Christianity
The Religion of Mithras and Christianity
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 23, 1999;
Wednesday, 13 July 2005
Magian Religions and Dualism
Monotheism can properly mean only one thing—belief in the existence of one supreme god. A supreme god can not be limited by the power of any other supernatural being. Ahuramazda was opposed by Ahriman in the Persian religion. Osiris was opposed by Set in the Egyptian religion. Those who believe their bibles cannot pretend that Yehouah is alone supreme. Yehouah faces his equal, Satan. The Christian expression for the devil, “Prince of Darkness”, used for example by Milton, matches Mithraic as well as Essene use—Mithras was Light and Darkness was Evil. The force of Good necessarily was opposed by a force of Evil in the old religions. In the Patriarchal religions, Zoroaster began it all. Other names for Satan trace him to earlier pastoral gods Pan and Zeus Myiagros, respectively Mephistopheles and Beelzebub, the Protector of Flocks, the Lord of the Flies as the Jews mockingly called him, Baal of the Philistines.
Though Christians now claim to be monotheists, early Christians never doubted the existence or the power of Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Apollo and the other gods of the classical world, but labelled them as fiends. As gods, they could not be killed, but their votaries could be terrorized and butchered, and their homes looted, and their beautiful temples could similarly be looted and destroyed. Augustine writes, De civitate Dei, 4:1:
The false gods, whom [the Pagans] once worshipped openly and even now worship secretly, are the most filthy spirits and devils, so extremely malignant and deceitful that they rejoice in whatever crimes are, whether truly or falsely, imputed to them… so that human weakness… may not be restrained from the perpetration of damnable deeds.
Christians could not be allowed to doubt the existence of the “daimones”, the Pagan gods, because they had to be representatives of Satan, who could not himself appear in any significant role without making the believer doubt the omnipotence of God.
“Daimon” was the word in classical times for a large class of supernatural beings that included powerful Pagan gods and lesser spirits. Using the self same ploy that Zoroaster did in revising the Aryan polytheistic religion, when he defined all the normal gods of the Indo-Europeans, the “Daevas”, as wicked, the Christians called all the Pagan gods, the “Daimones”, wicked agents of Satan. Clever Christians might have seen them as no more than idols made by human hands, but so did intelligent Pagans, who no more thought there was power in the idol than the Christian critics.
Once they had power and opposition was suppressed, the Christian bishops could revert to the beliefs of the Pagans, that the idol was merely a focus for prayer and devotion. Modern Catholics, if not the Protestant schismatics, consider a crucifix as not idolatrous, and the images of saints and the Holy Virgin, also prayed to, are also not idolatrous. Yet, ordinary Christians never ceased to believe that the idols stood for the power of Satan—they still believed in the power of the “Daimones”, but now it was an evil power! The Christians created the word “demon” in its current sense of a little devil.
The Babylonians thought themselves encompassed by swarms of malign demons, under the command of the Seven Evil Gods, who strove to injure men by every means from diseases to hurricanes. These demons would destroy mankind but for the protection that might be won from the more placable gods, especially Marduk, the solar deity, and his purifying agent, fire, which appears also in Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster’s great invention was to divide the whole world, natural and supernatural, by a moral line drawn between Good and Evil.
Another contemporary god of evil, in the luxuriant theology of the Egyptians, was Set (Seth), execrated as the very incarnation of evil and the enemy of mankind after 1570 BC. Osiris was the Egyptian dying and rising god whose death and resurrection at first standing for seasonal change, eventually stood for the raising up from death righteous men could expect. Set murdered Osiris and scattered the portions of his corpse to prevent it from being magically restored, but Isis, sister and wife of Osiris, succeeded through her devotion in having her husband restored to life as a god of the dead! Though this sounds silly, it is no more so than Christian belief. Set was therefore the implacable enemy of the good gods and of mortals hoping for immortality. Set was the Christian Satan, an anti-god whom the Egyptians execrated. Set was loathed as the god of all evil, but was honoured by the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty (1320-1200 BC), two of whom even took the theophoric name Seti (Sethos).
Every human being must now take sides between odious Patriarchal religions fighting for the world. Those who are not for the Good Spirit must be for the Evil one, but no one knows which is which, or whether the Evil Sprit has taken over the contenders while the Good spirit tears out his hair in desperation. No polytheist was ever sure of the favour of any god or of the limits of his power. One god might be favoured by a devotee, but they knew that there were other gods who also had power, and the outcome was not certainly with their own god. But when there is only one true God, every man is certain his is it, and he is ready then to commit any atrocity in his god’s name.
Astronomical and Cosmological Interpretation
The imagery of the tauroctony is ancient. Only in the period from around 4000 BC to 2000 BC did the sun rise at the vernal equinox in the constellation Taurus. As the sun rose, the bull disappeared in the dawn glow—the bull had been slain. The symbols found in the tauroctony—Taurus, Canis, Hydra (a serpent), Corvus and Scorpio—were constellations along the celestial equator at the end of the Taurus era, about 2000 BC. The bull is Taurus, the dog is Canis Minor, the snake is Hydra, the raven is Corvus and the scorpion is Scorpio. Scorpio was the equinoctial constellation of the autumn, the onset of winter. The ears of wheat grain issuing from the tail of the bull shows the time is the spring equinox. As the rising sun illuminated the night sky, these constellations along the horizon faded away. First to go was the bull of Taurus because the sun was rising in that constellation. Sometimes a lion and a cup were added to the tauroctony, apparently symbols of the constellations Leo and Aquarius, which were the constellations in conjunction with the sun at the solstices in the age of Taurus.
This epoch was when the astronomer priests of Akkadia were making the first accurate astronomical observations and describing the celestial patterns which later spread everywhere as the zodiac. They divided the year according to the celestial sign of the rising sun but the sun does not forever rise in the same place each month. The plane of the equinoxes slowly rotates backwards at a rate of one constellation every 2148 years and the entire zodiac every 25,776 years.
