Mithraism

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Mithraism, cult of Mithra, or Mithras, an anct. Aryan god of light, whom the Zoroastrians conceived of as a champion of Ahura-Mazda in his eternal conflict with Ahriman, the prince of evil. M. was therefore a spurious development of Mazdaism (see ZOROASTBIANISM) which latter spread over most of Asia Minor, but through Gk. influences, the only part of the creed which was embraced by the people was the worship of Mithra, really a subordinate, if attractive, Zoroastrian spirit, yet chosen as an absolutely supreme god.

Mithra was early identified with the sun-god, and as such was the centre of a cult which, according to Plutarch, was introduced to Rome by Pompey's pirate-captives from Cilicia in 68 B.C. The monuments of this worship have been found wherever the Rom. legions went in Britain, thus showing how readily one religion supplants another which has not adapted itself to the developing needs of any race. On the monuments of his cult Mithra is represented as a beautiful youth driving a sword into the neck of a prostrate bull which latter at the same time is being devoured by a scorpion, a crab, and a dog; but no convincing solution has been offered to explain this symbolic representation, which was no doubt part of an elaborate dogmatic system.

M. was also an ethical system and what is extant of its ritual suggests the existence of an organized hierarchy and a worship assimilated to the Gk. mysteries. M. finally ceased to exist in the fourth century, when it was superseded by Christianity.

In the struggle of Paganism with Christianity, however, M. exercised a powerful attraction, being a pure and elevated religion, and though at first a form of sun-worship, it became modified by syncretism. Its most striking ceremony was the blood-baptism called Taurobolium.

Also see
See F. Oumont, Textes et monuments figures relatives aux mysteres de Mithre, 1896-99; and A. Schutze, Mithramysterien und Ur- christentum, 1937.

From Everyman Encylopeidia.

Mithra also spelled Mithras, Sanskrit Mitra, in ancient Indo-Iranian mythology, the god of light, whose cult spread from India in the east to as far west as Spain, Great Britain, and Germany. (See Mithraism.) The first written mention of the Vedic Mitra dates to 1400 BC. His worship spread to Persia and, after the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great, throughout the Hellenic world. In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, the cult of Mithra, carried and supported by the soldiers of the Roman Empire, was the chief rival to the newly developing religion of Christianity. The Roman emperors Commodus and Julian were initiates of Mithraism, and in 307 Diocletian consecrated a temple on the Danube River to Mithra, “Protector of the Empire.”

According to myth, Mithra was born, bearing a torch and armed with a knife, beside a sacred stream and under a sacred tree, a child of the earth itself. He soon rode, and later killed, the life-giving cosmic bull, whose blood fertilizes all vegetation. Mithra's slaying of the bull was a popular subject of Hellenic art and became the prototype for a bull-slaying ritual of fertility in the Mithraic cult.

As god of light, Mithra was associated with the Greek sun god, Helios, and the Roman Sol Invictus. He is often paired with Anahita, goddess of the fertilizing waters.

the worship of Mithra, the Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract, and war in pre-Zoroastrian Iran. Known as Mithras in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, this deity was honoured as the patron of loyalty to the emperor. After the acceptance of Christianity by the emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, Mithraism rapidly declined.

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