The Temple of Mithras

The light was bleeding out of the sky into a dank evening with a lowering cloud and distances shrouded with mist laden air. The road in front ran straight as a ruler, drawn across the rise and fall of the ground; a linear mark worked into the landscape physically and a linear time-line linking now  with then. Parallel to it the rough selvedge of worked stones still stand as a monument to the Emperor who commissioned this greatest wall in the West, Hadrian’s Wall.

The wall and the road exert such a presence within our thoughts that it is impossible to travel that way without constantly being aware of those unknown people who originally created it and whose shadows march along it.  

Today I broke my journey from Newcastle back home to stretch my legs and have a look at the Temple of Mithras. The path from the car park was narrow, winding between tussocks of yellowing moorland grasses leading down into a fold of the ground. There the ruins of a building lay, an oblong of foundations with a single door opening at one end and at the other, three stone altars. It was much smaller than I had imagined, more secret and secluded.
Here soldiers would have come to be initiated into the Mysteries of the cult of Mithras, venerating a god that had been born from within a rock, had slaughtered a sacred bull with his bare hands and then, sheltered in a cave, shared its flesh in a feast with the god of the sun.  

Seven levels of Ordeals requiring physical and mental strength were undertaken, but who knows what they were or what the spiritual significance was to the individuals involved. Even now there is an urge to appease the old gods that still linger; one of the altars had gifts placed upon it, a piece of white quartz, a coin and a fairy ring toadstool. As I left, a solitary crow perched for a moment or two on the fence post, Corax, the symbol of the first level of initiation. I hoped it would be a good omen for the journey home.