Inside the great magical papyrus kept in Paris, the manuscript numbered IV among the Greek Magical Papyri in the modern system, there is a text that has fascinated philologists and historians of religion for more than a century. It occupies roughly lines 475-829 and describes, in the first person, an ascent of the soul through the heavens into the presence of a supreme god. Its modern name is the «Mithras Liturgy», but this label, as we shall see, is anything but settled.
A name given by a philologist
The title goes back to Albrecht Dieterich, a German scholar who in 1903 published the text under the title Eine Mithrasliturgie. Dieterich was convinced he had found an authentic fragment of the rituals of the Mithraic mysteries, the initiatory cult widespread in the army and in the cities of the Roman Empire of which we possess almost no liturgical texts.
The thesis was soon challenged. Franz Cumont, the leading scholar of Mithraism of his time, denied that the text had anything to do with the mysteries of Mithras. Today most scholars regard it as a composition born in the Graeco-Egyptian milieu of the papyri, which uses the name Helios Mithras as one of the titles of the solar god without reproducing the liturgy of a mithraeum. The modern name, however, has stuck for convenience.
The stated purpose: «immortalization»
The text presents itself as a revelation received from the great god Helios Mithras and intended for a single disciple. Its aim is called apathanatismos, literally «immortalization»: not eternal life of the body, but an experience in which the soul, for a limited time, is lifted beyond the mortal condition to contemplate the divine and receive a revelation from it. At the end the practitioner returns to his human nature.
The stages of the ascent
The sequence is described with great visual precision. Simplifying, the stages are these:
- Invocation of the elements. The practitioner addresses the «first origin» and the elements of which his body is made, asking to be regenerated in a pure state.
- Breathing the rays. He is told to draw breath from the rays of the sun, three times, until he feels lifted into the air.
- Silence. Faced with the gods approaching, he must put his finger to his lips and pronounce the formula of silence, a detail that has become famous.
- The doors of heaven. After sounds and visions, doors of fire open and the world of the gods appears.
- Helios. A young god with fiery hair appears, in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak.
- The seven Tychai and the seven Pole Lords. Maidens with serpent faces and young men with bull faces, guardians of the celestial axis, whom the practitioner must greet one by one.
- The supreme god. Finally an immense god appears, with a shining face, holding in his hand the golden shoulder of a calf, that is, the Great Bear. From him the practitioner receives an oracle.
Astronomical symbols
Many details make sense when read as images of the sky. The seven Pole Lords with the calf's shoulder recall the constellation of the Great Bear, which in Egyptian tradition was represented precisely as a bull's foreleg. The seven maidens have been linked to the stars of the Little Bear. The ascent, in short, follows a cosmography: from the earth, through the elements and the spheres, up to the motionless pole around which the universe turns.
The practical instructions
Like all the texts in the papyri, this one has an operative part: days of purity, the use of a scarab to be placed in a fragrant substance, plants to be gathered at precise times, and the possibility of sharing the revelation with one companion only, who must purify himself together with the master. The revelation is therefore not public: it is tied to a personal relationship between the one who teaches and the one who receives.
How to interpret it
Interpretations swing between two poles:
- some read it as a genuine ecstatic rite, in which the visions described were expected as an inner experience guided by breath, silence and the repetition of names;
- others see it mainly as a literary and sapiential text, a sort of map of the sky in narrative form.
The two readings are not mutually exclusive. It is significant that the text shares many themes with Hermetic literature and with Neoplatonic speculation on the ascent of the soul: the cosmos ordered in levels, the need for purification, light as a sign of the divine. The «Liturgy» shows that these ideas circulated not only among philosophers but also in a ritual context.
Why it remains important
For the study of late antique religion the text is valuable for three reasons. It is one of the rare documents describing an experience of ascent from within; it shows the syncretism between Greek solar cult, Egyptian astronomy and initiatory vocabulary; and it testifies to how thin the line was between «magic», «mystery» and «philosophy» in the Roman world. Maestro Cornelio proposes it as a text for studying the symbolism of light and silence, read as a language of the soul and not as a procedure to repeat.
In short
- The «Mithras Liturgy» is a section of the great Paris magical papyrus, PGM IV, roughly lines 475-829.
- The name goes back to Albrecht Dieterich in 1903; Franz Cumont and most scholars have denied its link with the Mithraic mysteries.
- It describes an ascent through elements and heavens, with Helios, the seven Tychai, the seven Pole Lords and a supreme god.
- Many of its symbols point to astronomy, in particular to the Great Bear.
- It is a unique witness to the relationship between rite, mysticism and philosophy in late antiquity.
