Ritual & Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mithras
Ritual & Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mithras takes readers deep into the heart of the Mithraic mysteries, offering a profound exploration of the cult’s ritual practices and transformative visionary experiences. By blending cutting-edge scholarship with first-hand accounts of mystery initiations and contemporary ethnographies of ritual performance, the author provides an unparalleled glimpse into this ancient tradition.
Adams delves into the cult’s hierarchical grade structure, ritual roles, and ceremonial practices from an emic, or insider’s, perspective. He reveals the hidden mechanics of the cult’s invocation of the serpent power, culminating in a profound epiphany of Saturn-Kronos as the time-deity.
Employing a multi-disciplinary approach, Peter Mark Adams brings the cult’s iconography to life through the eyes of the ritualist. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship across Orphic metaphysics, Greco-Roman ritual practices, art history, and the comparative ethnography of higher initiation rites, he illuminates the frescoes and reliefs that encode the ritual grammar and vividly capture the experiential phenomenology of participation.
Richly illustrated and deeply insightful, this work is designed to enliven the study of the Cult of Mithras as Western Europe’s premier mystery cult.
