Chapter 171. Sacred Time and the Initiate: Ritual, Mysteries, Initiation and the Calendars of 21 December, 25 December and Nowruz

Religions mark out sacred action (sacrifice, meal, washing, initiation) and sacred time (the feasts that set the year). Both carry power. Grades of initiation create hierarchies, and calendars belong to whoever can fix them. This chapter first compares ritual systems and the graded initiations from Mithras to Scientology. It then gathers the dossier on the three dates that recur most often in the library: Nowruz at the spring equinox, the solstice night of 21 December, and 25 December. Each claim about where a date came from is attributed to the source that makes it.

Sacrifice, sacred meal and lustration

The Zoroastrian yasna with its haoma and the Vedic soma and agni rites come from a shared Indo-Iranian liturgy (chs. 13, 83). Boyce’s index calls the yasna ritual “essential to Zoroastrianism” and notes that rituals were “formerly held by most Western scholars to have been rejected by Zoroaster”, a view Parsi reformists accepted [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, index s.v. “rituals”]. The Mithraic sacred meal is pictured in detail. On the Konjic relief “the Raven and Lion, both wearing the masks of their grade, serve food and drink”, and attendants “carry bread and a mixing-bowl, a cock and a bundle of tapers”. In the Aventine Mithraeum it was “precisely this scene of the sacred meal which suffered most at the hands of the Christian iconoclasts at the end of the fourth century”. Vermaseren finds the reason “not hard to find”: according to Tertullian (De praescr. 40), “the meal in the Mithras cult was a ‘devilish imitation of the Eucharist'”. The same passage of Tertullian is the source for the Soldier’s initiation: “Mithras makes a sign on his soldiers’ forehead” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300]. Fideler collects the parallels a Christian reader would notice: “Initiates into the mysteries were baptized, and the initiates enacted a resurrection scene. According to Justin, the Mithraic initiates partook of a euc[harist]” [Fideler, Jesus Christ, Sun of God, #69295, ch. on Mithras]. Chs. 26 and 53 discuss Justin’s explanation that “demons imitated” the sacrament, the entheogen thesis for Eleusis and the Eucharist (ch. 39), and the Sufi sama’ (ch. 78).

The sacred meal is older than any of these cults. In Mesopotamia the god lived in a cult statue whose mouth was “opened” (pet pî) and “washed” (mes pî) so that it could see and eat, and the statue was given two banquets a day behind a curtain [Wikipedia: Ancient Mesopotamian religion] (ch. 3). Here the meal feeds the god; the worshippers do not share it. The Indo-Iranian rite worked the other way. Boyce writes that the pastoralists “had no temples, and worshipped mainly in the open”, and that the pressed haoma/soma, “when consecrated, was offered to the gods and drunk ritually by the worshippers”. There were also daily offerings to “the hearth fire and sources of pure water” [Boyce (ed.), Textual Sources, #55116, “1.2.4”] (ch. 6). In India the rite needed specialists. The developed Śrauta sacrifice used four chief priests, the hotṛ, adhvaryu, udgātṛ and brahman, and the patron became “only a sponsor” [Wikipedia: Vedic priesthood] (ch. 7). Ch. 8 discusses what the drink was. Washing was also an archaic rite. In the Babylonian Akitu festival the high priest bathed in the Euphrates on the second day before the temple prayers [Wikipedia: Akitu].

Graded initiation compared

Vermaseren lists the seven Mithraic grades: “Raven, Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Courier of the Sun (Heliodromus) and Father (Pater)”. They were “placed under the protection of the seven planets, the Pater standing under the guardianship of Saturn”. He warns that the planetary order (Saturn, Sol, Luna, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury) “could be taken to indicate that it was only at a later date that the planets were directly related to specific grades”. On social reality he adds: “The average follower of Mithras almost certainly did not advance to a higher grade” [#38300, ch. 14, “The Seven Grades of Initiation”]. The Pater was “a Father to his initiates, who call themselves fratres”, and also “the magister sacrorum” and “summus pontifex … chosen by his fellow-initiates” [#38300]. The grade ladder therefore produced an elected priesthood.

Two genealogies cross this table, and both are disputed. One holds that Masonic ritual came down from the ancient mysteries (ch. 109). The other holds that Joseph Smith’s temple endowment borrowed from Masonry (ch. 126). The chapters cited give the arguments on each side.

