Slaying Mithra: Self-help, Human Potential and the Luciferian Perversion of the West - Part I
By David Gosselin
For the radical and permanent transformation of personality only one effective method has been discovered — that of the mystics.
—Aldous Huxley
The Western oligarchy’s tradition of importing eastern cults into Western culture has been a long-standing one. Indeed, much of Christianity’s early battle within both the political and spiritual arena was against the legacy of mystery cults dominating Babylon, Persia, Rome and Delphi. From peasants up to the elites and emperors, a pantheon of mystery cults was used to corral and manage the various segments of the population, keeping them mystified through a medley of rites, rituals, and superstitions. From the Egyptian cult of Horus and Isis-Osiris to the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter, or the Persian and Babylonian solar cults of Mithra and Marduk, the use of Eastern cults and mysticism to maintain top-down control over societies has been around since time immemorial.
Take the cult of Mithra. Once a Persian solar deity, the Mithraic cult would be imported into the Roman Empire and quickly become popular among the Imperial Roman army from the first to the fourth century CE. It would become one of the most powerful cults among the Roman legions, boasting among its initiates none other than the emperor Julian the Apostate. In fact, the emperor Julian would renounce Christianity in favor of the ancient mystery schools repackaged as Mithraism. By that time, the cult of Mithra had spread across the Western Roman empire, with its temples often curiously appearing beneath Christian churches.
As even Carl Jung wrote, Mithraism was seen as the main spiritual contender to Christianity, representing the imperial class’s preferred system of deification through exclusive mystery rites. Jung spoke of “the two great antagonistic religions, Christianity on the one side and Mithraism on the other.” As journalist and researcher Mathew Ehret describes in his “Carl Jung’s Gnostic Revival, Abraxas, and the 20th Century Cult of Mithra (part 5)”:
“Situating his preference for Mithraism against Christianity, Jung stated that Mithra worship ‘is nature worship in the best sense of the word; while the primitive Christians exhibited throughout an antagonistic attitude to the beauties of this world.’”
For, Jung saw in the Mithraic and ancient mystery schools a divine rite of self-actualization, rebirth and “deification”:
“Awe surrounds the mysteries, particularly the mystery of deification. This was one of the most important of the mysteries- it gave certainty of immortality. One gets a peculiar feeling from being put through such an initiation. The important part that led up to the deification was the snake’s encoiling of me… The animal face which I felt mine transformed into was the famous Deus Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the snake’s head resting on the man’s head, and the face of the man that of a lion. This statue has only been found in the mystery grottoes (the underchurches [Mithraeum], the last remnants of the catacombs).” [Jung, Analytical Psychology, p. 98]
Then there was the cult of Cybele-Attis, which specifically targeted the Roman aristocracy and involved, among other things, rites of self-castration. As Ehret writes in “The Ancient Occult Roots of the Fabian Society, Cybele and the Mysteries of Eleusis (Part 4)”
“Both sects (Mithra and Cybele) featured death and rebirth rituals, involving the shedding of old identities of initiates in favor of new constructs groomed by a higher priesthood.
“The priests- dubbed ‘Hierophants’ of the Cybele Cult (called ‘Galli’) were all castrated as part of their initiation which is why the conservative families of Rome ultimately demanded the cult be removed after too many of their sons were given over to ritual castrations. Wasson notes that “Followers of her cult would work themselves into an emotional frenzy and self-mutilate, symbolic of her lover’s self-castration.”
And then there was the magical cult of Eleusis. Dedicated to the goddess of the harvest, Demeter, participants would travel from across the Greco-Roman world to the cult site of Eleusis for over 2000 years. There, initiates would imbibe a magical elixir, which would reveal its hidden mysteries and wisdom (if one was lucky).
While not ostensibly dedicated to any archaic deity, careful observers will note that the hunger for mystery has made a remarkable comeback in recent years—as have the promises of a “New Age” for mankind. From a desire to re-acquaint oneself with the salvational mysteries of Mother Nature through various forms of collective self-sacrifice to psychedelic “self-actualization” using magical substances to dissolve one’s ego and remove all limiting beliefs, rather than something new, could the latest spiritual trends signal the revival of something very old?
New Wine in Old Skins
As we’ve already outlined elsewhere, the conceptual frameworks necessary to re-integrate mystery religions into a re-imagined Western image of man was carefully elaborated in the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) “Changing Images of Man” document. There, the authors examine how very old and supposedly more “sustainable” ideas could be re-adapted to a twenty-first century technological and scientific context.
Making use of the latest psychoanalytic insights into man’s “self-image,” Systems Theory, Cybernetics, anthropology, psychedelics and drug-infused mysticism, the SRI authors dedicate key portions of their program to contrasting the Judeo-Christian and Classical Greek images of man with earlier “archaic” Greek, Zoroastrian and Babylonian varieties.
Perhaps most importantly the authors write:
“In contrast to the Greek notion of ‘man,’ the Judeo-Christian view holds that ‘man’ is essentially separate from the rightful master over nature. This view inspired a sharp rate of increase in technological advances in Western Europe throughout the Medieval period. On the other hand, the severe limitations of scholastic methodology, and the restrictive views of the Church, prevented the formulation of an adequate scientific paradigm. It was not until the Renaissance brought a new climate of individualism and free inquiry that the necessary conditions for a new paradigm were provided.
“Interestingly, the Renaissance scholars turned to the Greeks to rediscover the empirical method. The Greeks possessed an objective science of things "out there," which D. Campbell (1959) terms the “epistemology of the other.” This was the basic notion that nature was governed by laws and principles which could be discovered, and it was this that the Renaissance scholars then developed into science as we have come to know it.”