The fixed association of the months with zodiacal signs is that of the age of Taurus because 21 March is still deemed the beginning of the month of Taurus. In fact, today the spring equinox is in the constellation of Pisces. Formerly it was in Aries and in a hundred years time we shall have entered the age of Aquarius, but Taurus remains the sign associated with the spring equinox not Aquarius. In other words once the association of signs and months was made, it remained fixed, even though eventually the astronomers realized the heavens were slowly rotating as the equinoxes precessed. This is the origin and nature of Mithras the cosmic bull-slayer—an aspect of the sun god—the equinoctial sun rising in Taurus.
Now the sun is normally shown separately from Mithras in the pictures of the Mithraic legend that we have. How can that be if Mithras was the sun god himself? Inscriptions confirm he is “Sol Invictus”, the “Unconquered Sun.” The Mithraists apparently considered Mithras, the unconquered sun, as a sun beyond the sun—a supermundane or spiritual sun beyond the sphere of the fixed stars. What they had done is transfer the attributes of Ahuramazda, the Zoroastrian transcendental god who wore the “massy heavens” as his cloak, to Mithras, who was therefore not simply the sun at all but the power behind the cosmos. From the time when the sun was identified with the equinoctial bull to the time of the rise of Mithras in the Roman Empire, over 2000 years had passed, long enough for an astronomic religion to evolve into a spiritual one, but the seeds of the idea go back to Zoroaster and the Aryan origins of Mithraism.
The Aryans who went on into India took twin sun gods with them, Varuna and Mitra. Neither was the sun itself, Surya, which manifested itself in twelve different forms, plainly corresponding to the zodiac. The Persian holy book, the Zend Avesta, had an equivalent pair, Mitra (or Mithras) and Ahura. The word “ahura” is related to the name of the Assyrian sun god Assur and the Indian word “asura” which is cognate with Surya, the sun. Mitra is from the Persian word, “mihr”, meaning sun. Thus the Iranians had a pair of sun gods, Ahura and Mithras, just like their brothers in India.
Different Persian sects chose one or other of the sun gods as the main one. Zoroaster, who sought to promote monotheism, and the Persian Achaemenian kings favoured Ahura, calling him Mazda, the Illustrious or Wise Sun. He was always a spiritual sun, pictured as a benign bearded man (usually having the features of the current king) in sculpture merely as an artistic convention just as the transcendental Hebrew god is. He was served by “bounteous immortals”, one of whom was Mithras. As a sun god, Mithras saw all things. The Avestan Yasht dedicated to him describes him as having a thousand ears, ten thousand eyes, and as never sleeping.
Mithras was thus retained in the Persian religion, apparently contrary to Zoroaster’s intentions, as the face of God—the visible manifestation of an invisible and distant god. He it was who stood for the Good Spirit against the bad one, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, the Persian Satan. Later Mithras, who many must have found hard to distinguish from Ahuramazda, took the characteristics of the supreme god. In a hymn to Mithras in the Avesta, Ahuramazda tells the prophet Zarathustra that when he created Mithras: “I made him as worthy of worship as myself.” This accolade is given to no other Amesha Spenta. Something happened akin to the deification of Jesus in Christianity. Jesus was identified with the archangel Michael, who was the face and power of God. Soon Jesus became God! Mithras became God, too.
Furthermore, in Persian cosmology the sun and moon were located beyond the stars. Zoroaster, whose name can be read as sun-star, taught that the sun was situated above the fixed stars. So, the origin of the key ideas of Mithraism, a sun god and a spiritual sun god who dwelt beyond the stars, was Iranian.
The Greeks themselves never favoured Mithras worship because it came from the religion of their traditional enemies, the Persians. But Persian influence went into Greece by other routes. Greeks philosophers, if not Greek peasants, were never so bigoted that they thought there might not be anything to learn from their enemies. Plato was influenced by Persian religion and thought, just after the time when the Persians had been the greatest threat. He calls “Divine Goodness” Oromasdes, the Greek form of the name of the Persian god. Platonists took Persian beliefs and expressed them more clearly, and it seems most likely that when Mithras was adopted by the Romans a newer Platonic philosophy, rooted in Zoroastrian ideas, was welded on to the ancient god. Mithraists took back into their religion Platonic ideas through the neo-Platonists. The Christians did the same while decrying Pagan practice.
Porphyry (c 232-c 305 AD) says Mithraists were initiated into the mystery of the descent of souls and their subsequent ascent. The descent of the soul was from a spiritual “heaven” into the material universe whence it was to ascend again back to the spiritual sphere. Since the universe was thought of as a gigantic egg, the inside of it was thought of as a cave. Zoroaster lived seven years on a mountain in a cave decorated as the cosmos. We live in a vast cave, the sky being its roof. So, the soul enters the universe in a cave, lives a mortal life, then must ascend at death once more to the outside world. In Plato’s Republic the sun is the source of all illumination and understanding, in the visible world, while the Good is the supreme source of being and understanding in the world of the forms, the intelligible world. Plato also symbolizes the world as a cave. The cave dwellers have to ascend to the world beyond the cave to receive the rays of the sun. The ascent from the cave is an allegory of the ascent of the immortal soul. Either Plato expanded on a Zoroastrian myth, or the ideas of Plato were adopted into Mithraism, according to Porphyry.
Hellenistic people believed that after death the human soul ascended through the seven heavenly spheres to an afterlife in the pure and eternal world of the stars. It was a dangerous journey, requiring passwords to be given at each level of the journey, and people were buried with small gold medallions inscribed with the words. Plato, in Phaedrus, describes explicitly the ascent of the soul to the realm outside of the cosmos (“upon the back of the world”), effectively heaven or paradise. Here dwells “True Being” which reason alone can perceive, and “Good” is the power. The supermundane sun, the Good or the True Being which reigned over this transcendental region was seen by the Mithraists as Mithras. Thus his appeal was as the god who helped and protected the soul in reaching the highest heaven, beyond the dome of the stars.
About the time of Jesus, Philo wrote of God as the “intelligible sun” or hypercosmic star. Later the Neoplatonist, Plotinus, told the same story, that the sun in the divine realm is Intellect which sustains soul—if Intellect dies, soul dies. Later still the Neoplatonist Emperor Julian wrote in Hymn to Helios that the sun moved in the starless heaven beyond the fixed stars. For almost a millennium the idea of a second sun beyond the cosmos was a constant of Classical thought. Platonists like Numenius, Cronius, and Celsus were Mithraists, so it is inconceivable that Platonist ideas did not influence Mithraism where we also find two suns, Helios, the god of the physical sun, and Mithras, unconquerable sun beyond the stars.
