period immediately prior to the official conver-
sion of the Roman Empire to the religion of
Jesus. As such, Mithraism left its mark on Chris-
tianity. For example, the Romans celebrated
Mithras’s birthday (Mithras was the central
deity of Mithraism) on December 25, the time
of year when the daylight hours—which had
gradually been shortening over the course of the
previous six months—begin to lengthen, thus
symbolically representing the victory of the
forces of light over the forces of darkness.
Christ’s birthday began to be celebrated on the
same date so that Christianity could compete
more effectively with Mithraism.
Although Mithraism left a rich heritage
of temple art and architecture for archaeologists
to uncover, the actual doctrines of Mithraism
were not preserved. In the late nineteenth cen-
tury, the Belgian scholar Franz Cumont put for-
ward a convincing hypothesis about these doc-
trines that held sway in Mithraic studies for the
next 70 years. Beginning with the similarity in
name between Mithras and the Persian god
Mithra, Cumont developed an explanation that
portrayed Mithraism as a form of Zoroastrianism
that had branched off and transformed into a
mystery religion. If this initial premise is grant-
ed, it is then possible to find other Persian
myths, often quite obscure, that seem to apply
to most of the sculpted forms found in Mithraic sanctuaries (Mithraeum). There were
certain problems, however, with Cumont’s interpretation—problems that came to a
head in 1971 at the First International Conference of Mithraic Studies. At this meet-
ing, devastating critiques were leveled against Cumont’s Iranian (Persian) hypothesis.
These critiques opened the door for entirely new interpretive approaches.
Freed from the “conventional wisdom” about the meaning of Mithraic statu-
ary, scholars were able to look at Mithras imagery with fresh eyes, and one of the first
things they noted was that many of the figures surrounding the tauroctony (the bull-
slaying scene that is the central motif in every Mithraeum) seemed to compose a star
map of certain constellations. This impression was reinforced by the zodiacal wheels
found in many sanctuaries. With these clues as a starting point, contemporary scholars
gradually pieced together a picture of a mystery cult that arose out of the religious
speculations of a group of astrologically inclined Stoic philosophers in Tarsus (the
birthplace of Saint Paul).
David Ulansey, in his Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries,has convincingly pro-
posed that this group of philosophers responded to the discovery of the precession ofMithraism and Astrology
[456] THEASTROLOGYBOOK
A detail of a Mithraic zodiac from an engraving, c. 1870.
Reproduced by permission of Fortean Picture Library.