Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

Between approximately the 1st and 4th centuries CE, a mystery religion dedicated to the god Mithras spread through the Roman Empire with extraordinary speed — found in every province from Britain to Mesopotamia, concentrated particularly in military garrisons, port cities, and merchant communities. Its initiates met in underground temples (mithraea) built to resemble caves, in small groups of no more than forty, passing through seven grades of initiation named for the seven classical planets. They shared a sacred meal. They watched, and perhaps participated in, the re-enactment of Mithras's slaying of the primordial bull. They preserved their secrets so completely that virtually no Mithraic text survives — we know the Mysteries almost entirely through the material evidence of 400+ mithraea excavated across the empire. What we see in those remains is extraordinary. What it meant, we can only partially reconstruct. Mithras Tauroctony relief — the central image of ...