If Mithras was seen as a spiritual sun, a god of the whole cosmos, then he must have been understood in a transcendental sense as outside of the cosmos. This explains the Mithraic motif of the birth of Mithras from a rock. Mithras emerges from the top of a round rock, which is usually shown Orphic style with a snake around it. The Orphics also had an idea of a spiritual sun. Indeed Mithras is sometimes shown being born from a cosmic egg, just as Phanes is born of the cosmic egg in Orphic representations. The Mithraic cave and the Orphic cosmic egg both were the cosmos. In the rock-birth scenes Mithras is almost always shown holding a torch, the symbol of a sun. Franz Cumont, the scholar disparaged by Christians for revealing our knowledge of Mithraism, described much of this solar theology in 1909.
So Mithras, the Bull Slayer, evolved into a spiritual god of the whole cosmos and was depicted, like Atlas, supporting the cosmic sphere, depicted with the constellations reversed, because they were seen from the other side! The statue of Atlas Farnese similarly depicts the cosmic globe, bearing the constellations as they would appear from outside the universe.
Mithras was the power behind the sun who delivered it from darkness and made it do its daily and seasonal duties without fail—it was unconquerable. Many votive inscriptions in Latin are “To Mithras, the Invincible Sun”, while as many others are “To Mithras and the Invincible Sun”, “Soli Invicto Mithrae” as opposed to “Soli Invicto et Mithrae.” In sculpture representing the tauroctony, the side panels, if they include Helios, sometimes show him clasping the hand of Mithras in friendship and sometimes as kneeling humbly before his master. The myth might originally have been that the pair were partners in defeating the forces of darkness, but then Mithras assumed the power of Ahuramazda and became the master of Helios. Another version makes Mithras defeat the jealous sun god in a wrestling match after which they become inseparable friends. This might be a version from Babylon in which Mithras is Marduk and the sun god is Shamash, the myth showing why the old god was subordinate to the new one.
After their victory, the two celestial companions and their assistants shared the sacred repast, and faithful Mithraists imitated it in their holy suppers, which were a pledge of their comradeship and reciprocal affection in their common struggle against the evils of the world. The tradition was that Mithras and his companions drank wine at the Last Supper, when they celebrated the completion of his work of salvation. Mithraic votaries celebrated that Last Supper, wine being the soteric blood.
David Ulansey has expressed the latest cosmic interpretations of this most clearly (The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, 1989), noting that over Taurus (ie to the north) there is Perseus, a constellation identified with a Phrygian capped man as early as the fifth century BC. Here then, in the heavens, is the source of the central Mithraic image. By then Cyrus had conquered Phrygia, and Phrygian warriors must, to the Greeks, have been identified with the Persians, whence his name Perseus.
Even so, for Ulansey, Mithras has nothing to do with the Persians. The Mithraic religion only happened after the Greeks became aware of the precession of the equinoxes with Hipparchus in 128 BC, or thereabouts. Christians are fond of rejecting the argument from silence when it is used against them but in their utter dishonesty use it like tricksters when it suits them. The historians are stating what is undoubtedly known—Hipparchus (d 120 BC) described the precession of the equinoxes, but his own work is lost and we know this from a second century work by the astronomer Ptolemy (d 168 AD) called the Almagest. Moreover, why should a religion newly founded at the end of the Age of Aries, the Ram, focus on a bull and the very constellations that were along the plain of the ecliptic in the age of the bull, 2000 years before?
Hipparchus used Babylonian observations, and some evidence suggests that Babylonian astronomers already knew of the precession. Indeed, it is almost impossible to imagine they did not. The orientation of the celestial equator already, in 500 BC was well out of synchronization with the Zodiac. Are we to believe that the world’s most advanced astronomers at the time simply had not noticed?
Every year after about 700 BC, Babylonian astronomers published ephemerides they called “astronomical calendars” for all the visible heavenly bodies. From 380 BC, the Babylonians had a calendar with a nineteen year cycle to give agreement between the solar and lunar years. This will be the same as the Jewish calendar which has a nineteen year cycle with seven intercalated 30 day months, the Babylonian calendar being introduced into Yehud by the Persians when it was introduced in Babylon. Nabu-rumanni (Naburianos), an astronomer at the time of Darius, published his calculations of lunar eclipses about 500 BC that were more accurate than later ones of Ptolemy or even Copernicus.
Yet, precession has an effect observable by astronomers in the long-term even by the naked eye. The earth’s axis projected on to the celestial sphere defines astronomical north. If there is a star there, it is the pole star—our Polaris. But precession moves the projection of north in a circle, and other stars on the circle successively replace Polaris as the pole star. The Pole star in 15,000 BC was Delta-Cygnus. About 2000 BC, at the end of the Age of Taurus, the pole star was in the constellation Draco. Are we to suppose the Babylonian astronomers had not noticed this movement? Moreover, precession moves the rising point of the stars around the celestial equator, so that the southern cross at one time was visible from the Mediterranean, as M Hoskin has shown from studies on the Mediterranean islands (Tombs, Temples and their Orientations, 2001), but fell from view below the horizon from about 1700 BC. Astronomers whose livelihood, indeed lives, depended on their accuracy of prediction, we are to suppose, had not noticed such wonders, or speculated about their meaning.
Babylonian astronomers collected astronomical data on argilla tablets for many centuries with an accuracy more precise than one minute of arc, suggesting that they were using instruments, such accuracy being unlikely by naked eye observations. The Mul-apin, written around 1000 BC, contains astronomical data back to 2048 BC. It contains (Giulio Magli):
- A list of 71 celestial objects (constellations, single stars and the five planets) divided in three “courses” (Enlil, Anu and Ea)
- A list of heliacal rising of many stars
- A list of simultaneous rising/settings of pairs of stars
- A list of time delays between the rising of the same stars
- A list of simultaneous transit/rising of other pairs of stars.
