| #### 7. MITHRAISM |

| #### #### Before we come to the final discussions which bring this century of controversy and crisis to an end, something must be said of yet another ancient religion from the East which, by now, was racing for the primacy of popularity. This was the cult of Mithra. #### Mithra, originally, in the religion of ancient Persia is the god of Light. In the religion of the Avesta he is a god of the second rank, the judge of the dead, the god who keeps men to their promises, the god of Honour then, and especially of military honour. He sees all things and the Sun is his eye. With the fourth century B.C. the cult spread to Chaldea, and Chaldean astrological theologies influenced it, working out an identity between Mithra and the Sun God. About the same time Alexander's conquest of Persia brought Mithraism into relation with the Greek mythology, and thence derived a more aesthetic interpretation of the rites and the myth. Finally the later Roman conquest of the East opened to the cult the whole of the West, and from the end of the first century (A.D.) Mithraism was a settled religion in the West and rapidly developing. Merchants and oriental slaves took it to all the ports of the western world, but the chief agent of its spread was undoubtedly the army, and with the legionaries it soon travelled to the very frontiers. As a religion it has its foundation in the great eastern theory of the dual origin of all reality. To fight the evil principle, beings are created intermediary between God and man. Mithra is one of these heroes and gradually, as the theories develop, he comes to eclipse all the other heroes, and even the transcendent divinity, as the God of Light and the protector of mankind. #### The culminating point of the Mithra legend is his victorious conflict with the bull, and from the slain bull flows all life and all usefulness. Finally Mithra ascends to Heaven in a fiery chariot driven by the Sun. He will, however, return once more. There will be a second slaying of the bull, whence will come immortality for the faithful, and then a general conflagration will destroy the wicked, the demons, and the principle of evil, Ahriman himself. #### The cult was organised in circles of restricted membership which divided and sub-divided as their members increased. It had an elaborate liturgy in which ablutions, an anointing with honey, fasts, and a ritual banquet of bread and water played their part. The initiation was through seven degrees, animals were sacrificed, and the candidate was received through a baptism of blood which poured from the bull slain above him. The meetings took place in caves, and crypts built to resemble caves, decorated with pictures of Mithra slaying the bull. The weekly holy day, naturally, was Sunday and, equally naturally, the Equinoxes were regarded as a sacred season, and the date of Mithra's birth, placed at the winter solstice -- December 25. #### That the cult was immensely popular with the army there is no doubt, nor of its influence in the third century. But that it ever threatened the future victory of Christianity is a matter infinitely less certain. It has, however, been the subject of much loose thinking, as has been also the question of the analogies between Mithraism and the religion of the Church. Fr. Martindale [ ] summarises the position very fairly, setting side by side M. Salomon Reinach's neatly phrased thesis and the no less skilfully worded examination of Pere Lagrange. "M. Salomon Reinach thus sums it up: ' Mithra is the mediator between God and man; he secures salvation to mankind by a sacrifice; the cult includes baptism, communion, fasts; his disciples call themselves brothers; in the Mithraist clergy there are men and women vowed to celibacy; there is a moral code which is of obligation and which is identical with that of Christianity.' We have here a series of scornful affirmations to which Pere Lagrange can oppose another series of flat denials. 'The fasts and the brotherhood we can admit -- and they are found in every religion that ever was. Everything else is incorrect. Mithra is called "mediator" once-in Plutarch, and he is mediator between the God of Goodness and the God of Evil. We have no knowledge of any direct relation between the sacrifice of the bull and salvation. Nor is Mithra ever sacrificed, as was Jesus. The Mithraist baptism is a simple ablution in no way different from any other; the communion is nothing more than an offering of bread and water, nor can anyone say it was even intended to represent Mithra; women, usually, had no part in the mysteries of Mithra and could not, therefore, have been there dedicated to celibacy. . . as to men, in that respect, we know nothing except for a single text of Tertullian. . . a text which has been misinterpreted. Every moral code sets out to be obligatory, more or less, and if that of Mithra was identical with the Christian code why did Julian the Apostate-himself a devotee of Mithra -- recommend the Christian code as a model to Pagans?' " ####  |