Noah Blough
Mrs. Hatmaker
Latin 3, Period -6
December 16th, 2010
The Cult of Mithras
In ancient Roman society the state religion was polytheistic. This means that the Roman people did not focus their worship on just one god. However, due to the fact that worshiping numerous god can be hard to do, many people joined cults that focused their attention on one god. This did not mean they did not believe in the other gods, they just believed they connect more with one deity. One such deity was Mithras, whose cult was an early rival of Christianity.
Much like the cult, the origins of the god Mithras are mysterious. Many scholars believe that Mithras was first worshiped in Persia or what is now Turkey. He was one of the many gods that did not start out as a Roman god but was adapted over time. It was believed that Mithras killed a bull and when he did, the first man and women came out of the bulls blood, with all other things of nature. From then on, Mithras was the messenger between man and the of life, different gods depending on which religion. Mithras main role is to defend mankind against the god of the dead, which again depends about which culture Mithras was being worshiped in.
The Mirthras cult was consisted only of men, no women were allowed to join. The temples of worship are now called by scholars, mithraeum. They were either in caves or in places that were built to replicate a cave. This is because Mithras was supposedly born in a cave and the people who worshiped him wanted to acknowledge this belief. Most mithraeums were found on the Roman frontier such as the border of Germania and at Hadrian Wall. This implies that there was heavy worship among Roman soldiers. This is most likely because the Roman legion was the vitality of the Roman Empire and they drew the connection to Mithras who is the vitality of mankind.
Very little is known about the initiation ceremony. It is believed that people who were applying to the cult needed to experience three elements of pain and discomfort. These were most likely heat, cold, and hunger. After a person has entered the cult, they progress through different levels. The average amount of levels for a person to get through is four. People who are more religious would have been able to get to level seven of worship. Each level was represented by a totem, such as a raven or a soldier, and would also be associated with a planet, such as Mercury or Saturn. For example, the first level was Corax and its totem was a crow and its planet was Mecury.
To conclude, not much is know about this cult because it was kept very secrete in Roman society. Though what scholars know of this cult backs up the idea on how open Romans were in including other peoples religion into their own.
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