Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras. Carl Ruck

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

       Myth and Reality

      As a classic example of the Mystery religions that were so common in ancient spiritual life, little was known by outsiders regarding the details of the Mithraic initiation or of the finer points of their mythological exegesis. These were primarily oral, centered on a foundational myth which imparted a profound meaning and significance through a complex process of initiation. If there is one unifying constant among these religions, it is that almost without exception they ritualized a sacred meal (or potion, as in the case of Eleusis) that induced an intense spiritual experience for the initiates. Amongst the Vedic, Mazdean, Isaianic, Orphic, Hellenic, Christian, et cetera. religions, the central Mystery revealed to and experienced by the prepared celebrant was the mythos, a kind of indoctrination guiding the mystai through a profound spiritual trance during which the “story” became reality.

      The myths and icons of such cults contained their own mysteries that could be revealed liturgically or through insight to the adept. Such works of art, though often considered crude or amateurish by critics, represent graphically the Mystery for those who have “eyes to see.” The apocalyptic story, for example, is clearly intended as a simple exoteric version of the central entheogenic Revelation of the religion. This Apocalypse found a much more complex, subtle, secretive development within the cult that was imparted in the course of initiation through the progressive stages of the Mystery.

      Although very little in the way of written sources has survived the ravages of time and zealous religious suppression, sporadic references to Mithras and Mithraism are common in ancient texts. There are also about six hundred brief inscriptions and graffiti, many of which are simple dedications or fragmentary and damaged. Mithraism is also mentioned occasionally in the writings of the Christian Fathers, including the Acts of the Martyrs. All of this provides a basis for uncovering what actually was experienced in the subterranean banqueting halls.

      The similarities in the archaeological record clearly indicate that these subterranean sanctuaries with their restricted elite congregations of initiates were not suitable for ordinary banqueting. A sequence of various magical foods programmed the ascending stages of the initiate’s acceptance into the confraternity of members. The iconography and mythical traditions of Mithraism identify one of these as the primary and ultimate botanical sacrament.

       two

       Becoming One with God

       Tauroctony

      The front wall or altar niche opposite the entrance of the typical Mithraeum, facing eastward toward the rising sun,¹ commonly depicted the central heroic exploit of Mithras, his slaying of the bull, the so-called tauroctony. The event takes place in a cave, and the placement of the tauroctony in the altar niche effectively identifies the Mithraeum chamber itself as such a cave. Mithras characteristically averts his gaze from the dying beast,² upon whose back he kneels. The pose, which is unlikely in reality, is obviously symbolic. Significantly, as he kneels upon the beast, he essentially has only one operative leg, with his right foot pinning the bull’s extended right hind hoof, with the bull also kneeling.

      When color is an option, as in a fresco, Mithras is characteristically all in red, with Persian trousers, tunic, and a flowing cape, sometimes painted with the starry firmament on its underside. The cap is sometimes speckled with white, or with stars when the color is absent. This motif, white specks against a red background, sometimes also ex tends to the clothed body of Mithras, as we see in the fresco in the Marino Mithraeum in the Alban Hills near Rome. The bull is always white. The entire configuration is a red- and-white speckled god, cap and hemispherical cape, with a single leg atop a white pediment comprised of the similarly one-legged bull. (See color figures 1 and 2, p. 97.)

      The tauroctony depicts Mithras as being one with the bull, itself a secret representation of the Amanita muscaria mushroom, the most probable botanical original of the Vedic Soma³ sacrament and, given the research presented presently, its Avestan analogue haoma,⁴ even though it is well established that other psychoactive subtances could have been substituted in the later traditions and often in fact were.⁵ Thus Yasht 10 of the Avesta speaks of “all the haomas … having many species” wherever they are found. These substitutes range from cannabis, ephedra, ergot, and perhaps datura, to simple alcohol. Even when surrogates were employed, the attributes of the original, embedded in the mythological tradition, persisted and are often descriptive of the mushroom.

      The Amanita muscaria mushroom is characterized by its red top, speckled with white, upon a white leg or stipe. Thus Mithras and the bull present this distinctive combination, for it is characteristic of the hero myth that the hero-shaman acquires attributes of the god and the sacramental entheogen that unites the three of them together. That is to say that all three—shaman, entheogen, and deity—are of one divine-botanical identity, which is also the essential ritual purpose of the sacramental communion meal that the initiates, too, will be privileged to share.⁶ One is what one eats, or more explicitly, the state of mind is determined by the nature of the ingested drug, as the prophet Teiresias explains in the Bacchae tragedy.⁷ More simply put, Mithras, as well as the bull, can be expected to have attributes descriptive of the sacred mushroom, which similarly shares an identity with the solar god.

      The Mithras-bull configuration is a pictorial personification of the mushroom at the moment of its sacrifice or harvest. Thus there is a flow of cosmic energy through the configuration, with Mithras looking up toward the head of the Sun rising behind the bull and shedding its rays directly at the god’s eyes, while the bull, with arched neck pulled back forcefully, and usually vertically like the white stipe of the muscaria mushroom, looks up directly toward the Moon’s head descending