Mithras

The Mithras or Mithra cult or worship originates in Persian Mithraic Mysteries in the second ancient Persian cultural age, and the tradition was brought across from Asia into Europe, and was still widespread in Europe in the Roman culture in the fourth Greco-Latin cultural age when leaders and warriors were filled with the Mithraic service. Mithras ministry was based on the fact that the old, primitive clairvoyance was still present in a large number of people (see first column on Schema FMC00.617A below, and Schema FMC00.013). The Mithra cult in the Mediterranean countries was only exterminated in around the sixth century AD.

The Mithras mysteries is an example of the Heracles mysteries, and how the Greek spiritual life in the Dionysus myth represents the development of the higher as opposed to the lower. This representation of the initiatory process is the same throughout the ancient world.

The main cultic image is Man who is victorious over the bull: a bull is ridden by a Man thrusting a sword into the bull's neck, whereas below a scorpion or serpent is biting the bull. The picture is surrounded by the firmament and the signs of the zodiac.

The symbolism of this image shows human destiny between the lower and higher human being, and as mostly with symbols can be read on different levels or interpretations, in short (see lecture references below for more complete descriptions):

• The youth on the bull represents the pupil on the path of initiation; but also the God mediator or redeemer from evil (leading mankind from evil to good). Mithras is a symbol for the (higher, spiritual) sun force in Man, rebelling against the (lower) planetary and terrestrial aspects.
• the image shows Man's fight against his lower animal nature, and the victory of the 'upper Man' (higher Self, see Man's higher triad) over the lower bodily principles. Forces working through the metabolic-limb man are represented by the bull (the symbol of living nature from which life sprouts), and Man is mounted above this and thrusts the sword of Michael into the neck of the bull.
• In front of and behind the bull are two attendants, one with a raised torch and one with lowered torch, representing the process of initiation between life and death; but also symbolizing the course of the sun across the heavens. The higher being of Man was known by Mithras pupils through a heart-science and the spirit of the sun's annual passage through the zodiac (and nature's rhythm of the seasons).
• a serpent and scorpion also appear: a serpent winding around the bull, and a scorpion biting into the genitals (showing that if the lower human being is not made small by the higher one, lower human nature also harms itself).

Aspects

• symbolic picture of the cult is explained in 1901-12-28-GA087 and 1923-09-30-GA223
• the essence, meaning and feeling, as a symbol, and link with Christianity (1911-10-04-GA131, 1921-04-15-GA204)
  • Mithras links to the sun force in Man .. and Christ as the God mediator to go from lower to higher between good and evil
  • Christmas and the birth of a Savior is connected with the Mithras festival, celebrating the birth of Mithras in a cave (1916-06-06-GA169)
• places:
  • Mithras rites and observations were made and held in caves as they needed the stillness and quiet of a cave in the rocks. They did not need the outer light of the sun but the spiritual influences of the sun and the stars go into those places as well. (1924-09-10-GA350)
  • examples of well-known mithraea (Mithraic caves and underground temples)
    • Santa Maria Capua Vetere and Ostia Antica (Italy), Dura-Europos (Syria), Sidon (Lebanon)
    • examples beneath churches built upon them later: Santa Prisca Mithraeum, San Clemente Mithraeum (Rome, Italy)
• timing
  • Mithraic rites were common in the region of the Danube, Bavaria and this part of Switzerland. It continued for a long time even when Christianity was coming to these regions. The last remnants were still to be found when Christianity had come to those regions, especially the Danube region (1924-09-10-GA350)
  • in or around the sixth century, in regard to the cultic aspect, the Mithras worship was exterminated (1921-04-15-GA204)

• location - geographically:
  • the Mithraic were diffused from Persia as far as the Caspian Sea, along the Danube into Germany, and even to the South of France, to Spain and to England. Europe was permeated by the Mithraic Mysteries (1911-10-04-GA131)
  • another stream of revelation ran parallel to the stream of Christian life from east to west, more in the north, across the Black Sea, along the Danube up to the Rhine, right into Western Europe (1914-12-26-GA156)
  • finding their way from Asia into Europe .. extending from East to West .. through the countries of the Danube as far as the regions of the Rhine and on into France (1921-04-15-GA204)
• Mithraic initiation
  • Mithraic Mysteries consisted of lesser Mysteries and greater Mysteries (1904-12-19-GA090A)
  • seven degrees of Mithraic initiation.
    • The fourth degree is the lion. When the fourth principle – lion – awakens in the higher sense, it strives towards the fifth and wants to be freed from the third, the dragon. (1904-09-09-GA090A)
    • first degree Raven, second degree the Occult One (Occulter or hidden one), third degree the Warrior or Fighter for the sacred truth, fourth degree Lions, fifth degree Persian (the name of the people to whom he belonged; manas awakened), sixth degree Sun Runner or Sun Hero, and seventh degree Father (1904-12-19-GA090A, 1917-05-01-GA175)
      • note, according to R. J. Vermaseren, in 'Mithras, the Secret God' (1963) he who had acquired sufficient knowledge “could gain successively the title of Raven (Corax), Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Courier of the Sun (Heliodromus) and Father (Pater)”.
    • the first four degrees gradually led deeper into spiritual experience, the fifth degree really had capacity for expanded consciousness enabling the person to become a spiritual guardian of his people (1913-10-03-GA148)
• various other
  • first-degree Initiates were suited to act as intermediaries and the special task of the Ravens was to mediate between the external world and those long dead .. a tradition that survived in legends as echoes of the ancient pagan and Mithras mysteries. Example: The Kyffhäuser legend tells how the dead Barbarossa is instructed by Ravens, or how Charles the Great is surrounded by Ravens that brought him news of the outside world. (1917-05-01-GA175)
  • leontocephaline statues (body of a human and the head of a lion) are found in many Mithras locations: these are lion-headed figures with naked human body entwined with a serpent, (two or) four wings, and holding one or two keys and a sword. Well known examples of such statues: in the Vatican library (the Mithraeum in Ostia and from the Villa Albani), the Sidon Mithraeum.
    • see also potential syncretism link with Phanes (emerging from a cosmic egg entwined with a serpent) in Orphic cosmogony depicted as a deity; ... and variants such as marble relief in Galleria Estense (Modena, Italy)

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.625: shows two well known ancient depictions of the Mithras cult symbol. Left a fresco from the mithraeum of Marino near Rome (Italy); right a relief in sandstone at the Mithraeum of Heddernheim near Frankfurt (Germany).

Observe the consistency of key elements besides the bull, like the two guardians, dog, snake, scorpion.

Schema FMC00.626: illustrates the leontocephaline figures found in Mithraic temples: lion-headed figures with naked human body entwined with a serpent, (two or) four wings, and holding one or two keys and a staff or sword.

Manly Hall quotes Franz Cumont and relates this symbol to boundless time and the victory over time and the god Aion or Kronos. Compare also with depictions of Phanes (such as in the Estense Gallery in Modena, Italy) showing a winged human body encircled by a serpent and holding a staff.

Schema FMC00.617A: is a simplified reduced version of Schema FMC00.617, positioning the future evolution towards so-called heart-thinking with the future clairvoyant consciousness and transformed faculty of memory, versus the contemporary brain or head-thinking with current waking consciousness.

This schema positioning and lecture is central to and connects to various perspectives covered on multiple topic pages, such as: Christ in the etheric, Past life memories, Stages of clairvoyance, Development of the chakras, and the development of the future faculty of memory, and the Transition between 4th and 14th century, the Sixth epoch, and Future Jupiter.

Lecture coverage and references

1901-12-28-GA087

The bull is a symbol in all mysteries that was widespread in the ancient world at that time, a symbol that passed from Persia through Asia Minor, Egypt and then spread from there through Greece. It is a symbol for the fruitful living nature.

Therefore, in the Mysteries of Mithras, we see the bull paired with a strange symbol, a symbol of living nature. The tail of the bull runs out into a bunch of ears of wheat. This is definitely the symbolic representation of fertile and living nature. And the Mithras symbolism represents nothing other than this work of Heracles. This appears as a higher work of Heracles: the "Nemeijic lion is the lower, the bull the higher. The bull is the nature from which life sprouts, while the lion is the nature that is blind, dull.

