The Cult of Mithras

Sometime over four thousand years ago there emerged from the depths of southern Russia a wild and war-like race of horsemen whose influence on the subsequent history of mankind was to be out of all proportion to the exiguity of their numbers.

What it was which sparked off the migration from their homeland or, even where the exact location of that home­land was, no one has ever been able to say with any degree of certainty. Only the places where they eventually settled are beyond dispute. They read like a roll of honour of some of the greatest civilisa­tions ever seen as radiating south, west, north and southeast like the spokes of a wheel. The descendants of these Aryan invaders founded the Greek and Roman empires, the Celtic and Teuton tribal systems of northern Europe, the Hindu culture of India and the earliest orga­nised settlement of Iran in the days before the prophet Zoroaster.

They were days about which very little is known, for if records were kept they have since been destroyed and even the birth place of the prophet himself can be gauged no closer than a rather vague location somewhere in east-central Iran, around 660BC — thirty years before he received the series of miraculous visions which were to set him off on the quest for true knowledge. A knowledge which for him was to find fulfilment in the establish­ment of a new order. A dualist religion with Ahura Mazda as supreme god. A religion which held that the powers of good and evil were in perpetual conflict, with man an onlooker, free to support either side as his heart dictated.

Not that the heart of every man dictated that he supported either side. Despite the threats and cajolery of the established church many preferred to stick with the tried and tested nature deities of their Aryan forebears. The result was much as it was a millennium later when the Christian Church gave up trying to eradicate the related Celtic religion, in favour of absorbing it instead. The one difference was that what the Christians called saints the Zoroastrians looked on as yazatas. One of their number was Mithra, a god widely revered amongst Aryan peoples everywhere.

He had first been mentioned in a Hittite document of 1400-1300BC under the name of Miidra, the supreme god of the Mitanni, who were an Aryan tribal group controll­ing mountain areas fringing the north of the Mesopotamian plain. Later he became more widely accepted as the giver of cattle and sons, god of light, divine inspiration of loyalty and faith-keeping. One 'to whom princes pray when they go into battle' according to the Khordah Avesta.

And not only princes. It had been the perseverence of the ordinary people in continuing to worship Mithra in the face of official persecution which had resulted in his newly gained importance to the state religion. For so long, much as the Druids under Roman rule, Mithraic priests had conducted their secret cere­monies in the open, beside natural altars of wood or stone with the aid of fire-worship and a visionary draught prepared from the sacred haoma plant. Now they felt secure enough to emerge once more from the shadows and accept the official recognition of their spirituality which had for so long been denied.

With its star in the ascendant the stage was set for an expansion of Mithraic understanding. Carried by Iranian con­scripts to the forces of the Imperial Empire, knowledge of Mithra reached Rome during the first century BC.

It was more of a secret society than a religion by then and one from which women were excluded. Adherents had no exclusive allegiance demanded of them and were permitted to take part in any other religion they chose. Nevertheless, they were bound by strict vows to reveal nothing of the nature of the mysteries and sacred symbolism with which the cult of Mithras, as he was now known, was surrounded. The precepts, rituals of food and drink, and physical and psychological ordeals which were encountered throughout the various grades of initia­tion were guarded with holy dread.

They made less secret of their belief in the nature of a god they declared to be the creator and orderer of the Universe and the Divine Word incarnate, who had been born into their world to save them from Ahriman, the power of darkness.

In a creed which owed, or lent, much to Christianity 25 December was taken as the day when Mithras was born in a cave and visited by shepherds who had left their flocks to seek him. There followed a life filled with teaching and the perform­ance of miracles before he held a last supper with his disciples and ascended to heaven. He will come again though at the time of reckoning to judge the guilty and lead the chosen through a river of fire to blessed immortality. Those seeking to prepare for this should live a life of devotion and communion with their god through the sacramental means of initia­tion.

Whether or not this latter really included the need for the initiate to stand beneath a grating through which the blood of a freshly slain bull poured down on him is open to question. The depiction of the god killing the cosmic bull is commonly encountered, but this may have been purely for its symbolism rather than its actuality. The sun's gift of fertility to all lifeforms, the transfer of vitality to earth and womb and the transmutation of matter into energy between opposing poles may be what we are expected to see.

Other depictions show Mithras spring­ing fully armed from the broken halves of the cosmic egg as the creative action of the spirit of life, or emerging from the centre of solid rock as the life force seeking to free itself from the shackles which the limitations of existence impose on it.

To the soldiers who made up the bulk of the congregations who prayed to him, Mithras was never so metaphysical, however. In natural or artificial caves known as Mithraeums they worshipped him as an unconquerable warrior riding across the heavens in a chariot drawn by four swift horses. Though the heyday of the cult was undoubtedly during the third and early fourth centuries AD in Britain, at least, the appeal of Mithras seems to have been strictly limited. The size of such places of worship as have been discovered by archaeologists suggest that a dozen worshippers may have been the most ever to gather together at one time. Three temples along Hadrians Wall emphasized the point as well as revealing the infinite variety of the symbols associated with the god. At Housesteads for instance, Mithras was given the title Saecularis and portrayed as Lord of Ages with a design making clever use of rear illumination and the signs of the zodiac. At Rudches­ter the accent was on the sun god who was either companion and advisor to Mithras or his own alter ego depending on the belief of the individual.

At Carrawburgh initiation by ordeal was stressed by the provision of a cist for temporary entombment. This had been superceded by the importance of revela­tion at a later period of use though, for a remarkable altar had been constructed to depict the god as he is described in an Egyptian liturgy at the moment of his manifestation in glory, his sun-ray crown being pierced for illumination from behind.

Later still the Carrawburgh site seems to have been deliberately desecrated and thrown down to be used as a dumping place for refuse and animal manure. This would have undoubtedly been on the instructions of a Christian commandment as the ritual and dogma of Mithraism would have seemed a diabolical mockery of the sacraments of Christian belief.

They were certainly similar enough for suspicions of that nature to flourish and it was a similarity which was to bring about the termination of the cult. For as soon as the Christian Church felt itself strong enough to misuse the power granted it in 313AD by the Edict of Milan, it struck without mercy. The sun god was exting­uished by the Son of God, and the light of the sacred fires of Mithras was seen no more.



To find out more why not read Gardens of the Gods by Brian Taylor, recently given a five star rating by a satisfied reader, and available as a hard back book from Amazon, or its e-book version, Sacred Plants of the World From Neolithic Times Until the Present Day. Available from Amazon Kindle.