The “main characteristic feature of Hellenistic religion[s]” such as Mithraism has been described as “syncretism,” as has the entire Hellenistic age (Grant 1953: xiii). However, the utility of this category of syncretism, usually understood as some sort of mutual influence upon a religious practice or representation by two (or more) cultures in contact, is contested. If employed as an explanatory category, as it often is, it explains nothing. From a historical perspective, all religions are syncretistic, that is, constituted of temporal antecedents and influenced by contemporaneous contingencies. Even when used as a descriptive category, consequently, “syncretism” is simply the redundant naming of a historically constructed conundrum to be explained (Martin 1983; see now Leopold and Jensen 2004 for an excellent historical and theoretical overview of uses of this category). If, then, we begin with the notion of Hellenistic syncretism as a problem to be explained, the Amor and Psyche relief in the Mithraeum of Capua Vetere, the only known presence of these popular Greek figures in a sanctuary devoted to the Roman deity Mithras, would appear to present an exceptional case indeed.
The small (32 x 36 cm), white marble relief of Amor and Psyche in the Mithraeum of Capua Vetere portrays the nude, winged child Amor leading the larger (adult) female figure of Psyche, also winged, by the light of his torch (Fig. 15.1). He grasps Psyche’s left arm with his right hand while holding the torch in his left (CIMRM 186: see Merkelbach 1984: 296, Abb. 27; Vermaseren 1971: 23 and pl. 20). Psyche wears an ankle-length diaphanous dress, the hem of which she holds in her right hand. As in conventional representations of the pair, the wings of Amor are birdlike, whereas those of Psyche are butterfly wings. Unlike conventional representations, the feminine attributes of Psyche have been moderated, giving her a more masculine appearance (Merkelbach 1984: 82). The relief, highlighted by a red border painted on the wall around it, was probably inserted in the wall of the Mithraeum during its first period of use, during the early to mid-second century CE (Vermaseren 1971: 49-50, 50 n. 1).
Figure 15.1. Amor and Psyche. Photo by Patricia A. Johnston.
Little discussion has been devoted to the significance of the Capuan Amor and Psyche relief. Reinhold Merkelbach considers Psyche to be a representation of the enigmatic “nymphus,” the second grade of Mithraic initiation (Merkelbach 1982: 24; 1984: 88-92), and Amor to be that of Heliodromus, the sixth grade of the initiation (Merkelbach 1984: 92) — though he offers little evidence for these conclusions.1
More interestingly, Richard Gordon emphasizes that the position of the relief in the Capua Mithraeum is above a niche at the longitudinal center of the left (southern) bench of the Mithraeum. He suggests that such niches, which mark the center of benches along the two side walls in virtually all Mithraic temples, represent the solstices that, according to Porphyry, are the gates by which souls enter and depart the cosmos (Porph. Antr. 2). Following Porphyry, Gordon argues that souls descend into this world of being through the “northern” gate and re-ascend through the “southern” gate (Porph. Antr. 24-25) — “north” and “south” referring here to the astrological orientations of the cosmos represented in the formal structure of Mithraic temples and not to the actual cardinal points (Gordon 1996b: 56). In this astrological interpretation, the Capuan Amor and Psyche relief is located above the niche marking the “southern” portal of the soul’s re-ascent (Gordon 1996b: 56-58; so also Beck 2000b: 162 n. 69).2 While Eros (Amor) is traditionally associated with freeing the soul from the conditions of this existence (Schlam 1976: 31), the implication of the Capuan relief is that the re-ascent of the soul is under the guidance of a winged Amor as well. Indeed, Porphyry characterizes the north winds, which he considers to assist in the descent of the soul, as erōtikos (Porph. Antr. 26; Gordon 1996b: 56-58). This descent of the soul, its subsequent trials, and its final ascent may represent a process for its purification for which initiation into the mysteries is an analogue (Schlam 1976: 19).
