——————— ◆ ———————
Soho
London W1
England
The United Kingdom
Once outside the restaurant, Ava made a quick call on her mobile phone to make sure Cyrus Azad was at his office.
He was, and readily agreed to look into what Ava hurriedly asked.
She was ninety-nine per cent sure she was right, but of everyone she knew, Cyrus would be able to confirm it the quickest.
And time was of the essence.
Her main fear was if she really had now cracked the puzzle on the medal, then it was possible Malchus might already have solved it, too—or he soon would.
If Cyrus confirmed her conclusion, they would have to act fast. She was keenly aware there was a clock ticking in the race with Malchus, and there would be no prizes for second place.
Hailing a black cab, she jumped in, giving the cabbie an address in Soho. Ferguson piled in after her, pulling the door closed on the already moving car.
As the taxi drew away into the traffic, she had no time to look about.
Usually as she passed through Piccadilly Circus she found herself distracted by the immense neon and LED advertisements on the north-west corner, or by the iconic statue of the winged archer, Anteros, the world’s first cast aluminium statue—misidentified by most Londoners and tourists as Eros, the Greek god of love, beauty, and sex.
But not today. Her head was spinning with thoughts about the medal—and the implications of her discovery.
“So where are we going?” Ferguson asked.
“Somewhere you’re going to love, if you’re still interested in buildings,” she answered enigmatically.
Cyrus had been a former colleague from the British Museum—but his interests, as well as his heritage, had led him to leave the rarified world of the museum and start up his own consulting business. As far as Ava knew, the centre he now ran was unique in the world.
After a short journey beyond Piccadilly into the rabbit warren of small streets that made up Soho, the cab pulled up outside the address she had given the driver.
When Ava had first visited Cyrus’s offices a few years earlier, she had expected to find him in a tatty basement under one of the hundreds of gaudy sex shops, adult cinemas, and prostitutes’ walk-ups that filled Soho. But she had been surprised to discover that the area had been completely made over, and was instead jammed with trendy restaurants and new media offices—a world away from the infamous garish red light area it used to be.
She paid the cabbie, and pushed open a door next to a chalk white anodized plaque engraved with the words:
INSTITUTE FOR MITHRAIC STUDIES AND RESEARCH
As she entered the small but fashionably furnished reception area, Cyrus emerged from an open door to the back office.
He had not changed a bit. Still the same scruffy beard, tangled black hair, and Buddy Holly glasses, although the ill-fitting tie and overly pointed leather shoes were a clear concession to his new status as a businessman rather than the eternal researcher she had known.
“Ava, great to see you!” he smiled broadly as she stepped past the sofas towards him.
She gave him a hug, before introducing Ferguson. “So was I right?” she asked, keen to hear the answer to her question as soon as possible.
“Always business before pleasure,” Cyrus replied, shaking his head. “Follow me,” he instructed, leading them through a doorway and down a flight of stairs into a small darkened theatre-room filled with three short rows of velvet cinema chairs.
“We use this for our educational screenings,” he explained. “Mainly to academics, but occasionally corporates—especially ones involved in digging, building, or drilling on Mithraic sites.”
“And that,” he continued, “is how we got this.” He walked over to the far end, which featured a large rectangular plate of glass mounted about a foot in front of the wall. As he touched it, around five square yards lit up to show a range of computer icons.
Cyrus swiped both hands across the glass, dragging the icons off the screen, to be replaced with a picture of his institute’s logo.
“Is that what I think it is?” Ferguson asked, stepping over to the screen and peering at it, a note of admiration in his voice.
“It sure is,” grinned Cyrus, clearly delighted with the opportunity to show off his toy. “Multitouch screen—courtesy of an aerospace-defence company that shall remain nameless. We helped them build their office basement car-park in the Middle East around a mithraeum they discovered while sinking the foundations. The temple is now preserved and visitable, and they still got to develop their offices. Everyone’s happy.”
“A mithraeum?” Ferguson asked, gently touching the screen.
Ava nodded to Cyrus. “Go on, you tell him. You’ll do a much better job than me. It’s why we’re here, anyway.”