This bull is sacred to Poseidon.

We also know that this bull is depicted for those who were admitted to the battles of Mithras, as a bull on which a youth sits, thrusting his sword into the bull's side. A dog jumps in. Below is a snake, lengthwise. In front of and behind the bull are two attendants.

The youth represents nothing other than the one on the path of initiation. On one side he has a companion with a raised torch, on the other side a companion with a lowered torch. This represents a process between life and death, which is the process of initiation. The upper part represents the passing sun god, the ascending and descending one. This rightly represents to us as spiritual what goes on below. This is the corresponding process in the realm of Dionysus, while the lower one is that in which Heracles finds himself. The image contains nothing other than the seventh work of Heracles. This is contained in all the representations of the Mysteries throughout the ancient world.

...

When we understand the legend of Heracles, we understand the corresponding teachings of all peoples, of the Indians, Persians and Egyptians. The mysteries of Heracles have existed alongside the mysteries of others. They all represent to us the initiatory process, and the initiatory process is the same throughout the ancient world. I have cited the Mithras myth only to show how the Heracles myth lives throughout antiquity and how the Greek spiritual life in the Dionysus myth represents the higher development of the Heracles myth, representing the higher as opposed to the lower. [This is illustrated by the parallelism of the Dionysus process with that of the others. It is also shown in Angelus Silesius that the Initiate is not something indifferent in the world process, but something significant.

1904-09-09-GA090A

Iwein is also a deeply symbolic piece of writing. Here again a female being represents the higher self. In this case it is the daughter of a giant, a race preceding humanity. The fusion of man with nature, as well as with [gap in transcript], was the gigantism. At the beginning of his development, Iwein is still close to this original development. He must now awaken Manas within himself. Manas was originally a gift of the gods, connected with the soul. Now he loses the higher gift in order to regain it as inner human intellect. When he reconciles with the higher self, he gains it, but by freeing the lion from the dragon, that is, from selfishness, from the wisdom that is directed towards the worldly.

It is wonderful when we consider the Mithras mysteries: their seven degrees.

The fourth degree is the lion. When the fourth principle – lion – awakens in the higher sense, it strives towards the fifth and wants to be freed from the third, the dragon.

1904-12-19-GA090A

It is interesting to investigate in the spiritual accounts called the Akashic Record the way this twofold form of mankind expressed itself. Even the spiritual scientist, who is able to decipher these wondrous documents, is astonished to find how different the male and female elements of that time were as compared with what they are at present. Under the guidance of the wise leaders of mankind, woman developed the soul element, and man the element of will. In this way, the duality of will and soul arose and confronted each other in the two sexes in the Atlantean period. Through the fact that the soul entered the physical body, evil entered mankind, and because mankind had to recapitulate the epoch that is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire worship of the religion of the Parsis appeared, that is, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman. This, as the Persian period of culture, precedes recorded history.

The duality of good and evil was taught in the religion of Zarathustra. Men were not yet concerned with a trinity, which came later at about the time when the first historical documents appeared. The Akashic Record gives no information of a trinity existing in pre-historical times. It only became necessary for people to look up to a third power after they came to distinguish between good and evil. Thus the figure of the mediator appeared—the conciliator, the redeemer from evil, who led mankind from evil to good, and he was most clearly present in the Mysteries of Mithras that originated in Persia and spread finally over the whole world.

In those ancient times men saw earthly events as a reflection of the Divine and of what had occurred in the great celestial vault of the heavens. If you study the Zodiac, you will find there the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries. The vernal point of the sun advances according to certain laws so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, then in Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries. At about the eighth century B.C. the sun had entered the sign of Aries, the Lamb. In our age it has entered the sign of Pisces.

[Cancer and spiral]

Earthly events are determined by what occurs in spiritual realms. Take the sign of Cancer, for example. Its true significance is not always known, but this sign, which consists of two intertwining spirals, when rightly understood points to the dawn of a new age. Whenever an important event occurs in the world, whenever one stage of evolution is superseded by another thereby bringing something new into the world, two such spiral movements intertwine. One spiral of the sign of Cancer indicates the end of the Atlantean culture; the other, the beginning of the Aryan culture.

Our ancestors thus perceived in the heavens the outward sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture. At a later time the sun entered the sign of Gemini, the Twins. This is the sign of good and evil, the sign that governed Persian thinking. Then the sun entered Taurus. Here we have the third post-Atlantean period with its veneration of the Bull in the Egyptian Apis cult, the Babylonian cult of the Bull and its sacrifice, and the Mithraic cult of ancient Persia. Man brought the sacrifice of the Bull down to earth from the heavens where it was inscribed.

The fourth post-Atlantean period, in which Christianity arose, began with the entrance of the sun into Aries. This important turning point in history is indicated by the story of the Greek hero, Jason, who captured the Golden Fleece. A further important turning point is indicated by the sacrifice of the Mystical Lamb upon the Cross.

Let us understand this whole course of evolution correctly. After the duality of good and evil had been comprehended in human consciousness, the concept of the trinity arose and appeared in various religions.

We recognize it in the Mithraic Mysteries that existed in many Mediterranean countries. Let us look at one of these Mystery temples. Only a symbolic action was performed for those who participated in the lesser Mysteries, but for those who were permitted to participate in the greater Mysteries, the same events also took place as an event in the astral world.

I can only describe the lesser Mysteries of the Mithraic cult now. The symbolic Bull became visible and the Mediator, the God, rode upon his back. He covered the Bull's nostrils, plunged a sword into his side and a snake and a scorpion appeared. Above the head of the God Mithras was a bird and over the whole group, on one side a being soared with a lowered torch, on the other a being with a raised torch, symbolizing the course of the sun across the heavens.

This description represents human life as it lived in the consciousness of the men of that time. Man had reached the point of looking within himself for redemption, for the third divine principle that could lead him beyond evil, reconciling evil with good. Evil here consisted of the passions that drag man down to earth, symbolized by the Bull. The Mediator who killed the lower nature by thrusting the sword into the side of the bull appeared as the immortal in man that can raise him to his higher self.

Thus, during the time of the third post-Atlantean period a divine trinity appeared as mediator between good and evil, and mankind came to comprehend what is called in theosophy, atman, buddhi and manas. At the moment the mediator appeared, the mystical secret was accomplished; the trinity had been awakened in man's consciousness.

Through his recognition of the unity, the duality and the trinity, man was led to atman, buddhi and manas. Atman, or spirit-man, is the unity man comes to experience in himself when he has achieved that stage. Buddhi, or life-spirit, will find expression in man through the overcoming of evil by good. Duality will purify the lower instincts and desires, and all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas, or spirit-self, is the spiritual principle that rules human development even now. As the Messiah, the Redeemer, created a unison in the world that leads from disharmony to harmony, so duality is redeemed through the trinity in which evil is conquered by good.

So the human race reached the point of perceiving its destiny, pre-ordained by the eternal world order, in the Trinity. Man looked up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead and perceived a divine Trinity in the world upon which he himself was dependent. In truth, however, he first had to experience the descent of the Trinity to the earth embodied as a human being, as his human brother. This was the great event that stands at the beginning of our era, and the Trinity thereby acquired an entirely new significance for human consciousness.

We can understand the deeper meaning of the Christmas festival only if we comprehend the Mediator in the right way. Out of unity, duality has developed, and out of duality, a chaos from which harmony is to be re-created—a re-creation that can only be brought about by the Mediator. This harmony can only find its expression in an eternal law that, in the time of the Mithraic cult, found its symbolical expression in the fact that in man himself people saw an image of the cosmic law that creates the everlasting harmonies of the world.

