Mithra and Mithraism

The Origin of the Cult of Mithra

The followers of this esoteric system of beliefs were persecuted by virtually all the official religions including the Zoroastrians of Persia and Christians of Rome.The Mithra followers were known as the Magi (plural of Magus, From Latin and Greek mágos , Old Persian maguŝ; Avestan moγu) . Study of the Magi is hampered by the lack of original source material, nevertheless we know that the Magi were revered by classic authors as wise men, which their reputed power over demons gave rise to the word magic. As James Darmesteter writes :

All classical writers, from Herodotus down to Ammianus, agree in pointing to Media as the seat and native place of the Magi... in the time of Marcellinus (4th century A.D.) there was in Media a tribe, called Magi, which had the hereditary privilege of providing Iran with priests. Strabo, writing three centuries before Marcellinus considers the Magi as sacerdotal tribe spread over the land. Lastly, we see in Herodotus (III,65) that the usurpation of the Magian Smerdis was interpreted by Cambyses as an attempt of the Medes to recover the hegemony they had lost (to the Cyrus of Persia)".

According to Herodotus, Magi were a Median tribe of a priestly family. Zoroaster himself is thought to have been a Magus who rebelled against the Mithraic pantheon of Gods. Spengler, who has described the Magian idea of the Divine Mediator, of one who transforms the state of Man from a torment into a bliss has suggested that the Magian deity was the indefinite Power on high that poured out his Wrath or his Grace, descended itself into the dark or raised the soul into the light as it saw fit.The idea of individual wills was simply meaningless, for "will" and of "thought" in Man were not prime, but already effects of the deity upon him. He writes:

The Magian man is but part of a pneumatic "WE" which, descending from above, is one and the same in all members. As body and soul he belongs to himself alone, but something alien and higher, dwells in him, making him with all his glimpses and convictions just a member of a consensus, which, as the emanation of God, excludes error, but also all possibility of the self-asserting Ego... Herein lies the ultimate, for us unapproachable, secret of Magian thought ... the impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego is the the presupposition of all fundamentals of all these religions.

The Belief and The Philosophy

Magi distinguished between the daiva (Indo-Iranian and Old Persian equivalent of Avestan daeva, Latin dīvīnus, equivalent to dīv(us) god + -īnus, Middle English devin(e), Old French devin) and the asura, a special class with demonic powers. Mithra was a development of the Vedic Aryan Mitra-Vouruna which denoted the name of two daivas. It is conjectured (Oldenberg, "Die "Religion des Veda," Berlin, 1894) that Mithra was the rising sun, Varuna the setting sun; or, Mithra, the sky at daytime, Varuna, the sky at night; or, the one the sun, the other the moon. In hymns, Mitravarunau, Varuna is considered as the lord of the cosmic rhythm (rta) in the starry sky; while Mitra brings the light of dawn, which at night was covered by Varouna. The god The Mithraic belief saw in Infinite Time, the one ultimate and changeless principle from which all else proceeds.
The idea that Time is the source of all things was an Aryan belief which can be traced back to the Maitric Upanishad (c. 500 BC). Here we find Time identified with the supreme principle; and which is of two aspects, ( i .) the 'timeless', which is the idea of time, the universal, the eternal 'now', and ( ii .) time which is represented by its manifestations, as it is normally observable, like the passage of the day and night or changes of seasons. The latter, of course, was associated with the movements of sun -- Mithra . Thus, the timeless is 'Time without form', the actual time is the 'form' of Time. In the beginning, Mithra, who in the Sassanian era identified as Zurvan Akarana, the limitless-time, existed alone. The name Zurvan means the protector-of-power or the guardian-of-force, and is derived from two words , Zur (Pahlavi, Zoor, Avestan, Zauer, Armenian, Zaaour, Persian Zoor) meaning power or force, plus -van meaning protector or guardian . Mithra, offered libation for a thousand years that conceivably he might have a son who should be called Ahura Mazda, or Ohrmuzd, (meaning the Wise Lord) and who would create heaven and earth.Towards the end of this period, he began to doubt the value of his dedication and at the moment of this doubt Ohrmuzd, the God of good deeds and Ahriman, the demon of evil doings were conceived: Ohrmuzd representing the dedication and Ahriman representing the doubt. Upon realizing that twins were to be born, Mithra resolved to grant the first-born sovereignty over creation. Ohrmuzd ascertained His father plan, which He then shared the information with His brother. Ahriman then appropriated Ohrmuzd privilege by ripping open the body of Mithra to emerge first. Reminded of the resolution to grant Ahriman sovereignty,the father conceded, but limited kingship to a period of 9000 years, after which Ohrmuzd would rule for all eternity (Zaehner, 1955:419-428). As Shahristani says, perhaps Mithraism is a mystery of what is figured in the mind. ' A mystery that tries to explain the interrelationship of the infinite and the finite time, the constant, taciturn universal , and the volatile and effervescent particular .

