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Updated: June 5, 2025
That in the adoption of Oriental worships in the west such higher speculative and moral elements as they contained were generally allowed to drop, is strikingly evinced by the fact that Ahuramazda, the supreme god of the pure doctrine of Zarathustra, remained virtually unknown in the west, and adoration there was especially directed to that god who had occupied the first place in the old Persian national religion and had been transferred by Zarathustra to the second the sun-god Mithra.
This larger life was a reality "a Presence to be felt and known"; and whether he called it by the name of a Totem-animal, or by the name of a Nature-divinity, or by the name of some gracious human-limbed God some Hercules, Mithra, Attis, Orpheus, or what-not or even by the great name of Humanity itself, it was still in any case the Saviour, the living incarnate Being by the realization of whose presence the little mortal could be lifted out of exile and error and death and suffering into splendor and life eternal.
In the temple of each of the leading gods of the time Jahveh, Serapis, Mithra, and so on people of all races and classes were received on a footing of equality. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man spread all over that cosmopolitan world.
For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites of some notorious Isis or Mithra; and the Gods themselves they honour by washings.... At the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptised; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is the regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries.
Zarathustra becomes a god, the hymns themselves are adored; the Homa-offering reappears, Mithra is often coupled with Ahura, other old gods creep back and are mentioned along with the moral abstractions, which also increase in number; in one passage there are said to be thirty-three objects of worship, a number which also occurs in India. Organisation of the Heavenly Beings.
Sometimes the phrase is varied, and the petition is for the special protection of a certain class of Deities the Dii familiares or "deities who guard the house." The worship of Mithra, or the Sun, does not appear in the inscriptions until the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, the victor of Cunaxa.
We may also note that the Attis Mysteries were utilized by the priests of Mithra for the initiation of women who were originally excluded from the cult of the Persian god. Cumont remarks that this, an absolute rule in the Western communities, seems to have had exceptions in the Eastern.
Perhaps the conjecture is allowable that here we have Ormazd exhibited to us in a solar character, with the attributes of Mithra, from whom, in the olden time, he was carefully distinguished. Ormazd seems to have been regarded by the kings as their special guardian and protector.
All day long he sat in his palace-like tent, receiving congratulations from even the lowest of his followers, and bound in turn not to reject any reasonable petition. The Magi sacrificed blooded stallions and rare spices to Mithra the “Lord of Wide Pastures,” to Vohu-Manu the “Holy Councillor,” and all their other angels, desiring them to bless the arms of the king.
Mithra was the Persian god of the sun; and in the system of two gods, one good and the other wicked, he was the god of goodness. The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero in Phrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing it in sacrifice to the god.
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