[sevenfold initiation]

In the Mysteries of the Persian religion already mentioned you will find a sevenfold initiation of those permitted admission to the holy secrets. Those who had some knowledge of the most elementary secrets belonged to the first degree of initiation, and were given the symbolic name of the “Ravens.” The second degree was that of the “Occult Ones,” the third, that of the “Warriors” or “Fighters” for the sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the “Lions,” and the fifth, the “Persians.” Only one in whom the consciousness of spirituality we call manas had awakened was considered to be a full “Persian,” an initiate of the fifth degree. A member of his people in the true sense of the word, he represented the destiny of his people. If he advanced to the next degree of initiation, he no longer represented the character of his people but that of all mankind in its development from the third phase of evolution, that is, the middle of the Lemurian epoch, into the fifth phase, the post-Atlantean. Such an initiate was called a “Sun Runner” or a “Sun Hero,” and all Sun Heroes mentioned in ancient books are initiates of the sixth degree. The last degree of initiation was that of the “Father,” which was connected with the future development of mankind.

What does the name “Sun Runner” signify? If you were to look back into the primeval ages of our solar system, you would find that it arose from out a battle of chaotic heat; you would find that harmony in our world emerged out of disharmony, and that peace and law developed from non-peace and disharmony. The course of the sun is so regular that we cannot imagine that it might deviate and turn from its path even momentarily. Our universe is so firmly and harmoniously grounded that nothing can throw the sun off its destined course. In the path of the sun across the sky the ancient Persian initiate of the sixth degree saw his own inner destiny. The sun of his inner life, the sun of his spirit, had to shine for him with the same certainty as the outer sun, making it impossible for him to deviate from the path of the good and the wise. The human being who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so permeated by this lawfulness that it was impossible for him to stray from the path. He was a Sun Hero, a Sun Runner. The goal of all previous degrees of initiation was to give this inner certainty to man.

Men who knew something about the Mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the course of the sun across the sky. They said that the sun makes the days grow shorter as autumn approaches, that everything withdraws into the earth. When Christmas arrives, a turning point is reached. The light increases, days grow longer and nature reawakens. So the birth of the light at Christmas time has been celebrated since the times when the light became the symbol of revelation in the world and man. In the East all men of the post-Atlantean epoch saw in the light the garment of the wise world order, of world wisdom.

Gazing into cosmic space today, we see the light shining steadfastly and harmoniously from the stars. In reality, however, the Spirits of Wisdom reveal themselves through the light, which in ancient religions was conceived of as the garment of cosmic wisdom. It was at first celebrated as the unity, the primeval wisdom, then as the duality of light and darkness, and finally as the trinity, the illuminated human being, the teacher and mediator, Mithras. But mankind could be blessed by this cosmic harmony only when a consciousness of it arose from the human heart itself. The external light, the light that is born out there in the universe, must today be born also in the human heart.

1904-12-28-GA051

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa undertook the third crusade, which also led to no real successes, but which became important through the Kyffhäuser saga, which tied itself to it. Those who can read legends know that they are dealing with one of the most important ones. It did not originate from the soul of the people, as it is usually said, because only the individual wrote poems and then what he produced spread among the people, as it also happens with the folk song, of which professors claim that it originates directly from the people and does not come from the heads of individuals. The legend originated from the mind of a man who knew how to use symbols that had a deep meaning, such as the cave in Kyffhäuser, the ravens and so on. It is one of the legends that can be found all over the world, a proof that there is something similar everywhere. The Barbarossa saga is a very important saga from the point of view of cultural history. Rome was in the church the advocate of what resulted from the, the Germanic spirit in connection with Christianity imposed external accessory. In a grotto the emperor was supposed to be hidden. From time immemorial grottoes were secret places of worship. Thus the Mithras service was generally held in grottoes. In this worship, Mithras was depicted on the bull, the symbol of the lower animal nature, which was overcome by Mithras, the predecessor of Christ. In the Kyffhäuser legend, the emperor hidden in the rocky grotto became the advocate of that which turned against Rome and its influence in German spiritual life. How much there is in this legend! A pure Christianity, longed for by many at the time, was to emerge from hiding when the time came.

1911-10-04-GA131

Thus the Greek Mysteries, as also those of Isis and Osiris in the Egyptian Mysteries, worked outwards from the inmost nature of man and sought to lead him into the spiritual worlds. It was a living apprehension of the “God in Man.” A real acquaintance was formed between man and God, and immortality ranked not as mere abstract theory and philosophy but as something known, something as firmly grounded as the knowledge of external colours, and this was experienced as an intimate connection with external things.

With no less certainty was this experienced also in the Persian or Mithraic Mysteries. Whereas Man was led in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries through the unfettering of his soul-powers, he was confronted at once with the Universe itself in the Mithraic Mysteries; not only did the Universe work upon him through the great and mighty Nature which is overlooked by those who regard the world in its external aspect, but by gaining a deep intimacy with Nature, he could gaze upon phenomena that lay outside the limits of the human understanding. By the methods then used the most terrible and magnificent powers were brought before the pupil from Universal Space. Whereas the Greek disciple was affected by a deep feeling of reverence, to the Mithraic disciple alone was given the knowledge of the terrible and awe-inspiring powers in Nature so that he felt himself infinitesimally small in comparison. So powerful was this impression, consequent upon his alienation from the primal source of being, that he felt that in its vastness the Universe could at any moment overwhelm and annihilate him. The first impulse came from his being led through a comprehensive astronomy and science away from external things to the greatness of the phenomena of the Universe, and what he further developed in the Mysteries was then more a consequence of the Truth in all its ramifications when Nature in her details (science in the old sense of the word) worked upon his soul. The Greek disciple became fearless through the setting free of his powers. The Mithraic disciple was brought so far that he drank in the greatness of Cosmic Thought, and thereby his soul also became strong and courageous. A knowledge of the dignity and value of a human being was gained, and with it a feeling for truth and fidelity; the disciple learned to recognize that man must always hold himself under control during his earthly existence.

Such were the benefits obtained especially through the Mithraic Mysteries, and whereas the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries are to be found spread over Greece and Egypt, the Mithraic are diffused from Persia as far as the Caspian Sea, along the Danube into Germany, and even to the South of France, to Spain and to England. Europe was indeed permeated by the Mithraic Mysteries, and everywhere it was seen clearly that something streamed into man from the Universe if only he could learn to understand it, and this that could be received was Mithra, the God that streams through the world in all worlds.

It was through this power of action that courage was aroused: the warriors, the Roman legionaries, were filled with the Mithraic service or cult of Mithra. Both leaders and men were initiated into the Mysteries. Thus was God sought on the one hand by the freeing of the individual soul-powers, and it was quite evident that through this process something streamed out from the depths of the soul. On the other hand, however, it was equally evident that when man sought God by devoting himself to the great cosmic phenomena, something streamed into his soul as the essence, the finest life-sap contained in the world. There were found the primordial forces of the Universe. God came as it were into human souls through this development which was attained in the Mystery schools. A veritable process is to be seen here: each soul became a door for the entrance of the Godhead into human evolution on Earth. Few were able to undergo such a development, and a special preparation for it was necessary. The teaching consisted in showing that what was hidden in external nature (Mithra) as also in the inner man of the Greek, poured through the world as a stream of divine consecration.

...

[Christianity]

He who had the profoundest knowledge of this fact of Christianity was Paul. The Apostle recognized that as men looked to Adam as their physical progenitor they could, through the Christ Impulse, look to the Christ as the Great Example, and so attain to what was striven for in the Mysteries and must be born again if they were to know their own original nature. The knowledge that was kept within the recesses of the Temples, and could only be attained after ascetic training, was set forth neither in mundane document nor as some external fact but as having been accomplished as a mystical fact, the God Who pervaded the world having actually appeared in one single Form. What the disciples of the Mithraic Mysteries acquired through looking upon the Greatest Model had now been attained through Christ. The courage, self control and energy acquired by those disciples had also to be acquired by those who could no longer be initiated in the old Mithraic sense; through the Model of the historical Christ and the gazing upon Him the impulse towards this fortitude was now to pour itself out upon the soul. In the Mithraic Mysteries, as has been shown, the whole Universe was in a certain sense born in the soul of the disciple, and the courageous soul was fired with all the inner forces of initiative. In the Baptism of John something was poured down from above of which human nature could be the vehicle; when a man was permeated with the thought that his nature was capable of assimilating the profoundest harmony of the Universe, the view of the Baptism aroused within him the understanding that Mithra could be born in human nature. Those, therefore, who grasped the original meaning of Christianity, acknowledged that the end of the Mysteries had come: the God Who formerly had poured Himself into the Mysteries had now flowed directly into the being of the Earth through the Personality Who stood at the beginning of a new era (our present one).