Mithra, the Guardian of force, as finite Time and Fate, is neither good nor evil, but he is endowed with both. As fate, he is the apotheosis of an exalted death; and even in the Avesta the paths of Time are the paths that the soul must traverse on its way from death to the Judgment. Mithra is the god of fate, and because he himself must strive for his own deliverance in finite time and gradually atone for the remnant of his doubt which is still desecrating his mind and causing him consternation, so that ambivalently causes him to distribute good and bad fortune injudiciously. When, as the arbiter, he is tempted by the inveiglements of Ahriman; a chaotic path of the planets ensue -- and this chaotic path explains the catastrophic events on earth that befalls on man unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the orderly paths of the heavenly bodies are under the Zodiac prerogative, which bestow different fortune giving power to the different paths of planets. Some paths, like those of Saturn and Mars, are ominous; others, like those of Jupiter and Venus, are propitious.

In Persia, cult of Mithra, was criticized by Zoroastrians like Karter and Mardan-Farrukh who refer to them as the 'Zandiks' or 'Dahris' and whom Karter persecuted. Karter as a fundamentalist Zoroastrian insists on the very doctrines that the Mithraists deny. In a very decided language he warns his flock to fix in the mind that 'heaven exists and hell exists, and whoso is virtuous will go to heaven, and whoso is vicious will be cast into hell'. According to Mardan-Farrukh;

They (meaning Mitraists) give up their religious duties and make no effort to practise virtue: ...They believe that Infinite Time is the first Principle of this world and of all the various changes and [re-]groupings to which its members and organs are subject as well as of the mutual opposition that exists between them and of their fusion with one another. [They also believe] that virtue goes unrewarded, that there is no punishment for sin, that heaven and hell do not exist, and that there is no one who has charge of [the rewarding of] virtue and [the punishment of] sin. [They believe as well] that all things are material and that the spiritual does not exist.'

Zoroaster's revolution changed the Median order of the Mithraic Pantheon; the Ahura Mazda was extolled as the supreme God, to the exclusion of the other daevas , who were reduced to the rank of demons. King Darius, a Zoroastrian himself, when seized power in 522, had to fight a usurper, by the name Gaumata the Magian, who pretended to be Smerdis (Bardiya) -- the son of Cyrus the Great and brother of the king Cambyses. This Magian had destroyed Zoroastrian shrines, which Darius restored. Perhaps, it was Darius' revenge which forced the cult of Mithra to go underground. After the defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great, Zoroastrian books were systematically destroyed. As a consequence of his conquest, the Achaemenids' Zoroastrian religion was almost totally submerged by the wave of Hellenism. Many decades later, according to Denkart, a late Sassanian work of the sixth century;

"Valakhsh the Arsacid (Vologaeses I, reigned 51-77 A.D.] commanded that a memorandum be sent to all provinces,with instructions to preserve in whatever state they appeared as much of the Avesta and Zend as came to light and was genuine; also, any teachings derived from it; which , though scattered, owing to the chaos and confusion that Alexander had carried in his wake and the pillage and looting of the Macedonians in the kingdom of Iran, might have survived either in writing or in authoritative oral communication."

