Mithra or Mithras is a god indo - Iran IEN, wire of Anahita, whose worship knew its apogee with Rome about the 3rd century of our era.

The worship

The mithraïsme was then a concurrent religion of the Christianisme. Its worship was especially very popular in the armies, which engaged a savage competition between the believers of the two religions, so much so that the Church had to make many concessions with the pagan worship of Mithra (it is known for example today who it is because the worship of Mithra was at the neighborhoods of the current winter solstice that one celebrates Christmas on December 25th). In pagan Rome the " took place; Saturnales " , of December 17th to the " Calends " from January (first Roman New Year's Day). One of the festivals, " Natalis Invicti" (Nativity of the Invincible Sun) or " Ground Invictus " (Unconquered God), precisely celebrated Mithra, god of the light, symbolizing the purity, chastity and combatant against the obscure forces. One celebrated the December 25th, for the winter solstice, the birth of Mithra, the unconquered sun (Dies natalis solis invicti) by the sacrifice of a young bull.

initiatory Religion with mysteries, the mithraïsme returns a worship to the Taureau. This type of worship however has very old origins in Europe and goes back doubtless with the paleolithic superior, or the épipaléolithique one. The Bullfight in Spain and in the Hispanic world in is a remote survival.

Mithra, which created for itself itself starting from the rock of the caves, is at the same time primogenitur and autogenitur . Its first exploit, the Tauroctonie, was to overcome, hardly born, a bull as furious as powerful.

At the time of the Initiation, the followers, during reunion S, aspergeaient blood of the sacrificed bull and reciprocally traced a cross of ashes on the face and the back of the hands. The myste probably went down in a pit to the top of which the animal was sacrificed, its blood falling down thus on him. The ritual proceeded in places with the variation and preferably in caves.

It would seem that the Franc-maçonnerie took as a starting point many Rites and Mythes of mithriaque origin. Some as thought as the Mithra worship had inspired the Christian religion.

See too

Related article

• late Antiquity
• Worship of Mithra

External bonds

• Similarities between mithraïsme and Christianity;

• Inspiration of Freemasonry.
• Solomon Reinach, the morals of Mithraïsme, Worships, myths and religions , T. II, ED. Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1906, pp. 220-233.
• the iconography of Mithra
• the editor of the novel Lions of Mithra, Gramond-Ritter Editions, 2006

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