Merry Mithras!

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, 25 December 2007 21:05.

Musings from December 25, 2001…

The kingdom of Phrygia is the origin of the cult of Mithras (aka “Sol Invictus”) as well as that of the Magna Mater (probable origin of a black stone as focal point of worship as it is now in Islam).

December 25 was the traditional birthday of Mithras.

As it spread out of Phrygia, members of the mystery cult of Mithras were largely mercenaries and masons at the frontiers of the Roman Empire—and therefore extended the length and breadth of the Roman Empire at the time of Christ. Hadrian’s Wall, at the boarder of Scotland and England, is one of the better-preserved masonry sites of Mithras worship. Indeed, the origin of what is called today “Freemasonry”, in its distinctions between “Scottish” and “York” rituals, quite likely begins with those ancient itinerant “Phrygian” mercenary masons, who built Hadrian’s wall between York and Scotland, and their secretive cult of Mithras worship. Certainly there is something to be said for the enormous profits available to itinerant mercenary masons and there are grave dangers of their daughters being seduced by media of exchange, uprooted as they are from the nonmonetary compensations of their native culture. Mercenaries, themselves, sell their flesh in a sense. One suspects the myth of Midas whose touch turned his daughter’s priceless flesh to fungible gold may have been, in part, the story of a key problem in a culture of itinerant mercenary masons.

John Noble Wilford, releasing both of these stories on December 25 (2001), may have been thinking of this connection: Were it not for the spread of Christianity, the greeting on this day might well be “Merry Mithras!”.

First Mithras/Midas:

So Who Is Buried in Midas’s Tomb?
NYT Decemer 25, 2001
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
...But Assyrian texts indicate that Midas ruled the kingdom of Phrygia after 718BC. So the imposing tomb, some 150 feet high and 1,000 feet wide, was presumably built as a memorial to a predecessor, perhaps the father or grandfather of Midas.

And of the Celtic mercenary masons:

Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Central Turkey
NYT December 25, 2001
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
...
After Midas and Alexander, Gordion languished on the fringes of history, and until recently archaeologists had taken little notice of its Celtic past. Yes, European Celts—the Gauls of Roman times and the forerunners of Bretons, Welsh, Irish and highland Scots—once migrated as far east as what is now central Turkey and settled in and around post-Alexander Gordion, beginning in the early third century B.C.
...
The remains of Galatian Gordion, archaeologists conclude, reveal that the Celts, although they came as mercenary soldiers, bringing along their wives and children, were looking beyond warfare and pillage. They put down deep roots, revived Gordion and created an ambitious, thriving society.

Above ruins of ordinary mud-brick houses, they erected a monumental public building of cut-stone blocks that was surrounded by a massive stone wall.

“Sol Invictus” is a name used for Mithras in the transition from Mithras-worship to Christ-worship. The William Ernest Henley “Invictus” or “Unconquerable soul” was the poem chosen by Timothy McVeigh for his epitaph at age 33 when he was executed for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the same age given as Christ’s at his crucifixion. (The Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing taking place on the traditional birthday of Ceres, the oldest form of worship recorded for Rome—the god named for the proto-indoeuropean word for both “create” and “plow”—both unified in words like “cereal” and “ceremony” as the neolithic source of human sustenance .)

Given the homonyms “Sol” and “Soul”, combined with the long string of historic conflation of meanings of words with similar phonetic structure, one might be forgiven musings about this, darkest, time of year being the time we celebrate our souls, unconquerable as the sun.

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Comments:

Posted by daveg on Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:20 | #

Merry Mithras to you, and here is a podcast of the Hisory of Rome I have found to be very good. He covered a little bit of this in his last episode.

http://thehistoryofrome.blogspot.com/

Posted by M McGregor on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 02:52 | #

So “European Celts ... once migrated as far east as what is now central Turkey ” did they ?

