tunic and golden crown, clothed in anaxyrides, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder of a young bull.” This, _i.e._ the shoulder, we are told, is called “Arctos, who moves the sky, making it to turn forwards and backwards according to the hour.” But the god appears to be intended for Mithras, and the shoulder of the bull is probably an allusion to the bull-slaying scene which may serve to show that there were more interpretations than one placed upon the Tauroctony. The initiate hails this god as “Lord of water, consecrator of the earth, ruler of the air, shining-rayed One, of primeval rays!” and the like, and continues: “O Lord, having been born again, I die! Having increased and again increasing, I come to an end by life-begotten birth, and coming into existence, and having been released unto death, I pursue my way, as thou hast ordered from the beginning, as thou hast ordained: And having accomplished the mystery, I am _Pheroura miouri_.” Here the fragment abruptly breaks off, and plunges into directions for the manufacture of oracles and the other stuff common in Magic Papyri. One is not much inclined to believe with M. Cumont that the author of the galimatias knew nothing about Mithraism[964], and merely introduced Mithras’ name into his opening to impress his readers with a sense of the value of his recipes. It seems more likely that the writer of the fragment had really got hold of some part of a Mithraic ritual, which he had read without understanding it, and that he was trying to work more or less meaningless extracts from it into his spells on the same principle that the sorcerers of the European Renaissance used when they took similar liberties with the words of the Mass. If this view be adopted, it follows that the concluding words given above confirm the view that the Mithraists, like the Orphics before them, taught the metempsychosis or reincarnation of souls[965]. Did the Mithraist think that his soul, when released from this “dread necessity,” finally escaped from even the planetary spheres and, raising itself into the heaven of the fixed stars, became united with the Deity Himself? We can only ask the question without being able to suggest an answer supported by any evidence.