The Earth God's Iconography

Chapter Five of Sacred Number shows how a number of archaic divinities have a common set of symbols, especially St Michael and Mithras, even though one kills a dragon and the other a bull. One of the startling images in the Mithraic artifacts (they left no literature being a secret society) is that of a Lion with a man's body, entwined in a snake.

This Mithras has wings which makes him a type of angel, a concept likely originating with the Persians. Whilst some say that Mithraism should not be confused with Mazdaism, there is reason that it did derive from Persia, arriving historically in Cilicia, Turkey, where there was a Perseus cult - note the similarity Perseus and Persia. The most famous city in Cilicia is Tarsus, from which Paul of Tarsus came, major founder of non-Jewish Christianity.

It is a wonder that Mithraism did not become the official religion of Rome since many legionaires were members and indeed it very much appears that components of many other religions and practices of the time were imported to official Christianity, including the iconography of Mithras as can be seen below in a photo I found on a dutch web board.

 

First off, you could be forgiven for thinking this is St Micheal or at least an angel if not an archangel. The lion has been sublimated (as was the Gorgon's head with Athena) onto the chest. The first picture stands on an explicit sphere, cruder versions of Mithras are of a torso emerging from a rock. This sphere is the emblem of the Earth.

In Chapter Five I introduce Michael and "His" Lines which run at 30 relative to east-west across Europe and in Chapter Nine I show how these could be naturally derived from the formal description of a sphere according to path curves and projective geometry. If one wanted an iconography to present this, it would be hard to beat this one since the lines are exactly described as serpents and are associated with the dragon as well. Were the encircling serpent to be interpreted as lines upon the Earth, then the man or lion encircled is in some way a God of the Earth who has become known as the archangel Michael.

The conventional meaning of the upward facing torch, in his right hand, within Mithraism, is to represent the ascending solar node but the lion character is different. David Ulansey reveals that Mithraism was a precessional cult, focussed on the constellation now called Perseus who (through precession) killed the age of Taurus the bull. He also gives much useful background on the Cilician culture of what is now southern Turkey.