''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.
"The TAU cross was inscribed on the forehead of every person admitted into the Mysteries of Mithras. Concerning the crucifixion of the Persian Mithras. In the Persian Mysteries the body of a young man, apparently dead, was exhibited, which was feigned to be restored to life. By his sufferings he was believed to have worked their salvation, and on this account he was called their Savior."
― Manly P. Hall - The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Myth
In the beginning there was only the world-mountain and the great enclosing sky. On that mountain the rock of the earth split open, and from it sprang a young god. He rose from the stone fully formed, carrying a torch in one hand and a dagger in the other. This was Mithras, the one born from the rock, the fire hidden in the heart of the world.
It is said he came forth at a moment of cosmic tension, when the powers of Light and Darkness were contending for mastery. Because of this, the wise taught that Mithras stands between the two, mediator and judge, neither wholly of one nor the other. For this reason some called him the companion of the Sun, and others equated him with the Sun itself.
After his emergence, Mithras wandered the cosmic fields. There he found a primordial bull, great in strength and radiant with life. Whether the bull was an enemy to be overcome or a willing sacrifice is not told; only that Mithras seized it, struggled with it, and at last bore it upon his shoulders into a hidden cave.
Inside that cavern the decisive act was done. Mithras threw the bull down and struck it with his blade. As its blood flowed, life burst forth through all creation. From the wound came wheat, wine, healing herbs, and the seeds of all things. The cave shone with the fire of stars. The dog and the serpent approached to partake. The scorpion seized the generative power. And above the scene arched the signs of the zodiac.
Thus the followers said: by the slaying of the bull, Mithras set the heavens in motion. The seasons turned. The planets began their rounds. The great clock of the cosmos started its cycle.
After the sacrifice, the Sun himself descended to Mithras. The two gods embraced and made covenant. They reclined together upon the hide of the bull and held a divine banquet. The Sun placed upon Mithras the rays of kingship. From that time the two were inseparable, one running the course of heaven, the other guiding souls who sought ascent beyond the planetary spheres.
Two torch-bearers accompanied Mithras. One held his torch raised upward, herald of rising light. The other held his torch downward, keeper of setting light. Some said they marked the equinoxes, some the gates of ascent and descent; but all agreed they stood beside Mithras at the turning points of the sky.
It is also told that there exists a great ladder of seven gates leading upward from the realm of men to the farthest height. Each gate is fashioned of a metal and guarded by a star: lead for Saturn, tin for Venus, copper for Jupiter, iron for Mercury, a mixed metal for Mars, silver for the Moon, and gold for the Sun. Above these stands an eighth gate that opens to the realm beyond the heavens. The soul, reborn through Mithras, climbs these gates after death, passing through the powers of the seven planets until reaching the light beyond.
In the Mysteries it was said that Mithras himself held the keys to the gates. The lion-headed power bound with the serpent stood as a sign of Time, against whom all mortals struggle. But Mithras, as mediator and savior, could free the soul from the coils and open the hidden gate.
For this reason initiates gathered not in open temples but in caves shaped after the first cavern. Within those narrow halls they reclined together as Mithras reclined with the Sun. They took vows of loyalty and discipline. They passed through seven grades, imitating the seven gates, until one among them attained the title Father and presided over the rites.
They ate bread and drank the cup in remembrance of the god’s covenant with the Sun. They faced tests that proved their courage and fidelity. They spoke the words of refusal when the crown was offered, saying, “Mithras is my crown.”
To the uninitiated these things were hidden. But those who took part said that in the cavern they felt themselves drawn into the story of the god: born from the rock, entering the cosmic cave, witnessing the bull’s sacrifice, sharing the meal of light, and ascending the ladder of the stars.
So the myth is told: the god born from stone, the slayer whose act sets the heavens in motion, the friend of the Sun, the mediator between darkness and light, the guide of souls, the keeper of the seven gates, and the one whose mysteries teach strength, fidelity, and ascent through the cosmos.
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)