Such data must have revealed precession. Kidinnu, an astronomer in the fourth century BC, two centuries before Hipparchus, had most likely already discovered the precession of the equinoxes and calculated the length of the year accurate to 7 minutes 16 seconds. The Babylonians had made the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes not later than Persian times, and the Persians were familiar with transcendental gods. The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes gave authority to the Persian view of the universal god as a sun beyond the sun—a god beyond the heavens that moved the heavens themselves! This became the basis of Platonic philosophy and the beliefs of the Mithraists. Hipparchus was passing on what he learnt from the extensive Babylonian archives preserved in the Alexandrine library.
The discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, a fabulous mechanical device for predicting the movement of the planets and eclipses, in a Roman shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera, dating from around 150 BC, rather shows that the Greeks had obtained data of considerable sophistication from the Babylonians by the time of Hipparchus. The construction of the mechanism takes into account the elliptical nature of the Earth orbiting the sun. In this YouTube video, Michael Wright of Imperial College, London University, demonstrates his reconstruction of the mechanism. The little computer needed a huge amount of knowledge and skill to construct. Bob Yirka wrote at PhysOrg.com:
It is clear that early civilizations came to know and understand much more about the world around them than modern society has given them credit for and as our own understanding of the sciences grows, we come to see that it is quite possible that a lot of the things we take for granted as inventions of the modern era, are simply recreations of work done by our forebears.
The Christian error is to think that some phenomenon was only discovered when it was described. Apologists cite the historians of science who agree Hipparchus discovered the precession of the equinoxes only in the second century BC, and Greek philosophers knew nothing of it—but it was a secret that might have been kept quiet deliberately by the Chaldaeans. Eventually through the Seleucid Greek empire, it emerged and Hipparchus explained it in detail. Ugo de Santillana and Ertha Von Dechend (Hamlet’s Mill) are sure ancient astronomers discovered precessional astronomical effects before Hipparchus, and, though an astrological secret, it is recorded in myths. But myths are not accepted as scientific evidence, and so Giulio Magli sought historical proof of it, reporting in 2004 on such phenomena as historical shifts in the declination of the heliacal rising of bright stars. He could not find the definitive evidence he wanted but concluded that the circumstantial evidence is compelling.
Mithraic Practice and Christianity
The cave of the Tauroctony was the material world into which the soul had to descend to be purified before it could return to the solar realm of light and spirit. Initiates of the Mysteries of Mithras had to be ritually pure and were purified by baptism, as we are told by Tertullian, a third century Christian from North Africa, but they were obliged to undergo a series of eighty trials of increasing difficulty. The initiate, Dr O Seyffert, notes, had to remain unconquered—undaunted and unfazed by the tasks, which involved water, fire, hunger, thirst, scourging and solitude. The mystae descended seven steps into the grotto to begin initiation.
There were seven levels of initiation, one for each of the seven planets and each with its symbol, the highest level being that of the Father, Pater—though some say there were five more above the seventh making twelve in all, more befitting a solar cult, the ultimate one being called the King of Kings (Persian, Shahanshah), the level supposed to have been held only by the Persian king. From the lowest these grades were Corax (symbol—a raven, planet—Mercury), Nymphus (a male bride, Venus), Miles the first grade of full membership (a soldier, Mars), Leo (a lion, Jupiter), Perses (a Persian, Luna, the moon), Heliodromus (a charioteer of the sun, Sol, the sun), meaning a servant of Mithras, and finally Pater (a father, Saturn), the head of the grotto, and reminiscent of the honour the Zoroastrians paid to the head of the family and Ahuramazda, perhaps. Quite unlike Christianity, members of the cult of Mithras were not stopped from being members of other cults.
The first level, Corax, might have been represented by a carrion bird because the Zoroastrian dead were left in the Towers of Silence to be picked by birds, and so the crow was the bird of death. It meant that the Mithraist symbolically died when he became a first grade neophyte and was born again as a crow. The crow ate human flesh and so outlived the human. It was, so to speak, a human revivified. In this sense, the first grade of membership stood for a “born again” experience, as Christians are fond of calling it. They died as imperfect humans and were reborn as Mithraists.
At the level of initiation called Miles or soldier, the mystae of Mithras were symbolically branded, the pater making the sign with water upon their foreheads to redeem their sins and to mark them as soldiers of Mithras ready to “fight the Good Fight.” Tertullian complains that the Devil was imitating the Christians’ “divine mysteries” because initiates of the Mithraic religion were baptised in this way, and we can be sure the sign made was that of the cross. The mythological justification was Zoroastrian, that good creation was in warfare with evil creation, and these soldiers were soldiers of the good creation. Christians use the expressions “soldiers of Christ” and “put on the armour of light”, somewhat inappropriate metaphors for a religion of love, one might think, but entirely appropriate to their Mithraic origins.
Tertullian, whose father was probably a Mithraist, says a crown was placed before the aspiring Miles, hanging from the point of a sword. This he took and placed it aside with the words, “Mithras alone is my crown”. Not only does this ritual evoke the temptation of Jesus, but the crown spoken of was plainly the solar halo, and the sword a cross! Crowns derived from a golden sun-disc with a hole in the centre for the head, the Christian halo! The Persian crown was a fillet of gold, possibly the ring being handed to the king by many images of ANE gods, representing the contract or covenant made by the god with the king as his viceroy on earth. Then the edges were cut into points for the sun's rays making the crown known in heraldry as the oriental crown. The mystes now had to prove himself. He was pursued by all sorts of terrors such as “wild beasts”“demons” and so on—members in animal skins or costume—that he had to engage in a mock combat. The Roman emperor, Commodus, was so enthusiatic at this stage of his initiation, instead of play-acting, he killed one of the actors.
Above the rank of Leo votaries were called “participants” because they participated in this sacred meal. Below the rank of Leo, Mithraists were called “servants” and served the higher levels—the similarity with Essenism is striking. Participants committed their everlasting loyalty to the saviour god, Mithras, in his fight against evil. Plutarch tells us that their reward was to be returned to life in the restored world at the eschaton. Mithraists had their Lord’s Supper, apparently a celebration of the meal that Mithras had with the sun deity, which had eschatological significance. It therefore stands for a heavenly meal, and it is depicted in some Mithraea, so was considered important. It seems like the messianic meal of the Essenes, symbolic of the righteous entering heaven.
Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, says the arrangement of the grottos, with benches on either side of a table, was because the Mithraic central ritual was a sacred meal of bread and water, that he himself compared to the Christian Eucharist. He complained that Satan had copied the Christian Eucharist because the adherents of Mithras also partook of consecrated bread and water symbolic of the incarnate god’s body. The bread consisted of small round cakes—each marked with a cross! The bread was placed on a drum and the candidate ate one mouthful.
I have eaten from the drum and drunk from the cymbal, and I have learned the secret of religion.
This is the cryptic phrase which an early Christian writer, Firmicus Maternus, reports as being taught to Mithraists “by a demon”.
The effect of initiation was to produce people of upright character, as Roman writers amply show. Mithraists were considered as completely trustworthy. Tertullian could reproach Christians, in his De Corona, which he composed in the third Christian century, inviting them to see Mithraists as examples:
You, his fellow-warriors, should blush when exposed by any soldier of Mithras. When he is enrolled in the cave, he is offered the crown, which he spurns. And he takes his oath upon this moment, and is to be believed. Through the fidelity of his servants the devil puts us to shame.
Mithraic language and symbolism are widespread in the New Testament. “The Dayspring from on High”, “the Light”, and the “Sun of Righteousness” are all Mithraic (or Essene) expressions used of Jesus. Mithras was born out of a rock—Theos ek Petros—and Christian imagery shows the stable, in which Jesus was born, as a cave. (The newly born Mithras was adored by shepherds who brought him gifts.) It was not originally oppression that led the early Christians to use catacombs for worship but simply a desire to copy the practice of the worshippers of Mithras. They decorated their catacombs with paintings, one of the most popular ones being of Moses striking the rock. Mithras, also struck a rock but with an arrow to produce water for his followers to drink! The most popular picture of all however was Christ as the Good Shepherd. Mithras too was the Good Shepherd.
The Cilicians introduced Mithraism to Rome. The chief city of the Cilicians and one of the main centres of Mithraism was Tarsus, home of S Paul. What Paul writes:
And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ,1 Cor 10:4
mutatis mutandis is entirely appropriate to a Mithraic initiation, and indeed, “Moses” is the biblical rendering of the Persian High God, Ahuramazda, the Lord Mazda. Paul is leaning noticeably toward the Mithraic idea of the God from the Rock, and so does Jesus when, referring to Peter, he says:
Upon this rock I will build my church.Mt 16:18
Both Mithraism and Christianity introduced symbolic sacrifice—Mithraists by depicting the sacrifice of the bull prominently in their churches and Christians by images of the crucifixion of Jesus and the symbolic drinking of his blood in the communion. The shedding of animal blood was originally a substitute for the shedding of human blood. The bull is interchangeable with a ram—the Ram in the Persian Zodiac is a lamb. So Mithras can also be sacrificed as a lamb just as Jesus is the Paschal Lamb. Remember Mithras is also the seven spirits of goodness just as the Book of Revelation has a slain lamb with seven horns and seven eyes representing the “seven spirits of God”—pure Zoroastrianism! Easter when the Paschal Lamb was eaten was a Mithraic festival. In the seventh century the church tried to suppress pictures of Jesus as a lamb precisely because of its Pagan associations.
The Church took most of its features from Pagan mystery religions—vestments, pomp, ritual, mitre, wafer. When Western fundamentalist Christians try to argue that the Church took nothing from the mystery religions, they are not only arguing against skeptics and atheists, they are arguing also against the millions of protestant Christians whose protest was precisely that the Roman Church had adopted Pagan, largely Mithraic, practices.
The Vatican Hill in Rome considered sacred to Peter was previously sacred to Mithras. The cave of the Vatican was a Mithraeum until December 25, 376 AD, the birthday of the sun god, when a city prefect suppressed Mithraism and seized the grotto in the name of Christ. Mithraic artefacts found in the Vatican Grotto were taken over by the Church.
The head of the Mithraic faith was the Pater Patrum, the “Father of Fathers”, who sat in the Vatican cave. The Mithraic Holy father wore a red cap and garment, and a ring, and carried a shepherd’s staff. The head of the Christian faith, the bishop of Rome, adopted the same title and dressed himself in the same manner, becoming the “Papa” or “Father”—the Pope—who subsequently sat literally in the same seat in Rome as the Pater Patrum! The throne of St Peter at Rome is older than the Church. From the carved motifs decorating it, it was Mithraic.
All Christian priests, like Mithraic priests, became “Father”, despite an editor of Matthew specifically repudiating this and several other rival religious habits on Jesus’s behalf:
But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.Mt 23:8-10
The Magi, priests of Zoroaster, wore robes displaying the sword of Mithras. Identical robes are worn by Christian priests to this day. Why is the Pope’s crown called a tiara, a Persian headdress? Why do Christian bishops wear a divided tiara called a mitre? Did they adopt the habit from Mithras’s priests who wore a “mitra” (Greek) to signify their office and the duality of the world. Mithraists commemorated the ascension of Mithras by eating a “mizd”, a sun-shaped bun embossed with the sword (cross) of the god. This “hot cross bun” as the “mass ”was adapted to Christianity and eventually degenerated to the communion wafer, though it is still the same design, in Catholic churches at least.
In the fourth century, Constantine effectively merged Mithraism with Christianity and the other solar cults of the Empire under the control of the Christian bishops. Roman Emperors from Julius Caesar to Gratian had been “pontifex maximus”, high priest of the Roman gods. When Theodosius refused the title as incompatible with his status as a Christian, the Christian bishop of Rome had no such qualms about taking the title. Patriarchal Pagan purists as well as worshippers of Isis defied official syncretism for a few hundred more years but after the beginning of the fifth century, the bishops were confident enough to purge Pagan religions. Paganism survived precariously for a while but illegally.
Holy Days
The Christian Bible has no calendar of holy days and at first Christianity had no festivals, holy days or Sabbaths. When the Saviour might arrive on a cloud at any moment, one has little interest in constructing calendars. To gentile Christians all days were the Lord’s day so there was no basis for separating out just some of them. As hopes of an early return faded, the traditional festivals of Passover and Pentecost, the latter from the Essenes’ Festival of the Renewal of the Covenant, were remembered as commemorating the crucifixion and the events of Acts. But, once Christianity became a state institution, principles gave way totally to pragmatism and holy days were introduced to front Pagan festivals which people had become accustomed to celebrating and which could not easily be suppressed.
