I.H.S.

What does it mean?

There are several explanations as to what these letters mean, but what is the true meaning?

Hislop (1) says that these letters are intimately connected with the "unbloody sacrifice" of the mass. "The letters on the wafer are worth reading. These letters are I.H.S. What do these mystical letters mean? To a Christian these letters are represented as signifying, Iesus Hominum Salvator, "Jesus Saviour of Men"? But let a Roman worshipper (for in the age of the emperors there were innumerable worshippers of Isis in Rome) cast his eyes upon them, and how would he read them? He will read them, of course, according to his own well_known system of idolatry: "Isis, Horus and Seb", that is, "The Mother, the Child and the Father of the gods." _ In other words, "The Egyptian Trinity." Can the reader imagine that this double sense is accidental? Surely not. The very same spirit that converted the festival of the Pagan Oannes into the feast of the Christian Joannes, retaining at the same time all its ancient paganism, has skilfully planned the initials, I.H.S. to pay the semblence of a tribute to Christianity, whilst Paganism in reality has all the substance of the homage bestowed upon it".

On the other hand, Garnier says that there would be no particular object in the above, and gives the following possible origin of the letters.

Quoting an ode to the Sun god, (2) "....Egypt worships thee as Isoean Serapis, and Memphis as Osiris. Thou art worshipped by different rites as Mithra, Dis, and the cruel Typhon. Thou art also the beautiful Atys and the fostering son of the bent plough. Thou art the Ammon of the barren Libya, and the Adonis of Biblos. Thus under varied appellations the whole world worships thee. Hail, thou true image of the gods and of thy fathers face, thou whose sacred name, surname and omen, three letters make to agree with the number 608."

"What these letters were, we learn from the author of The Origin and Destiny of Man: "The Sun," he says, "had the mystic surname of Bacchus, I.H.S. This mystic name consists of three letters the numeric value is 608. This number, 608, is one of the cycles."

The meaning of the above seems to be as follows:_ I(iota) stood for Bacchus, called also Iacchus, or for Isiris, the Egyptian form of Osiris or Bacchus. H(eta) stood for Helios the sun; and S(sigma) for Zoro, or Zero, the seed; thus signifying "Bacchus," or "Iacchus," "the son, or incarnation of the Sun." But in using these three letters a double mystification seems to have been introduced. Their actual numerical value is only 218. for I=10, H=8, and S=200; but the B,V & I were interchangeable with the Greek Y(upsilon) and as Y=400, the numerical value of IHS would be 608. The letters I.H.S. , which are here said to represent the mystic surname of Bacchus, appear to have been a sacred symbol in India, from the Cushite Rameses of which country the Egyptians seem to have obtained much of their later idolatry.(4) The symbol has been found on coins of the Maharajah of Cashmere."

Ian Paisley has said that it is a Jesuit symbol and that where it is introduced, Jesuit teaching will surely follow as surely as night follows day.

The Roman wafer bears the initials IHS, I’m not sure if varies and sometimes has a cross instead, as in the past, or if that is and old symbol, which is no longer used. It makes no difference. The cross is the sign of Tammuz, the Babylonian equivalent of Bacchus. Both Tammuz and Bacchus are incarnations of the sun-god. The consecrated wafer is put into a monstrance, which has a sun image. The worshippers bow down before it.

A young Ian Paisley, speaking at the Oxford Union, (Shown a few years ago in a television film) held up a Roman wafer and said “This is the Roman Catholic god.” Father Chiniquy calls the host “le Bon Dieu,” The Good God, and relates the consternation felt, when taking the Bon Dieu to a sick parishioner, it was lost in the snow, and on another occasion it was dropped into a baby’s potty which had not been emptied. (5)

The ‘host’ is credited with many ‘miracles.’ Faverney, a small town, near where we had a house in France, is noted for a ‘celebrated miracle of the holy host (la sainte hostie).’ In 1608, during a fire at the church,a monstrance or ostensory (ostensoir) containing two consecrated hosts, escaped from a fire and remained suspended in the air for 33 hours and astonished the congregation. This played an important role in the catholic counter reformation in Franche-Comté. These “Bon Dieu’s” would have borne the images of Bacchus or Tammuz.

I have read somewhere that the sign IHS was used for words meaning, "Death to heretics." My dictionary also gives “in hac (cruce) salus. – In this (cross) safety.”

In view of the above, should we use these letters in our Church? Is there any valid reason that makes us use initials, which are probably of pagan origin, when nobody actually knows the exact meaning?

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Last Edited 05/05/00

D.S. 1998 Revised 1st May 2000