THE TAUROCTONY: IMAGERY LINKED TO ASTRONOMY?

The depiction of Mithra slaughtering the bull, whether painted or sculpted, is at the heart of the cult. The Neuenheim bas-relief at the Karlsruhe Museum represents the most complete tauroctony we know of in the West.

In the centre of the relief, the sacrifice of the bull bestows upon Mithra the title of protector of the world and guardian of cosmic order. The torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopates, symbolise the rising and setting of the sun, marking the solar cycle. Mithra is the cosmocrator, dominating Time and the Universe, but also the chronocrator, regulating the year and the seasons, the winds and the path of the Sun and the Moon.

Some researchers believe that the animals depicted could represent the constellations visible along the celestial equator during the first Age of Taurus. The celestial equator, a projection of the terrestrial equator, is an imaginary line crossing the sky from east to west. During the equinox, the Sun is aligned on the celestial equator, crossing the ecliptic, the Sun’s path through the constellations.

The Little Dog, the Hydra, the Cup and the Raven are present on this line, just as in the tauroctony. On the left, Libra, represented by Scorpio’s pincers in the past, marks the intersection of the lines of the equator and the ecliptic. This indicates that the Sun was in Scorpio at the autumn equinox.

The tauroctony symbolises the seasons: Taurus marks the beginning of fertility while Scorpio pinches the bull’s testicles in the autumn, signifying the end of the fertile period.