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Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism

Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism · Chapter V: Mithra & Mithraism

The Mithras Liturgy: An Ascent Ritual in the Magical Papyri

The Mithras Liturgy (PGM IV.475–829) explained: the Paris magical papyrus, its heavenly ascent to Helios Mithras, Dieterich's theory and its critics.

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The "Mithras Liturgy" is the modern name for a Greek ritual text in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (PGM IV.475–829) that describes a visionary ascent through the heavens to meet the god Helios and then a supreme deity identified with Mithras, who gives the practitioner an oracle. Published under that title by Albrecht Dieterich in 1903, it was long thought to preserve a genuine liturgy of the Roman mysteries of Mithras; most scholars now regard it as a product of late antique Egyptian magic that borrowed Mithraic and solar names, though it remains one of the most remarkable religious documents of the period.

The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris§

The papyrus that contains the Mithras Liturgy is a codex of thirty-six leaves, written in Greek with some Old Coptic, and usually dated to the fourth century CE. It belongs to a group of magical books that surfaced in Egypt in the early nineteenth century, many of them sold by the collector and diplomat Giovanni Anastasi, and thought to come from a single find near Thebes. The Paris codex was acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale in 1857 and catalogued as Supplément grec 574.

It is the longest of the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), the collection of spells and rituals edited by Karl Preisendanz between 1928 and 1931 and translated into English under the direction of Hans Dieter Betz in 1986 (see the Greek Magical Papyri). Among love charms, divinatory rites and protective formulas, the section now known as the Mithras Liturgy stands out for its length, its literary quality and its elevated religious tone.

The Text: Prayer and Purpose§

The ritual opens with a prayer addressed to Providence and to the Soul (Psyche), in which the speaker asks for help in a unique revelation. The text says that the great god Helios Mithras commanded these mysteries to be revealed through his archangel, so that the writer alone might ascend to heaven, behold all things and return. It calls the procedure an apathanatismos, an "immortalisation": not a promise of physical deathlessness but a temporary transformation, in which the mortal person is reborn into a divine state for the duration of the vision.

The opening invocation addresses the four elements of the speaker's body — spirit, fire, water and earth — and calls on the "first origin" of each, asking that the mortal nature be set aside so that the "immortal spirit" may be received. This combination of cosmological prayer with long sequences of voces magicae, the strings of unintelligible sacred names typical of the papyri, gives the text its distinctive character: part hymn, part ritual script, part magical formula.

The Heavenly Ascent§

The core of the text describes a journey upwards through the cosmos, stage by stage. It is presented as a sequence of visions, each met with a specific response.

From the air to the doors of the sun§

The practitioner rises into the air and sees the divine order of the heavens: the gods passing to and fro and the winds issuing from a tube hanging from the solar disc. Each stage brings a danger and a response: silence enforced by placing a finger on the lips, the utterance of names, hissing and popping sounds that imitate cosmic noises. The doors of the sun open, revealing the world of the gods.

Helios, the Fates and the Pole Lords§

The practitioner then sees Helios himself as a young god, fiery-haired, in a white tunic and scarlet cloak, wearing a fiery crown, and greets him with a long prayer. Next come seven maidens with the faces of asps, the "Fates of heaven", and seven youths with the faces of black bulls, the "Pole Lords of heaven", who turn the axis of the heavens; each group is greeted by name.

The supreme god and the oracle§

At last appears an immensely great god, young, with a bright face and golden hair, in a white tunic and golden crown, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder of a young bull — understood as the constellation of the Bear, which turns the heavens. Lightning and light pour from his eyes and stars from his body. The practitioner greets him, asks to remain in his presence and to receive revelation, and the god answers in an oracle in verse. The visionary then descends, often described as dazed, with the instruction to remember the revelation.

Ritual instructions§

A final section gives practical directions about the procedures that accompany the ascent: the preparation of a scarab and of certain plants, an amulet, purity rules, and the sharing of the immortalisation with a single fellow initiate, called a "son". These instructions show that the text was meant to be used, not only read, although we know nothing about who used it.

Dieterich's Thesis and Its Critics§

In Eine Mithrasliturgie (1903), the classical scholar Albrecht Dieterich argued that the text was a genuine liturgy of the Mithraic mysteries, lightly reworked by an Egyptian magician. The supreme god holding the bull's shoulder, the solar Helios and the seven-fold structure seemed to fit what was known of Mithraism, the Roman cult discussed in Mithra and the Roman Mithraic mysteries.

Franz Cumont, then the leading authority on Mithras, rejected the identification. He pointed out that the text's theology, its Egyptian ritual elements and its sacred names belong to the world of Greco-Egyptian magic rather than to the closed, male, military-flavoured cult known from Roman mithraea, and that nothing comparable is attested in Mithraic inscriptions or iconography. Later scholars have largely followed him. Marvin Meyer's edition (1976) and Hans Dieter Betz's full commentary (2003) treat the text as a composite magical ritual in which "Mithras" is one name among many for the highest solar deity, drawing on Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and Iranian elements. Some scholars still allow that the author knew Mithraic ideas, especially about the soul's ascent through celestial gates, which Roman writers associated with the Mithraic cave.

Today the Mithras Liturgy is usually read alongside Neoplatonic theurgy, Hermetic ascent literature and Jewish heavenly journeys, as evidence of a widespread late antique desire for direct vision of the divine. Its distance from the Iranian Mithra of the Avesta, the god of covenant and truth, is great; it shows instead how a Persian divine name, already identified with the sun in the Hellenistic East, could become part of the common religious vocabulary of Roman Egypt (see also Greco-Roman magic).

Mead, Jung and the Modern Reception§

The text found readers well beyond classical philology. In 1907 the Theosophist G. R. S. Mead published A Mithraic Ritual, an English translation with a commentary that read it as a genuine mystery initiation and a guide to spiritual rebirth. Through Mead and others it entered the reading of occultists and esoteric groups in the early twentieth century.

C. G. Jung made it famous in psychology. In Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912), translated as Psychology of the Unconscious (1916), he compared the tube hanging from the sun in Dieterich's text with the hallucination of a psychiatric patient who reportedly saw a phallus on the sun whose movement made the wind. Jung argued that the patient could not have known the papyrus, so the image must arise from a shared, inherited layer of the psyche — an early argument for what he later called the collective unconscious. Critics, notably Richard Noll in the 1990s, questioned the dating and transmission of the patient's report and noted that Dieterich's book had been in print since 1903, weakening the case. The episode illustrates how an ancient magical text came to play a part in modern theories of mind; Jung's own visionary work is discussed in Jung's Red Book.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the Mithras Liturgy?§

It is a Greek ritual text, PGM IV.475–829, in a fourth-century magical papyrus now in Paris. It describes an "immortalisation" in which the practitioner ascends through the heavens to meet Helios and a supreme god, Mithras, and receives an oracle. The name was given by Albrecht Dieterich in 1903.

Is the Mithras Liturgy really Mithraic?§

Most scholars think not, at least not directly. It uses the name Helios Mithras and some imagery that recalls Mithraism, but its rituals, sacred names and theology belong to Greco-Egyptian magic. It may borrow ideas from the Mithraic mysteries without being one of their liturgies.

Why is the Mithras Liturgy connected with Jung?§

Jung compared a vision reported by a psychiatric patient — a tube hanging from the sun that produced the wind — with the same image in Dieterich's edition of the text. He used the parallel as evidence for the collective unconscious, an argument later criticised by historians.

Sources and further reading§