Before the mysteries: sacred time in the archaic civilisations

Claims that a monument tracked the solstice go back further than any text. Göbekli Tepe (c. 9500 BCE) is the usual starting point (ch. 2). Graeber and Wengrow report that archaeologists “remain sceptical” of astronomical readings of its enclosures, since the buildings “may once have been roofed” and were often altered [Graeber and Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, #87533, ch. 3]. The reference shelf concludes that “no definitive purpose has been determined” for the megaliths [Wikipedia: Göbekli Tepe]. The sources used here therefore give no secure solstice cult before writing.

With writing, the calendar becomes part of the order of the gods. In Enūma Eliš Marduk, after splitting Tiamat into sky and earth, “sets the stars and the calendar” and orders Babylon and Esagila built [Wikipedia: Enūma Eliš] (ch. 3). The spring New Year acted the myth out. The reference shelf describes Akitu as a festival “held on the first day of the Assyrian and Babylonian Nisan … to celebrate the sowing of barley”, which began in Babylon on 4 Nisan and lasted twelve days. On the fourth day “the priests would tell creation stories”. On the fifth the high priest struck the king “to further induce humility”, and “the king’s tears were seen as a good omen for the coming year”. On the eighth the gods gave their power to Marduk, and on the eleventh, in the Hall of Destinies, they decided “the fate of the people of Marduk” and promised the city “another cycle of seasons”. The same article records that Sennacherib built an “Akitu house” outside Assur in 683 BC and that the emperor Elagabalus brought the festival to Italy [Wikipedia: Akitu]. This is the “Babylonian spring festival” that Boyce compares with No Ruz (below). The sky was also read for the state. The omen series Enūma Anu Enlil (some 7,000 omens on 70 tablets) was “solely mundane”, concerned with the king and the land, and a bad eclipse could be diverted onto a substitute for the king [Wikipedia: Babylonian astrology] (ch. 3).

Egypt kept two calendars. The reference shelf describes a civil year of 365 days, three seasons of 120 days named after the Nile’s inundation, emergence and low water, and five “epagomenal” days “treated as outside of the year proper”. Lacking a leap day, it drifted through the solar year as the “wandering year”. It was “probably based upon astronomical observations of Sirius”, whose reappearance matched the flood. Alongside it ran a lunar calendar “used for some religious rituals and festivals”, the “temple month”, whose days were “celebrated as stages in the life of the moon god” [Wikipedia: Egyptian calendar]. The myth followed the river: Mercatante calls Osiris “originally the personification of the flooding of the Nile” [Mercatante, #72968] (ch. 4). In the Levant the seasonal pattern appears in Baal, who was “considered to be dead in the underworld for half the year” [Day, #86469, ch. 1], and in the “awakening (egersis)” of Melqart, which Josephus says Hiram I was “the first to celebrate” [Wikipedia: Melqart] (ch. 5). The reference article itself presents the egersis only as “possible evidence” of a dying-and-rising god, and the cautions against reading such parallels as borrowings, given in ch. 26 for the Mithraic case, apply here as well.

Nowruz and the Zoroastrian year

Boyce writes of the greatest Zoroastrian feast: “It is called in Persian No Ruz, ‘New Day’ (the Avestan form of the name does not survive); and it appears that Zoroaster established it at the spring equinox, re-dedicating what” was an older festival. She adds that “the theological symbolism of the Zoroastrian holy year demands that the ‘New Day’ should be celebrated at the spring equinox”, and she compares the Babylonian spring festival [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117]. Her index calls No Ruz “the seventh feast of obligation, devoted to the seventh creation, fire”. It “foreshadows Frasho-kereti” and was “probably celebrated at Persepolis”. Further index entries trace how the calendar moved under the later Achaemenians and in the Parthian period [#55117, Index]. Textual Sources agrees that No Roz, “as the last of them, is an annual prefiguration” of the final renovation [Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, #55116, sec. 1.6].

The other six holy days are the gahambars, which “appear to have been ancient seasonal festivals, refounded to honour Ahura Mazda and the six great Amesha Spentas, together with the seven creations”. “Each festival lasted originally one day, but after a calendar reform in the third century A.C.” it was lengthened [#55116, sec. 1.6]. Keeping them was enforced through the afterlife. Neglect “was a sin that ‘went to the Bridge'” [#55116]. The twelve months include Mihr and Dai (sec. 1.7.2). The autumn Mihragan (Mehregan) and the solstice night Yalda continue them. The reference shelf describes Mehregan as “an ancient Zoroastrian and Persian festival celebrating the autumnal equinox since at least the 4th century BC” and Yalda as “an ancient Iranian festival celebrating the winter solstice” [Wikipedia: Persian astronomy; Wikipedia: Yalda Night].

