(image on the side: affresco representing Mithra killing the bull, XNUMXnd cent. AD, Marino, Italy)
NIn the 50s, the Gnostic documents of Nag Hammadi, found immediately after the war in Egypt, made their entry into the academic world, and the need arose in the field of studies for a reflection on the material available and a rethinking of the categories into which they fell. the so-called mystery cults. The years between the 30s and 40s had already brought new materials and new research hypotheses: studies on patternΒ or mythical-ritual model inaugurated in England, which still felt the influence of Frazerian comparativism, "by now they were putting the theme of mystery religions in a broader perspective to consider them, one by one, in their ancient roots of national and ethnic religions - Crete, Egypt, Anatolia and the rest of anterior Asia, overcoming the limitation to mystical and soteriological cults of the Hellenistic-Roman age and in particular those relating to divinities of oriental originΒ»Such as Mithra (Persia), Isis and Osiris (Egypt, Rome), Cybele and Attis (Anatolia), Aphrodite / Astarte and Adonis (Phenicia, Greece) [From: U. Bianchi, The study of mystery religionsin The soteriology of oriental cults in the Roman Empire, Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Rome 24-28 Sept. 1979].
In that decade the investigations [Puech, Proceedings of the VIII International Conference on the History of Religions, Rome 1955] were oriented towards a "Hellenism inclined to the cyclical concept of time, as an eternal return, a Christianity that understands linear and eschatological time as the history of salvation, and, as a third, a Gnosticism as salvation in the timeless but not cyclical framework of a savior-revealer who descends to awaken his fellow men from sleep"[Cfr. Cyclical time and linear time: Kronos / Shiva, the "Time that devours everything"].
After '55 the studies declined on different paths. The Messina Colloquium (13-18 April 1966) was a first occasion for a common reflection on the new Gnostic documents of Nag Hammadi: the terminology 'gnosis and gnosticism' should not imply generalizing categories, but useful for identifying a differentiated and well-defined historical typology. attestable of these cults; the method applied was the historical-comparative one, "in which the history of religions consists precisely, as a specific and indivisible discipline", and "he placed his foot firmly on a sure point of reference, that of the Gnostic sects of the second century CE, to whose knowledge the new texts contributedΒ».
It came to be identified in nuce the 'Gnostic feeling', a coherent series of characteristics that can be summarized in the idea of ββ"presence in man of a divine spark that comes from the pleromatic world, fallen into this world subject to destiny, which must be awakened through a revelatory message to be reintegrated in its world of origin; the divine therefore degrades, enters into crisis and indirectly produces this world, which he cannot disinterest in, however, because he must recover the divine element that has fallen into it and retained itΒ».
Mystical, mystical, mystical: terminology
It was urgent to clearly establish a specific typology of the 'mystical' and the 'soteriological' in the pagan religions of the Hellenistic-Roman age, from the ancient mystical cults of the god in each other and of the divine couple to initiatory rituals, up to the soteriology of mystery cults and, finally, to an Orphic-Neoplatonic-Gnostic mysteriosophy that will transcend them, seeing in them the symbol of the story of the divine soul lost in matter.
The origin of the word is Greek, to mystikΓ³n, or better ta mystikΓ‘, to point out "the experience of a profound, mutual interference between the two divine and human planes, both in the sense of the participation of certain divinities in a partially human event (disappearance and return, life and death), and in the sense of a ritual participation of men to events and ways of being connected with the divinities"[Cfr. Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].
Within the 'mystical' concept, a further differentiation was then reached:
- a first form, in which the participation or interference between divine and human is temporary and characterized by enthusiasm, as in the practices of Dionysian and Metroaco menadism (relating to the goddess Cybele, called by the Greeks simply Meter, hence the adjective. See S. Ribichini, The secret rite. Ancient mystery cults, handouts);
- a second form, the so-called 'mystery cults', stands out because it additionally implies the "presence of an initiatic ritual, graduated and esoteric, inside sanctuaries destined for this purpose (telesterion, mithraeum, penethral) in view of an even extra-worldly bliss of which the initiate receives promise and anticipation by witnessing and associating himself with the story and destiny of the mystery god". The Eleusinian mysteries are the model of this typology, to which the mysteries of Mithra, Isis and Cybele attested respectively by Apuleius, Clement of Alexandria and Firmico Materno are added with novelty of structure.