The great festivals at Easter in honour of Attis and other gods were popular and had to be given a Christian raison d’etre. The church was quite open about this as a letter of Pope Gregory in 601 AD shows, but it might come as a shock to many Christians to know that Christmas, Easter, the Assumption, the feast of John the Baptist, the feast of S George and the fast of Lent are all Pagan.
Mithras was associated with festivals at the equinoxes, whence the figures of the torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopates, possibly Iranian names. They are Mithras writ small. They stand for the waxing and the waning sun, Mithras being the sun at its annual zenith. The main festival however changed during the Persian empire, when the Persians chose to adopt the Babylonian New Year. So, although it began as an autumn festival, it later became a spring one.
In his Errors of the Profane Religions, Firmicus Maternus, the Christian Father, ridicules Mithraists for doing what Christians do, saying that, in March…
…on a certain night an image is laid upon a bier, and it is mourned with solemn chants. When they are sated with this fictitious lamentation, a light is brought in. Then the mouths of all the mourners are anointed by a priest, who murmurs slowly: “Rejoice, followers of the saved god, because there is for you, a relief from your grief.”
More clearly he writes:
Thou dost bury an image, thou dost mourn an image, thou dost bring forth an image from the grave, and, wretched man, when thou hast done this, thou dost rejoice… Thou dost arrange the members of the recumbent stone… So the devil also has his Christs.
The Christian Sabbath is also Pagan. The Babylonians adopted a seven day week based on the cycles of the moon and directed that certain types of work should not occur on certain days called Sabbaths. The seven days of the week were early identified with the seven known planets beginning with the sun. The first day was therefore dedicated to the sun and the last day to Saturn. But the god Saturn was considered unlucky so no work was risked on his day. The people commissioned by Cyrus to leave Babylonia and set up a temple to Yehouah adopted the Babylonian habit of not working on a Saturday. The story of the Jewish Sabbath, the day when God in the creation myth rested from his labours, was devised to offer an explanation for the custom they had adopted.
Subsequently, the Jews imposed such a strict interpretation on the day of rest that a man could be executed for lighting a fire on the Sabbath and the scriptures record that, in the myth of Moses, a man was indeed executed merely for gathering fire wood on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36). It was, of course, an exemplary tale written after the Persian colonization.
Early Christians believed that Jesus had repealed laws on the Sabbath and did not include observance of it in his ordinances. Even Paul attacked the Galatians for observing a special day as holy and he repeated his view in his letter to the Colossians. In the second century Irenaeus confirmed that Jesus had cancelled observance of a Sabbath. Tertullian added in the third century that Sabbaths were unknown to Christians. The church fathers, Victorinus, Justin, Clement, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Cyril, Jerome and others were all emphatic that Christians knew no Sabbath!
The Lord’s day was Sunday, for obvious reasons but not Christian ones. There was a whole tradition in the Roman world of having Sunday as a sacred holiday and the early gentile Christians found it convenient to match it. Obviously Sunday was a special holy day for sun worshippers which included the worshippers of Mithras. Mithras was called “Dominus”, the Lord, and his sacred day was Sunday. So Sunday was the “Lord’s day” long before the Christians took it as their sacred day. Because of the remnants of Nazarene tradition associating Jesus with the sun, justified by Malachi, and backed up by the tradition that Jesus had risen from the dead on a Sunday, it became customary even in the first century for Christians to meet on a Sunday. For Christians Sunday also became the Lord’s Day. Irenaeus and Tertullian both thought the Lord’s Day should be a day of rest but plainly there was no adoption of any strict observance of it, though it was regarded as a special day.
In 321 AD, Constantine, still not officially a Christian, ordered that the “venerable day of the Sun” should be a compulsory day of rest. And so it became, gradually taking on a stricter religious purity so that, despite the protestations of Luther that people should dance and feast on that day, the puritans took it over and turned it into a day to rival that of the Mosaic Law of the post-exilic Jewish priesthood!
Mithraism eventually died out after its suppression by the Christians in 376-377 AD. By then its doctrines and ceremonies had been absorbed into Christianity so it had little basis for an independent existence. The two religions had almost everything in common:
- a divine Lord who offered men salvation;
- a sacramental meal;
- baptism;
- the idea of the believers being crusaders against evil;
- an ultimate judgement of the soul;
- ideas of Heaven and Hell;
- a high moral code.
Ernest Renan, a Catholic scholar who wrote a famous Life of Jesus, believed that if it were not for Christianity we should all today be worshippers of Mithras. Augustine of Hippo, S Augustine, admits the two religions had effectively merged when he claimed that the priests of Mithras worshipped the same God he did. Mithras was Jesus. One reason for the loss of importance of the cult undoubtedly is that admission was restricted only to those who were thought worthy. Christianity was open to crooks and lowlife too. Scholars are agreed that the purely ritualistic side of Christianity owes much to those of the sun-god of the Persians. Other reasons for the success of Christianity were its overwhelmingly syncretic nature, the admission of women, the expropriation of the Jewish Scriptures, and the claim that the Christian incarnate god was a historic figure.
Christian Arguments
Most Christians dismiss the worship of Attis and of Mithras as of no general importance in the empire until later than the New Testament time, not until the second and third centuries in the case of Mithras worship. Edwin Yamauchi, a Christian archaeologist and polemicist, says:
Those who seek to adduce Mithra as a prototype of the risen Christ ignore the late date for the expansion of Mithraism to the west… [Most] dated Mithraic inscriptions and monuments belong to the second century (after 140 AD ), the third, and the fourth century AD.
Never trust a Christian. The earliest remains of a church building, at Dura-Europos, date from 230 AD, and nothing else is found until the end of the third century, yet there are many earlier Mithraea. Plainly, the worship of Mithras was well ahead of the worship of Jesus. In any case there is the dated pre-Christian Mithraic inscription of Antiochus I of Commagene (see previous article) in eastern Asia Minor. Mithras shakes hands with the king, he wears the Phrygian cap, the Persian trousers, and a cape. His hat is star speckled, and rays of light emerge from his head like a halo. His torq is a serpent. This is the image of the Roman Mithras in a scene taking place 100 years before the crucifixion.