A key statement that should stand out is: “And it was this that the Renaissance scholars then developed into science as we have come to know it.” For, the SRI notes that the “official” view “laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution to come.” The purpose of the “Changing Images of Man” program would be to create a new “self-image” for Western man, based on a revamped Gaia-centric “ecological ethic.”
The authors write:
“An ecological ethic is necessary if man is to avoid destroying the complex life-support system on which our continued existence on the planet depends. It must recognize that available resources, including space, are limited and must portray the human as an integral part of the natural world. It must reflect the ‘new scarcity’ in an ethic of fragility, of doing more with less. It must involve not only a sense of mutual self-interest between individuals, but also the interests of fellow men and the more extensive interests among fellow creatures (both near and far, both present and future).
“An ecological ethic would imply movement toward a homeostatic (yet dynamic) economic and ecological system, in which the human acts in partnership with nature to harmonize ecological relationships and in establishing satisfactory recycling mechanisms. Such an ethic is necessary to achieve a synergism of heterogeneous individual and organizational micro-decisions such that the resultant macro-decisions are satisfactory to those who made the component decisions, and to society.” (The Changing Images of Man p.114)
The SRI authors correctly observe that the Renaissance image of man allowed for a natural elaboration of the Classical Judeo-Christian and Greek image of man, such that each individual was understood to be distinct from all other living things by virtue of his creative powers of reason. This conscious notion of imago viva dei (a living image of God) and capax dei (having a god-like capacity) would unleash a flurry of investigations into the workings of the natural laws of the universe and the ability to the effectively increase his power over nature. The result was a natural qualitative and quantitative increase in human population growth.
While often obscured by various theological and philosophical narratives, this essential Promethean view of man, famously depicted in the work of Aeschylus as the fire-wielding Titan, epitomizes the qualities which the archaic, alchemical, and Gnostic schools have always sought to conceal or suppress using a medley of magical rites and superstitions. What were these earlier “archaic” schools?
The SRI authors write:
“The Gnostics, whose beliefs appear to have been a synthesis of Babylonian, Indian, and Egyptian, as well as Semitic and Zoroastrian thought, took another view. Agreeing with the Semitic belief in one Eternal and Supreme Being, and the Zoroastrian view of the World and its unredeemed citizens as savable, the Gnostics took as central the ‘saving’ power of gnosis-extraordinary and experientially intimate knowledge of the mysteries of existence.”
The authors continue:
“The import of this view, as contrasted with the view which ultimately came to be the ‘official’ one, is portrayed by the Gospel according to Thomas: His disciples said to Him: When will the Kingdom come? Jesus said: It will not come by expectation; they will not say: "See there." But the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it. (Saying 113) This tension between the Gnostic understanding of apocalyptic symbolism and that of the Early Church which condemned it as heretical is the essence of what is sometimes called "the Judeo-Christian Problem." Is an apocalyptic Messiah to come (or come again) and thus grandly save the elect from evil, or is the "Kingdom of the Father" already here within us, within ourselves and our world-as is "Buddha-consciousness" and the "Mother Light"-only waiting to be recognized and fulfilled? The conundrum was inherited also by Islam, and supplied the whole sense of the contention. Because the Gnostic path was condemned as heretical, of necessity it went underground, and hence its influence on our culture is much less visible than are the effects of the orthodox views. It and views like it, however, have been kept alive by secret societies such as the Sufis, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, whose influence on the founding of the United States is attested to by the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, on the back of the dollar bill. The Semitic/Zoroastrian/orthodox Christian image meanwhile came into dominance in Western Europe. This image of the ‘human as separate’ laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution to come.”
Towards the goal of rehabilitating this “underground” current, seen as more amenable to an Earth-centric worldview, the SRI authors offer a new vision based on individual “self-actualization,” that is, progress not based on man’s mastery of natural laws, but on new mystical levels of “consciousness.”
The SRI authors write:
“The desirability of this characteristic of the new Image is based on the view that the proper end of all individual experience is the evolutionary and harmonious development of the emergent self (both as a person and as a part of wide collectivities), and that the appropriate function of social institutions is to create an environment which will foster that process. This is the ethic which must supersede the man-over-nature ethic and the material-growth-and-consumption ethic which have given rise to a large portion of man's problems as he became increasingly preoccupied with solely material aspects of exploiting and controlling nature for selfish ends on a fragile and finite planet where the pursuit of such goals can be suicidal.”
In a word: man should give up the Promethean fire and return the mystical bosom of “Mother Nature.” For, despite the will of the archaic gods and their magicians, the discovery of “fire” only gave hubristic and selfish man more power to destroy himself and Mother Earth, giving him the illusion of “progress” over pre-Renaissance ages, so we are told. But by returning to the mysteries old man could finally re-acquaint himself with the sacred “experiential gnosis” which had been the well-spring of “mystery” and “magic.”
In doing so, man would finally rediscover his true self.
The Search for the Self
Much advance, both in biological evolution and in psychosocial evolution, including advance in science, is of course obtained by adding minute particulars, but at intervals something like crystallization from a supersaturated solution occurs, as when science arrives at an entirely new concept, which then unifies an enormous amount of factual data and ideas, as with Newton or Darwin. Major advances occur in a series of large steps, from one form of organization to another. In our psychosocial evolution I believe we are now in a position to make a new major advance.
—Sir Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO (1968)
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