The 25 December dossier

The solar-Mithraic case. Aurelian’s establishment of Sol Invictus in 274 is covered in ch. 25. Koster opens his section “Christmas – 25th December” by asserting that the pagan origin of the feast “is admitted by all scholars”. He quotes Frazer: “The largest pagan religious cult which fostered the celebration of December 25 as a holiday … was the pagan sun-worship, Mithraism … This winter festival was called … ‘The Nativity of the SUN.'” He also quotes Frazer’s barb: “Christianity took a leaf out of the devil’s book when it fixed the birth of the Saviour on the 25th December”. Through Cumont he cites Minucius Felix for the claim that “The Mithraists also observed Sun-day and kept sacred the 25th of December as the birthday of the Sun” [Koster, Come Out of Her My People, #86909]. Fideler writes that Mithras’ “birthday was celebrated on December 25, the shortest day of the year, marking the return of Sol Invictus”, and that “Mithras was born on December 25 in a cave and his birth was witnessed by shepherds” [#69295]. Asimov says Mithras’ “birth was celebrated on December 25-about the time of the winter solstice” [Asimov, Of Time and Space and Other Things, #368629]. Lawless, in a Christmas gift book, calls the Persian festival “the day of the birth of the unconquered sun” [Lawless, Heaven Scent, #67495].

The counter-case. Foley sets out two theories. The “history of religion” theory holds that Roman Christians chose 25 December “to supplant a Roman pagan festival called the Birth of the Unconquered Sun”. It “has enjoyed the most scholarly support” but “has been criticized”. The rival calculation theory starts from the Jewish idea of an “integral age”, the belief that “the prophets died on the same date as their birth” or conception. On that reckoning “March 25 became the date of Christ’s conception … and nine months after March 25 is December 25”. Foley adds that the solar symbolism “works” anyway, since the Bible calls Christ the Light [Foley, Why We Kiss Under the Mistletoe, #72208, Introduction]. As ch. 25 shows, he also uses St Lucy’s feast on 13 December, which fell at the solstice before the Gregorian reform. Ch. 26 gives the cautions of Vermaseren and Nock against reading Mithraic-Christian parallels as borrowings.

Saturnalia and reversal. Sheldrake writes: “In ancient Rome, the winter festival was called the Saturnalia, beginning on 17 December, and lasting for a week. The law courts and the schools were closed”. In northern Europe, Yule “was celebrated with fires and light” [Sheldrake, Ways to Go Beyond, #70907]. Asimov describes “a time of feasting and of giving of presents; of good will to men, even to the point where slaves were given temporary freedom while their masters waited upon them” [#368629]. Markale concludes that “the period of Christmas, which corresponds to the winter solstice, exactly re-creates the reversal of values that took place in Roman society during the time of Saturnalia”, in the same way that “All Saints’ Day … re-creates the druid holiday of Samhain” [Markale, The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween, #85627].

Polemical readings. Hebrew-roots writers use the same material to call for abolition. Lew White claims that Dionysius Exiguus “knew that the Pagan festival of Saturnalia, the re-birth of the sun at the winter solstice, had to go”. He reads Easter as the moment “when Mithras (the sun) ‘slayed the bull'” at the vernal equinox [White, Fossilized Customs, #63673]. Koster urges believers to return to Hebrew practice [#86909]. Alvin Boyd Kuhn reads the cycle allegorically, tracing “the origin of the Passion Week of seven days, the ancient Fetes de Tenebres, and also the origin of the forty days of Lent” to solar and lunar symbolism. Easter is “the consummate festival of human joy” because it “signalizes the god’s release from his imprisonment in a body” [Kuhn, Spiritual Symbolism of the Sun and Moon, #68762].

