I found this post at ARTNews by Francesca Aton fascinating. Apparently, an 1,800 year old shrine to Mithras has been found in Spain:
A sanctuary dedicated to the ancient god Mithras was uncovered by archaeologists excavating at the Villa del Mitra in Cabra, Spain. Remains of ritual banquets were found within the sanctuary.
Mithraism was a cult religion that became popular among the Roman Empire during the first century CE. Mithras was a Romanized form of the Iranian god of the sun and justice Mithra.
The Villa del Mitra, within the Roman city Licabrum, dates to the first century CE. The villa gets its name from a second century CE Mitra de Cabra sculpture, depicting Mithras sacrificing a bull (a symbol of death and resurrection), that was discovered in situ.
If you’re not familiar with the cult of Mithras, you should do a little research on it. It was spread throughout the Roman world via the legions. And, interestingly, Christianity stepped right into the gaps that the cult of Mithras had created. In a sense it’s with us today. The Holy Saturday rituals of the Catholic Church are just full of echoes of the cult of Mithras. The similarities between the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus and the stories of the birth of Mithras are just too numerous and close to be coincidental.
For some that casts doubt on Christianity. It reminds me more of how the Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th century rewrote the gospels, recasting the apostles as sages and highlighting the areas where Christianity resembled Confucianism or Taoism. They were exploiting ideas with which their audience was already familiar.
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
Nietzsche has been enjoying a come back for the last few decades, and Heidegger is supposed to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century. There’s a message there, but I don’t have a decoder ring anymore.
As to the Jesuits, well what can I say. They did, finally, get a Pope in Francis. Ann Barnhardt has had a continuous conniption fit ever since. Francis is rumored to be planning a complete ban of the Latin Mass and all the older Latin rites of the sacraments.