Given the length of time that elapsed, between the destruction of the Zoroastrian religious documents and their subsequent recollection it is easy to see that why the recollected documents were commingled with the old Mithraic beliefs, as there were perhaps very few who still could remember the true content of the original Avesta. Perhaps many Mithraists offered the remnant of their religious texts to be included as part of the new Zoroastrian codex. It is also the case, that since the Sassanian objective was to reunify the country against their Roman enemies,they accepted many of the Mithraic texts to facilitate such reunification, and as a result many of the old contents of the Mithraic believes entered into the Sassanian Avesta. In the new Avesta Mithra became secondary to Ahura Mazda, and a Yazad, a kind of demigod, in spite of the fact that in the original Zoroastrian scheme Mithra had became a daeva. The bull-killing act of Mithra which originally had been performed for the benefit of man, and later on was portrayed by Zoroaster as an evil act performed by Ahreman , now turned positive again, since from the bull's sperm, purified in the moon, sprang the domestic animals. As well, it was suggested that a future savior, Soæyant , will sacrifice a bull to generate immortality.

The Cult of Mithra in Greek and Rome

The Mithraic ideas had a significant influence on Greek and Roman philosophy . Nevertheless, many Greek writers from the days of Achaemenids had considerable difficulties in distinguishing between the principles of Mithraic religion; dominant in Median empire, with those of the Zoroastrian religion; prevalent in the later day Persia. Thereby Zoroaster was bound to be confused as a magician. The first century Pliny the elder names Zoroaster as the inventor of magic1, which supposedly later on was introduced to Greeks by the "fabulous magus", Ostanes 2 . He praised Zoroastrian philosophy as "the most famous and most useful". The earliest evidence of the cult of Zurvan is found in the ''History of Theology'', attributed to Eudemus of Rhodes (''c.'' 370-300 BCE). As cited in Damascius 's ''Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles'' (6th c. CE), Eudemus describes a sect of the Persians that considered Space/Time to be the primordial "father" of the rivals Oromasdes of Light and Arimanius of Darkness (Dhalla, 1932:331-332). Plato learnt of Mithraic philosophy through Eudoxus and incorporated much of it into his own Platonic realism. In the 3rd century BC, however, Colotes accused Plato's of plagiarizing parts of Zoroaster's On Nature , such as the Myth of Er.

The Enneads of Plotinus, which were collected and published after his death by his student Porphyry, a Phoenician was the foundation of Neoplatonism philosophy which was influenced by Mithraism. Plotinus (204-269) was born in Lycopolis in Egypt. He left for Rome in 244, where he would teach until his death. He was initiated into Mithraism during a military campaign to Persia, and he rediscovered the relationships of Mithraic ideas with Plato's philosophy. Neoplatonism rejected the dualism of good and evil, and set forth instead one vast order containing all the various levels and kinds of existence.The Neoplatonic cosmology also had Mithraic overtones, for Plotinus believed that the individual soul through contemplation would rise to the level of the Divine Mind and then through mystic union would be absorbed in the One itself. He would have considerable influence on the Emperor Julian "the Apostate," who according to Encyclopedia Americana (1944 ed.) "had never been a Christian except nominally and by compulsion." and who tried unsuccessfully to return the Roman Empire to Mithraism, against the tide of Christianity. According to J. Bidez, a biographer of Julian, he was the last emperor who professed the Mithraic faith. In the Emperor's own 'Hymn to the Helio'; Mithras is the Helio and is one and the same with Apollo, phaethon, Hyperion and Prometheus. He, quotes from Plato, that the universe itself "came into being as a living creature possessing soul and intelligence." In Julian's allegorical description of the constitution of the universe, its substance, origin, powers, and energies are the sun's gift to its domain. Following Plato, he describes a chain of being, emanating from the "uncompounded Cause": the Supra Intelligible, the One, or the Good, as Plato names this central cause of existence. Next comes the Intelligible world, one step closer to generation. Then there is Helios, the god behind the visible Sun, lord of the Intellectual worlds, not only "the common father of all mankind," who "continually revivifies [the substance of things generated] by giving it movement and flooding it with life," but also "the mind of the universe" bestowing through Athene "the blessings of wisdom and intelligence and the creative arts." Helios gives to the "divided souls" (men) the faculty of judgment, and bestows on all nature the generative power. From the moment that Julian was initiated in a Mithraeum at Constantinople and entered into the highest grade of the cult he did everything in his power to encourage the triumph of the Mithraic cult. Julian's life was cut short by an arrow during his expedition against the Persian King Shapur. His final words was "As for thee" [.i. e. Julian] Hermes said to me, "I have granted thee the knowledge of thy father Mithra. Do thou keep his commandments and thus secure for thyself a cable and a secure anchorage throughout thy life; and when thou must depart from the world thou canst with good hope adopt him as thy guardian god." After his death in A.D. 363 a period of comparative tolerance set in, but this was cut short by an edict of the Emperor Gratian in A.D. 382. The altar of Triumph was removed from the Senate, and state support for the upkeep of the Roman cult was withdrawn. In A.D. 377 the city perfect of Rome; Gracchus had, according to Hieronymus, overturned, broken and destroyed a cave of Mithras filled with monstrous images.