The connection with the Greek or Dionysian Mysteries has now to be considered. Through the fact that the human gaze was guided to Jesus of Nazareth in Whom Mithra lived and Who then passed through death, an indication was given that Mithra (the bestower of courage, self control and energy) had Himself died with the death of Jesus. It was further seen that because Mithra had so vanished that which man found in his deepest nature, and had attained earlier through the Dionysian Mysteries, had now become in Jesus of Nazareth the immortal conqueror over death. Herein lies the true Christian meaning of the Resurrection if it is grasped in its spiritually scientific sense. The Baptism by John in [the] Jordan demonstrated that the old Mithra had entered into man, that thereby human nature had won the victory over death, and that by the example so created the soul could unite itself in the deepest love in order to come to that which lived in its own depths. In the Risen Christ was seen the fact that man, by living according to the event that had taken place in history, could rise above the level of ordinary humanity.

1913-10-03-GA148

If we want to clearly understand the Pentecost event in the sense of the Fifth Gospel, we must use the concepts we have developed in spiritual science. It has been brought to your attention that in ancient times there were Mysteries, initiations, through which the human soul was raised to participation in spiritual life.

This pre-Christian initiation process can be seen most clearly when one observes the so-called Persian or Mithras mysteries.

There were seven stages of initiation. The person who was to be raised to the higher stages of spiritual experience was led first to what was symbolically called the “Raven” stage; he became an “occulter”, a “hidden one”. In the third degree he became a “Fighter”, in the fourth a “Lion”, in the fifth he took on the name of the people to whom he belonged. In the sixth degree he became a “Sun-Hero”, in the seventh a “Father”. For the first four degrees it is sufficient today to say that he was gradually led deeper and deeper into spiritual experience. In the fifth degree the person reached the capacity for an expanded consciousness, which enabled him to become a spiritual guardian of his people. Therefore he was assigned the name of the corresponding people. When someone at that time was initiated into the fifth degree, he had a certain participation in the spiritual life.

1914-12-26-GA156

DE version

(poor) internet translation:

In the course of the last year we have often spoken about how we actually have to celebrate not just one Jesus child, but two Jesus children on our spiritual-scientific basis, and it can be said that the fact that the spiritual-scientific consideration of this revealed the mystery of the two Jesus boys, a weak beginning has been made for a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

This Mystery of Golgotha ​​was only able to take hold of people's hearts slowly and gradually. Our souls can see how it entered the human spirit when we consider, for example, that what Christians today have struggled to achieve in the vision of the Christmas child had to make its way from East to West going through other conceptions of a divine mediator between the highest divine-spiritual beings and the human soul.

We have also often noticed that another stream of revelation ran parallel to the stream of Christian life from east to west, more in the north, across the Black Sea, along the Danube up to the Rhine, right into Western Europe. That ministry which we know as the Mithraic ministry disappeared after the first centuries of the Christian era. But by the first centuries of the Christian era it had gripped as many hearts in Europe as Christianity itself, had made a deep imprint and spread throughout the regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Mithras appeared to those who professed him to be just as lofty and great as the divine mediator who descended from spiritual heights entered earthly existence as Christ appeared to Christians. Likewise we hear how the entry of Mithras into earthly existence was celebrated in the winter Christmas Eve of the shortest day; likewise we hear that he was born hidden in a cave, that shepherds first heard his song of praise. Like other Christian holidays, Sunday was dedicated to him.

What is characteristic of the descent of this Mithraic figure?

Just as Christ was presented in Jesus, so Mithras was not presented. If you made an image, a pictorial idea of ​​him, you knew that you were only having a symbolic idea. The real Mithras could only be seen by those who had clairvoyant vision. It is true that he was presented as a mediator between men and the spiritual hierarchies; but he was not presented as having incarnated in a human being. He was conceived as descending to earth in his true essence only to be seen by the initiates, only by those who had psychic vision. That the divine-spiritual being who is to be represented as a mediator between the spiritual hierarchies and the human soul is embodied in an earthly body as a child was not yet present in the Mithras ministry. For what Mithras ministry is based on the fact that the old, primitive clairvoyance was still present in a large number of people. If we examine the path of the Mithraic service from east to west, we find among the people who became Mithraic servants a large number of those who could see in those intermediate states between waking and sleeping, where the soul is not in dreams but in spiritual Reality lives, the descent of Mithras from eon to eon, from stage to stage, from the spiritual world down to earth. And the others were carried away by these seers. Many were able to testify that such a mediator has arisen for men, a mediator in the spiritual worlds. What one had as a Mithraic cult was just an external, more or less pictorial representation of what the seers saw.

What is it actually what confronts us in this Mithraic mistery?

We must not believe - this is evident from our whole world view - that anything about Christ has only been known since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the pre-Christian times, the initiates and their disciples knew him well as the spirit that was to come. The initiates have repeatedly referred to the one whom they saw descending from the heights as a sun spirit, who was approaching the earth to set up his dwelling in the earth. They designated him as the one who was to come, the one who was to come. They knew him in spirit and saw him descending. Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. We know what it means. We know that through this Mystery of Golgotha ​​the spirit through which the earth got its meaning moved into a human body. We know how this spirit has been connected to the earth ever since, and we also know how humanity is to develop so that in the not so distant future we will again be able to see Christ in the spirit who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, lived his own life united with the life of mankind on earth.

1916-06-06-GA169

We can have deep feelings for these festivals only when we remember what we know through spiritual science. Christmas and the ideas it evokes are closely connected with all the festivals ever celebrated to commemorate the birth of a Savior.

Christmas is connected with the Mithras festival, which celebrates the birth of Mithras in a cave.

Thus, Christmas is a festival closely linked with nature, as symbolized by the Christmas tree. Even the birth it celebrates is a part of nature. At the same time, because Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, which has great significance particularly for us in spiritual science, it includes much that is spiritual. As we have often said, the spirit of the earth awakens in winter and is most active when nature appears to be asleep and frozen. Christmas leads us into elemental nature; the lighting of the Christmas candles should be our symbol of the awakening of the spirit in the darkness of winter, the awakening of the spirit in nature. And if we want to understand the relationship between Christmas and human beings, we have to think of what connects us to nature even when we are spiritually separated from it, as in sleep when our astral body and our I ascend as spirit into the spiritual world. The etheric body, though also spirit, remains bound to the outer, physical body. Elemental nature, which comes to life deep inside the earth when it is shrouded in wintry ice, is present in us primarily in the etheric body.

It is not just a mere analogy, but a profound truth that Christmas also commemorates our etheric, elemental nature, our etheric body, which connects us with what is elemental in nature.

1917-05-01-GA175

Let us now follow up the train of thought which I touched on in my lecture yesterday. I pointed out that the forms of Christian worship were in many respects borrowed from the symbols and ceremonies of the ancient pagan Mystery cults, that the forms of these Mystery cults and symbols had been totally eradicated by Christianity in order to conceal their origin. Christianity had made a clean sweep of the pagan forms of worship so that people had no means of knowing what had existed prior to their time and would simply have to accept what the Church offered. Such is the fate of human evolution. We must be prepared to recognize without giving way to pessimism that the course of human evolution is not one of uninterrupted progress.

I also showed in the course of my lecture yesterday that the rites and rituals of the Roman Church owed much to the Eleusinian Mysteries which had been interrupted in their development because Julian had been unable to carry out his intentions; his plan had failed to materialize.

