Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras. Carl Ruck
Mithras eventually ascended to heaven by feasting with the Sun on the hide of the slaughtered Bull. This sacred meal is almost as frequently depicted as the Bull-slaying in the Mithraea.
You have saved us with the eternal blood poured. (Et nos servasti eternali sanguine fuso.)
—Graffito, Santa Prisca Mithraeum26
The religion that had survived already for two millennia was syncretistic, incorporating elements of Mesopotamian and Hellenic symbolism. It was typical of the Classical world to recognize the deities of foreign nations as versions of their own gods. Thus the Mithraic Zoroastrian pantheon consisted of Ahura Mazda (related to the Vedic Mitra-Varuna, diad of the Vedas), who was equated with Zeus. His opposite, the force of darkness, was Ahriman, equated with Hades-Pluto. Kronos, the father of the first generation of Olympians, was often confused with Khronos, the figure of time personified, and equated with Zurvan. The Babylonian Shamash was seen as a version of Mithras and identified with the sun god Helios. Anahita, the sometime mother of Mithras (since he also had a motherless birth), was equated with Artemis, both of them associated with special springs or waters.
Although the origin of Mithras was Aryan, the impetus for much of the later mythology and ritual is still very much a matter of debate. Certainly Mesopotamian influences played a major role in brokering this religion to the Occidental world, as did the speculations of Hellenistic thinkers. The astronomical and alchemical aspects may be a Chaldean addition and may not go back to its earliest origins. The theme of ecstatic redemption through the sacramental meal is its essential feature, however, and was the most obvious way that the Soma-haoma rite reached the West. Surprisingly, this has been the feature usually least noticed by scholars, even for those who acknowledge that it was the sacramental meal of warriors. During the two thousand years that separate the Vedic Mithras from the Roman cult of the bull-slayer, the secret ritual practice underwent numerous mutations. Despite the changes, there is no doubt that its ethnic identity in the Roman Empire was recognized as Persian and the cult of the Magi priesthood.27
As intriguing as the problem of haoma/soma’s identification is, it does not contribute one way or the other to a religious understanding of the sacred juice…. A second major property of haoma/soma … was that of a stimulant taken by warriors before going into battle.
—W. Malandra.28
It did not really matter what Soma was, since it was lost so early in history.
—W. Doniger.29
Since there is so little documentation about Western Mithraism, it is extremely difficult to compare, contrast, and otherwise understand how the Western manifestation of Mithras is related to the Vedic and Persian pantheons. While there is no doubt that Mitra, Mithra, and Mithras are essentially the same deity, there are two schools of thought regarding the origin of Roman Mithraism.30 While some scholars argue for or against an independent Roman genesis, others, like ourselves, feel that there is ample evidence for both Aryan and Persian sources as well as distinctly Hellenistic and Roman innovations to the entheogenic ritual. An indisputable and well-documented connecting thread between the Eastern and Western Mithraic rites concerns the use of botanical sacrament. We argue that the visionary state induced by haoma is the essential and indispensible element to the Mithraic religion, whatever the particulars of its outward forms or cultural context, and that identifying the specific sacrament also informs the mythology and unanswered questions relating to the complex of metaphors expressed in the mythic narrative.
As ample evidence demonstrates, the mushroom-centered ritual survived in the West, as well as in the East, and was a fundamental element of the political and military power that upheld the far-flung Roman Empire. The very similar rites of early Christianity easily assimilated it, and it continued to survive in the so-called heresies throughout the medieval period, and also in the perpetuation of pagan knowledge in hermetic alchemy.
The entheogenic initiation was as fundamental to the formation of the pagan and Christian cultural identity and the political organization of civilized Europe as the similar experience afforded the Greco-Roman world in other Mystery initiations. Foremost among those experiences being the consciousness-altering ergot potion of the Eleusinian rites,31 as well as those like the Mystery of Osiris assimilated from Egypt. Even Cicero added his voice to the chorus of endorsements for Eleusis, which included most of the famous artists and leaders of Classical antiquity, claiming that there was nothing better that Athens had offered the world.
Battle Fury
The haoma cult appears to have been a basis of the warrior brotherhoods of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty of Cyrus and his successors, and like the later Nordic berserkers,32 the sacrament energized them for battle. In the funeral inscription of Darius at his grave in Naks-i-Rustam near Persepolis, at the end of the uppermost row in a list of twenty-nine countries that brought tribute appears the name Saka Haomavarga, which means “Haoma-wolves,” a confraternity of wolf-warriors bound by the sacrament.33 The berserkers metamorphosed for battle into bears or wolves in the same manner.
The intoxicating nature of the sacrament is well documented. Ctesias, a Greek doctor at the Persian court of Artaxerxes, recorded that he personally assisted at a celebration of Mithras and witnessed the king dance and drink himself into a stupor, a ritual intoxication that was reserved for him alone on this day.34 The followers of Darius were also said to drink urine to induce ecstasy. These combined attributes, physical prowess and intoxicating urine, betray the identity of the sacrament as Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric, for several reasons: first, because ingesting Amanita muscaria is known to induce a heightened stamina and aggressive fury, and also because the metabolite of Amanita muscaria remains psychoactive in the urine of those who have ingested it. In fact, some shamanic societies considered drinking the urine of a person who has eaten Amanita muscaria a superior means of accessing the drug than ingestion of the mushroom itself because the consciousness-altering properties are preserved while the often unpleasant side-effects of eating the mushroom are not. This quality of Amanita muscaria adds further evidence to it being the original identity of Soma-haoma.
In fact, linguistically Soma-haoma may even name the plant as a “spongy thing,” which is to say, a mushroom or fungus.35 The Latin word fungus is cognate with the Greek spongos and German Schwamm and is metaphoric for the spongy texture characteristic of mushrooms.
The Nativity
Mithras was born on December 25.36 For obvious reasons of the Sol Invictus, in the third century Pope Liberius finally decided to place the birth of Jesus also on this date, although there had been considerable controversy about the appropriateness of even specifying a birthday for a nonpagan god.37
Although we share with them Sunday, we are not apprehensive lest we seem to be heathens.
—Tertullian of Carthage
Persian tradition describes the birth of Mithras from the immaculate virgin Anahita (Greek Anaïtis, assimilated to Aphrodite and Ishtar), who prior to the reformation of the religion was a popular fertility goddess, the primal source of waters flowing from the cosmic mountain. She conceived Mithras from the seed of Zarathustra as it was preserved in Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan. Mithras ascended to the Empyrean sixty-four years later, and Parthian documents and coins bear double dates, one counting the intervals since the ascension in 208 BCE.
The myth as promulgated in the Mithraic initiation was that it was not from a woman that he was born, but from a rock thrust upwards as if by some magical force. The rock was called the “rock that gave birth to god,” petra genetrix dei. And he emerged as the “begetter of light,” genitor luminis, the “god who was the begetter born from a rock,” deus genitor rupe natus.38 This strange birth is well attested in Mithraic art. (See color figures 6, 7, and 8, p. 99.)
The petra genetrix