World View of Mithraism
4. The World View of Mithras
4. The World View of Mithras
Mystery cults were a new religious form that emerged in the Hellenistic era. Following the fundamental transformations which occurred in the social, political and cosmological domains after the conquests of Alexander the Great, mystery cults assumed specific images and assumptions about the world and the cosmic order, and they provided a new strategy of existence in it, accessible only to initiates (Martin 1987, 11).
Mithraism was one of these cults that were widespread throughout the Roman Empire in the first three centuries CE. Nevertheless, in contrast to the other Hellenistic and Roman mystery cults, its mysteries were not merely an option of a broader religious system but were coterminous with the cult itself. In this sense, the Mithraic cult could not exist without its mysteries, symbolic complexes and rituals that were hosted in the Mithraeum (Beck 2006, 2‐3).
However, Mithraism was not an autonomous culture, but it was embodied in the society of the Roman Empire. This specific cultural and social context affected and defined the contents of its world view universals.
The Mithraic cosmos was a replication of the cosmological Ptolemaic model of the universe that included and affected both the perception of self and other and their relationships within the framework of its mysteries.
Ptolemaic cosmology, which expanded and replaced the classical Greek cosmic imagery, had seven planetary spheres that surrounded a spherical and immobile earth. The Moon was deemed as the closest planet to the earth, and the trajectories of the other visible planets (Mercury,
Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) constituted the other six sequential spheres with Saturn’s orbit taken as the most distant. Beyond these spheres there was a realm of fixed stars that embraced them. ’An abyss of cosmic space’ separated the ‘terrestrial, sublunar’ and the ‘celestial, superlunar realm’. This cosmic space was populated by ‘elemental and demonic powers’, which controlled the ’terrestrial sphere’, but they were in turn under the control of the ’celestial deities’
(Martin 1987, 7‐8).
This cosmic structure followed a universal motion that instantiated sameness and uniformity in the universe. According to this motion, each planet was rotating around the earth in a certain order. Specifically, the fixed stars in the outer sphere rotated around the earth westwards in twenty four hours. All the other planets followed in the opposite direction (eastwards), completing their rotation in different periods. The different times that each planet needed in order to achieve a full rotation around earth defined the planetary motion that instantiated difference and multiplicity in cosmos. Thus, for example, the Moon needed 24 hours for a full gyration around earth. The Sun that was in the centre of this sequence needed one year. Spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as summer and winter solstices were ascribed to the rotation of the fixed stars and of the planetary spheres around different poles. The equators of the latter were oblique to the equator of the former by roughly 23.5º. The Sun’s orbit, as well as the orbits of the other planets, was defined by these four tropic points and marked the succession of seasons. The course of the planets’ rotation was divided into twelve signs, the zodiacs that encircled the heavens beginning with Aries at the spring equinox (Beck 2006, 77‐79).
This cosmological model provided Mithraists with the fundamental images and assumptions about the cosmos that contributed to a cognitive organization of the phenomenal world (Kearney 1984, 80). The major categories of the universe as a cosmic totality and the causal interrelations between its parts determined the awareness of self, its perception of change and consistency, its relationship with other humans and its position in the world.
There was an essential distinction between the sublunar and superlunar realm. Sublunar was the sphere where people were living and acting. However, their lives were affected by demonic powers that populated the cosmic space between those two spheres and were subject to the abrupt reversals of Fortune (Tyche). Gods in their celestial realm were too far away without direct interference in the terrestrial traits. Thus, humans had a sense of dependence upon an implacable Tyche and incontrollable powers (Martin 1987, 10). Nevertheless, there was Mithras, the agent of the supreme ordainer of the universe and ally of powers which conserve the order, who provided humans with a new potential strategy of existence in his mysteries. He revealed to the initiates the image of a certain cosmic order and the sympathetic relation between the human microcosm and the universal macrocosm (ib., 113). Initiation into the Mithraic mysteries was an opportunity for the initiate to surpass the apparent chaos of the world and serve the cosmic order.
In the mystery framework, the individual formed a new awareness of his self and of his relations both with other humans and with the world (other). Participation in the mysteries transformed his existence as long as he acquired a knowledge and view of the systematic cosmic integration that affiliated the initiates with each other and distinguished them from other people (Clauss 2000, 15). After the initiation, the identity of cult members was defined by the sharing of this knowledge that set them in the service of Mithras, regardless of their social status.