But the rites and sacraments of later years owed still more to the Mithras Mysteries. But the spirit of the Mithras Mysteries, that which justified their existence, the source from which they derived their spiritual content, can no longer be investigated. The Church has been careful to remove all traces of it and to close the door to enquiry. Knowledge of this can only be recovered if we strive to come to an understanding of these things through spiritual science.

Today I propose to touch upon only one aspect of the Mithras Mysteries . I could of course speak at greater length about the Mithras Mysteries if I had more time at my disposal, but in order to understand them we must first gradually become conversant with their details.

In order to grasp the true spirit of the Mithras Mysteries whose influence spread far into the West of Europe during the first post-Christian centuries, we must be aware that they were based upon a central core of belief (which was right for the world of Antiquity and perfectly justified up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha), that

... the community or the individual communities, for example, the folk-communities or other groups within the folk-communities consisted not only of the individual units or members, but that, if they were to have any reality, communities must be imbued with a community spirit which has a super-sensible origin.

A community was determined not only by the counting of heads, but for the people of antiquity it represented the external form, the incarnation, if I may use the word in this connection, of a genuinely existing communal spirit.

The aim of those who were received into these Mysteries was to participate in this spirit, to share the thoughts of this group-soul; not to insulate themselves from the community by obstinately pursuing their own egoistic thoughts, feelings and volitional impulses, but to live in such a way that they were receptive to the thoughts of the group-soul.

In the Mithras Mysteries in particular the priests maintained that

• this union with the group-soul cannot be achieved if one looks upon a larger community simply as an external manifestation, for thereby that which lies in the community spirit is in the main obscured.
• The dead, they claimed, are part of our immediate environment and the more we can commune with those who have long been dead the better we shall order our present life. Therefore the longer these souls had been discarnate, the more beneficial they found it to commune with these souls.

And in order to be able to commune with the spirit of the ancestor of a tribe, folk-community or family they found it best to make contact with the ancestral soul. It was assumed that this soul develops further after passing through the gates of death and therefore has a deeper insight into the future destiny of the Earth than those who are living on this Earth in their present physical bodies. Thus, the whole purpose of these Mysteries was to establish those dramatic representations which would put the neophyte into touch with the souls of those who had long passed through the gates of death.

[first degree - raven]

Those who were admitted to these Mysteries had to undergo a first stage of initiation which was usually characterized by a term borrowed from the bird-species; they were called “Ravens”. A “Raven” was a first-degree initiate. Through the particular Mystery rites, through the potent use of symbols and especially through dramatic performances he became aware not only of the sensible world around him or of what one learns through contact with one's fellow-men, but also of the thoughts of the dead. He acquired a certain capacity which enabled him to recall memories of the dead and the ability to develop it further. The “Raven” was under the solemn obligation to be conscious in the moment, to be alert and responsive to the world around, to be aware of the needs of his fellow-men and to familiarize himself with the phenomena of nature. He who spends his life in day-dreaming, who has no feeling for the indwelling spirit of man and nature was considered to be unsuitable material for reception into the Mysteries. For only the ability to see life around him clearly and in its true perspective fitted him for the task which he had to fulfil in the Mysteries. His task was to participate as far as possible in the changing circumstances of the world in order to widen the range of his experience, to share in the joys and sorrows of contemporary events. He who was unresponsive or indifferent to contemporary events was an unsuitable candidate for initiation. For the first task of the aspirant was to “reproduce”, to re-enact in the Mysteries the experiences gained through participation in the life of the world. In this way these experiences served as a channel of communication with the dead with whom the Initiates sought to make contact.

Now you might ask: Would not a high Initiate have been more suitable for this purpose? By no means, for the first-degree Initiates were eminently suited to act as intermediaries because they still possessed all the feelings, shared all the sympathies and antipathies which fitted them for life in the external world, whilst the higher Initiates had more or less purged themselves of those emotions. Therefore these first-degree Initiates were specially suited to experience contemporary life in terms of the ordinary man and to incorporate it into the Mysteries. It was therefore the special task of the “Ravens” to mediate between the external world and those long dead.

This tradition has survived in legend. As I have often stated legends as a rule have deep implications. The Kyffhäuser legend tells how Friedrich Barbarossa who had long been dead is instructed by Ravens, or how Charles the Great in the “Salzburg Untersberg” is surrounded by Ravens that brought him news of the outside world. These are echoes of the ancient pagan Mysteries and especially of the Mithras Mysteries.

[second degree - occultist]

When the aspirant was ready for the second degree of initiation he became an adept or “occultist” as we should say today. He was then able not only to incorporate into the Mysteries his experience of the sensible world, but also to receive clairvoyantly the communications from the dead, the impulses which the super-sensible world (this world of concrete reality which the dead inhabit) had to impart to the external world.

[third degree - warrior]

And only when he was fully integrated into the spiritual life which originates in the super-sensible and is related to the external, sensible world was he considered to be adequately prepared for the third degree, and he was now given the opportunity to give practical expression to the impulses he had received in the Mysteries. He was now singled out to become a “warrior”, one who mediates to the sensible world that which must be revealed from the super-sensible world.

But was it not a gross injustice, you may ask, to withhold vital information from the people and to initiate only a select few? You will only understand the reason for this if you accept what I stated at the outset, namely, that the people were dependent upon a group-soul and were content for these select few to act on behalf of the whole community. They did not look upon themselves as separate individuals but as members of a group. It was only possible therefore to pursue this policy of selection at a time when the existence of a group-soul, when the selfless identification with the group was a living reality.

[fourth degree - lion]

And when, as a “warrior” the initiate had championed for a time the cause of the super-sensible, he was considered fitted to establish smaller groups within the framework of the larger group, smaller communities within larger groups as the need arose. If, in those ancient times, anyone had taken into his head to found an association on his own initiative, he would have been ignored. Nothing would have come of it. In order to establish a union or association the initiate must become a “lion”, as it was termed in the Mithras Mysteries, for that was the fourth degree of initiation. He must first have reinforced his spiritual life through association with those impulses which existed not only amongst the living, but which united the living with the dead.

[fifth degree]

From the fourth degree the initiate rose to a higher degree of initiation which permitted him through certain measures to take over the leadership of an already existing group, a folk-community in which the dead also participated. The eighth, ninth and tenth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha are totally different from those of today. It would never have occurred to anyone to claim the right to choose arbitrarily the leader of their community; such a leader had to be an initiate of the fifth degree.

[sixth degree - Sun hero]

Then, at the next higher degree, the initiate attained to those insights which the Sun Mystery (of which he had recently received intimations) implanted in the human soul.

[seventh]

Finally he attained the seventh degree of initiation.

I do not propose to enter into the details of these later degrees of initiation, for I simply wished to characterize the progressive development of the initiate who owed to his contact with the spiritual world his capacity to take an active part in community life.

1920-12-23-GA202

Then came a different time, the time of the Egypto-Chaldean development. Then it was the constellation of the Lion that was looked up to in the same way that the Persians regarded the constellation of the Virgin. But now, in quadrature to the Lion stood the Bull, and there arose the Mithras religion, the worship of the Bull, because into the constellation of the Lion was projected that of the Bull.

1921-04-15-GA204

Now we can also turn our attention to what has remained of those ancient times in cultic practices and religious ceremonies. The religious ceremonies were mainly made available to the masses; what I have just been describing was predominantly considered to be a treasure of wisdom belonging to centers of learning. Those cultic practices that found their way from Asia into Europe and that, insofar as they are religious endeavors, correspond to the view I have just explained, are known as Mithras worship.

It is a worship we find even as late as the first Christian centuries extending from East to West; we can follow its path through the countries of the Danube as far as the regions of the Rhine and on into France.

This Mithras worship, familiar to you as far as its outer forms are concerned, may be briefly characterized by saying that along with the earthly and cosmic context the conqueror of the Mithras-Bull was depicted imaginatively and pictorially in the human being, riding on the bull and vanquishing the bull-forces.

