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Updated: May 5, 2025
Significance of evidence. Vegetation cults as vehicle of high spiritual teaching. Exoteric and Esoteric parallels with the Grail tradition. Process of evolution sketched. Bleheris. Perlesvaus. Borron and the Mystery tradition. Christian Legendary, and Folk-tale, secondary, not primary, features. Mithra and Attis Problem of close connection of cults. Their apparent divergence.
Prayer was offered to Mithra three times a day, at dawn, at noon, and at sunset; and it was usual to worship him with sacrifice. The horse appears to have been the victim which he was supposed to prefer. Sraosha, or Serosh, was an angel of great power and dignity. He was the special messenger of Ormazd, and the head of his celestial army.
On the authority of this same prelate it is found that in the fifth century, the faithful, before entering the Basilica of St. Peter, were wont to turn and salute the shining orb of day. The Roman winter solstice which was connected with the worship of Mithra, and which was named the "Birthday of the Unconquered Om," was adopted by the western churches some time during the fourth century.
Christian Legend, and traditional Folk-tale, have undoubtedly contributed to the perfected romantic corpus, but they are in truth subsidiary and secondary features; a criticism that would treat them as original and primary can but defeat its own object; magnified out of proportion they become stumbling-blocks upon the path, instead of sign-posts towards the goal. Mithra and Attis
Nor in view of the persistent vitality and survival, even to our own day, of the Exoteric practices can there be anything improbable in the hypothesis of a late survival of the Esoteric side of the ritual. Cumont points out that the worship of Mithra was practised in the fifth century in certain remote cantons of the Alps and the Vosges i.e., at the date historically assigned to King Arthur.
Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the pagans whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or Apollo or Hercules that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the air' at the time of the advent of Christianity.
But the worship of Mithra in the form in which it spread throughout the Roman Empire, Mithra as the god of the Imperial armies, the deity beloved of the Roman legionary, was in no sense of this concrete and material type. This is how Cumont sums up the main features.
Vayu, "the Wind," seems to have been regarded as a god from the first. He appears, not only in the later portions of the Zenda vesta, like Mithra and Aryaman, but in the Gathas themselves. His name is clearly identical with that of the Vedic Wind-god, Vayu, and is apparently a sister form to the ventus, or wind, of the more western Arians.
The successors of the problematic Zarathrustra, the line of magi who wrote and taught in his name, may have gathered the tales and theories elsewhere. In the creed which they instituted there is a trinity. India had one, Egypt another, Babylonia a third. Babylonia had even three of them. But in Mithra, Iran had a redeemer that no other creed possessed.
It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early days of the Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials of Mithra and Cybele, probably much intermingled and blended, were exceedingly popular.
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