Cyrus wiped his hands across the screen again, dragging a small icon into the centre, which he then expanded into a full size picture of a classical statue of a man. He was young, fully clothed in a short belted tunic, and looking at the viewer with a hint of challenge in his eyes. His head was covered with a strange long cap, and he had a short cape billowing out behind him. In his right hand he held a vicious-looking dagger, which he was plunging into the meaty neck of a fallen bull which had vegetation sprouting from its tail.
“This ancient god,” explained Cyrus, “is Mithras. He was the central figure in what was once ancient Rome’s leading religion. There were over seven hundred temples to him in Rome alone. The imperial soldiers carried his mystery religion all over the empire, so there are archaeological remains of Mithraic temples spread far and wide over Europe and the Middle East. There’s a very famous one right here in London. Specialists usually refer to a temple of Mithras as a mithraeum.”
“What do you mean ‘mystery religion’?” Ferguson asked. “What’s that?”
“There were dozens of them in the ancient world,” Cyrus answered without hesitating. “They were basically religions with temples like all the others, but there were some major differences, too. Most importantly, they claimed to reveal special secrets and powers, but only to people initiated into their mysteries. That’s where we get the word ‘mystery’—from the Greek
mystes
, meaning initiates.”
“In one way or another, these mystery religions all focused on death and rebirth, invariably symbolized by the yearly cycle of the sun, or plants, or animal fertility—anything that dies and is reborn once a year, giving an annual pattern that can be celebrated.”
Cyrus swiped at the screen, pulling up classical images of five ancient gods and goddesses.
“Don’t tell me—Bacchus and Osiris,” Ferguson said, nodding towards a heavy bearded face emerging from a vat of grapes, and a man carrying a candy striped sceptre and flail, and wearing the high crown of Upper Egypt with a single red ostrich feather either side of it.
“Correct,” Cyrus nodded. “And Orpheus with his lyre, Cybele with her lion-chariot, and Demeter with her fruits and grains. All of these gods and goddesses were widely worshipped in secretive mystery religions. They all died and were reborn again every year, symbolizing the death of nature in winter and the return of life in spring.”
The image on the screen changed to a Greek temple. “The site of the greatest mystery cult was at Eleusis, where the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone were celebrated. They involved a dramatic underground journey and culminated in a climactic ritual, possibly involving psychoactive drugs, in which the initiate was symbolically killed and brought back to life. Many famous people were initiated there. But like most mystery religions, almost no details survive, so we have only the scantest idea of what went on.”
Cyrus pulled up another picture—this time of a Roman mosaic laid out like a ladder. It showed seven individual emblems, all enclosed in roundels. “Mystery religions usually had a system of grades. Mithraism had seven—Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Sun-Runner, and Father. This mosaic is taken from the floor of an actual mithraeum, and clearly shows the sequence of the grades. As initiates progressed in their commitment to the religion, they were welcomed into ever deeper secrets. They even had some kind of recognition handshake, and called each other
syndexoi
—meaning those joined by the right hand.”
“Like freemasons?” asked Ferguson.
“Who knows?” answered Cyrus with a shrug. “The mysteries and freemasonry are both similarly shrouded in secrecy. So we can’t really tell. But yes, many experts believe freemasonry is somehow connected to the mysteries as there are some ritualistic similarities.”
“Freemasons seem to be cropping up everywhere these days,” Ferguson mused, rubbing his chin.
“Anyway,” Cyrus continued. “Initiation into successive grades of a mystery religion was a common system in the ancient world. In fact, there’s one classic mystery religion still surviving today—a true Roman mystery religion, completely frozen in time in all its strange details, but alive and well in the modern world. If you want to get a feel for Roman mystery religions, you couldn’t do better than to start there.”
Ferguson looked blank. “Don’t they have laws against those sorts of cults these days?”
Ava shook her head. “Far from it. Cyrus is talking about the largest religion on the planet.”
“Exactly,” Cyrus nodded. “Christianity. Although to get the full undiluted mystery religion you have to look at the traditional Roman Catholic Church, which has barely changed in the seventeen centuries since the emperors of Rome bowed before its incense-perfumed altars.”