Already Hesiod had elevated Eros, one of the oldest of the gods, into a cosmic principle that was all-powerful over younger gods and men (Hes. Theog. 118-120). Similarly, the fifth-century BCE philosopher, Parmenides of Elea, presented Eros as first of all the gods (Parm. 13) and, consequently, as the cosmic power of love and procreation. Following Parmenides’ logic that “there can be no real coming to be nor passing away” (Parm. 2; Burkert 1985: 319), a monistic view of the soul follows that is similar to that reported of Mithraism by Porphyry (Porph. Antr. 25; cf., e.g., Pl. Phd. 79C-D). Of course, this view of a cosmic descent and re-ascent of an immortal soul was, in some form or another, an increasingly common feature of Hellenistic religions, culminating in Neoplatonism.3
A further possible association of the Amor and Psyche relief in the Capua Vetere Mithraeum with the Eleatic tradition of Parmenides is that its representation of Amor leading Psyche by torchlight is an apparent allusion to representations of initiation into the mysteries. In the proem of his poem (Parm. 1), Parmenides seems to employ such representations of initiation to articulate his understanding of the unity of contrasts, such as that between death and life (Nussbaum 1996: 1113; see Parm. 19).
Parmenides’ native city, Elea (modern Castellammare di Velia), was one of the first Greek colonies of Magna Graecia. Although conquered by Rome in 290 BCE, Elea retained its Greek culture until the first century CE (Lomas 1996: 516). The city is but 153 kilometers (94 miles) southeast of Capua. Thus, an influence upon the Mithraic community of Capua by an Eleatic tradition about a procreative and initiatory figure of Eros presiding over a cosmic descent/ascent of the eternal soul is a historical possibility.
Further, the earliest Greek monuments representing Amor and Psyche also expressed a view of the immortality of the soul (Schlam 1976: 25), and the earliest representations of the pair are from the Greek cities of Magna Graecia—although the wings of the female figure accompanying Eros are those of a bird (Schlam 1976: 5). Portrayals of Psyche with butterfly wings, as on the Capuan relief, first appeared in the Crimea in the late fourth or early third century but became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period, as documented, for example, by numerous instances in the vicinity of Capua, for example, nearby Pompeii (Schlam 1976: 20-21).
If the Capuan relief was influenced by ideas about the descent and ascent of an immortal soul derived from the Greek Eleatic tradition, this influence would support Gordon’s interpretation with reference to the location of the relief in the Mithraeum. And this influence would also introduce a relationship between this view of the soul and the figures of Amor and Psyche, a relationship documented also from the material culture of Magna Graecia.
If, however, the Amor and Psyche relief represents the possibility of Greek influence within the Mithraic community of Capua, its masculinized figure of Psyche seems to reflect a Mithraic influence upon this classical motif as well—an expected modification by a cult that excluded female participants (Gordon 2005b: 6090).4 And if this relief is a rerepresentation of a classical motif in a way that reflects specific aspects of Mithraic practice, then it must be an intentional representation that cannot be explained as a random consequence of cultural contact (syncretism), or dismissed, as in the conclusion of Gordon, as a “marginal gloss” (Gordon 1994: 121 n. 88).
Though rare, there is some documentation for associations between AmorPsyche and Mithras apart from that of the Capuan relief. For example, a fragmentary statue of Amor and Psyche was found in the Mithraic excavations at Santa Prisca in Rome. It is not known, however, whether this statue was associated with the Mithraic community there or whether it was simply “fill” from the demolition of an earlier structure. As the Roman architect Vitruvius noted, stone from demolished buildings, including sculpture, was often broken up and used in the concrete foundations of new construction (Vitr. 6.8.1-7). The excavators of the Santa Prisca Mithraeum, Maarten Vermaseren and Carel van Essen, simply describe the statue as one of the “stray finds from the right hand part of” one of the side rooms off the Mithraeum proper (Vermaseren and van Essen 1965: 476; 478, no. 275). The significance of this find, therefore, while suggestive, is inconclusive.
