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The two systems of religion became, therefore, mixed up together for a while; and hence it is not uncommon to find in pagan sepulchres symbols and arrangements of a Christian character, and in Christian Catacombs Mithraic features. The funeral monuments of those who were converted to Christianity in the earliest ages of the Church indicated the transition between the two religions.
This crevice is too narrow for corpulent persons to squeeze through, but it is constantly resorted to for purposes of moral purification. Through natural or artificial caverns in India pilgrims enter at the south side, and make their exit at the northern, as was anciently the custom in the Mithraic mysteries.
This is the bust referred to by J.A. Symonds, in his Sketches and Studies in S. Europe, as by far the finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and sacrificial reliefs.
We do not find wild Bolshevists calling themselves Mithraic Socialists as many of them call themselves Christian Socialists. Leaving orthodoxy and even sanity entirely on one side, the very heresies and insanities of our time prove that after nearly two thousand years the issue is still living and the name is quite literally one to conjure with.
There is not a word of proof of the view that the placation of the deity was due to his assimilation of kindred flesh and blood. Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration.
"Though you disclaim all images of divinity," rejoined Aspasia, "yet we hear of your Mithras pictured like a Persian King, trampling on a prostrate ox." With a smile, Artaphernes replied, "I see, lady, that you would fain gain admittance to the Mithraic cave; but its secrets, like those of your own Eleusis, are concealed from all save the initiated."
He found the fire-altars in ruins, the sacred flame extinguished, the most essential of the Magian ceremonies and practices disregarded. Everywhere, except perhaps in his own province of Persia Proper, he found idolatry established. Temples of the sun abounded, where images of Mithra were the object of worship, and the Mithraic cult was carried out with a variety of imposing ceremonies.
The first of these is in line with the Mithraic conquest of the Bull; the Lion is of course one of the most prominent constellations of the Zodiac, and its conquest is obviously the work of a Saviour of mankind; while the last four labors connect themselves very naturally with the Solar conflict in winter against the powers of darkness.
I think we may take it as proved that from the earliest ages, and before History, a great body of religious belief and ritual first appearing among very primitive and unformed folk, whom we should call 'savages' has come slowly down, broadening and differentiating itself on the way into a great variety of forms, but embodying always certain main ideas which became in time the accepted doctrines of the later Churches the Indian, the Egyptian, the Mithraic, the Christian, and so forth.
By partaking of the sacramental meal, even in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the god; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the Mithraic, Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one passed behind the veil of maya and this ever-changing world, and entered into the region of divine peace and power.
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