A symbol of strength and virility, the Bull appears in frescoes, mosaics, paintings, sculpture and architecture. Blood sacrifice of bulls and oxen usually involved feasting on the meat afterward, akin to eating the God, a practice associated with fertility rituals. In ancient Rome the brazen bull represented scientific engineering and tortuous death.
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Among wild animals the Bear is untamed nature and the wild heart, while the Bull is among the major fertility spirits and powers of the Earth. If crops don't grow, the people sacrifice Bulls. With the blood of the Bull potent magic flows into the ground.
In ancient Rome the God appears in the constellation Taurus, one of the oldest of the zodiac star signs. The Bull represents Jupiter, who turned himself into a Bull to abduct a woman, one of his favorite hobbies.
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In ancient Rome as well appears the worship of the Sun God Mithras, which rose in popularity about the same time as Christianity, in the first century CE. Mithras was borrowed from the Persian Mithra and adapted to Roman philosophies. In Rome Mithras is strongly associated with the Cult of the Bull and taurobolium or ritual bull sacrifice.
A popular theme is Mithras killing a sacrificial bull with a knife, by request of the Sun himself, Sol. In artworks he's often accompanied by helper animals snake, scorpion and dog. The scorpion holds the bull's genitals while the dog laps up the blood spilling from the wound and the snake is either biting the bull or just hanging around.
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In engravings and reliefs a pair of torch bearers appear, one on either side of Mithras and the Bull. The Bull's tail might end as a sheaf of wheat, symbol of Virgo, fertility, the harvest. The scorpion is thought to represent Scorpio, the torch bearers Gemini.
Both the poisonous snake and scorpion are symbols of healing. Aspects of the theme are still puzzling mythologists and historians, but the basic concept of the Sacrificial Bull is clear. When Mithras kills the Bull, Sol throws its body into the sky as the moon, and Mithras' cloak becomes the stars.
The Bull is associated with the skies, stars, moon and Sun. The shape of his horns represents the solar disk or Sun, or the crescent moon, pointing to the sky. His strength comes from the Earth beneath his hooves. His primary energy is Yang, outward seeking.
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Drinking and ceremonial vessels made of Bulls' horns appear in Greek art of the 5th century BCE. Dionysus is shown holding a drinking horn. In antiquity drinking horns were also made of wood or metal.
Sculptures and paintings of the Aurochs, an extinct giant bovine, adorn prehistoric caves. The large number of artworks shows the aurochs as a powerful symbol of life force. Oldest remnants of Bull worship appear in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia about 7,500 BCE.
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A Sumerian protector, the lamassu is a winged hybrid of human and animals, first arising in Assyria in the 8th century BCE as a symbol of power. According to Marie-José Castor at the Musée du Louvre,
"The human-headed winged bulls protective genies called shedu or lamassu, ... were placed as guardians at certain gates or doorways of the city and the palace. Symbols combining man, bull, and bird, they offered protection against enemies."
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The Bull was also the steed of storm and rain god Hadad, a deity equated with Jupiter and Zeus, the Egyptian Amun and Indo-European weather god Teshub, showing the Bull's connection to the Sky. In some mythology birds such as blackbirds or cranes accompany the Bull.
Worship of the Bull as fertility symbol, power, protector and sacrifice was widespread from Norse habitations to the Mediterranean to the East. Animal domestication gave humans a sense of authority over nature. The first evidence of domestic animals (sheep) comes from the Upper Paleolithic era or Late Stone Age about 11,000 BCE.
The first evidence of the domestication of wild Aurochs is a few centuries later, in 10,500 BCE. With it came selective breeding and early animal husbandry. The aurochs of about 10,000 years ago are ancestors of domestic cattle.
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As a species the Aurochs survived until 1627, when it's believed a poacher shot the last one. Attempts to bring the wild Aurochs back from extinction began with German biologists Heinz and Lutz Heck in the 1920s.
Evidence of a powerful Bull cult, Bull worship and sacrifice comes from the Minoans of Crete, 2000 - 1450 BCE. The legend of the Minotaur, a man with bull's head who demanded human sacrifice, fascinated writers and readers, interpreted throughout the ages through legend, art, song and poetry.
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Bull worship and culture spread from and through Anatolia, Crete, Iran, South & Southeast Asia, Cypress, Levant, Greece, Rome and the Celtic lands. The Romans were so enthusiastic they built the infamous torture and execution chamber, the Brazen Bull.
Convicted persons, suspected insurgents and even whole families were put into the hollow bronze bull, and a fire lit underneath before a mass of cheering people. As the prisoners were roasted alive, a system of tubes, pipes and trumpets converted screams from the belly of the bull into snorts and roars.
A miraculous creation it was, and the first to test it was the unfortunate man who invented it. It became popular entertainment under the Roman tyrant Phalaris about 570 BCE. Its last use was allegedly in the 3rd century AD, to burn a Christian. By that time Rome was well into the worship of Mithras and the sacrificial Bull.
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The Bull assumes a place of power. In the sacrificial hierarchy of godly tribute, the blood of the Bull is second only the blood of Man whose is second only the blood of a King, or better, a God-King. Bull blood represents fertility of the Earth.
Celts also practiced both veneration and sacrifice of the Bull. In the first century Pliny the Elder wrote:
The druids—that is what they call their magicians—hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and a tree on which it is growing, provided it is Valonia oak. … Mistletoe is rare and when found it is gathered with great ceremony, and particularly on the sixth day of the moon….Hailing the moon in a native word that means 'healing all things,' they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls, whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion.
A priest arrayed in white vestments climbs the tree and, with a golden sickle, cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to a god to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it. They believe that mistletoe given in drink will impart fertility to any animal that is barren and that it is an antidote to all poisons.
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In some villages of Greece, Greek Orthodox adherents sacrifice oxen and lambs in a practice known as kourbania (Christianized animal sacrifice) on February 10. It's specially associated with the feast of Saint Charalambos, a Christian martyr.
In the 2nd century AD or Roman Imperial Era, the taurobolium or Bull sacrifice became linked to Cybele, the Mother Goddess of Anatolia. Her adherents also participated in the criobolium or Ram sacrifice. In Greece, she was integrated into the lore of Mother Goddess Gaia. After 159 AD, all private taurobolia inscriptions mention Magna Mater (Great Mother, Mother Goddess, Big Mama).
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As Christian emperors took the Imperial thrones of Rome, the Church criticized the practice of animal sacrifice. The taurobolium became a symbol of paganism and reaction against the soon-to-be-dominant ideology.
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