The Roman cult of Mithras : a cognitive perspective

Explorations by cognitive scientists into the panhuman biases of and constraints upon the processing and transmission of perceptual as well as conceptual information by human brains promises historians a scientifically-based set of theories with which to reconstruct past scenarios with greater confidence than previous methods have allowed. This article exemplifies this promise by employing one cognitively based theory, based upon two distinct systems of human memory, for a preliminary study of the Roman Cult of Mithras. Historians have previously understood Mithraism as a cultic tradition with a more or less common cultic myth which historians – despite any textual evidence for the cult – might decode from its abundant material remains. The transmission of such a widely shared myth would have depended upon an encoding of such information into the semantic memory of initiates. The encoding of shared information into semantic memory requires, however, repetition and members of Mithraic groups were initiated but once into their respective initiatory grades. The emotional arousal associated with these rites suggests an encoding of the initiatory experience into episodic memory, recall from which results in solidarity – and even shared knowledge – among a particular group of initiates but argues against any Mithriac myth held in common by all Mithraic groups.