<A HREF="http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html">Click here: The
Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras
</A> This is a neat site. The Mithras cult was taken over by the Roman
Christians, even Vatican Hill was a sacred temple site of the Mithras
worshipers. Their leader was called the Pope. We discussed this on the list
some months ago, here's a reprint...(the following is NOT found on the above
site)Also, most know that Jesus
>wasn't born on Christmas, the church used Dec. 25th as his birthday to
>coincide with the Pagan festival of Yule. So, here we've got the birth
>of the son of God (Jesus) and the birth
>of the Oak King (rebirth of the God/ devine child). Plus you have the
>whole concept of Jesus dying and being born again and the Pagan God
>dying and being born again.>Who says you can't mix the two religions
together?>
>Okay, you asked for it. In my Patterns in Mythology class we studied how
similar world myths and religions truly are. I got really shook up, because
I believe in a lot of Christianity, when we came across the following, which
shows how Mithras, who PRE-DATES JESUS BY SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS, (we have
this documented in several parts of the ancient world)---how Mithras and
Jesus share so many details, as in birth day, birth place, an evil serpent,
Popes as heads of their churches, Vatican hill, baptism for initiates, three
wisemen, shepherds witnessing their births, it goes on! Read it for
yourself. I am typing straight from "The World of Myth" by David Adams
Leeming, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of
Connecticut. (Not my University, I attended another State U.)
**************************************Persian Myths of the Gods:Mithras
The god Mithras (or Mithra) was a major influence on Christianity until the
fourth century C.E. In this version of his story, by Barbara Walker, the
parallels between the two cults are emphasized.
Mithra was the Persian Savior, whose cult was the leading rival of
Christianity in Rome, and more successful than Christianity for the first
four centuries of the "Christian" era. In 307 A.D. the emperor officially
designated Mithra "Protector of the Empire."
Christians copied many details of the Mithraic mystery-religion, explaining
the resemblance later with their favorite argument, that the devil had
anticipated the true faith by imitating it before Christ's birth. Some
resemblances between Christianity and Mithraism were so close that even St.
Augustine declared the priests of Mithra worshipped the same deity as he did.
Mithra was born on December 25th, called "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun,"
which was finally taken over by Christians in the 4th century A.D. as the
birthday of Christ. Some said Mithra sprang from an incestuous union between
the sun god and his own mother, just as Jesus, who was God, was born of the
Mother of God. Some claimed Mithra's mother was a mortal virgin. Others
said Mithra had no mother, but was miraculously born of a female Rock, the
petra genetrix, fertilized by the Heavenly Father's phallic lightning.
Mithra's birth was witnessed by shepherds and by Magi who brought gifts to
his sacred birth-cave of the Rock. Mithra performed the usual assortment of
miracles: raising the dead, healing the sick, making the blind see and the
lame walk, casting out devils. As a Peter, son of the petra (rock), he
carried the keys of the kingdom of heaven. His triumph and ascension to
heaven were celebrated at the spring equinox (Easter), when the sun rises
toward its apogee.
Before returning to heaven, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his twelve
disciples, who represented the 12 signs of the zodiac. In memory of this,
his worshippers partook of a sacramental meal of bread marked with a cross.
This was one of seven Mithraic sacraments, the models for the Christians' 7
sacraments. It was called mizd, Latin missa, English mass. Mithra's image
was buried in a rock tomb, the same sacred cave that represented his Mother's
womb. He was withdrawn from it and said to live again.
Like early Christianity, Mithraism was an ascetic, anti-female religion. Its
priesthood consisted of celibate men only. Women were forbidden to enter
Mithraic temples. The women of Mithraic families had nothing to do with the
men's cult, but attended services of the Great Mother in their own temples of
Isis, Diana, or Juno. (One of which was usually always beside a Mithraic
temple).To eliminate the female principle from their creation myth,
Mithraists
replaced the Mother of All Living in the primal garden of paradise
(Pairidaeza) with the bull named Sole-Created. Instead of Eve, this bull was
the partner of the first man. All creatures were born from the bull's blood.
Yet the bull's birth-giving was oddly female-imitative. The animal was
castrated and sacrificed, and its blood was delivered to the moon for magical
fructification, the moon being the source of women't magic lunar "blood of
life" that produced real children on earth.
Persians have been called the Puritans of the heathen world. They developed
Mithraism out of an earlier Aryan religion that was not so puritanical or so
exclusively male-oriented. Mithra seems to have been the Indo-Iranian sun
god Mitra, or Mitravaruna, one of the 12 zodiacal sons of the
Infinity-goddess Aditi. Another of Aditi's sons was Aryaman, eponymous
ancestor of "Aryans," whom the Persians transformed into Ahriman, the Great
Serpent of Darkness, Mithra's enemy.
Early on, there seems to have been a feminine Mithra. Herodotus said the
Persians used to have a sky-goddess Mitra, the same as Mylitta, Assyria's
Great Mother. Lydians combined Mithra with his archaic spouse Anahita as an
androgynous Mithra-Anahita, identified with Sabazius-Anaitis, the Serpent and
Dove of Anatolian mystery cults.
Anahita was the Mother of Waters, traditional spouse of the solar god whom
she bore, loved, and swallowed up. She was identified with the Anatolian
Great Goddess Ma. Mithra was naturally coupled with her, as her opposite, a
spirit of fire, light, and the sun. Her "element," water, overwhelmed the
world in the primordial flood, when one man built an ark and saved himself,
together with his cattle, according to Mithraic myth. The story seems to
have been based on the Hindu Flood of Manu, transmitted thru Persian and
Babylonian scriptures to appear in a late, rather corrupt version in the Old
Testament.
What began in water would end in fire, according to Mithraic eschatology.
The great battle between the forces of light and darkness in the Last Days
would destroy the earth with its upheavals and burnings. Virtuous ones who
followed the teachings of the Mithraic priesthood would join the spirits of
light and be saved. Sinful ones who followed other teachings would be cast
into hell with Ahriman and the fallen angels. The Christian notion of
salvation was almost wholly a product of this Persian eschatology, adopted by
Semitic eremites and sun-cultists called Essenes, and by Roman military men
who thought the rigid discipline and vivid battle-imagery of Mithraism
appropriate for warriors. Under emperors like Julian and Commodus, Mithra
became the supreme patron of Roman armies.
After extensive contact with Mithraism, Christians also began to describe
themselves as soldiers for Christ; to call their savior Light of the World,
Helios the Rising Sun, and Sun of Righteousness; to celebrate their feasts on
Sun-day rather than the Jewish Sabbath; to claim their savior's death was
marked by an eclipse of the sun; and to adopt the seven Mithraic sacraments.
Like Mithraists, Christians practiced baptism to ascend after death thru the
planetary spheres to the highest heaven, while the wicked (unbaptized) would
be dragged down to darkness.
Mithra's cave-temple on Vatican Hill was seized by Christians in 376 A.D.
Christian bishops of Rome pre-empted even the Mithraic high priest's title of
Pater Patrum, which became Papa, or Pope. Mithraism entered into many
doctrines of Manichean Christianity and continued to influence its old rival
for over a thousand years. The Mithraic festival of Epiphany, marking the
arrival of sun-priests or Magi at the Savior's birthplace, was adopted by the
Christian church only as late as 813 A.D."
************************************************