PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

America-watchers around the world must be shaking their heads and wondering what the flock is going on here.

For the last four years, the basic institutions of American democracy—the stability of which most of us (and let this be a lesson to us) have taken utterly for granted—have been systematically dismantled by a corrupt and honorless cadre of strongmen who care only for power at any price, backed by their dupe-army of fetus-worshipers and White Power malicious...um, militias. For all their rhetoric, the Opposition are the ones now revealed as the true Haters of America.

Now, when the Super-spreader-in-Chief loses the election—which he will—some are predicting blood in the streets and, in essence, Civil War II.

Is America falling apart?

Well—for what it's worth—I, for one, don't think so. The fact that American checks and balances have survived the current mis-administration at all is a testimony to their institutional resilience, and to the creative brilliance which envisioned and created them in the first place.

Meanwhile, what do we do while waiting for trumpocalypse?

Hey, every little pagan gayboy harbors a Mithraic fantasy or two, and I was no different from the rest.

As gods go, Mithras is as cute as they get, not to mention that he gets to ascend to heaven and handfast the Sun, who's not only cute, but hangs out butt-naked all the time. What's not to like? In the end, they even share a couch. (Go ahead, check out the vignettes if you don't believe me.) Plus, it's an all-male cult. That's pretty hot.

I wrote these lyrics back in the 80s as a send-up of the classic American hymn Are You Washed in the Blood (of the Lamb)? They do not faithfully portray actual Mithraic practice. The taurobolium (blood baptism) characterized the cultus of the Magna Mater, not that of Mithras. (No sane person would ever try to bring a live bull into the intimately close confines of your average Mithraeum, much less sacrifice one there.) Likewise, surviving iconography makes it quite clear that Mithras ≠ Sun.

So what follows is best regarded as a lark, not a serious addition to contemporary pagan hymnody.

Still, I like to think that it successfully captures something of the fraternal joy that must have characterized ancient (and, no doubt, modern) Mithraism. Does anybody seriously believe that, after the wine had gone around once or twice, the Brothers did not sing a good, rousing anthem or two together?

Do you shine for the Sun,

and does he shine for you?

Are You Washed in the Blood of the Bull?

A Mithraic Anthem