Nevertheless, the epigraphic evidence indicates that the majority of the initiates were recruited from the ranks of ”soldiers, administrative members of familia Caesaris, slaves, freedmen and ordinary Roman citizens” (ib., 40). This social background and the systematic exclusion of women from the cult imply elements and values of the Graeco‐Roman society that Mithraism had embedded. The principles of ”submission to the authority, acceptance of a specific role within an organization, conformity” (ib.) and support of the Roman empire, which inspired the male members of the military and petty bureaucracy, were transmuted and completed in the Mithraic context with a new integrated view of the cosmos and the mission of preservation of the cosmic order. In this Mithraic cosmos, the initiates did not have equal access to knowledge. A grade hierarchy defined their roles, which were accompanied by different instructions, missions and commitments and determined their behavior and their relationship with the other cult members.
The conceptions of self and its relationship to its surroundings were in direct connection with the perception of space and time that were manifested in the Mithraeum, the ritual space where the mysteries of Mithras were taking place. Generally, Mithraists might have had a great geographical sense of the Roman’s empire extent and of the wider ‘oikoumene’ (Beck 2006, 80).
Nevertheless, in the Mithraic cult, emphasis was given to the celestial cosmos ”where Time and Space are related” (ib., 79). Archaeological and monumental remains indicate an outline of the typical structure and symbolic complexes of the mithraea.
The microcosm of the Mithraic ritual space was a replication of the universe macrocosm.
Caves that could be perceived as an image of the universe, ”as an inside without outside” (ib., 106), were considered to be ideal places for the Mithras cult. The Mithraic cave had a rectangular room with vaulted ceiling and semicircular benches along the long sides. On the end wall, the image of the bull‐killing Mithras in the eminent iconography of the tauroctony was instated. This was the cult niche which represented the spring equinox. On the opposite side was the entrance, representing the autumn equinox. The aisle linking those two points equated with the diameter of the universe between the two equinoxes and divided the celestial sphere in two parts. Upwards of this diameter, on the ceiling of the Mithraeum, was the northern hemisphere and downwards on its floor was the invisible southern hemisphere. An imagined axis penetrated the floor exactly in the middle of the aisle, marking and linking the north and south poles. This was the axis around which the universe rotated. The earth was imagined in the middle of the celestial sphere, at the point
where this axis intersected the aisle. Thus, the Mithraeum lying upwards and the diameter that linked the two equinoxes were perceived as the northern celestial hemisphere. Its side benches represented everything existing above the north plane of the celestial equator. In the middle of these benches there were two niches, facing each other, representing the solstices. The diameter which linked these two niches bisected the universe at the “solstitial colure” (ib., 111). On each side of the niches, the benches were carried on three arches that corresponded to the three zodiac signs before and following the solstices. In this way, to the north – Mithra’s right – there was the
“summer solstice in or at the start of Cancer” and to the south – Mithras’ left – was the “winter solstice in or at the start of Capricorn” (ib.). In some cases, images of the seven planets were instated on the arches with the zodiac signs (ib., 109‐114).
In this image of the universe embodied in the structure of the Mithraeum, the earth was in the centre of the celestial sphere, and the planetary motion around it defined time. In the Mithraic microcosm, there were no signs for the east or the west, except for a rotative motion westwards or eastwards around earth. This motion of the planets and especially of the sun configured the major categories of time. The Sun’s rotation marked day and night. The solar transit from the main tropic points defined the seasons’ alternations. The Moon defined the month. The period in which the other five planets completed a full gyration around the earth and simultaneously returned to their points of departure, was the Great Year (Megalos Eniautos). The past and future as well as the present as a “moving now” were reflected in the Mithraeum by marking each time the appropriate zodiac sign (ib., 114).
In this perspective, the motion of the universe around the immobile earth instantiated sameness and uniformity and constructed the cosmic order. On the other hand, the motion of the planets and their orbits transiting through the zodiac circles and the main four tropic points (equinoxes and solstices) instantiated difference and multiplicity both in sublunar and superlunar spheres.
In the Mithraic cosmos, the initiates arrived at a new view of the universe and of the universal powers that preserved the cosmic order. They became aware of the causes that explained change and consistency in their selves and their surroundings. In other words, they formed a new world view with logico‐structural integration that determined essential conceptions about their selves, the environment, the universe, the relationships between them and the causality that governed these relations. But it was in the rituals that this world view became connected with special moods and motivations that gave ‘an aura of factuality’ to its images and assumptions about the world (Geertz 1990, 109).