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Updated: June 3, 2025
Both Mithraism and Manichæism classified their adepts in various ranks, and the Yogâcâra doctors who delight in grading the progress of the Bodhisattva may have borrowed something from them. In spite of his literary merits Asanga remains a doctor rather than a saint or poet.
Was this so in Mithraism or in the cult of Isis? In both of them it seems rather that the initiate was brought rather into relationship with the Lord. Surely it was a real advantage to Christian propaganda that the Church offered union with the Supreme God more definitely than did any rival cult. Two elements must be distinguished in such teaching.
+1059+. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths Greek Mysteries, Mithraism, Isisism, Christianity.
Perhaps this independence helped to nourish the enthusiasm that carried Mithraism from one end of the Roman Empire to the other; a church appears to flourish most on the religious side when it confines itself to religion. A more important fact was that Mithraism was a religion of redemption.
It is important to note, however, that this same democratic tendency was very marked in Mithraism. "Il est certain," says Cumont, "qu'il a fait ses premieres conquetes dans les classes inferieures de la societe et c'est l'a un fait considerable; le mithracisme est reste longtemps la religion des humbles." Mysteres de Mithra, p. 68.
The British Church was also represented at the Council of Nicæa, called by Constantine in 325 to consider the Arian heresy, when the Nicene Creed in its original form was authorized; the British vote was orthodox. It was Constantine who in 321 first made Sunday a holiday, but whether Christianity or Mithraism prompted him to this is doubtful.
The expansion of Mithraism and of half-a-dozen other Asiatic and Egyptian cults, which were drawn from the East to Greece and beyond before the first century of the Hellenistic Age closed, testifies to the early existence of that spiritual void in the West which a greater and purer religion, about to be born in Galilee and nurtured in Antioch, was at last to fill.
Best attested form that connected with Nature cults. Attis-Adonis. Popularity of the Phrygian cult in Rome. Evidence as to Attis Mysteries. Utilized by Neo-Platonists as vehicle for teaching. Close connection with Mithraism. The Taurobolium. Details of Attis Mysteries. Parallels with the Grail romances. The Secret of the Grail The Naassene Document
It is a matter of historical fact that at one moment the religious fate of the West hung in the balance, and it was an open question whether Mithraism or Christianity would be the dominant Creed.
The extracts given above will show the striking analogy between the higher doctrine of Mithraism, and the fundamental teaching of its great rival, a resemblance that was fully admitted, and which became the subject of heated polemic.
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