Nowadays, we are easily inclined to think that such images — all cultic pictures, religious symbolizations which, if we may say so, have emerged organically out of the ancient wisdom teachings — are simply the abstract, symbolic product of those teachings. But it would be absolutely false if we were to believe that the ancient sages sat down and said, Now we must figure out a symbol. For ourselves we have the teaching of wisdom; for the ignorant masses we have to think up symbols that can then be employed in their ceremonial rites, and so on. Such assumptions would be totally wrong. An assumption approximately like that is entertained by modern Freemasons; they have similar thoughts about the nature of their own symbolism. But this was certainly not the view of the ancient teachers of wisdom.

I should now like to describe the view of these sages of old by referring in particular to the connections of the Mithra worship to the world view I have just outlined above. A fundamentally important question could still be raised by those who had retained a vivid view of how the human being is received into the planetary world with his etheric body, of how man is subsequently received into the sphere of earthly elements into warmth or fire, air, water, and earth, of how through the effects of these elements on the human etheric being black gall, white gall, phlegm, and blood are formed. They asked themselves a question that can occur now to a person who truly possesses Imaginative perception. In those times, the answer to this question was based on instinctive Imaginative perception, but we can repeat it today in full consciousness. If we develop an Imaginative conception of this entrance of the human being from the spiritual world through the planetary sphere into the terrestrial sphere of fire, air, water, and earth, we arrive at the realization that if something enters from the spheres beyond into the planetary sphere, hence into the earth's sphere, and is received there, this will not become a true human being. If we develop a picture of what is actually evolving there, if we have an Imaginative view of what can be beheld in purely Imaginative perception outside the planetary sphere, then enters into and is received by the planetary sphere and is subsequently taken hold of by the influences emanating from the earth sphere, we see that this does not become a human being. We do not arrive at a view of man; instead we attain to a conception that can be most clearly represented if we picture not a human being but a bull, an ox.

The ancient teachers of wisdom knew that no human beings would exist on earth if there were nothing besides this extraplanetary being that descends into the planetary sphere of evolution. They saw that at first glance one does arrive at the conception of the gradual approach of an entity out of extraplanetary spheres into the planetary and hence the earth sphere. But if one then proceeds from the content of these conceptions and tries to form a vivid Imaginative view, it does not turn into a human being; it becomes a mere bull. And if one comprehends nothing more in the human being but this, one merely comprehends what is bull-like in human beings. The ancient teachers of wisdom formed this conception. Now they said to themselves, In that case, human beings must struggle against this bull-like nature with something still higher. They must overcome the view given by this wisdom. As human beings, they are more than beings that merely come from the extra-planetary sphere, enter into the planetary sphere, and from there are taken hold of by the terrestrial elements. They have something within them that is more than this.

It is possible to say that these teachers of wisdom came as far as this concept. This was the reason they then developed the image of the bull and placed Mithras on top of it, the human being who struggles to overcome the bull, and who says of himself, I must be of far loftier origin than the being that was pictured according to the ancient teaching of wisdom.

Now these sages realized that their ancient teaching of wisdom contained an indication of what is important here.

[essence]

For this teaching did look upon the planetary sphere, upon Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, moon, and so on. It also said that as the human being approaches the Earth, he is constantly lifted up by the sun so as not to be submerged completely in the terrestrial elements, so as not to remain merely what proceeds from the etheric body and the mixture of black and white gall, phlegm, and blood when it is received by the planetary sphere and when the astral body is received by the other planetary sphere through Mercury, Venus, moon. What lifts man upward dwells in the sun. Therefore, these sages said, Let us call Man's attention to the sun forces dwelling in him; then he will turn into Mithras who is victorious over the bull!

This then was the cultic image. It was not meant to be merely a thought-out symbol but was actually to represent the cosmological fact.

The religious ceremony was more than a mere outer sign; it was something that was extracted, as it were, out of the essence of the cosmos itself.

This cultic form was something that had existed since very ancient times and had been brought across from Asia to Europe. It was, in a sense, Christianity viewed from one side, viewed from the external, astronomical side, for Mithras was the sun force in man. Mithras was the human being who rebelled against the merely planetary and terrestrial aspects.

[Connecting Mithras with Christianity]

Now, a certain endeavor arose, traces of which can be observed everywhere when we look back at the first Christian centuries. The tendency arose to connect the historical fact, the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Mithras worship. Great were the numbers of people at that time, especially among the Roman Legions, who brought with them into the lands on the Danube and far into central Europe, indeed even into western Europe, what they had experienced in Asia and the Orient in general. In what they brought across as the Mithras worship there lived feelings that, without reflecting the Mystery of Golgotha, definitely contained Christian views and Christian sentiments. The worship of Mithras was considered as a concrete worship relating to the sun forces in Man. The only thing this Mithras worship did not perceive was the fact that in the Mystery of Golgotha this sun force itself had descended as a spiritual entity and had united itself with the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

Now there existed schools of wisdom in the East up until the fourth century A.D. that by and by received reports and became aware of the Mystery of Golgotha, of Christ. The further East we go in our investigations, the clearer this becomes. These schools then attempted to spread a certain teaching throughout the world, and for a time there was a tendency to let flow into the Mithras cult what agrees with the following supersensory perception: The true Mithras is the Christ; Mithras is his predecessor. The Christ force must be poured into those forces in Man that vanquish the bull.

To turn the Mithras worship into a worship of Christ was something that was intensely alive in the first Christian centuries up until the fourth century. One might say that the stream intending to Christianize this Mithras worship followed after the spreading of the latter. A synthesis between Christendom and the Mithras worship was striven for. An ancient, significant image of man's being — Mithras riding on and vanquishing the bull — was to be brought into relationship with the Christ Being. One might say that a quite glorious endeavor existed in this direction, and in a certain respect it was a powerful one.

Anyone who follows the spread of Eastern Christianity and the spread of Arianism can see a Mithras element in it, even though in already quite weakened form. Any translation of the Ulfilas-Bible into modern languages remains imperfect if one is unaware that Mithras elements still play into the terminology of Ulfilas (or Wulfila). But who pays heed nowadays to these deeper relationships in the linguistic element? As late as in the fourth century, there were philosophers in Greece who worked on bringing the ancient etheric astronomy into harmony with Christianity. From this effort then arose the true Gnosis, which was thoroughly eradicated by later Christianity, so that only a few fragments of the literary samples of this Gnosis have remained.

...

Then, in the sixth century, the attempt was made to obliterate the traces even of the more ancient teachings by Dionysius the Areopagite. They were altered in such a way that they now represented merely an abstract teaching of the spirit. In the form in which the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite has come down to us, it is a spiritual teaching that no longer has much to do with etheric astronomy. This is the reason he is then called the “Pseudo-Dionysius.” In this manner, the decline of the teaching of wisdom was brought about. On the one hand, the teachings of Dionysius were distorted; on the other hand, the truly alive teaching in Athens that had tried to unite etheric astronomy with Christianity was eradicated. Finally, in regard to the cultic aspect, the Mithras worship was exterminated.

1921-04-16-GA204

continuation and closure of the day before

Yesterday I referred to the significant turning point in the development of occidental civilization in the fourth century A.D. I pointed out that,

• on the one hand, this was the time when Greek wisdom disappeared from European culture, wisdom through which people had tried to bring to expression the depths of Christianity in a wisdom-imbued way. The time of the outer expression of this disappearance falls somewhat later, namely, when Emperor Justinian declared the writings of Origen heretical, abolished Roman consulship, and closed the Greek Academy of Philosophy at Athens. The guardians of Greek wisdom thus had to flee to the Orient, withdrawing, as it were, from European civilization. The wisdom teaching that had extended from the East as far west as Greece and had assumed its special form there, is one aspect of the picture.
• On the other hand, the Mithras worship was supposed to indicate in a significant external ritual how, with their soul-spiritual nature, human beings were to raise themselves above all that could be comprehended through the interplay of beings of the planetary sphere with terrestrial forces, how the human being could sense his full humanity. This was the object of the Mithras cult. This Mithras worship, which was intended to reveal to Man his own being, likewise disappeared after it had spread through the regions along the Danube and on into central and western Europe.

