>>17937595
According to the Mithraic Mysteries, Mithras was born from that is thought to be the primordial heavenly light which manifests itself as a "god generated from a rock" (cheos ek pecras, co petroghenos Mithra). While standing on the bank of a river, he frees himself, escaping the obscure mineral by wielding the sword and torch which helped him while he was in the "mother's" womb. This is a miraculous birth, noticed only by "shepherds" hidden on the "mountaintops".

The heavenly "light", which was the light of the Word, but men could not comprehend, is rekindled in he who experiences his first spiritual birth. This birth occurs when one breaks away from the "god of this earth" and is able to withstand the onslaught of the waters. This light is rejected by the principle which informs ordinary people's lives and the stuff on which their ephemeral being, their lights and certainties are based. This principle is characterized by a frenzied, shallow and confused activity; by a blind race toward the "abyss"; by a deepseated greed which perpetuates, through the chain of rebirths, an hetero-centric life-style, characterized by an insatiable craving for various things.

This wild and unrestrained vical force, which first generates and then devours irs own energies in a context of radical contingency,l corresponds to rhe symbol of the "waters" at the edge of which Mithras is generated. An initiate is one who is ''rescued from the waters" (notice the connection with the Moses story as recounted in Exodus), and who "walks on water" (hence the esoteric meaning of Christ's miracle). The initiate is a being who has learned how to rake control of the totality of the cravings and the deficiencies which urge him internally.