''Either he [Mithras] is the Sun, the brightest planet, or he is a solar diety'' - Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, 1-4
(Persia → Rome)
- Deity: Mithras, a solar deity and bull-slayer
- Theme: Cosmic battle between light and darkness
- Structure: Hierarchical initiations (7 grades), sacred meals, and cavern temples (mithraea)
- Followers: Especially popular among Roman soldiers; emphasized loyalty, strength, and brotherhood.
7 stage ascent in the Mithras Mysteries
One of the oldest writings concerning the 7 stage ascent is by the heretic Church Father, Origen (185-254 A.D.). In his book Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), Origen quotes the Pagan writer Celsus concerning the 7 stage ascent described by the participants in the Mithras Mysteries: These things are obscurely hinted at in the accounts of the Persians, and especially in the mysteries of Mithras, which are celebrated amongst them. For in the latter there is a representation of the two heavenly revolutions,—of the movement, viz., of the fixed stars, and of that which take place among the planets, and of the passage of the soul through these. The representation is of the following nature: There is a ladder with lofty gates, and on the top of it an eighth gate. The first gate consists of lead, the second of tin, the third of copper, the fourth of iron, the fifth of a mixture of metals, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. The first gate they assign to Saturn, indicating by the ‘lead’ the slowness of this star; the second to Venus, comparing her to the splendor and softness of tin; the third to Jupiter, being firm and solid; the fourth to Mercury, for both Mercury and iron are fit to endure all things, and are money-making and laborious; the fifth to Mars, because, being composed of a mixture of metals, it is varied and unequal; the sixth, of silver, to the Moon; the seventh, of gold, to the Sun,—thus imitating the different colors of the two latter.
- Lead -Saturn
- Tin - Venus
- Copper - Jupiter
- Iron - Mercury
- Mix - Mars
- Silver - Moon
- Gold - Sun
Origins and sources
The Roman cult of Mithras is not a simple transplant of Iranian Mithra; it is a new, astro-mystical religion that appears in the Roman world in the 1st–2nd centuries CE, drawing on Persian names and prestige, but speaking in a visual language of caves, constellations, and graded initiation. Our frankest ancient summary of the mithraeum’s meaning comes from Porphyry: “Zoroaster first of all men consecrated a natural cave to Mithras, the creator and father of all; the cave… was an image of the cosmos.” Plutarch, writing of Persian lore, places Mithras “between” Light and Darkness—“for which reason the Persians call Mithras the Mediator.” Christian apologists, hostile yet invaluable, preserve further details. Justin notes that Mithraists “set forth bread and a cup of water with certain incantations,” which he regards as a diabolic imitation of the Eucharist. Tertullian describes a dramatic initiation: at sword’s point a crown is offered; the initiate refuses, saying “Mithras is my crown.” And Origen quotes Celsus’ report of a seven-gate ladder, the soul’s planetary ascent, each gate formed of a metal and ruled by a planet. I give the core lines because they govern the whole system:
“There is a ladder with lofty gates, and on the top of it an eighth gate. The first gate consists of lead… the second of tin… the third of copper… the fourth of iron… the fifth of a mixed metal… the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. The first gate they assign to Saturn… the second to Venus… the third to Jupiter… the fourth to Mercury… the fifth to Mars… the sixth to the Moon, and the seventh to the Sun.”
Temple and image
A mithraeum is a man-made cave: long, low, with side benches for the common meal, and a niche at the far end for the central relief. Archaeology repeats this plan from Britain to Syria; Rome’s Santa Prisca and Ostia’s houses of Mithras are exemplary. The focal icon—the tauroctony—shows Mithras in Phrygian cap plunging a dagger into a cosmic bull; around him a coded menagerie appears (dog, serpent, scorpion at the bull’s genitals, raven), while above, the zodiac spans the vault; flanking him stand two torch-bearers, Cautes and Cautopates, one torch raised, the other lowered. The second great image shows Mithras and Sol reclined at a banquet on the bull’s hide—ritual prototype for the meal taken on those benches. A third image, the rock-birth (petra genetrix), displays Mithras springing from the stone as a youthful god, dagger and torch in hand—born from the world-rock because he is its inner fire.
Another enigmatic presence, often set near the tauroctony, is the lion-headed, serpent-bound figure (the leontocephaline), grasping keys and a scepter, sometimes standing upon a globe. Scholarship reads him as Aion/Time or a chthonic lord of cycles—the bonds of the serpent marking cyclic time that the initiate must learn to pass through.
