two laft, emblematical of the fluid and igneous elements and the erected ladder of feven planetary gates, have all been noticed in various preceding pages.* Among the decorations of the cave, alluded to and defcribed by Porphyry, were marble urns for the water of ablution, and with fuch fmall cifterns, or tanks, as they call them, every facred cavern in India at this day abounds. The Mithratic cave alfo contained numerous vafes full of honey for oblation. Now honey, I have obferved, ftill makes a principal part of the libations offered on the altars of the Indian deities. Porphyry. defcants highly on the virtues of honey as a great cleanser and purifyer of the blood, and therefore, fo far as man was concerned, properly used in initiation as an emblem of that purer ftate about to be commenced by the candidate. Speaking of it as an offering to the deity, he calls it the aliment, the nectar, of the gods. It is indeed the effence: of odorous flowers, and it appears no more than just and grateful, that a production, in part elaborated by the folar beam, fhould be offered up to the altar of the god, whose vivifying energy matured it in the fragrant bosom of the parent-plant. * See Indian Theology, chap. i. p. 316, et feq. All All ancient writers unite in afferting that the Mithraic myfteries were of an awful and terrifying nature. They seem to have thought them too horrible even to be revealed, and have therefore left us totally in the dark as to the greater part of the punishments endured during initiation. Thefe punishments fome of them affirm to be of eighty different kinds ;* others reduce them to twenty-four in number, From the feverity of those which are known to pofterity, we may form fome judgement of the others, the hiftory of which is loft in the abyss of near two thousand years. A drawn sword, if Tertullian may be credited, opposed the candidate at his very entrance into the cavern, from which, in the virtuous obftinacy of perfeverance, he received more than one wound. The inflexibility and firmness of his character being thus tried, and steel itself in vain opposed to him, he was admitted through the North gate, or that of Cancer, where a fire, fiercely glowing with the solstitial blaze, scared, but could not terrify or retard, the determined afpirant. He was compelled to pass through this flame repeatedly, and was thence hurried to the Southern gate, or that of Capricorn, where the folftitial floods awaited * Porphyry de Abftinentia, p. 150. awaited him. Into these floods his exhaufted frame was inftantly plunged, and he was obliged to swim in them, and combat with the waves, till life was at the last gasp. The dreadful rite of purification was not yet over : he was now doomed to undergo a rigid faft, which, according to Nicætas, quoted by the Abbé Banier, lafted fifty days; but this we must presume to be exaggerated, since no human creature can exift fifty hours without taking sustenance. We can only reconcile it to reafon, by fuppofing the time much shorter, or an allowance of fome fcanty food, barely fufficient to fupport agonizing nature. During this rigid fast he was exposed to the horrors of a dreary defart, remote from human affistance, and fhut out from human compaffion. After this, according to the fame author, the candidates were cruelly beaten with rods for two whole days; and, during the last twenty days of their trial, were buried up to the neck in fnow. If nature funk not, as fhe frequently did, under all this dreadful accumulation of fufferings, the honours of initiation were conferred upon the candidate; and, first, a golden ferpent was placed in his bofom, as an emblem of his being regenerated and made a difciple disciple of Mithra. For this animal, renewing its vigour in the fpring of every year, by cafting its skin, was not only confidered as an apt symbol of renovated and revirefcent virtue, but of the fun himself, whofe genial heat is annually renewed when he re-vifits the vernal figns; at that period, when, as I have elsewhere expreffed myself of Mithra opening year in Taurus, the Burfing the gloom of winter's drear domain, With finewy arms reluctant Taurus tames, Beams with new grace, and darts feverer flames. The candidate was next adorned with a myftic zone, or belt, which was the circle of the zodiac, and had the zodiacal figures engraved upon it. Upon his head was placed the Perfian tiara, or high Phrygian bonnet, terminating pyramidically, as we fee it on all the statues of Mithra. This cap was fymbolical of the beam of the fun, and it was worn by the priests of Egypt, as well as by those of Perfia; it is conspicuous on the heads of the antique figures, engraved on the large plate of the temple of Luxore, in my former volume. The high priest of Mithra wore a linen tiara, or mitre, of great magnitude, and rolled rolled round feveral times, in imitation of the convolutions of the orbs. Poffibly the name of mitre may be primarily derived from this high conical cap worn in the rites of Mithra, which was also covered with rays and painted with various devices. It is to thefe caps that the prophet Ezekiel, cited in the firft chapter, alludes when he ridicules the ornaments that decorated the gods of the Sabian idolaters, which he calls, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed upon the walls with vermilion, GIRDED with GIRDLES upon their loins, and exceeding in DYED ATTIRE upon their beads.* The brahmins and their deities, to this day, wear the myftic belt, or girdle; and it has been before obferved, from ancient travellers, that they formerly wore a cap or turban, of white muflin, folded round the head in fuch a manner, as that the extremities of the folds exhibited to the spectator the appearance of the two horns of a cow, that is, of the moon in her increase. This fashion of folding the fash that girds the head is not now I believe in use, at least in general ufe, in India; and perhaps never flourished, but among the higher orders of the priests. Its existing Ezekiel xxiii. 15. + See Voyage de l'Arabie Heureuse, p. 135. |