Mithra's epithet; Zurvan, or the Guardian of force, indicates that Mithraism had a distinct heraldic tone. Mithra himself symbolized royalty, gallantry, and conviction. The good camaraderie and fraternity was encouraged. Men only were admitted to this austere cult , and this is perhaps one of the reasons for its appeal to the Roman legioners so much so that they converted on mass to the cult of Mithra as; deus invictus, aeternus, agustus, dominus, genitor, incorruptus, megas, omnipotens, sanctus, summus. These ancient Roman Mithraists called their system of beliefs the mysteries of Mithras ; or the mysteries of the Persians. and erroneously believed that the founder their cult was Zoroaster, who "dedicated to Mithras, the creator and father of all, a cave in the mountains bordering Persia," a bucolic backdrop "abounding in flowers and springs of water" (Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs ). According to the Pliny Natural History (30.1.6), a Magus accompanied King Tiridates of Armenia's entourage when he visited Rome to be crowned by Nero. At the coronation festivities Tiridates announced that he had come "in order to revere you [Nero] as Mithras" (Dio Cassius 63.5.2). In that occasion the Magus "initiated him [Nero] into magical feasts" (magicis cenis), as the emperor expressed his wish to be initiated in the Magi mysteries. Earlier, Mithraism has been introduced to the Roman army by a Phrygian cult and it enjoyed the official recognition of Rome. Later on, the Emperor Commodus was publicly initiated. One of the cult's influential converts however was the future Emperor Valerian; the noble son of a hierophant of the sun-god at Sirmium in Pannonia. According to Flavius Vopiscus, Valerian, never forgot the cave where his mother initiated him. In Rome, he launched a seminary of sun priests and his coins bear the legend "Sol, Dominus Imperii Romani". Diocletian, Galerius, and Licinius built at Carnuntum on the Danube a temple to Mithra with the dedication: "Fautori Imperii Sui". Emperor Diocletian also a worshipper of Mithra, the Sun God, burned much of the Christian scriptures in 307 A.D.

To unify his badly divided country against Rome's chief enemy; Persia , Emperor Constantine attempted to merge the cult of Mithra with Christianity that was spreading fast. He declared himself a Christian but at the same time maintained his ties to the Mithra cult. In 313 A.D., Constantine declared December 25th to be the birthday of Jesus (December 25th, the night Persian call the Birth Night shabe yalda , the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter-sun, unconquered by the rigours of the season was prescribed earlier as the birthday of Mithra, by emperor Aurelian ). Sabbath day, which is literally Saturday (as the Jews still maintain), became Sunday as it was the day of the Sun, another element from the Mithra worship. He retained the title "Pontifus Maximus" the high priest. On his coins were inscribed: "Sol Invicto comiti" which means, commited to the invincible sun. Thus, with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity Mithraism came to a sudden end. Although, under Julian it had a short revival. In the bible we read St. Peter rebuked Simon Magus, a magician, who wanted to buy the powers of the Holy Spirit to make himself more powerful (Acts 8:9ff).