Of more interest is the “Tale of Amor and Psyche,” the centerpiece of Apuleius’ well-known Isis novel, Metamorphoses,5 in which the priest of Isis is named “Mithras” (Met. 11.22; see CIMRM 466). Roger Beck, elaborating upon an earlier suggestion by Filippo Coarelli (1989), has argued that the Apuleius who authored the Metamorphoses may well be the same Apuleius whose house in Ostia is proximate to the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres (Beck 2000a). If so, the author may well have been involved in the Mithraic mysteries and, consequently, his (fictive?) association of Isis (and of Amor-Psyche) with Mithras would be of more interest than just employment of a suggestive name.
The only clear parallel to the Capuan relief is the fragment of a yellow jasper gem with a portrayal of Mithras as the ubiquitous bullslayer (the tauroctony) on one side; on its obverse is a depiction of Amor and Psyche surrounded by the inscription ΝΕΙΧΑΡΟΠΛΗΞ (CIMRM 2356). Armand Delatte writes that all examples of this inscription on gems refer either to a deity whose solar character is clear—for example, to Mithras, Isis, or Leontocephales—or to representations of Amor, either alone or in conjunction with Psyche (Delatte 1914: 14). Further, Charles King, in his classic study Antique Gems, notes that yellow jasper was a “favorite material for the extensive series of intagli connected with the worship of Mithras” (King 1860: 338). Unfortunately, neither the provenance nor the present location of this gem is known. And while the exact role of Psyche in the relationship portrayed on the gem remains unclear,6 the implication is that Amor and Mithras were, in the minds of some, at least equivalent.
Taken together, the historical evidence—the presence of the Capuan relief in a Mithraeum, the influences from Magna Graecia upon that relief, and the lost gem—suggests that the Amor of the Capuan relief was intended as a representation of Mithras, and/or of his surrogate, the initiating Pater, who guides and supports with paternal love the descendant soul of the initiate through his initiatory trials toward a goal of re-ascent. Since, however, the Greek influences upon the relief, while certainly possible, are not verifiable, and since the provenance of the gem is unknown and its relevance for the significance of the relief is not, therefore, demonstrable, such a synthetic conclusion remains highly speculative. As the anthropologist Fredrik Barth has concluded, “A historical viewpoint [in and of itself] holds no magic key” for solving cultural puzzles without a reasonably sound and detailed account of the empirical processes whereby these materials are produced, transformed, and transmitted (Barth 1987: 9, 22; see Martin 2001).
More tantalizingly, the historical evidence does demonstrate that an association of Amor and Psyche with Mithras had, in the early centuries of the Roman Empire, crossed the minds of at least some apart from those of the Capuan Mithraic community. It is, in other words, not just the possibilities of historical influence but also the possibilities of human minds that constitute those res gestae and their surviving representations that we term history. In the absence, therefore, of any conclusive account of the empirical (historical) processes whereby such a representation as the Capuan Amor and Psyche relief was produced, I turn to the cognitive scientists to explore whether their empirical investigations into the workings of human minds might be of help. The question raised thereby of the relief, then, is not whether historical possibilities for explaining its presence and significance in the context of the Capua Mithraeum can be documented; they can. The question is, What kind of mind does it take actually to realize these historical possibilities, and do we have any kind of evidence for that kind of mind in that kind of context?
Cognitive scientists seek to explain the kinds of mental representations, both perceptual and conceptual, that the innate capacities of and constraints upon the cerebral processing of sensory stimuli and sentient input allow. They attempt, further, to explain the memory, transmission, and transformations of these mental representations, and the relationships among them. Employing some of the conclusions of the cognitive sciences, I argue that the Capuan Amor and Psyche relief represents a conscious and intentional re-representation of a classical mythic theme in a Mithraic context. Further, I argue that this re-representation was made possible as a consequence of quite ordinary, and predicable, cognitive processes such as that described by developmental cognitivist Annette Karmiloff-Smith (1992).
