An afternoon with Mithras

Mithras and me, we have history.

I created something in his image a long time ago, for an immersive improvisational event. He was the Unconquerable Sun and the Unconquerable Son, in that first name equated with Sol Invictus. I thought it was reasonable writing at the time, but reading it now might make me cringe so I won't test my theory.

I didn't expect to meet him today.

Today was about meeting the Bestie. I had issues enough getting there; a bus full of schoolchildren between 11 and 15 at the most, screaming at each other over a stolen oyster card, with such fury and intensity that I was waiting for a knife to make its appearance.The nearest I came to being useful was having my phone aimed at them; if anyone hurt anyone they would be filmed. It probably made no difference, but it was at least as useful as the efforts of the adult who tried to reason with them. All she got was baying in surround sound, and she came away shaking her head. The bus driver pulled over at a stop and waited. Eventually they left in little groups.

And on we went.

Meeting chum at Bank, the question was what to do. We discovered the London Mithraeum was just around the corner. Timing was with us: we got there about 10 minutes before the tour of the temple itself. There's not a great deal to it, but the atmosphere was impressively strange for no reason I can explain. The Bloomsberg space below which the Mithraeum lies is new and large, the Mithraeum is old and small. They are odd together, but I like it, that sense of London under a London under a London. You might scrape it clean but what is the point when all the stories are deep in the mud?

In the beginning is darkness and Mithras the young god slays a bull which act, for some reason, brings light and order. How does that even work? His initiation ceremonies were painful, and, I was told long ago, had seven levels, crow being one, lion being another etc, I forget. Pater was the highest level in initiation, I learned that today. But I didn't know it when I wrote a person of that name into the same immersive experience, a long time ago.

All of it, all of it about London. Our creation was a small thing, a half-written story I will never know the end of. Just as well, you could sink into these things and never move again, trapped in a morass of strange details that feel significant and have no point.

Returning to today there we were, in the Mithraeum, where we learned how the zodiac was intensely important to the cult; I can well believe it. In the night sky, Orion and Taurus are adjacent. It wouldn't surprise me if one of the cult secrets was an equation of the old constellation, Orion, with the new god, Mithras, reaching out for the horns of Taurus, dagger in hand.

Out we came looking for food, went to Farmer J's and had another bizarre new experience; pleasant cauliflower.

This has been a very peculiar day.