Closed Entrance to the Temple of Mithra SOLAR (Part 2 0f 3)

 

Closed Entrance to the Temple of Mithra SOLAR (Part 2 0f 3)

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes

''Either he [Mithras] is the Sun, the brightest planet, or he is a SOLAR DEITY''

(Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, 1-4)

Thanks to archaeological and iconographic sources in ancient India, extending to the remote borders of ancient China, the solar divinity of Mithra was known and appreciated.

M. Eliade comments:

"Indeed, in ancient India, to the social classes of the Brahmins (priests, sacrifices') ... correspond Varuna and Mithra." For the rest, the prestigious researcher tells us, that already by 1380 BC., in a Hittite Treatise, the duality Mitra and Varuna appear. (8)

This Vedic Mithra that as part of a very complicated Hindu Pantheon, resurfaces triumphantly as an auxiliary or "friend" of Varuna.

Both as maintainers of the cosmic order, and Mitrá, as the spirit of the firmament is established as the faithful ally of Ahura Mazda.

(Robert Turcan, 82)

It seems beyond doubt that it is the Solar Deity invoked by Artaxerjes II Mnemon= (c.436-358a.c.).

And by Darius III who invokes the Sun Mithra and fire before the battle.

Here is presented abundant spiritual iconography, coherent and of precise chronological location.

The same defined and geographically indicated and identified going back to ancient Mesopotamia in association with the Solar god Shamas or, to the seventh month of Samas.

Millenary iconographic tradition that arrives late in Rome, with the initiatory and labyrinthine astronomical taurabolium, complete and mature.

But it is not only that, but it also manifests minoico-cretences characteristics in genuine decoration in grottoes and constant recurrent motifs of double axes =(labrys), stylized horns of TORO.

They are horns of CONSECRATION - (Eliade) - and resurrection or change of serpentine skin. (9)

Cult also staged in Grottoes (Kamares, Psykhro), similar to that carried out in the Mithraea or Mitreo of the port of Ostia, in Italy.

Previous evidence of the philosophy and soteriology of the cult (Turcan 1975) or initiatory work in caves, can be found in the extraordinary mural painting of the cave of Doktar-e-Noservan in Afghanistan.

Therefore, something as early as the 7th century BC.C., this according to Grenet, 2003.

Or, even in clear direct association with the astrological phenomenon of the arrival of the sun in Aries and with the authentic celebration of the festival of the sun = (Biruni, Atar al-Bakiya).

Later Mithraic mysteries are associated with initiatory 7 degrees and are akin to certain astrological and astronomical correspondences.

"Mithras, says Porphyry, presides over the Equinoxes, seated on a Bull... The equinoxes were the gates through which souls passed to and from, between the hemisphere of light and that or darkness."(10)

Curiously, December 25 is the Solstitial Feast of the one born from the Petra Genetrix or Brute Stone.

Nomen invictum Sol Mithra... Soli Omnipotenti Mithrae.

It is worth emphasizing that it is personified in its mysteries subtly, arduous processes of ascension of the soul through the Mithraic ladder or 7 steps towards the 7 celestial zodiacal spheres.

(Pike;7,851)

All this allows us to affirm that his teachings conceal a significant and valuable map of the Mystical Cross of the Cosmos.

(Pike,505)

Or, better, they point to an astronomical directional chart, along with their consummate group of related constellations.

"The Mithraic tauroctony, then, was apparently designed as symbolic representation of the astronomical situation that obtained during the Age of Taurus."(11)

In any case they would be the Corvus, Korax or raven = Mercury, Nymphus or Nymph to Venus, Miles, soldier = Mars, Leo, lion = Jupiter, Perses, Persian = Moon, Heliodromus, corridor of the sun = Sun, and Pater, Father = Saturn.

"All the planets know to the Ancients were distinguished by the Mystic Cross", ...

(Pike,505)

It is striking that in the Ravenna Mosaic of the sixth century A.D., astrologers or Magi wear the Mithra initiatory cap or Phrygian cap (the Kara or conical cap and the Candys or loose tunic of the 'candidate').