- Finally, a third form of the 'mystic' is the 'mysteriosophical' religiosity, where the subject of the story of fall and rebirth is not so much the mystery god as thedivine soul, who are "a celestial element which, from the most ancient Orphic-Pythagorean formulations to Hermeticism and Gnosticism, through Platonic dualism, is found imprisoned in the tomb of the body and in the cave that is the world. Here the initiatory and salvific value is not so much found in a ritual of repetition of the story of the god, but in a sofia and in one gnosis which, moreover, is not without a certain ritualityΒ».
The specificity of Mithra
The mysteries of the Persian god in the Roman Empire have a peculiar character that disregards the ancient mystery cults of Greece: everything in Roman Mithraism belongs to the mystery structure, everything is based on initiation without any part open to public celebration.
Yet the mysteries of Mithra were able to fulfill a function that went beyond the initiatory environment (as evidenced by the popularity of the solar cult), and when it took on the characteristics of officialdom it became an instrument for the army, administration and notables. to show political-religious loyalty to the emperors - some of whom did not hide their adherence or sympathy to the Mithriac cult, as in the case of the dedication of Carnuntum placed by Diocletian, in which the emperor calls Mithra supporter of empires; in reverse, "the cults of the Magna mater or of Isis only in certain cases involved esoteric initiation and specific soteriological perspectives and had a large part that concerned public worship"; moreover Mithra was a foreign god, of a nation traditionally enemy of Rome, where the Magna mater it had long been the national deity and the Egyptian gods were now incardinated in Roman worship.
The mystery cults of the Hellenistic-Roman world are an expression of movements of a supranational and cosmopolitan dimension, consistent with an era in which the individual and his aspirations for salvation go beyond the national and citizen moment of ancient religion as in the mysteries of Eleusis. and privilege of the Athenian state. "The Eleusinian mysteries continue to attract aspiring initiates to the famous, only sanctuary, which knows imitations but not branches, while the spelaea, the Mithraic conventicles multiply excessively, administered by employees of various geographical and social origins" (see the Roman temple of Mithra in London, the "greatest archaeological discovery" of the English capital, Museum of London) - something very different from Eleusis where the cult is entrusted to people of noble extraction and only the solemn autumn ceremony is managed by the state and concerns the different categories of population.
However, we are not always authorized to suppose the allusion to an effectively mysterious cult, that is, involving an initiation of an esoteric type with prospects of salvation, in the inscriptions in which reference is made to mystery, mystai, myesis, orgy,Β looms or myths and rites aporrhetoi, 'which is not lawful to disclose'; the hints on Egyptian sarcophagi, for example, or the famous testimony of Herodotus (II 171) are not enough to suppose that in Pharaonic Egypt the Osiric rites had the character of mystery cults, because the privilege of bliss in the hereafter was not assured. to the individual still alive but to the dead, transformed into Osiris, through funeral rituals; not even the rich iconography of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii can guarantee that we are faced with a real initiation ritual rather than an imaginative fantasy on a mythical-ritual theme. "these aporrheta Greeks, Egyptians or others we will define them with the adjective 'mystics', because they refer to the story and suffering of a god in a context of seasonal rite, without however implying the initiatory structures and the individual soteriology of the mysteriesΒ».
On the other hand, it is true that the cults of Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis do not hide their 'vocation' or mystery predisposition, even in continuity with theethos deriving from their specific traditions; formerly Plutarch in chap. 27 of De IsisΒ Β«mentions the institution by the goddess of a rite that remembers and depicts her and Osiris's events for the purpose of consolation for those, men and women, who were in similar painful contingencies". Or the Homeric hymn to Demeter, when the goddess makes known and institutes the orgy misterici 'for all', and which recalls the mystery formula of an unspecified cult reported by Firmico Materno: "trust, or mixed, in the saved god: for you too there will be salvation from pain ".