These two streams, one a cultic stream, the other a stream of wisdom, were replaced in Europe by factual narrations of the events of Palestine. Thus, one has to say that neither a cultic worship, which would have recognized in Christ Jesus the victor over all the human being, was meant to bring under his control in the course of world evolution, nor a wisdom that would have tried to grasp the actual mysteries of Christendom in a wise manner were able to enter Europe. Instead, the superficial narration of the events of Palestine became popular. The concepts that should have been found in these happenings in Palestine were instead steeped in the flood of juristic thinking, which replaced the investigation of cosmic secrets with the determination of dogmas by means of majority resolutions in Church Councils, and so forth.

This very fact indicates that a change of great and far-reaching significance had taken place in the fourth century A.D. in the development of Western civilization, and consequently in the evolution of the whole of mankind. Proceeding from the Orient, all the influences that had laid hold of eastern European civilization were in a sense pushed back again towards the Orient. Only the increasing tendency towards abstract thinking in the Roman world maintained itself in the occident alongside the comprehension of the external, sensory world of facts.

1923-09-30-GA223

.. all through Central Europe, in parts of Germany, in the Rhineland, even in western France, relics and reminders of the ancient Mithras Cult are to be found.

The outer symbol of the Mithras Cult is always a bull ridden by a man thrusting a sword into the bull's neck; below, a scorpion biting the bull, or, a serpent; but whenever the representation is complete you will see this picture of bull and man surrounded by the firmament, and particularly the signs of the zodiac.

What does this picture express?

The answer will never be found by an external, antiquated science of history, because the latter has no means of establishing the interrelationships that can provide clues to the meaning of this man on the bull. In order to arrive at the solution one must know the nature of the training undergone by those who served the Mithras Cult. The whole ceremony could, of course, be run off in such a way as to be beautiful — or ugly, if you like — without anything intelligent transpiring. Only one who had passed through a certain training could make sense of it. That is why all the descriptions of the Mithras Mysteries are really twaddle, although the pictures give promise of yielding so much.

[the heart as a sense organ]

The service of the Mithras Cult demanded in the neophyte a very fine and sensitive development of the capacity for receptive sentience. Everything depended upon the development of this faculty in him.

I said yesterday in the public lecture that the human heart is really a subconscious sense organ: subconsciously the head perceives through the heart what goes on in the physical functions of the lower body and the chest. Just as we perceive outer events in the sense-world through the eye, so the human heart is in reality a sense organ in its relation to the functions mentioned. Subconsciously by means of the heart, the head, and particularly the cerebellum, perceives the blood being nourished by the transformed foodstuffs, perceives the functioning of the kidneys, the liver, and other processes of the organism. The heart is the sense organ for perceiving all this in the upper portion of the human being.

Now, to raise this heart as a sense organ to a certain degree of consciousness was the object in the schooling of those who were to be engaged in the Mithras cult. They had to develop a sensitive, conscious feeling for the processes in the liver, kidneys, spleen, etc., in the human organism. The upper man, the headman, had to sense very delicately what went on in the chest-man and the limb-man.

In older epochs that sort of schooling was not the mental training to which we are accustomed today, but a schooling of the whole human being, appealing in the main to the capacity for feeling. And just as we say, on the basis of outer optical perception, There are rain clouds or, the sky is blue, so the sufficiently matured disciple could say, Now the metabolism in my organism is of this nature, now it is of that. Actually, the processes within the human organism seem the same the year round only to the abstractionist. When science will once more have advanced to real truths concerning these things, men will be amazed to learn how they can establish, by means very different from the crude methods of our modern precision instruments, how the condition of our blood varies and the digestion functions differently in January from September, and in what way the heart as a sense organ is a marvelous barometer for the course of the seasons within the human limb-metabolic organism. The Mithras disciple was taught to perceive the course of the seasons within himself by means of his heart organization, his heart-science, which transmitted to him the passage of food transformed by digestion and taken into the blood. And what was there perceived really showed in man — in the motion of the inner Man — the whole course of outer nature.

What does our abstract science amount to, no matter how accurately we describe plants and plant cells, animals and animal tissues, compared with what once was present instinctively by reason of man's ability to make his entire being into an organ of perception, to develop his capacity for feeling into an organ capable of gleaning knowledge!

• Man bears within him the animal nature, and truly he does so more intensively than is usually imagined; and what the ancient Mithras followers perceived by means of their heart-science could not be represented otherwise than by the bull.
• The forces working through the metabolic-limb man, and tamed only by the upper man, are indicated by all that figures as the scorpion and the serpent winding around the bull.
• And the human being proper, in all his frailty, is mounted above in his primitive might, thrusting the sword of Michael into the neck of the bull.

But what it was that must thus be conquered, and how it manifests itself in the course of the seasons, was known only to those who had been schooled in these matters.

Here the symbol begins to take on significance. By means of ordinary human knowledge no amount of observation or picturesque presentation will make anything of it. It can only be understood if one knows something about the heart-science of the old Mithras pupils; for what they really studied when they looked at themselves through their heart was the spirit of the sun's annual passage through the zodiac. In this way the human being experienced himself as a higher being, riding on his lower nature; and therefore it was fitting that the cosmos should be arranged in a circle around him; in this manner cosmic spirituality was experienced.

The more a renascent spiritual science makes it possible for us to examine what was brought to light by an ancient semi-conscious, dreamlike clairvoyance — but clairvoyance, nevertheless — the greater becomes our respect for it. A spirit of reverence for the ancient cultures pervades us when we see deeper into them and rediscover, for example, that the purpose of the Mithras cult was to enable the priest, by penetrating the secrets of the seasons' cycle, to tell the members of his community what should be done on each day of the year. The Mithras cult served to elicit from the heavens the knowledge of what should take place on Earth. How infinitely greater is the enthusiasm, the incentive, for what must be done on earth if a man feels himself to be active in such a way that into his activity there flow the impulses deciphered from the great cosmic script he had read in the universe; that he made such knowledge his starting point and employed the resulting impulses in the ordinary affairs of daily life! However little this may accord with our modern concepts — naturally it does not — it was good and right according to the old ones. But in making this reservation we must clearly understand what it means to read in the universe what should be done in the lives of men on earth, thereby knowing ourself to be one with the divine in us — as over against debating the needs of the social life in the vein of Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Only one who can visualize this contrast is able to see clearly into the nature of the new impulses demanded by the social life of our time.

...

We have often heard that in olden times men had not only that instinctive wisdom of which I have spoken: they had beings as teachers who never descended into physical bodies — higher beings who occupied etheric bodies only, and whose instruction was imparted to men not by speaking, as we speak today, but by transmitting the wisdom in an inner way, as though inoculating the etheric body with it. People knew of the existence of these higher beings, just as we know that some physical teacher is present; but they also knew that these beings surrounded them in a strictly spiritual state. Everything connected with that “primordial wisdom,” recognized even by the Catholic Church — the primordial wisdom that once was available, and of which even the Vedas and the sublime Vedanta philosophy are but faint reverberations — all this can be traced back to the teaching of these higher spiritual beings. That wisdom, which was never written down, was not thought out by man: it grew in him. We must not think of the influence exerted by those primordial teachers as any sort of demonstrating instruction. Just as today, we learn to speak when we are children by imitating the older people, without any particular instruction — as indeed we develop a great deal as though through inner growth — so the primordial teachers exerted a mysterious influence on people of that ancient time, without any abstract instruction; with the result that at a certain age a man simply knew himself to be knowledgeable. Just as today a child gets his second teeth or reaches puberty at a certain age, so men of old became enlightened in the same way. Doubtless many a modern college student would be delighted if this sort of thing still happened — if the light of wisdom simply flared up in him without his having to exert himself particularly!

