions use symbols because they don’t want to be caught out again should God change their language so they’ve adopted symbols which can be universally understood. Likewise across the world every people group recognises the star signs and their names e.g. the lion, the virgin etc (albeit in their own languages) from when they worshipped the stars under Nimrod before the tower of Babel. So now you know where paganism came from and how it spread across the earth, why seemingly disconnected people groups worship the same mother/son god, how they all know the star signs and why symbolism is so important in pagan religions.