There were worshippers of Mithras in Rome in Pompey’s time (67 BC). There is a first century inscription contemporary with the earliest Christians from Cappadocia and one from Phrygia dated to 77-78 AD. Sanctuaries to Mithras existed in Rome and Ostia in the first century. Another inscription in Rome dates to Trajan’s reign (98-117 AD), and the Christian Father, Justin Martyr, mentions Mithraism in about 140 AD. Despite this Christians say the real diffusion of Mithraism only begins at the end of the first century.
Christians are more defensive about Mithras than perhaps any other pre-Christian Roman god. The two religions had so much in common it can hardly be denied, although Christians will try to deny it as a first shot. Their second shot is that the followers of Mithras copied the Christians! Christians feel obliged to take silly positions on these issues because they seek to defend Christianity as a revealed religion, not one which evolved in a certain milieu and therefore has common features with contemporary religions. So, no religious practices that seem in any way to be like any Christian ones could have been original—they must have been taken from Christianity!
Their third shot is even more tenuous. Critical scholars were Christians, and tended to interpret one cult by another, including Christianity. They aimed to construct a general “mystery theology” or common “mystery religion.” Starting with the Christian ideas they already had in their heads, they interpreted the mystery religions and found Christian ideas in the mysteries, having unconsciously put them there when they were not really! As we saw, S Augustine admitted that the priests of Mithras and he both worshipped the same abstraction. Even Christian saints therefore were subject to this methodological carelessness. They too were projecting Christian ideas! Oh, and their claim that the similarities came from demonic imitation of Christian rites was made only so that the Church Fathers could make apologetic capital out of the analogy! It is all Christian obfuscation necessitated by their absurd beliefs. They have muddied the waters of history for far too long.
The latest hypothesis—if it merits such an honourable title—of Christian apologists is that Roman Mithraism was “a new creation using old Iranian names” to give an exotic coloring to a new mystery cult. Such things happened, but not quite in this unashamedly commercial way. Religions evolved, notably when they crossed cultural boundaries, just as Christianity rapidly changed, when it entered the Roman sphere, from being a Jewish sect to being a new eastern mystery cult. The changes were not entirely uncommercial in Christianity, and doubtless the same was true of Mithraism, but the continuity is undeniable.
When it comes to specifics, Christians are as deceitful and two faced as ever. They are utterly unable to deny that 25 December was the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, the Roman name of Mithras. What they say is that it does not matter! Suddenly all Christians become fundamentalists because the New Testament does not say when Jesus was born. The church decided Jesus was born on 25 December precisely because it was already the highly popular birthday of Mithras, and a national holiday. What it was was the midwinter solstice, a solar festival, and therefore associated with a solar god. The reason the Christian bishops were happy to accept this as a Christian festival was because Christianity was seen by everyone as a solar religion—even by the Christian bishops.
Jesus had his twelve companions and sometimes Mithras is said also to have had twelve companions. There is nothing in the extant myths we have of Mithras to confirm this, but twelve in the context of a solar god can only represent the constellations of the Zodiac. What we do know is that Mithras was an aspect or yazata of the God of Heaven, Ahuramazda, and “The Ahura” originally was the Indo-European god, Varuna. Zoroaster spoke of Ahuramazda as a personal friend, and Mithras has the title, “The Friend”. Mithras and Varuna are both sun gods, Mithras being the bright sun and Varuna the dark sun, the winter or night-time sun. In Indian mythology they were included among twelve sun gods, the Adityas. Four or sometimes six constellations are illustrated in the Mithraic Tauroctony, though they are not all in the Zodiac.
In Christian iconography, the four evangelists are depicted by Zodiacal signs, but not all twelve apostles. Twelve small figures found on some representations of the Tauroctony, seem to be celestial symbols possibly signifying the Zodiac and the god’s companions, but it is conjecture. Nevertheless, allowing for the transmutation of myths and the gaps left by Alexander and the Mullahs, there are obvious connexions here that make sense in the context we have.
Mithras was considered a mediator between good and evil, as represented by Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu. Apologists like to find a distinction even in this simple role from the Christians’ Redeemer, but like many futile Christian objections, they simply refuse to accept religious symbolism. On that basis, we are right to see nothing other than a biscuit in the Holy Communion, not flesh, and nothing but wine in the chalice, not blood. These apologists are utter dolts. Mithras, as is accepted, had a role of acting as some sort of mediator between the Good and the Evil Spirits. He was neutral in this role except when he defended the worldly level, when he defended mankind. His initiates were introduced to him via the idea of a “Logos”, undeniably showing that Christianity and Mithraism had some common roots.
Appendix. An Incarnated Mithras
Professor M Moghdam at the Second International Congress of Mithraic Studies held at Tehran in 1975 suggested a novel origin of Mithraism. It was that a man named after the god, Mithras, appeared in Iran in the third century BC, and was hailed as the Saoshyant. He was the founder of a new religion related to the older one, Zoroastrianism, as Christianity later was related to Judaism. It was the Mithraism that became a cult of both Parthia and Rome. It was supposedly so different from the original Iranian cult of Mithras that it was a new religion.
Moghdam finds evidence in the writings of Islamic authors. They knew of the original saviour but deliberately confused it with the Quranic references to Jesus which were permitted whereas references to the Mithraic saviour were not. Moghdam thinks the evidence shows the unknown saviour was born in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday, 24th and 25th of December, 272 BC, from an immaculate (Anahid) Virgin (Xosidhag) somewhere not far from lake Hamin, Sistan. He lived for 64 years among men, and ascended to His Father Ahuramazda in 208 BC. He cites the following passages which show that all the Islamic references could not have been to the biblical Jesus, but must have been to an earlier saviour.