According to Karmiloff-Smith, the re-representational process, which recurs throughout childhood development, is “a specifically human way to gain knowledge.” By redescribing its own representations, “or, more precisely, by iteratively re-presenting in different representational formats what its internal representations represent,” the mind, according to Karmiloff-Smith, exploits “internally the information that it has already stored (both innate and acquired)” (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 15).7 Although this developmental process of representational redescription is, for Karmiloff-Smith, primarily endogenous, she notes that “clearly the process may at times be triggered by external influences” (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 18). I should like to suggest that this childhood developmental process, which Karmiloff-Smith attributes to some kinds of new learning among adults as well (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 18), is replicated in and exploited by the Mithraic course of initiation. By this explanation, the Mithraic course of initiation allowed for the personal (internalized) knowledge acquired by an initiate through initiation to become externalized and consciously manipulated. The resultant cognitive flexibility would allow a Mithraic initiate the intentional ability to produce such seemingly extraordinary representations as the Amor and Psyche relief.8
I have argued elsewhere that Mithraism belongs to a “mode of religiosity” that is termed by the cognitive anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse “imagistic” (2004). Imagistic modalities of religion, as described by Whitehouse, should not be misunderstood as simply designating a category of religious traditions that employ images, which, of course, virtually all do. Rather, in Whitehouse’s description, this modality is characterized by a diversity of precepts and practices that are based on local knowledge, that are associated with small-scale, face-to-face groups, and that are transmitted through infrequently performed rituals, especially through emotionally salient initiation rites. These traits of social organization and ritual practice seem to accord well with what is known of Mithraism (Martin 2005).
The rites of initiation by which knowledge in such groups is produced and transmitted have been described as “rites of terror” (Whitehouse 2000: 21-33). Such initiation rites were characteristic of Mithraism as well (Martin 2004; 2005) and are dramatically portrayed in the painted scenes of initiation along the front surfaces of the right (northern) bench of the Capua Vetere Mithraeum—the direction of descent into this world in its astrological symbolism. These scenes have been dated in the first half of the third century CE, following an enlargement of the benches somewhat earlier (Vermaseren 1971: 50-51).
In the first two of the Capuan initiatory scenes, a Mithraic initiate is depicted as blindfolded and naked (Vermaseren 1971: pl. XXI) and as menaced, subsequently, by sword and/or by fire (Vermaseren 1971: pl. XXII; CIMRM 198). Until recently, these scenes were considered the only extant portrayal of these rites (Vermaseren 1971: 24). In 1976, however, a large crater was discovered in a Mithraeum in Mainz that confirms that some form of initiatory threat was a feature of Mithraic initiation generally (Beck 2000b; Horn 1994). In a scene on this cup, an initiating Father aims an arrow from his drawn bow directly at the head of the initiate, who, like the initiate in the Capuan scenes, is portrayed as smaller, naked, and vulnerable (Beck 2000b: pl. XIII). The emotional salience of such terrifying rituals would be further heightened by techniques of sensory deprivation, typical of initiatory experiences generally, such as blindfolding the initiate and/or situating his initiation in a darkened chamber. The Mithraic community at Capua apparently practiced such techniques, as attested by the Capuan initiatory scenes and by the underground site of the Mithraeum.
These initiatory rites of terror produce personal inspirations or individual “revelations” in the form of “patterned screen[s] of representations and feelings against which later insights and revelations … [may] be projected” (Whitehouse 2000: 30).9 Cognitively, these analogical representations are encoded in the autobiographical memory system and are only activated and organized by the rememberer when presented with stimuli associated with his participation in the initiatory rites, such as relevant persons, images, and/or events.10 In the case of Mithraism, these stimuli would include, and be reinforced by, an initiate’s further participation in subsequent stages of initiation either as initiate or as initiator.11
The internal representations occasioned by initiatory rites, as described by Whitehouse, would not, according to Karmiloff-Smith’s developmental model, initially be available to conscious access and verbal report (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 22; for Whitehouse’s own perspective on the relationship between Karmiloff-Smith’s model and his own, see Whitehouse 2004: 89-94 and 115-117). According to Karmiloff-Smith’s model, representations of knowledge in this initial phase are “simply added, domain specifically, to the existing stock” of stored (or remembered) knowledge (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 18). She describes this initial phase as an “internally driven phase” during which external input ceases to be the focus and a “system-internal dynamics take over.” Although this “system-internal dynamics” may culminate in a relevant “behavioral mastery”—of ritual procedures, for example—its encoding in autobiographical memory will have minimal effect, if any, on knowledge previously encoded in working memory (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 18-19). Given, in other words, two “procedures for analyzing and responding to stimuli in the external environment” — ordinary and initiatory knowledge about the world, for example—the “potential representational links and the information embedded in [the] procedures remain implicit” (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 20).
