Mithras and Mythology; Buried by Christianity, Popes and Kings

I was reading about Mithras being ‘recently uncovered’ as an ancient cult within the Roman Empire and became intrigued. Apparently, this cult never put pen to parchment and thus the ONLY evidence of their existence is various burial inscriptions.  Typical for scientists and historians, they decided to create an entire knowledge bank of the Mithras civilization and society – out of thin air:  “Mithraic mythology centers on the Persian-derived sun god Mithras, who was revered in the Roman Empire (1st-4th century AD) as a “bull-slayer,” creating life through sacrifice and acting as a savior to initiates. Central to this faith was the Tauroctony, where Mithras subdues and sacrifices a sacred bull in a cave, releasing fertility and light.” 

Everything in this statement is conjecture. “Mithras was born from a rock, depicted as a youth wearing a Phrygian cap, carrying a torch and dagger.” 

What caught my attention though is the ritual of the Bull. The ancient Minoans who left behind cave drawings, Knossos, and Linear A and Linear B writings, projected much reverence for the Bull.  The Bull was a major part of their culture with pictures of men somersaulting over the Bull for entertainment and/or sport purportedly.  Like the Mithras, they also revered the Sun and depicted various spaceships in their hieroglyphics. They also carved pictorials of otherworldly lizard people. The Minoans are said to have originated in Crete around 2500 BC.  Well before the dating of the Mithras.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote an essay about Mithraism in 1949. In his view, the ‘cult’ of Mithra and all cults of the time frame surrounding Jesus should be analyzed for they all share common themes that in some instances are shared with Christianity. “This is not to say that a Saint Paul or a Saint John sat down and copied these views verbatim. But after being in contact with these surrounding religions and hearing certain doctrines expressed, it was only natural for some of these views to become a part of their subconscious minds.”

King quotes various philosophers when claiming that Mithraism would have continued as the dominant religion had Christianity ever been challenged. While there are no texts or sacred writings by Mithras the 400 excavated sites contain ‘inscriptions’ written in Latin or Aramaic. Unfortunately for historians, the earliest surviving record of written Latin is the 7^th century AD.  And Mithras was supposedly a dead religion by the 4^th century AD. However, the earliest surviving record of Aramaic dates from the 9^th or 10^th century BCE.

Most of these writings also allude to Roman Mythological beings as reigning in the same era. https://mithras.tertullian.org/literary_sources.htm#Herodotus.

In quoting The Traditions of The Magi:  Evander of Greece said that the gods who rule over everything are eight: Fire, Water, Earth, Heaven, Moon, Sun, Mithras, Night. This was the essence of Greek and Roman mythology discussed through the fourth century AD before going silent. During the span of these writings, Mithras as a god begins to decay with succeeding writings demonizing all those that follow this ‘cult’.

I am reminded of how Rockefeller used this tactic of demonizing to instill hatred of Medicine in favor of Medical Vaccine Horror in 1911. Much like Trump demonizing socialism as communism today in favor of Trumpism.

The Popes of early Rome began to sway power to themselves. Churches Built Over Sanctuaries: Rather than abandoning the sites entirely, early Christians frequently subsumed them. Because Mithraic temples were built in centralized hubs (often near docks or beneath cities), Christians literally constructed basilicas and churches on top of them. A famous historical example is the Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano in Rome, which was built over a 4th-century basilica, which was in turn built directly atop a temple to Mithras.

One such Emperor was Theodosius, the last Emperor to rule the Empire before it splintered into east and west. In the 4th century, the papacy transformed from a persecuted local bishopric into an institution of imperial power. With the rise of popes, they sought to control the Kings: Emperor Constantine’s conversion and Edict of Milan (313 CE) granted Christianity legality, while Emperor Theodosius I made it the state religion (380 CE). This rise to POWER was used to destroy the civilizations that had Mithras as their cult and replace it with Christianity.

The term paganus in Latin simply refers to a villager or civilian. Christians began using the term as a derogatory label attached to rural people and peasants who continued to practice traditional, polytheistic, and nature-based Mithraism. Because Mithraism had no God, Christians sought to bury, figuratively and literally, this cult of ‘pagans’. The gods prevalent in mythology were thus reduced to ‘fabricated stories’ in order to deflate their power.

MYTHOLOGY was thus redirected as a book attributed to Homer. The earliest known surviving text in book form of Homer’s Odyssey is a 1,700-year-old vellum manuscript containing fragments of Books 12–15 and 18–24. That would be 900 AD.  In 2018, archaeologists discovered a clay plaque near the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. Dating to the 3rd century AD it contains 13 verses from Book 14 of the Odyssey. But clay plaques were no longer in use in the 3^rd century as papyrus was much more suitable…

It is also noteworthy that Homer was blind and all his stories/poetry were oral. It is also noteworthy that Mithras was considered of Persian origin.

According to Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Mithra is represented as the genius of celestial light. He emerges from the rocky summits of eastern mountains at dawn, and goes through heaven with a team of four white horses; when the night falls he still illumines the surface of the earth “ever walking ever watchful.” He is not sun or moon or any star, but a spirit of light, ever wakeful, watching with a hundred eyes. He hears all and sees all: none can deceive him.”

This confirms that all ancient knowledge has been purposefully buried by the Popes and Kings who sought to maintain their superiority and power sometime in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.