What a very different wisdom that was from anything we have today! It was an organic force in man, related to growth, and other forces. It was simply wisdom of an entirely different nature, and what took place in connection with it I can best explain by a comparison. Suppose I pour some sort of liquid into a glass and then add salt. When the salt is dissolved it leaves the liquid cloudy. Then I add an ingredient that will precipitate the salt, leaving the liquid purer, clearer, while the sediment is denser. Very well: if I want to describe what permeated men during the period of primordial wisdom, I must say it is a mixture of what is spiritually wholly pure and of a physical animalistic element. What nowadays we think, we imagine our abstract thoughts simply as functioning and holding sway without having any being in us: or again, breathing and the circulation seem like something by themselves, apart. But for primeval man in earlier earth epochs, that was all one: it was simply a case of his having to breathe and of his blood circulating in him; and it was in his circulation that he willed.

Then came the time when human thinking moved higher up toward the head and became purer, like the liquid in the glass, while the sediment, as we may call it, formed below. This occurred when the primordial teachers withdrew more and more from the earth, when this primal wisdom was no longer imparted in the old way. And whither did these primordial teachers withdraw?

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Now to another rite, remnants of which you still find above all in Central Europe where you find sacred sites and specific images. The images show a bull, with a kind of rider on the bull wearing a Phrygian cap, a kind of revol­utionary cap. This was later adopted from those origins. And down below in the same picture you'd see a kind of scorpion which is biting into the bull's genitals. Then one also sees the individual who is sitting on top thrusting a sword into the front part of the bull's body. And if it is like this [drawing on the board], with this rider up there, the scorpion here, there the thrusting sword, you see from it how the starry heavens are configured up above. Up there are the starry heavens. These rites were known as Mithraic rites. So the first ones were Druid rites, and what I am describing now are the Mithraic rites, as they were called. The Druid rites were on the west coast — one does also find them in other areas, but I have just been telling you of an area where I have been able to see this for myself. These other rites, the Mithraic rites, once spread from Asia across and along the whole of the Danube, through southern Russia as we know it today, Bulgaria, Hungary, Bavaria, the Odenwald, Black Forest areas, and so on. And this meant something quite specific. For you see, why did they have a bull just there? This is the first question we have to ask ourselves.

I have told you that the sun rises in a particular con­stellation in the zodiac in spring, today essentially in the Fishes. The astronomers still give the Ram. This is wrong, however, for in reality it is the Fishes. For a long time, a period of 2.000 years, the sun would rise in the constellation of the Ram, and before that in the Bull. And people would then say to themselves: 'In the spring, when things begin to grow, the sun always rises in the Bull.' and they quite rightly connected the principle that above all has to do with growth in the human body—not in the head, but in the rest of the body — with the fact that the sun's rays change, and that behind this is the constellation of the Bull. And so they would say: `If we want to refer to the animal human being, we have to draw a bull, with the actual human being, who is governed by his head, sitting on the bull.' The bull thus represents the lower, animal human being, and the one who is sitting up there, wearing his Phrygian cap, represents the higher human being. The whole is however really just one human being — lower human being and higher human being.

And the people would say to themselves: 'Oh, it is bad when the lower human being rules, when the human being gives himself up completely to his animal drives, only obeying his passions which come from the belly, from his sexuality and so on. The higher human being must govern the lower one.' And they would put it like this: 'This one, who rides on top, has the sword and thrusts it into the flanks of the lower human being. This means that the lower human being has to grow small compared to the higher human being. And then there is also the scorpion, biting into the genitals to show that if the lower human being is not made small by the higher one, lower human nature also harms itself, for the powers of outer nature come upon him and destroy him.' The image therefore showed the whole of this human destiny between the lower and the higher human being.

Above were the starry heavens. It is highly significant that the starry heavens spread above. The sun rises in a particular point in the spring, in those days in the constellation of the Bull. But it moves on a little bit day by day. This movement happens in two ways. In the first place the spring point moves on. The following spring the sun will rise a little bit further along from the point where it rose the previous spring, so that 3.000 years ago it would have risen in the Ram, and even earlier than that in the Bull. Today it rises in the Fishes in spring. And so it gradually goes all the way round. In the course of 25.920 years the sun goes right round. But it also goes around within each year, so that it will not rise in the spring point the next day—it only rises there on 21 March—the next day it will have moved on a little, and so on. It also moves through all the constellations of the zodiac in the course of a year.

Now the people who served in the Mithraic rites had to observe when the lower human being, the animal human being, was more difficult to control—when the sun was in the Bull, that is, encouraging mainly the powers of growth. Yet when the sun was in the Virgin, let us say, which would be in October — at that time more towards December, actually — the lower human being would not be so powerful, and less control would be needed. The people in general had no feeling for these things, but those who observed the Mithraic rites had to know them. And so the people who served in the Mithraic rites were able to say: 'It is more difficult to control the lower human being now that it is spring; and now again it is easier, for it is a particular time in winter.' And so the human being himself was used in those rites to get to know the seasons of the year, and of course the whole way the sun and moon would move through the zodiac. With the Druids, it was more the outer signs that were used, the shadows; here, in the Mithraic rites, it was more the effect on the human being which was used. And so the Mithraic service was also very much related to life.

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All kinds of different rites thus existed. We have to understand of course that to observe the kind of thing the Druids once observed one needs to have quite specific regions on earth. You can still see this today. Living over there in Wales — the course of lectures took a fortnight — one always had rapid changes in the weather from small cloudbursts, I'd say, to sunshine and back again. It changes by the hour, so that the air there is quite different from the way it is here; it is always more full of water. If you have air like it is over there, where the Druids were, you can make such observations. You could not have made such obser­vations in the regions where the Mithraic rite was more widespread, for there the climate would be different, and you had to take your observations more from the inner human being. People were more sensitive to such things then. And the rites therefore differed according to the region.

The Mithraic rites were common in the region of the Danube, in Bavaria and also in this part of Switzerland, though less so, even in earlier times, I think. It continued for a long time even when Christianity was coming to these regions. The last remnants were still to be found when Christianity had come to those regions, especially the Danube region. You still find these images in caves there, in the rocks. For those observations and rites were made and held in caves. They did not need the outer light of the sun but the stillness and quiet of a cave in the rocks. The spiritual influences of the sun and the stars go into those places as well.

Related pages

• Mystery School tradition
• Ancient history of myths and legends
• Persian cultural age
• Symbols
• Stages of clairvoyance

References and further reading

• Franz Cumont (1868-1947)
  • 'The mysteries of Mithra' (1956 in EN after first English translation in 1903, original 'Les mystères de Mithra' (1900 in FR, 2nd edition 1901), in DE as 'Die Mysterien des Mithra' (1900))
  • reference work - the study that made his international reputation, by its originality and massive documentation
• Albrecht Dieterich: Eine Mithrasliturgie (1902)
• G.R.S. Mead and Edward Clary: The Mysteries of Mithras (1900 or 1903, 1993)
  • a more speculative and philosophical approach, often interpreting ancient traditions through the lens of Theosophy and esotericism
• Der Mithrakult: seine Anfänge, Entwicklungsgeschichte und seine Denkmäler (1911)
• Alfred Schütze: Mithras-Mysterien und Urchristentum (1937, 1960)
• M.J. Vermaseren: 'Mithras, de geheimzinnige god' (1959)
• Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies in 1971 (1975)

Internet

• mithra-project.eu
• mithraeum.eu

Various more (unqualified)

There a great many books also more recently published, below a selection:

• David Ulansey: The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (1989)
• D. Jason Cooper: 'Mithras: Mysteries and Inititation Rediscovered' (1996)
• Manfred Clauss: 'The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries' (2001)
• Payam Nabarz, Caitlin Matthews: 'The Mysteries of Mithras: The Pagan Belief That Shaped the Christian World'
• Roger Beck: 'The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun' (2007)
• Claudia Sagona: 'Looking for Mithra in Malta' (2009)
  • as Malta has many caves
• Petăr Georgiev: 'The Mysteries of Mithra or the Mysteries of Sabazios' (2016)
  • available in PDF download from academia.edu
• Attilio Mastrocinque: The Mysteries of Mithras. A Different Account (2017)