In fact, they migrated considerably further east than that. I recommend a fascinating book, the contents of which have already appeared as a television programme, entitled ‘The Mummies of Urumchi’ by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, which illustrates how Celtic people settled as far as the borders of China. Tombs have been excavated in such a good state of preservation that the tartan clothing and European racial identity of the occupants is beyond doubt.

The breadth of the book is too extensive to go into here, but it extends to a discussion on the linguistic influence on Chinese itself that these people had, so that (for example) the Chinese word for ‘chariot’ has Celtic roots, and together with cliff carvings, appears to confirm that far from inventing the chariot, as has been alleged, the Chinese adopted it from Celtic horse-warriors.

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:49 | #

Not only further, but much earlier from the dates of some of those mummies. Is it plausible this was driven by the dispersal of the protoindoeuropean peoples from the Black Sea flood as early as 7500 years ago?

Posted by The Great Wild Beast on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:42 | #

Nothing like a bit of Crowleyism* at Christmas time, just to keep our feet on the ground and our heads from the clouds.

*Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947).
English mystic, poet, ‘Satanist’, explorer, mountain-climber and pornographer.Ultimately of Irish descent.
Outraged the ‘morals’ of 1920s England and was excoriated by the tabloid press of the time.
See ‘The Great Beast’ by John Symonds (published by Duckworth & Co, London 1998).

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:49 | #

Well, for a lot of people, their “Crowleyism” is reminding us that “Jesus rather than Santa” is “the reason for the season”.

But, I say, “Why stop there?”

I do consider “the season” the most important holiday for our folk and this connection to the Celts and possibly to “the flood” itself is equally important for us to consider.

Posted by torgrim on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:51 | #

James;

“I do consider ‘the season’ the most important holiday for our folk and this connection to the Celts….”

The season is almost hardwired among the Indo-European folk because of cold weather adaptation. The return of the sun, a rebirth, from a cold sterile world, to life giving warmth, displays itself in the symbol of the evergreen tree, light/fire, and shelter. “The season” truly comes from our folk. Mithras, Christmas, are adaptations to our much older pre-civil, (city), folk cultures, that were bound up with land/territory, and a spiritual belonging to place.

“The flood” itself is equally important for us to consider.”

7500 years ago, sea levels were rising due to the melting of massive glaciers. It seems that the now, below sea level areas, like the Black Sea would have been places of refuge for flora and fauna as the atmosphere would have been more dense and hence warmer, during the glacial period.

Posted by Antisocialist on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 04:19 | #

For anyone wanting to know more on this subject I recommend ‘The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?’ and ‘Jesus and the Goddess’ by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.

Posted by The Great Wild Beast on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:31 | #

Many occultists love playing ‘alphabet soup’ with words that are similar or spelled alike in order to discover what they think of as hidden connections between them.
Perhaps its no coincidence that ‘Santa’ and ‘Satan’ are fairly close anagrams?

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:08 | #

The place where I could most easily be accused of playing “alphabet soup” is in the “Soul” vs “Sol” homonym. However, since we have a joining concept of “Invictus” that also corresponds to the joining of the resurrected Christ with the solar god Mithras, it seems a rather weak critique. The other phonetic correspondence I mention, of “Midas” with “Mithras”, is independently documented as substantive in genealogy if not identity.

Posted by Woof! on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:07 | #

Perhaps its no coincidence that ‘Santa’ and ‘Satan’ are fairly close anagrams?

Or dog and God?

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:36 | #

I think TGWB already set up that strawman. But thanks for playing.

Posted by The Great Wild Beast on Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:43 | #

Perhaps there is a deep significance in the ‘Dog-star’ Sirius being so-called?

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:50 | #

TGWB: Robert Anton Wilson is dead. You might consider throwing yourself on the pyre if you are serious.

Posted by Woof! on Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:49 | #

I couldn’t resist, Mr. Bowery. But this isn’t a sandbox for me to play in and I should remember that. A merry belated Mithras to you and yours.