The divinity of Mithra Petrogenus is undoubtedly born from the internal composition of the rough or brute stone-December 25.

In the Mithreos of Dura Europus and in San Clemente of Rome, the symbol of the grotto is directly associated with the zodiacal belt fused within the rite with the "image of the Cosmos", according to Porphyry.

As you can see; The Master of the Purple Mantle or Patres Sacrorum Mithraíco -taught pure liturgical memorization-, the harsh sorrows, dangerous trials and prolonged fasts, in a rigorous and well-elaborated dramatic staging of an entire cosmic phenomenon updated and to happen.

Or rather, it was possible to internalize through proven liturgical effects, the process of spiritually substantiating the astrological and sidereal phenomenon.

Which suggests that the constellations of the serpent, the dog and the bull were studied liturgically and internalized "lived" with great depth and severe rigor. (12)

"It is this phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes that provides the KEY to unlocking the secret of the astronomical symbolism of the Mithraic tauroctony.

For the constellations pictured in the standard tauroctony have one thing in common: namely, they all lay on the celestial equator as it was positioned during the epoch immediately preceding the Greco-Roman ''Age of Aries''.

During that earlier age, which we call the ''Age of Taurus'', lasting from around 4,000 to 2,000 B.C., the celestial equator passed through Taurus the Bull (the spring equinox of the epoch), Canis Minor the Dog, Hydra the Snake, Corvus the Raven, and Scorpio the Scorpion (the autumn equinox): that is precisely the constellations represented in the Mithraic tauroctony."(13)

Mithra in her carriage evokes an ancient and powerful solar and astrological wisdom.

Mithra is my only crown!

The initiate has to achieve the rescue of his internal sunlight from the Degree of Crow = 1 to the Pater = 7.

The Mysterica of Mithra is executed by means of the birth of the God SOL=Petrogenes or emerging from the Sacred Stone=Petra Genetrix together with symbolic elements of High theurgical of the magus-priest=serpent, scorpion, Krater, León and Toro.

All of them, astrological-astronomical symbols assimilated in a hierarchy of initiatory degrees.

('Birth Stone' showing Mithras and a 'reverse' zodiac, 2nd or 3rd century A.D., from Housesteads on the Roman Wall-Museum of Antiquities of the University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne).

"Other such representations of Mithras with zodiacs are found, for example, at the Wallbrook Mithraeum in London and at Modena.''(14)

As long as it is possible to prepare ourselves spiritually to thus – initiatory – receive the zodiacal mantle and make an agreement or alliance with it.

Naked and bandaged, kneeling and "tied" to a rope behind our backs to receive the PILEUS = Phrygian cap.

It is impossible to determine how many thousands of baptismal purifications, 'water lustrations or consecrations of sacred words' in each planetary sphere of the cavern, were received in fraternal communion or in glorious agape of the ritual banquet in the spelaeum or spelunca.

So it was in the Ancient Mysteries, and so it must be.

"The picture presented by the mysteries of Mithras is totally different... All seems to center on the initiations performed by secret clubs. The best parallel, which is often invoked, may be the MASONS, whose clubs began to flourish rather rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic in the eighteen century and persist to the present day.

In some respects, the mysteries of Mithras are closer to the general type of secret societies with initiation rituals''... (15)

Closed Entrance to the Temple of Mithra SOLAR (Part 2 0f 3)

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes

Bibliography:

8. Eliade M., Volume I, History of Religious Beliefs, p. 256.

9. Dictionary of Religions, M. Eliade, pp. 153-154)

10. Albert. Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 413.

11. David Ulansey, The Origins of Mithraic Mysteries, Oxford, 1989.

12. II Taurus, from a manuscript of a al –Sufi's book of constellations- Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms. Marsh 144, p.96.

13. David Ulansey, Oxford University.

14. Jim Tester, A History of Western Astrology, p. 104.

15. Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, pp. 41, 42.