“Before the shrine of Jupiter Ammon were suspended tinkling bells, from the sound of whose chiming the priests gathered the auguries; “A golden bell and a pomegranate…round about the hem of the robe”, was the result with the Mosaic Jews. But in the Buddhistic system, during the religious services, the gods of the Deva Loka are always invoked, and invited to descend upon the altars by the ringing of bells suspended in the pagodas. The bell of the sacred table of Siva at Kuhama is described in Kailasa, and every Buddhist vihara and lamasery has its bells.
We thus see that the bells used by Christians come to them directly from the Buddhist Thibetans and Chinese. The beads and rosaries have the same origin and have been used by Buddhist monks for over 2,300 years. The Linghams in the Hindu temples are ornamented upon certain days with large berries, from a tree sacred to Mahadeva, which are strung into rosaries. The title of “nun” is an Egyptian word and had with them the actual meaning; the Christians did not even take the trouble of translating the word Nonna. The aureole of the saints was used by the antediluvian artists of Babylonia, whenever they desired to honor of deify a mortal’s head.
In a celebrated picture in Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon, entitled, “Christna nursed by Devaki, from a highly-finished picture”, the Hindu Virgin is represented as seated on a lounge and nursing Christna. The hair brushed back, the long veil, and the golden aureole around the Virgin’s head, as well as around that of the Hindu Saviour, are striking. No Catholic, well versed as he might be in the mysterious symbolism of iconology, would hesitate for a moment to worship at that shrine the Virgin Mary, the mother of his God! In Indur Subba, the south entrance of the Caves of Ellora, may be seen to this day the figure of Indra’s wife, Indranee, sitting with her infant son-god, pointing the finger to heaven with the same gesture as the Italian Madonna and child.
In Pagan and Christian Symbolism, the author gives a figure from a mediaeval woodcut – the like of which we have seen by dozens in old psalters – in which the Virgin Mary, with her infant, is represented as the Queen of Heaven, on the crescent moon, emblem of virginity. “Being before the sun, she almost eclipses its light. Than this, nothing could more completely identify the Christian mother and child with Isis and Horus, Ishtar, Venus, Juno, and a host of other Pagan goddesses, who have been called ‘Queen of Heaven’, ‘Queen of the Universe’, ‘Mother of God’, ‘Spouse of God’, ‘the Celestial Virgin’, ‘the Heavenly Peace-Maker’, etc.
Such pictures are not purely astronomical. They represent the male god and the female goddess, as the sun and moon in conjunction, “the union of the triad with the unit.” The horns of the cow on the head of Isis have the same significance. And so above, below, outside, and inside, the Christian Church, in the priestly garments, and the religious rites, we recognize the stamp of exoteric heathenism.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 