Tag: mithras

A few mixed facts about Mithraism and its difference to other “oriental mystery cults”

“Mithraism then entered Asia Minor, especially Pontus and Cappadocia. Here it came into contact with the Phrygian cult of Attis and Cybele from which it adopted a number of ideas and practices, though apparently not the gross obscenities of the Phrygian worship.” > LINK ( http://www.newadvent.org )

“In Antiquity, the Phrygian cap had two connotations: for the Greeks as showing a distinctive Eastern influence of non-Greek “barbarism” (in the classical sense) and among the Romans as a badge of liberty. The Phrygian cap identifies Trojans such as Paris in vase-paintings and sculpture, and it is worn by the syncretic Persian saviour god Mithras and by the Anatolian god Attis who were later adopted by Romans and Hellenic cultures. The twins Castor and Pollux wear a superficially similar round cap called the pileus.” > LINK ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap )

“While it’s true that in his earlier incarnations, especially in Zoroastrian religion, Mithras was associated with the sun, no tauroctony is ever mentioned there or anywhere in pre-Roman Mithraic legends. Nor is there even the slightest hint in Persian accounts of Mithras killing some celestial bull. How is it possible, then, to reconcile the Mithras we see in Rome with his earlier synonymous counterparts?” > LINK ( http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ )

Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World) by Jaime Alvar and Richard Gordon, 2008, pp. 385. > LINK

The difference between the cult of the Magna Mater (Attis, Cybele) and Mithraism is the most striking in the forms of baptism. Mithraism is a symbolic myth, whereas Magna Mater is an actual orgy cult, that uses blood in their initiation rituals > LINK

Finally:

You can’t really separate the the history of Mithraism from its Zoroastrian and Pre-Zoroastrian roots.  Or you would end up losing the actual myth.

Mushrooms, Myth & Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe
Carl Ruck, Mark Alwin Hoffman, José Alfredo González Celdrán (on Google Books)

Mithraic findings in cave in Austria in St. Egyden. Vessel with Serpents, ineresting and beautiful piece, look at:
IN GERMAN: Heidnischer Kult in Höhle entdeckt

the persecution of mithraists : Sarrebourg, France

[…] Of all the Mithraic artifacts found, probably none compares to what was discovered at Sarrebourg, in Lorraine, France, when a shrine to Mithras was uncovered- with the skeleton of a man chained to the altar, and the door to the sacred room bricked up; Nabarz speculates [p. 52] that the man was a priest to Mithras who refused Christian conversion- and so was fastened to the altar of his Pagan God, walled up Edgar Allen Poe-like in the temple, and left to his Pagan fate.

http://culture.pagannewswirecollective.com/2011/08/the-smurfs-secret-mithraic-cult/

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[…] It was not long before the imperial government legislated formally and directly against the disgraced sect. In the provinces, popular uprisings frequently anticipated the interference of the magistrates. Mobs sacked the temples and committed them to the flames, with the complicity of the authorities. The ruins of the mithræums bear witness to the violence of their devastating fury. Even at Rome, in 377 A.D., the prefect Gracchus, seeking the privilege of baptism, offered as a pledge of the sincerity of his conversion the “destruction, shattering, and shivering,” of a Mithraic crypt, with all the statues that it contained.

Frequently, in order to protect their grottoes from pillage by making, them inaccessible, the priests walled up the entrances, or conveyed their sacred images to well-protected hiding-places, convinced that the tempest that had burst upon them was momentary only, and that after their days of trial their god would cause again to shine forth the light of final triumph.

On the other hand, the Christians, in order to render places contaminated by the presence of a dead body ever afterward unfit for worship, sometimes slew the refractory priests of Mithra and buried them in the ruins of their sanctuaries, now forever profaned (Fig. 46).

The hope of restoration was especially tenacious at Rome, which remained the capital of paganism. The aristocracy, still faithful to the traditions of their ancestors, supported the religion with their wealth and prestige. Its members loved to deck themselves with the titles of “Father and Herald of Mithra Invincible,” and multiplied the offerings and the foundations.

THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA by Franz Cumont [1903], pp. 203 – 206.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/mom/index.htm