Additionally, the ritual production of internal representations might be described as an exploitation of innate cognitive systems or templates by its introduction of selected stimuli. One of the cognitive systems that was exploited by Mithraism is, I suggest, that relating to place and environment. As a consequence of our evolutionary history, human beings—like all species—require, in order to survive, rather detailed information about their complex, natural surroundings. And, like all species, our mental capacities are exquisitely attuned to processing just those environmental stimuli required to establish the parameters of actions necessary for that survival (Boyer 2001: 120-121). The intelligence of Homo sapiens, consequently, gravitates naturally to spatial organization—a cognitive ability especially developed in males (Sherry 2000).
The Mithraic temples themselves, designed, according to Porphyry, as a “likeness of the cosmos” (Porph. Antr. 6), exploited a syntax of place and environment (as described by Gordon 1996b), as did the Mithraic tauroctony, a collage of artistic clichés organized as a “star-map or ‘celestial template’” (Beck 1998: 125). This Mithraic representation of cosmic space effectively exploited the innate cognitive sensitivity of its male membership to spatial location by reflecting and situating the initiate in an astrological/astronomical organization of the cosmos that was typical of the Hellenistic cultural environment (Martin 1987). In this first representational format, however, intuitive experiences of location could not, according to Karmiloff-Smith’s model, be either generalized or articulated.
In a second format of re-representation, according to Karmiloff-Smith, initial representations become “reduced” in a way that causes them to lose many of their details; they become simpler and less specialized but more cognitively flexible. The rich, evocative complexity of the Mithraeum as cosmos, for example, could become realized as a safe and controlled space. The cognitive flexibility that is characteristic of conceptual representations at this stage can, according to Karmiloff-Smith, be employed for other goals where explicit knowledge is required (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 21.) Thus, internal representations of spatial organization and order produced by Mithraic initiation could be transferred, for example, to an affirmation of loyalty to the wider ideals of a pax Romana (Merkelbach 1984: 153-188), though yet without any explicitly conscious reflection.
Finally, in a further stage of redescription, “knowledge is recoded into a cross-system code … [that is] close enough to natural language for easy translation into stable, communicable form” (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 23). Once the ordinary cognitive process of redescription has taken place and “explicit representations become manipulable,” Karmiloff-Smith concludes, violations might be introduced into data-driven, veridical descriptions of the world (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 22). Such violations would include those counterfactual and counterintuitive representations and formulations that are characteristic of every religion (Boyer 2001)—and, I might add, of their inventive or, if I may, their “syncretistic” representations — such as that exemplified by the Capuan Amor and Psyche relief.