Shabur son of Ashk: The Lord Messiah appeared in his days. Shabur fought against Rum, and at that time the king that ruled there was Antiochus, the third king after Alexander, and it was he who built Antioch.Hamza, History of Prophets and Kings, 41
Jesus and John son of Zacharias, on them be peace, lived during the reign of Sabur Shah son of Afghur Shah.Tha’alibi, Ghurar, 215
Jesus appeared during the reign of Sabur son of Ashkan.Ibn Miskuwaih, Ta jarib
And these were the Ashkanian kings that are now called Muluk-al-Tawa if (Kings of the Tribes, the Parthian Federation)… During this period Ashk son of Ashkan ruled for ten years. After him Shabur son of Ashkan ruled for sixty years, and in the forty-first year of his reign Jesus son of Mary appeared in the land of Palestine.Tabari, History II, 498
Jesus son of Mary, on whom be peace, was born in Jerusalem fifty-one years after the beginning of the reign of the Parthian Federation.Tabari, History II, 466
In contrast:
In the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus Jesus son of Mary, on whom be peace, was born, and his birth was 303 years after the uprising of Alexander.Tabari, History II, 495
The Persians think that Mary, daughter of Amran, gave birth to Jesus, son of Mary, sixty-five years after the domination of Alexander over the land of Babylon, but the Christians think the birth of Jesus occurred 303 years after the reign of Alexander, and they also think that the birth of John, son of Zacharias, was six months before the birth of Jesus.Tabari, History II, 501
The Magians agree with the Christians and Jews as to the duration of the desolation of the Holy City and what Bukhtnasr did with the Israelites until the domination of Alexander over the Holy City and Syria and the death of Dara, but they disagree as to the interval between the reign of Alexander and the birth of John. They think that the interval was fifty-one years, and the disagreement between the reign of Alexander and the birth of John and Jesus is what I have said.Tabari, History II, 507
Mas’udi in the Muruj and Tanbih is still more explicit:
After Ashk there was Shabur son of Ashk who ruled for sixty years, and in the forty-first year of his reign the Lord Messiah, on whom be peace, appeared in Ilya of Palestine.Muruj I, 229
Tishirin Second is thirty days and Kanun First is thirty days. Nineteenth of Kanun the day is 9 1/2 hours and a quarter, and the night is 14 hours and a quarter maximum. On the eve of the 25th of this month is the birth of Messiah, on whom be peace.Muruj I, 550
And, in connexion with the island of Socotra, he says, ibid, 382, that Aristotle wrote a letter to Alexander recommendating him to send a group of Greeks there to settle them. Alexander did it, then “died and Messiah appeared and the inhabitants of the island became Nasranis”. In contrast:
In the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, on whom be peace, who, as we have said before, is Yasu Naseri (Jesus of Nazareth) was born.Muruj I, 303
And he adds in the Tanbih:
In the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus the Messiah was born in Bethlehem of Palestine…According to the Christians in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, Ishu Nasiri was baptized in the river Jordan… According to the Christians in the seventeenth year of the reign of Tiberius, who was king 342 years after Alexander son of Philip, Ishu Nasiri was crucified.Tanbih, 114
Masudi is carefully using two distinct expressions, “al-sayyid al-Masih”, “the Lord Messiah”, and “Ishu Nasiri”, “Jesus of Nazareth”, although he used both expressions for Jesus, son of Mary, because he would not dare to do otherwise, just as Augustine spoke of Mithras as the “Fellow in the Cap” because Mithras was anathema to the Christian church. Moslem historians knew of two Messiahs, one born 65 years after the beginning of the reign of Alexander (336-335 BC) and in the fifty-first year of the founding of the Parthian dynasty (272-271 BC), and the other, Jesus of Nazareth, born in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus.
The same narrative and dates are given in the Koranic commentaries on the Sura’ Al’ Amran, for example Ab-ul-Futuh, Qomshei’s Tehran edition, II, 372. There seems also to be a distinction running through all the sources between a Messiah that was crucified and the Messiah that was not crucified, and the Koranic narrative of the crucifixion was perhaps as assimilation of the two traditions in one presentation. These narratives are derived from one source, universally accepted by these historians, for there was no other tradition.
From Armenia, the last stronghold of the religion of Mithras, the testimony of Elise Vardapet is that the Lord Mihr was born of a human mother and he was king and the son of God.
Students of Iranian religions know the story of a virgin bathing in Lake Hamun where the seed of Zoroaster is preserved to make the chosen virgin pregnant. She it is who gives birth to the Zoroastrian saviour, which provided the model for the story of the virgin birth of Jesus from the seed of David. In fact, no material seed of David is present at the appearance of the angel Gabriel in the Annunciation scene on the 25 March. Quranic commentators explain that the angel blew in the sleeves of Mary’s dress when she came out of the water!
Professor Moghdam adds that the story of the virgin birth originates from the materialization of “Khvarenah”, which, in spite of the scholarly literature, is the light within man—in modern terminology, aptitude. The capacity of the individual for kingship or prophethood is of a higher order, specified as the kingly “Khvarenah” and the “Khvarenah” of Zarathushtra. In popular belief, this “Khvarenah” had taken a material form, and had to be transmitted by material means. Hence the transmission of the “Khvarenah” of Zardosht had to be conveyed to the future saviour by means of his semen preserved in the sacred lake. Because of the preservation of the seed as bearer of the “Khvarenah” in water, three important Mithraic symbols—the pearl, the dolphin and the lotus flower—were connected with water.
Passing from the virgin birth to the ascension:
Gudarz son of Ashk, after John was killed by the Children of Israel, fought against them and destroyed Jerusalem for the second time.Hamza, 42
Gudarz son of Shabur started his reign with a war of revenge against the Children of Israel for their having killing John of Zacharias, and destroyed Jerusalem.Tha’alibi, 216
Leaving aside the confusion arising from the identification of Mithras with Jesus, and taking notice that the Messiah was charged with his mission when he was 25 years old and preached for 40 years among men, the date of the second destruction of Jerusalem in 168 BC, and the date given for the second destruction of Jerusalem as 40 years after the Ascension, the death of Mithras took place in the year 208 BC. From the Turfan fragment—taken by Henning wrongly as a description of the death of Mani because he made an emendation to suit it—the death of Mithra Messiah occurred on Monday, the fourth of Shahrivar, at the eleventh hour at night. Henning’s ascription of the said fragment to Mani’s death is impossible because the day and the month do not coincide with the accepted dates of Mani’s death in prison.
- Moghdam’s original article can be read at the CAIS-SOAS website.
