Part 2 (2/2)
In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression and its origin we must turn for a moment to the wors.h.i.+p both of Mithra, the Persian SunG.o.d, and of Attis the Syrian G.o.d, as throwing great light on the Christian cult and ceremonies. It must be remembered that in the early centuries of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole Western world. It has left many monuments of itself here in Britain.
At Rome the wors.h.i.+p was extremely popular, and it may almost be said to have been a matter of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity, or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in the face of the latter.
Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra cult the slaying of a Bull by the SunG.o.d occupies the same sort of place as the slaving of the Lamb in the Christian cult. It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the blood of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue. Mithraism was a greatly older religion than Christianity; but its genesis was similar.
In fact, owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of the Ecliptic and Equator was different at the time of the establishment of Mithra-wors.h.i.+p from what it was in the Christian period; and the Sun instead of standing in the He-lamb, or Aries, at the Vernal Equinox stood, about two thousand years earlier (as indicated by the dotted line in the diagram), in this very constellation of the Bull. (1) The bull therefore became the symbol of the triumphant G.o.d, and the sacrifice of the bull a holy mystery. (Nor must we overlook here the agricultural appropriateness of the bull as the emblem of Spring-plowings and of service to man.)
(1) With regard to this point, see an article in the Nineteenth Century for September 1900, by E. W. Maunder of the Greenwich Observatory on ”The Oldest Picture Book” (the Zodiac). Mr. Maunder calculates that the Vernal Equinox was in the centre of the Sign of the Bull 5,000 years ago. (It would therefore be in the centre of Aries 2,845 years ago--allowing 2,155 years for the time occupied in pa.s.sing from one Sign to another.) At the earlier period the Summer solstice was in the centre of Leo, the Autumnal equinox in the centre of Scorpio, and the Winter solstice in the centre of Aquarius--corresponding roughly, Mr. Maunder points out, to the positions of the four ”Royal Stars,”
Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut.
The sacrifice of the Bull became the image of redemption. In a certain well-known Mithra-sculpture or group, the SunG.o.d is represented as plunging his dagger into a bull, while a scorpion, a serpent, and other animals are sucking the latter's blood. From one point of view this may be taken as symbolic of the Sun fertilizing the gross Earth by plunging his rays into it and so drawing forth its blood for the sustenance of all creatures; while from another more astronomical aspect it symbolizes the conquest of the Sun over winter in the moment of ”pa.s.sing over” the sign of the Bull, and the depletion of the generative power of the Bull by the Scorpion--which of course is the autumnal sign of the Zodiac and herald of winter. One such Mithraic group was found at Ostia, where there was a large subterranean Temple ”to the invincible G.o.d Mithras.”
In the wors.h.i.+p of Attis there were (as I have already indicated) many points of resemblance to the Christian cult. On the 22nd March (the Vernal Equinox) a pinetree was cut in the woods and brought into the Temple of Cybele. It was treated almost as a divinity, was decked with violets, and the effigy of a young man tied to the stem (cf. the Crucifixion). The 24th was called the ”Day of Blood”; the High Priest first drew blood from his own arms; and then the others gashed and slashed themselves, and spattered the altar and the sacred tree with blood; while novices made themselves eunuchs ”for the kingdom of heaven's sake.” The effigy was afterwards laid in a tomb. But when night fell, says Dr. Frazer, (1) sorrow was turned to joy. A light was brought, and the tomb was found to be empty. The next day, the 25th, was the festival of the Resurrection; and ended in carnival and license (the Hilaria). Further, says Dr. Frazer, these mysteries ”seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood.”
(1) See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Part IV of The Golden Bough, by J. G. Frazer, p. 229.
”In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the wors.h.i.+per on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows--as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull.” (1) And Frazer continuing says: ”That the bath of blood derived from slaughter of the bull (tauro-bolium) was believed to regenerate the devotee for eternity is proved by an inscription found at Rome, which records that a certain s.e.xtilius Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and the mother of the G.o.ds (Cybele) was taurobolio criobolio que in aeternum renatus.”
(2) ”In the procedure of the Taurobolia and Criobolia,” says Mr. J. M.
Robertson, (3) ”which grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the literal and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of the lamb' (4); the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the actual blood of a sacrificial bull or ram.” (5) For the POPULARITY of the rite we may quote Franz c.u.mont, who says:--”Cette douche sacree (taurobolium) pareit avoir ete administree en Cappadoce dans un grand nombre de sanctuaires, et en particulier dans ceux de Ma la grande divinite indigene, et dans ceux: de Anahita.”
(1) See vol. i, pp. 334 ff.
(2) Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius, and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8.
(3) That is, ”By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of the ram born again into eternity.”
(4) Pagan Christs, p. 315.
(5) Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153.
Whether Mr. Robertson is right in ascribing to the priests (as he appears to do) so materialistic a view of the potency of the actual blood is, I should say, doubtful. I do not myself see that there is any reason for supposing that the priests of Mithra or Attis regarded baptism by blood very differently from the way in which the Christian Church has generally regarded baptism by water--namely, as a SYMBOL of some inner regeneration. There may certainly have been a little more of the MAGICAL view and a little less of the symbolic, in the older religions; but the difference was probably on the whole more one of degree than of essential disparity. But however that may be, we cannot but be struck by the extraordinary a.n.a.logy between the tombstone inscriptions of that period ”born again into eternity by the blood of the Bull or the Ram,” and the corresponding texts in our graveyards to-day. F. c.u.mont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra (2 vols., Brussels, 1899) gives a great number of texts and epitaphs of the same character as that above-quoted, and they are well worth studying by those interested in the subject. c.u.mont, it may be noted (vol. i, p. 305), thinks that the story of Mithra and the slaying of the Bull must have originated among some pastoral people to whom the bull was the source of all life. The Bull in heaven--the symbol of the triumphant SunG.o.d--and the earthly bull, sacrificed for the good of humanity were one and the same; the G.o.d, in fact, SACRIFICED HIMSELF OR HIS REPRESENTATIVE. And Mithra was the hero who first won this conception of divinity for mankind--though of course it is in essence quite similar to the conception put forward by the Christian Church.
As ill.u.s.trating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer quotes an ancient writer (1) who says that for some time after the ceremony the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting the devotee on MILK, like a new-born babe. And it is interesting in that connection to find that even in the present day a diet of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT MILK for six or eight weeks is by many doctors recommended as the only means of getting rid of deep-seated illnesses and enabling a patient's organism to make a completely new start in life.
(1) Sall.u.s.tius philosophus. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, note, p. 229.
”At Rome,” he further says (p. 230), ”the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood appear to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian G.o.ddess (Cybele) on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St.
Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From the Vatican as a centre,” he continues, ”this barbarous system of superst.i.tion seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire.
Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican.”
It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early days of the Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials of Mithra and Cybele, probably much intermingled and blended, were exceedingly popular. Both religions had been recognized by the Roman State, and the Christians, persecuted and despised as they were, found it hard to make any headway against them--the more so perhaps because the Christian doctrines appeared in many respects to be merely faint replicas and copies of the older creeds. Robertson maintains (1) that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying (2) that ”a place near the equinoctial circle was a.s.signed to Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he bears the sword of the Ram (Aries) which is a sign of Mars (Ares).” Similarly among the early Christians, it is said, a ram or lamb was sacrificed in the Paschal mystery.
(1) Pagan Christs, p. 336.
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