BTW Antisocialist, Jesus the magician/carpenter picked up some pagan stuff when he visited England(Cornwall to be precise) with his uncle Joseph when he was a teenager. Remember, he was in the tin trade!

Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:56 | #

In that peerless weekly window into Jewish life, ‘Seinfeld’, the majority-hating writers, the eponymous Jerry and his racial cognate Larry David, created an alternative to Xmas, viz., Festivus (“for the rest of us”) and in that particular episode the Semitic animus directed towards the White people to whom America formerly belonged, seemed almost palpable. Fortunately, I spent an atheistic Xmas in Singapore and the sensible policy of that island-state’s Confucian-style government is the commercial promotion of (what is for them) that racially-alien, quasi-Christian festival, whilst still being sufficiently sensible to ban that wondrously obtuse Christian doorstepping sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Posted by Duncan Tyyne on Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:04 | #

The season is almost hardwired among the Indo-European folk because of cold weather adaptation. The return of the sun, a rebirth, from a cold sterile world, to life giving warmth, displays itself in the symbol of the evergreen tree, light/fire, and shelter. “The season” truly comes from our folk. Mithras, Christmas, are adaptations to our much older pre-civil, (city), folk cultures, that were bound up with land/territory, and a spiritual belonging to place.

There is a memorable scene of a Viking Age Yule celebration in the Icelandic film The Outlaw, based on a saga whose title I can’t remember at this point. It features men joining in drink and song inside a warm, inviting hof as the snow falls outside. I think of it every time I gather with my own relatives on Christmas Day, comforted by the knowledge that there are some traditions the modern world has not the slightest hope of smothering.

Perhaps its no coincidence that ‘Santa’ and ‘Satan’ are fairly close anagrams?

If Varg Vikernes is not mistaken, the inspiration for Santa Claus is in the Norse God Heimdallr. I’ve read also that he could also be considered analogous to Thor (with a sleigh replacing a chariot and reindeer replacing goats). Since all pagan deities are considered diabolic in the strictest Christian views, the Santa-Satan connection might be less of a coincidence than it seems!

The place where I could most easily be accused of playing “alphabet soup” is in the “Soul” vs “Sol” homonym.

I thought “soul” was related to sawol, the old Saxon word for “breath”? Or are all three related to each other?

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:11 | #

The humorous “rationale” for the anagram also occurred to me but I didn’t want to encourage bad behavior.

As for the original meaning of “Sol” it is apparently quite ancient and may even go back to PIE languages since it appears in Norse, Roman and Persian. Of course, it is difficult to say whether there is some other, more recent, common derivation of the word wherein one of the 3 cultures diffused into the other 2.

Something that I find rather intriguing is the fact that many of the names of Hindu gods seem to have had their genders reversed—and the gender of the more pagan Norse Sol is female while the civilized Persian and Roman solar gods by the same name are male.

Posted by torgrim on Sun, 06 Jan 2008 04:49 | #

Duncan Tyyne;

” There is a memorable scene of a Viking Age Yule celebration in the Icelandic film the “Outlaw”..

There was a similiar film that won a Cannes award in 1988 and was briefly played in small, independent theatres in the US. I have tried to get a copy, but to no avail. It has been “pulled”, I even went so far to call the Iceland Embassy and they told me that, “they are having trouble with the middlemen.”

Maybe the film was too powerful….as it showed a pre-Judeo-Christian culture in existance and a very virile one at that.

“comforted by the knowledge that there are some traditions the modern world has not the slightest hope of smothering”...

True,... but beware, if one does actually re-create a hof and celebrate with drink, food and friends in the Elder Way, rest assured, you *will* have the usual suspects show up and monitor your….. thoughts?

From personal experience.

Posted by torgrim on Sun, 06 Jan 2008 04:52 | #

Oh…,er,

The film name is, “In The Shadow OF The Raven”.