Keshe’s calendar: 21 December, 21 March, the end of 6,000 years

Keshe’s Christmas Eve workshop of 2020 makes the most direct claim in the library: “the true birthday of Christ until some 200 and odd years ago was celebrated on 21st, and about 200 years ago Vatican decided to shift it”. The transcript reads “to 24th”, while its section heading reads “Vatican moved from 21st to 25th”. The stated reason is “to make more separation, that Christianity is not replication of Mithraism”. He says 21 December, “the longest night”, “is considered to be the birthday of Mitra, some 8,000 years ago”. He adds that “Christianity we know today was adaptation of the old Mithraism, so the birth of Christ was put on the same day as the birth of Mitra, as his son, or I should say as her son”. He connects the date to Hanukkah, the twelve days of Christmas and “the 3 Wiseman of Iran and Persia”, and he praises the Zoroastrian “room of fire, where fire has been kept on for thousands of years”. The cycle closes in spring: all “shall wait for the birth of the time … that starts on 21st of March to bring all to one point, to bring the earth and the soul of the U together” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 360, #378072].

KSW 608 adds a prophetic calendar. A questioner says “the calendar is based on a lie” because Jesus’ birth “was brought forward to coincide with the festivals … commemorating the birth of Mitra”. Keshe replies that “the calendar, without this new Universal reference of time, taught by the Keshe Foundation, will no longer make any sense”. He dates “the big change” to “the 15th of September, according to the books”, and “the end of the 6,000 years … on 23rd of December… September”, which begins “the cycle of the 7,000 years” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 608, #378320]. Ch. 153 covers the Day of Enlightenment of 21 December 2021, and ch. 158 the Promised Days.

Calendars as instruments of power

The oldest cases come from Part 1. In Babylon the king of the gods was the maker of the calendar, and the New Year renewed both his kingship and the king’s (ch. 3). In Egypt, the reference shelf reports, Ptolemy III’s Canopus Decree tried to add a sixth epagomenal day every four years, but “the proposal was resisted by the Egyptian priests and people” and was dropped until Augustus imposed the reform by decree in 25 BC, creating the Alexandrian or Coptic calendar [Wikipedia: Egyptian calendar]. A priesthood could defend the sacred year against a king, and a conqueror could then impose it. Ch. 23 notes, following Nock, that the Roman army kept its own religious calendar. The French Revolution replaced the Christian year with a decimal calendar and the cults of Reason (ch. 140). The Bahá’í calendar and the Iranian solar hijri year both begin at Nowruz. The reference shelf lists Mehregan and Cyrus the Great Day among Iranian observances kept alongside the Islamic ones [Wikipedia: List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar]. Asimov recalls that when Britain adopted the Gregorian reform in 1752, “There were riots all over England … many people came quickly to the conclusion that they had suddenly been made eleven days older by legislation” [#368629]. Keshe’s Universal time and Promised Days continue the pattern: a new movement claims authority by renaming the year.

Key points

• Mithraic initiation had seven grades under seven planets. Vermaseren cautions that the planet assignments may be late and that most initiates never rose above the lowest grades (#38300).
• Christian writers saw the Mithraic meal and washings as rivals to the sacraments. Iconoclasts singled out the sacred-meal scene in the Aventine Mithraeum (#38300; #69295).
• According to Boyce, Zoroaster re-dedicated an older spring feast as No Ruz, the seventh feast of obligation, which foreshadows Frashokereti. Neglecting the gahambars was a sin weighed at the Bridge (#55117; #55116).
• The case that 25 December is the Sun’s or Mithras’ nativity rests here on Frazer (via Koster), Fideler, Asimov and Lawless. Foley’s calculation theory derives the date from 25 March instead (#86909; #69295; #72208).
• Sheldrake, Asimov and Markale tie the Christmas season to the Saturnalian reversal of social order (#70907; #368629; #85627).
• Keshe says the Vatican moved Christ’s birth away from Mitra’s 21 December “about 200 years ago” and makes 21 March the cycle of reconnection. He offers a “Universal reference of time” in place of existing calendars (#378072; #378320).
• The archaic meal fed the god in Mesopotamia, but the Indo-Iranian haoma/soma was shared by gods and worshippers. Vedic India turned the rite into a craft of four specialist priests (#55116; chs. 3, 6–7).
• No secure solstice cult appears before writing in the sources used: astronomical readings of Göbekli Tepe are doubted (#87533). In Babylon Marduk set the calendar, and Akitu renewed his kingship and the king’s each spring. Egypt kept a drifting 365-day civil year tied to Sirius and the flood, together with a lunar temple calendar (chs. 2–4).
• Calendar reform is an exercise of political authority, whether by Egyptian priests resisting the Canopus Decree, Augustus in 25 BC, the Roman army, the French Revolution, Britain in 1752, Iran or the Keshe movement (#368629).