Grades, planets, and ascent
Mithraic initiation was sevenfold. The sequence is secured epigraphically and iconographically—by the Santa Prisca fresco and the floor mosaics at the Ostian “Mithraeum of Felicissimus”—and commonly aligned to planetary “tutelaries.” The grades were: Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bridegroom), Miles (Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (Sun-Runner), Pater (Father). In Rome the fresco even pairs grades with planetary guardians (“tutela Saturni… tutela Solis…”), making the lodge a living orrery of soul-work.
Read with Celsus’ ladder, the grades map an initiatory itinerary from Saturn’s heaviness (lead) to the Sun’s gold, culminating beyond the seven in the “eighth gate.” Porphyry’s cave-cosmos gives the architecture; the Ostian mosaics trace the path underfoot.
Cautes and Cautopates—the torch-bearers—mark the cosmic hinge points. Many scholars identify them with equinoxes or solstices (the raising and lowering of the Sun), and thus with the gates of descent and ascent for souls through the sphere of the fixed stars.
Rites, vows, and the saving act
The mithraeum hosted oath-taking, tests of endurance, and communal feasts. Dining debris, cooking installations, and banquet reliefs corroborate that the rite of the shared meal was central. An Aventine graffito—damaged but famous—reads “et nos servasti … sanguine fuso” (“and you have saved us … by the shed blood”), almost certainly referring to Mithras’ salvific bull-killing and its life-releasing power. Tertullian’s vignette of the refused crown shows the ethic: the Miles submits to discipline under a higher sovereignty—Mithras is the crown.
What the symbols teach the initiate
First level: discipline, brotherhood, secrecy. The cave is the world; the bench a cohort; vows and tests bind the will.
Second level: the myth is cosmology. The tauroctony is not a pastoral scene; it is a star-map. Modern readings differ in detail—Ulansey argues it encodes the discovery of precession and Mithras’ power to “move” the heavens; Beck treats the icon as a program for ritualized experience of the soul’s journey—yet both agree the imagery is astronomical and soteriological.
Third level: the task is ascent. The seven metals, seven grades, seven “tutelaries,” and the two torches arrange the entire work of transmutation: leaden Saturn to solar gold, through Mars’ ordeal, Jupiter’s magnanimity, Venus’ bridal veiling, Mercury’s cunning, Luna’s flux, until the Pater bears Saturn’s gravitas without bondage—time mastered rather than fled.
Fourth level: the lion-headed figure reminds the adept of the limit—Chronos/Aion coils the cosmos. Keys in his hands signal that the bonds of cyclic time can be opened; this is why the “eighth gate” stands beyond the seven.
Relation to other Mysteries, and to the Western initiatory stream
Plutarch’s “Mediator” made Mithras an obvious bridge for Middle-Platonists; the mithraeum’s graded ascent harmonized with Hermetic and Neoplatonic theurgy; Porphyry himself reads caves, gates, and stars as the soul’s itinerary. In late antiquity Mithraism fades under changing imperial policy and Christianization, yet its architectural grammar (microcosmic temple), its planetary ladder, and its ethic of tested brotherhood reappear as leitmotifs in later esoteric constructions. Early modern Freemasonry explicitly adopted Solomon-Temple craft myth rather than Mithras, but masonic writers noticed the parallel: the lodge as cosmos, the degrees as ascent, the oath-bound table-fellowship. Modern occultists (19th–20th c.) also re-mythologized the tauroctony as an inner alchemy of life-force. These are analogies and revivals, not proofs of institutional descent; the hard links are conceptual and imaginal—cosmic temple, graded soteriology, the warrior-adept under vows—more than lineal. For sober orientation to the scholarly debate on origins and meanings, see Beck’s and Clauss’ monographs; for the ambitious astronomical thesis, see Ulansey.
Notes on temple space and Christian polemic
Mithraea often stand today beneath churches (e.g., San Clemente, Santa Prisca), a fact of urban stratigraphy rather than direct “conversion,” but one that dramatizes the late-antique collision of cults. Justin Martyr’s and Tertullian’s charges of “imitation” likely reflect a competitive religious marketplace; nonetheless, their testimonies preserve precious details of Mithraic meals and initiations.
“Zoroaster… consecrated a natural cave to Mithras, the creator and father of all; the cave… an image of the cosmos.”
“Mithras is between [Light and Darkness], for which reason the Persians call Mithras the ‘Mediator’.”
“There is a ladder with lofty gates… seven of gold and silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and a mixed metal… Saturn… Venus… Jupiter… Mercury… Mars… Moon… Sun.”
“[At initiation] when at the sword’s point a crown is presented to him… he is admonished to resist and cast it off… saying that Mithras is his crown.”
“And you have saved us … by the shed blood.” (graffito in the Santa Prisca mithraeum)