Mithra presents some continuity with the original god, as well as in the name also in some ritual term as in the exclamation us or in the iconography and, above all, in the same distinction / identity between Mithra and the Sun, which appears, in different ways, in Rome and in Persia. But, for the rest, everything is new in Roman Mithraism, starting from the exclusively mysterious, esoteric nature of the cult, while the cult of Isis, deeply rooted in the terrain of Egyptian popular festivities connected with the seasonal cycle, could easily assume in the Ptolemaic period and then Roman a meaning of popular cult widely practiced: Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis imposed themselves in Rome as 'mystical' gods before being mysterious, because they were connected to a story of loss and discovery. Mithra instead is Β«devoid of mystical connotations in Persia, and only emerged as such during his long journey to the WestΒ».
Attis and Adonis, the young gods
Already in public worship, as can be seen for example from his sanctuary in the field ofΒ Magna mater in Ostia, Attis assumes the characters of the cosmic god to whom attributes such as omnipotens, while Osiris remained rather in his, so to speak, mortuary dimension. In mystical-philosophical speculation, "the story of Attis and the other mystery gods has been related to the story of genesis e apogenesis of souls, divine substance compromised in the corporeal world and therefore integrated into the divine world, identified with this solemn female figure in the Speech on the Great Mother by Giuliano: world of the eternal and of the spirit that nevertheless does not forget its roots naturistic-erotic, as is clear from the Gnostic doctrines of those who identified sperm and pneuma "[in E. de Faye, Gnostiques et gnosticisme. Γtude critique des documents du gnosticisme chrΓ©tien aux IIe et IIIe siΓ¨cles, 1925].
The 'thrice beloved Adonis', the dear and desired Adonis, and the pathetic Attis, who died of love and jealousy have their oldest prototype of the Mesopotamian Dumuzi / Tammuz, the tender and self-centered spouse object of yearning nostalgia and funeral weeping. , in an ambivalent relationship with the goddess who is his wife and the author of his sad destiny. The two characters are linked by a mythical-ritual connection; they suffer a painful affair that led them to die miserably, with just a few hints of their incomplete extinction. "Adonis was 'a handsome dead man' and an attractive bridegroom, even lying on the funeral bed into which his nuptial bed had been converted; Attis dead did not rot and his hair continued to grow, and his little finger to move.". Then the rite intervenes, the annual celebration of pain for the death of the two gods and the joy that followed the mourning; a seasonal and recurring event, but Origen and Jerome already attribute to the pagans the belief in a resurrection of Adonis, an idea welcomed by the German historical-religious school with a formula that in studies has become, starting from the first decades of the last century, in common use: the 'gods who die and rise again', the gods 'now extinguished now bright' [cf. Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'].
Repetita mortis imago
Therefore the myth foresees an end for the two divine characters, the rite instead foresees that they return seasonally in the celebration of their presence-absence story, and when they return they are married with the goddess of all fertility, accompanying and guaranteeing earthly fertility. The gardens of Adonis were planted on purpose to melancholy withering immediately afterwards, signifying the rapidity and prematurity of the disappearance of the god, who died prematurely and without children; but Adonis and Attis still exist somewhere and have not ceased their function, they do not disappear even if the center of gravity of their mythical story is absence. For this, especially the weak and defeated Attis acquired cosmic attributes towards the end of antiquity that make him the great and powerful holder of a mystery cult.
Finally, in the Orphic and later Platonic doctrine, man exists in this world to 'suffer his Hands', that is, to atone for an ancient sin; this doctrine is founded on the dualism of Orphic mysteriosophy, which will have continuation in one of the central dogmas of Gnosticism according to which man is the fruit of a culpable event or a primordial accident that occurred in the divine world, before the creation of the world (different from sin original of Adam, formerly man). Still at the end of the fourth century, in Rome we are witnessing a rebirth of a noble style of the cults dedicated to the Great Mother, when Christianity had already been present in this city for some centuries.
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