Читать книгу Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras - Carl Ruck - Страница 10

The rectangular or oblong chambers, called Mithraea, typically measured about twenty-five by seventy feet and were divided by a broad aisle on either side of which was a wide raised stone platform, which was not so much for sitting but to be spread with pallets for reclining while the members witnessed the various pageantries enacted in the central space. These rituals prepared them for the ascending grades of initiation, and the Mithraea was the “set and setting” for the Mystery. As with the original Christian Eucharist of the early agape halls,¹² the Mithraea were not banquet rooms and the Mithraic sacrament was not ordinary food, but, as the Elder Pliny called it, magical, i.e., entheogenic.

The initiate became deified (entheoi) in the Eleusinian Mysteries by partaking in a meal which represented the body of the god. In the mysteries of Attis, a meal of bread and liquid, representing the body of the god, enabled the initiate to participate in his passion and resurrection…. Such ideas were pervasive in the pagan world.

—Hyam MacCoby, Paul and Hellenism.¹³

Although other elements of Mithraic ritual may have varied over the long history of the religion in its different locales, the sacramental meal was always essential and the design of the Mithraea invariably was intended to accommodate it.

The Mithraea were kept intentionally small¹⁴ and when the membership exceeded their modest capacity, rather than enlarge the chamber, additional halls were often constructed in the near vicinity. This tradition of maintaining small communities for the ritual persists among the Kurds today in their version of the Mithraic banquet, which they celebrate by drinking an ecstasy-inducing wine on rooftops.

Although the slaughtered bull was a mythological rep resentation of a Eucharist meal, it is inconceivable that such a menacing and dangerous creature could be butchered in so confined a space. The flood of blood has made the chamber entirely intolerable, especially since there were no provisions for draining it or cleansing the chamber.

Mithraic Eucharist. Bas-relief fragment, Konjica, Bosnia, Muzej grada, Sarajevo. The two initiates of the highest grade recline in the center, with members of the five other orders—Raven, Persian, and Lion on the left, and Soldier and Bride on the right. A tripod with four circular loaves of bread marked with a cross, representing the four quarters of the universe, is in front of the banquet table, draped with a bull hide. The Persian (Perses) presents the drinking horn, whose intoxicating potion conferred immortality. Limestone, 37x27 cm. Museo Civito Archeologico Bologna.

In fact, the actual slaughter of a bull upon a grating above an initiate who would be washed in its blood was a rite in the religion of Attis and Cybele, and it sensibly took place outside. The Vatican is built above the remains of such a site. And the bull sacrifice occurs today in the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha), when the streets literally run with torrents of blood. The mystical symbolism of this bull slaughter persists in the Spanish tradition of the bullfight, whose inner significance inspired Picasso with his series of depictions of the Minotaur.

Banqueting chamber, reconstruction, Ostia Mithraeum.

Nor do the subterranean Mithraea, even with their vestibules, provide facilities for the roasting of the animal’s flesh, which certainly could not take place without suffocation in an enclosed and cramped subterranean chamber. The slaughter and cooking could, of course, have taken place aboveground outside, but perhaps most significant, a slaughtered bull would provide food for hundreds, not a mere thirty. In the Eid al-Adha, the meat is distributed to the poorer members of the whole extended family. The slaughter, moreover, commemorated a heroic mythic event, whereas the actual slaughter would have to have been performed by a professional butcher, typically someone of a lower class, and it seems unlikely that every Mithraic community included one in its small membership.

Significantly, a few Mithraea burial pits or garbage dumps have been found with the remains of various slaughtered animals, but these do not include bulls. Where are the bulls’ remains? The artistic evidence for the banqueting cannot be used to describe the ritual event. Thus the Santa Prisca Mithraeum depicts a procession with youths leading a bull, a ram, and a pig while holding cocks, wine kraters, and bread; which surely would have been too much food for a small community, especially since only two people share the final feast. The supposed menu for this banquet is symbolic or mythical as it is all brought to Sol and Mithras in a cave, the Cosmic Cave, and not the Mithraeum.¹⁵ Similarly, depictions of the Last Supper often display a variety of foods on the table, although the sacramental items celebrated in the Eucharist are only bread and wine.¹⁶

Justin Martyr, in fact, confirms that the sacramental meal was not common bread and common drink but symbolic communion with the deity.

And this food is called among us the Eucharist … which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding that the same thing be done. Bread and a cup of water are made flesh and blood with certain incantations of the one who is being initiated.

—Justin Martyr, First Apology

The final initiatory item, the sacred Mithraic meal, was a consciousness-altering liquid served in a rhyton, a drinking vessel in the shape of an animal’s horn, providing it with its taurine identity. The ancient Greek shaman Epimenides of Crete invented the famous paradox about lying Cretans. He was supposed to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a cave, during which time he was free to wander outside his body. These miraculous feats of shamanism were accomplished with a special herbal compound that he kept stored, for want of anything better, in a “bull’s hoof.”¹⁷ The bull sacrament is then obviously a metaphor for the actual food of the Eucharist meal, like the transubstantiated bread and wine of the Christian communion, the Blood and Body of their Lord.¹⁸