“Seriously?” Ferguson stared at Cyrus.
“Unquestionably,” he answered with a smile. “I’m sure Ava will tell you all about it. The Catholic Church still talks about initiation into the mysteries of salvation and the sacraments. And even today its believers are specifically initiated into a series of grades—Catechumens, Baptized, and Confirmed for the lay people, then the ordained grades of Deacon, Priest, and Bishop. Each of these grades brings new powers, insights, and privileges.”
Ava nodded. “Christianity is, though many people find it hard to accept, a text-book classical pagan mystery religion,” she confirmed. “As you’ll see if you flick through the Bible, there’s no mention of any of these grades. The early Church simply created them in order to position itself as a mystery religion. The Graeco-Roman Empire already had mystery religions with Greek themes, Egyptian themes, and a load of different Middle-Eastern themes. Christianity was its attempt to make one with a Judaic flavour. They could never have known at the time, but by bolting elements of existing mystery religions onto the Jewish texts, they created one of the most successful religions of all time. And the mystery religion that gave most elements to Christianity was Mithraism.”
“But I’ve heard of Bacchus and Osiris and some of those other gods you mentioned,” Ferguson noted. “How come I’ve never heard of Mithras?”
“Simple,” Cyrus answered. “The same reason most people haven’t heard of him.”
“The Church erased him from history,” Ava completed the thought.
“Why would they do that?” Ferguson asked. “It’s a bit conspiratorial, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” replied Cyrus, dragging another image onto the screen. This time it was a series of smaller pictures. One showed a man holding a sheep on his shoulders. Another had the face of a man with a sunburst behind his head. The next one depicted a man in a chariot, racing across the heavens. The final one was of a man wrapped in grape vines.
“Maybe this will help,” Cyrus explained. “The first is a picture of Attis, the immensely popular shepherd god worshipped all over Asia Minor, the Middle East, and in Rome. It’s from over a thousand years before Christ. He lived, castrated himself, died, and was then resurrected—a cycle of death and rebirth that was reenacted every year by his eunuch priests. Like the other mysteries, it’s essentially a cycle of nature and fertility. As a matter of interest, did you know that in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ recommends men castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven? At least that’s what Origen, the early Alexandrian scholar, thought Christ meant, and he did it.”
Ferguson looked at Cyrus, bewildered.
“Anyway,” Cyrus continued, pointing back at the screen. “The second and third images are of Apollo, the sun god. The last is Bacchus, the wine god. All of them were very popular mystery gods in ancient Rome. Now watch this,” he said. As he touched the screen, the pictures morphed into almost identical images—clearly from different buildings, but essentially exactly the same.
“These are all very early images of Christ from old churches, including the Vatican. As you can see, Christ is depicted identically to the pagan gods—as the shepherd, the sun god, and the vine. It’s early copy-and-paste.”
Ferguson looked stunned. “Are you saying Christianity just
copied
all these old religions?”
“Absolutely,” Cyrus answered. “It’s human nature. Think of the world of business. If your competitor has an idea the public likes and buys, you ride that train and incorporate similar ideas into your own product. Why wouldn’t you? Why reinvent the wheel? Religion is no different.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Ferguson looked at Ava. “Aren’t religions set in stone, in holy books like the Bible?”
“Where in the Bible does it say Christ was born on the twenty-fifth of December?” Ava asked him with a smile.
Ferguson looked blank.
“Exactly. It doesn’t. But the twenty-fifth of December was Mithras’s birthday. So the Church borrowed the date to try and encourage converts from Mithraism to feel at home with Christianity. Late December was honoured by many mystery religions as it is falls soon after the winter solstice—the darkest and coldest time of year when the sun is weakest. Hence the days following the solstice were an appropriate date for religions to choose for the birth of their gods, who came to conquer and banish the darkness. Christ was simply slotted into this tried-and-tested matrix.”
Ferguson looked shocked. “Seriously? They built religions with templates, like websites?”