The cognitive possibilities for representing the Capuan Amor and Psyche theme in a Mithraic context could, I suggest, only have been a conscious and intentional consequence of a cognitively mature, flexible, and innovative mind, such as would have been inculcated by the Mithraic course of initiation. The mind of the anonymous Mithraist responsible for this relief would seem to be, therefore, that of one of the highest of the grades of Mithraic initiation, perhaps that of the (in this case anonymous) Pater himself. Although the possibility for representing Amor and Psyche with Mithras was, as we have seen, both a historical and a cognitive possibility elsewhere than at Capua, the full significance of the Capuan relief would, in the absence of any centralized organizational structure for Mithraism, belong to (and largely remain) the local knowledge of those who had shared in the initiatory regimen practiced by the Capuan Mithraic community.12
Mithraism was a new Roman religion in an expanding world of Roman cultural influence. The Mithraic community at Capua represented one of the earliest and southernmost incursions of “Romanness” into Magna Graecia. At the same time that Mithraism represented the growing and expanding dominance of Roman culture, its ritual regimen offered its potential recruits, the generally uneducated lower ranks of the military and the petty civil servants who dominated its membership, an incremental possibility for expanded cognitive flexibility and creativity that was elsewhere available only through alternative, class-differentiated techniques such as formal education.13 The competitive advantage of such a supple and innovative mind is clear, especially among members of the military, who must deal quickly and decisively with the rapidly changing conditions of battlefield strategy, and even among the local Roman bureaucrats, who had to administer an often discontented population. The difference is one of doing things creatively and with greater self-reliance rather than merely acting in conventional and expected ways.14
By this interpretation, Mithraic initiation did not transmit any coherent corpus of Mithraic or “mystery” knowledge (apart, of course, from the local knowledge developed by each Mithraic cell). Rather, the Mithraic course of initiation, whatever its local variants, accomplished an increase in and potentially a perfection of a particular cognitive skill, of the innate capacity of human cognition to achieve “representational flexibility and control” (Karmiloff-Smith 1992: 16). It is perhaps the cognitive and material products of this expanded cognitive flexibility, control, and creativity that have been dismissed by some observers as examples of syncretistic nonsense but perceived by others as the “wisdom” of the mysteries.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Symposium Cumanum, sponsored by The Vergilian Society, 9-12 June 2004, at the Villa Vergiliana in Cuma, Italy, on the theme “Interactions of Indigenous and Foreign Cults in Magna Graecia.” I should like to thank Professors Giovanni Casadio and Patricia Johnston, the organizers of this symposium, for inviting my participation, the participants in the symposium for their responses to my presentation, and Roger Beck, Harvey Whitehouse, and Donald Wiebe for their comments on its first draft.
1. Nymphus is a masculinized form of the feminine Greek noun nymphe. Like the masculinized figure of Psyche represented on the Capuan relief, this masculine form of the noun also appears only in a Mithraic context (Merkelbach 1984: 88; see 77 n. 2). Nymphe can mean either “bride” or the “pupa of bees or wasps.” Merkelbach concludes, apparently by association, that this masculine neologism means “human pupa” and refers to the second stage of Mithraic initiation. We might also cite the monograph on Cupid and Psyche by Carl Schlam (1976), in which he noted that the imagery of the pupa “suggests a concept of the immortality of the soul, rising from the body like the chrysalis from the pupa.” Further, and referencing the neglected article on this topic by Otto Immisch (1915), Schlam concludes that “Greek terms for earlier stages of the cycle of the butterfly support this interpretation” (Schlam 1976: 8). We can also note that Porphyry uses nymphai, which he equates with “pleasure-seeking bees,” to refer to souls seeking birth: Porph. Antr. 18.
2. Gordon correctly identifies the location of the Psyche and Amor relief as “fixed into the front wall of the [southern] left hand ‘bench’” (Gordon 1996b: 57), which is associated, in his interpretation, with the re-ascent of souls. In what can only be understood as a typographical error, however, he then writes that the relief is “directly above the niche which is, on the present hypothesis, the appropriate one for souls entering genesis” (ibid.), that is, of descent into the world of becoming, which in his interpretation is associated with the northern right hand bench (ibid.: 56).
3. A commentary on Plato’s Parmenides is attributed to Porphyry.
4. On the possible initiation of women into some Mithraic associations, see David 2000. At the Cuma symposium at which this paper was presented, Giovanni Casadio called my attention to and kindly supplied me with a copy of a photograph showing a scene from a Mithraeum in Budapest in which Mithras is portrayed grasping the hand of (leading?) a nude figure (initiate?) that is unmistakably female (Póczy et al. 1989: 25).
