Images of the soldier’s warrior-god Mithras ‘slaying the bull’ are familiar from the Roman era, but a cross-cultural perspective offers older and less militaristic forms of this influential and star-led mystery religion. Ancient Vedic roots lead to Mitra, flame of celestial light, guardian of truth and order, patron of friendship; to Avestan Mithra, ‘Lord of the wide pastures’, protector of covenants, mediator between light and darkness. There are many variations, but historically, only Herodotus has ever described Mithra as female, apparently conflating Phrygian Attis, the beautiful Mithra, with Venus-Aphrodite under one of her many names. But was he perhaps glimpsing a truth? In this illustrated talk we’ll take to the ‘wide pastures’ of the imaginal itself; Mithra’s mediating middle-ground of living image between earthly things Below and the starry heavens Above. An ‘imaginal inquiry’ (Angelo 2013) investigates in all the worlds, cultivating as research instrument the trained eye of the heart, organ of visionary imagination. Reflecting on our ‘meetings with imaginal peoples’ teaches us more about the strengths and pitfalls of person-ifying the living powers. Holding ‘conversations in the imaginal’ takes us into the poetic territory of the alchemical language of the birds, where the sounds and symbols of folk etymology and esoteric correspondences are taken seriously. Following this 'way of the imaginal', we will find ourselves in ancient Egypt, at the end of the age of Taurus, the Bull, and we will be assisted across the centuries by alchemical illuminations of the ‘Splendor of the Sun’, garment of Mithra’s mystical Silver Star, the ‘Sun-behind-the-Sun’.

Dr Marie Angelo, C. Psychol., ran the MA in Transpersonal Arts and Practice at Chichester University, combining archetypal psychology, liberal ‘liberating’ arts, and western esoteric practice. For details of her research and new Splendor Solis book, see www.imaginalstudies.org