5. A marble group of Eros and Psyche has been found in the Isaeum at Savaria—modern Szombathely — in western Hungary (Vermaseren 1971: 23 and n. 4).
6. It can be mentioned that the so-called Mithras Liturgy from the Greek Magical Papyri opens with an invocation of Psyche (PMag. 1.475), though Psyche is here paired with Pronoia. Some scholars have read Tyche for Psyche (Betz 2003: 88-89).
7. Cognitive innateness, like biological structure, does not (necessarily) imply a direct causal connection between genetic inheritance and adult behavior. One cognitivist, Michael Tomasello, has cautioned that “the search for the innate aspects of human cognition is scientifically fruitful to the extent, and only to the extent, that it helps us to understand the developmental processes at work during human ontogeny” (Tomasello 1999: 51). He addresses Karmiloff-Smith’s (1992) hypothesis as a possible description of one such developmental process (Tomasello 1999: 194-197). The philosopher Andy Clark has emphasized the crucial importance for developmental processes of structured environmental resources upon innate cognitive capacities (Clark 1997).
8. I do not argue that Mithraic initiation replicates in any precise way the specific developmental formats of representational redescription modeled by Karmiloff-Smith, nor am I qualified to argue for the validity for her specific model. My suggestion is simply that the incremental process of Mithraic initiation replicates a developmental process of cognitive maturation like that described by Karmiloff-Smith.
9. The production of internal representations by initiatory rites and any “spontaneous exegetical reflections” (Whitehouse 2003: 305) upon them stand in stark contrast to the knowledge maintained and transmitted within a second mode of religiosity described by Whitehouse and termed by him “doctrinal.” In this modality, large-scale, anonymous communities cohere around bodies of teachings and beliefs held to be “orthodox” by a centralized authority and are maintained and transmitted by that authority through repetitive and routinized ritual instruction (Whitehouse 2004).
10. Because rites of initiation are considered to be performed by the deity itself, in this case by Mithras, or by his authorized surrogate, probably, in the case, by the presiding Pater, the cognitivists of religion E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. Mc-Cauley have characterized such rites as “special agent rituals.” Because such rituals are considered to be performed by the deity himself (or by his surrogate), they are considered to be especially efficacious and, consequently, need be performed but once or, at most, infrequently. Such singularly potent events of divine activity are accompanied by heightened sensory pageantry that contributes, consequently, to their memorability (McCauley and Lawson 2002: 26-33).
11. Whether initiation rites involve an extended series of trials over a period of months (or years), as is the case among a number of tribal societies, e.g., the Nkanu of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Eickel 2001; van Damme 2002), or whether they are structured by a discrete number of stages, as in Mithraism and a number of other tribal societies, e.g., the Baktaman of Papua New Guinea, who, like (at least some of) the Mithraists, count seven grades of initiation (Barth 1987: 12), they should not be viewed as an event or a series of events but as a process that occurs over time. As a cognitive process, what is required is a sufficient period of time over which the cognitive process of representational redescription, as described by Karmiloff-Smith (1992), might be reinforced and developed. This cognitive process is further reinforced by the repeated participation of initiates as initiators.
12. Emphasis on the local character of Mithraic knowledge and practice did not preclude the “emergence” of certain more widely, even universally, shared Mithraic traits and practices from among the network of autonomous Mithraic cells, even in the absence of any centralized structure or organization. On noncentralized processes of biological and cognitive emergence, “in which some kind of higher-level pattern emerges from the interactions of multiple simple components without the benefit of a leader, controller, or orchestrator” (Clark 1997: 73), see Clark 1997: 72-75, 103-128, 163-166; and Johnson 2001.
13. Whereas such rites as the course of Mithraic initiation encouraged and supported the development and expansion of cognitive capacity, formal education included, in addition, an intellectual mastery of some prescribed content (Clark 1997: 205).
14. Today, we might refer to such honed but nonschooled knowledge as “street smarts.”