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>>42531186
Now, going back over these:
>Saturn
A father of Zeus fulfilling a similar function, but arguably distinct as an archetype and principle.
>Vesta
Seems to function as a basic prerequisite for primitive life and thus merely symbolizes the continuity of the state.
>Magna Mater / Cybele
We already have Venus, which can be compared to Isis, Ishtar, and perhaps Cybele. I'm hesitant to say how distinct they really are, but it's worth mentioning that Cybele is from Anatolia, which is also where we said Mithras came from. Cybele had a much older presence in Rome, so that's interesting.
>Sol Invictus
Some say it's the same as Elgabalus, the sun god from Emesa in Syria, which produced an emperor of the same name who was famously bad. Not Anatolian it would seem, but eastern. Elgabalus was also worshipped as a meteorite, like Magna Mater, which is interesting
>Mithras
Now we are back to the subject at hand. Mithras lacks a clear equivalent anywhere in the Roman pantheon, even though it is associated with a few (eg, Mars because soldiers also followed Mithras). I would like to know if Mithras relates to Cybele. That would have a common Anatolian connection, and Sol Invictus could be brought in if we understand Mithras to be the hidden aspect of the sun, which is how Zoroastrians placed him I believe.

Being a hidden aspect of the sun, I think Mithras represents secrecy. Being something that so many people loved, I think represents a very important secret that brings peace upon knowing it. Something kinda fundamental to self-identity. Probably philosophical and sometimes drug-related, right?

Now, what else in Rome represents anything like that? I neglected to mention Bacchus earlier. I guess he's just a random "god of wine", right? But he was banned as part of a conspiracy around 186 BC. Sure that conveys some significance?

>>42531186
Wow a lot of responses to the jesus-mithraism- emanationism posts.
I'll give in depth responses later when I'm home to those.
For now I'd like to respond to the op questions
>We can say that Mithraism was popular in Rome, particularly after a certain date and particularly with a certain class of people. That doesn't mean it simply was the most important Roman god overall. I'm also not even saying Mithras is inherently a "Roman" god (as we established, it clearly isn't), but we probably wouldn't be talking about it right now if Mithras didn't go into Rome.
So, mithras is absolutely not a Roman specific god. But he WAS adopted into Rome.
Mithras as a deity was popular among the indo-iranians. His solar connections are through his mother aditi, with his primary happenstance being Rta, pacts, and all waters. Especially deep ones.

He's got some connections to the magic & speculative aspects of sovereignity as well. On the Iranian side, he's primarily worshipped for his solar, friendship & pacts aspect. This is especially due to the zoroastrians being a solar religion in nature.

Now, the reason why mitra became adopted into rome is simple. It's because rome was a republic (later empire) made up of many people. Romans had no issue worshipping foreign gods in the ultimate sense, they saw it as a power move infact to do so. Adopting mitra and forming pacts with and through him strengthens the romans in their POV.
>I would argue that, in the long run, each of these unique principles or forces may become its own independent trade with a guild system, causing them to be split apart from each other and given independent temples.
There were gods for just about everything in rome. Guilds would adopt a specific god in context to their craft and business.

>>42531217
Or perhaps it is not that drugs are not the sole centerpiece, but the power of drugs on the masses is as powerful as almost any ideology (and thus, one ought to be careful of both).

Let's go back to the meaning and purpose of "temples" so we're imagining the right things in our minds. In an era of bicameral minds, there is no functional difference between thought and worship, or between god metaphor and god literal. We dig up the remains of ancient buildings with iconography on them, and we hilariously slap on this psychology that mimics our Christian way of thinking today. Even though I am saying they "worshipped" these gods in a sense, it makes all the difference that they didn't simply see any of these gods as all-powerful. They saw them as forces to interact with.

It seems as though people by the Roman times were already losing their bicameral minds because they were becoming literate and therefore capable of refining their thoughts with symbols (also leading to symbolic logic, the prerequisite for math). However, they had no alternative way of explaining the world and thus held onto the temples of the gods. I'm sure levels of superstition varied greatly.

1. A temple is just a building with a name.
2. The most prolific and powerful buildings in all ancient civilizations can be tracked to understand how the civilization was ran.
3. Any changes in the importance of gods represents some sort of large change in that civilization. Maybe a change in faction or in philosophy.
4. Mithras seems to most clearly represent a change in power in Rome, but it seems almost like a rejuvenation of the Bacchus cult which the state had previously shutdown as part of a conspiracy to grow the empire.
5. Mithras may not directly be Bacchus, but they both bring mind-altering drugs to the people and cause change. They're not so much "orgiastic" as one book on Mithras put it, but they are gnostic.

>>42531237
>a solar religion in nature
This would seem to derive from a similar concept as the pantheon of the 8 or 12. It's probably emanationism that would try to say that if the sun is the ultimate power on earth, then all forces in nature derive from it. Thus, the sun is the real seat of the Zodiac.

I think it might also be that the solar religion is a genuinely distinct cosmology. It doesn't take much of an imagination to think of primitive man looking up at the sun and valuing it.

>>42531237
We see this happen still in Asia, where businesses and unions will pay homage to a god that's favourable to their work. In the west, this tradition continues - though mostly in the black market, through saints and demons.

Mystery schools in the Mediterranean-levant do this for an entirely different reason than guilds. Some deities are unique in origin to the mystery schools, others are not and were adopted in.
>Saturn (a pretty important god in the ancient world, and it also held the Roman treasury while the patricians ruled — Julius Caesar seized it for the state during the civil war)
- Vesta - the sacred fire
- Magna Mater / Cybele (Galli priests, black meteorite stone)
- Sol Invictus
- Mithras

Some of these (including mithras) are great displays of what I said before. Rome adopted gods of other communities and tribes readily. They only ever really suppressed another religion if they saw it as some sort of legitimate danger to Rome. Especially after the decline of the republic & rise of the empire.

If you pay attention to each of these gods, you'll notice the exact political implications for WHY they were adopted in. Especially given the nature of the pax deorum.
>>42531217
>Now, what else in Rome represents anything like that? I neglected to mention Bacchus earlier. I guess he's just a random "god of wine", right? But he was banned as part of a conspiracy around 186 BC. Sure that conveys some significance?
Bacchus-Dionysus was another deity that had been adopted in. Hes thracian in origin. He does have dominion over wine, but his cult-mystery tradition revolves around the cultivation of wisdom that can drive you insane. He's the god of escstatic experience and the wisdom (or madness) that comes from that.

Thus wine becomes one of his springs.

He was also associated with death and rebirth through the orphist cult specifically, which may or may not have tacit connections to Indian religions.

>>42531241
I think Cybele is the most interesting god to look at in contrast with Mithras. Cybele had the Taurobolium (baptism by bull blood), but Mithras is also literally slaying the bull in his scene. They also rose to prominence in Rome at roughly the same time, even though Cybele was there earlier.

Should we look at these as two arms of the same organization, or two organizations with similar form doing the most important (secretive) stuff to running a state?

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There's one more thing I want to put out there before I have to run, but I will be back within a couple hours.

I think the Mercury/Hermes cult isn't just a school of writing. It's a school of language and meaning itself. I think the Trivium and Quadrivium is a good way of explaining this relation. Letter systems (consonants and vowels; symbols taken from ancient drawings) sit next to musical systems (tonic scales) and anatomical systems (places where the sound might originate in speech).

If this relates to any gnostic concepts, which it does when most creation stories are simultaneously creating a cosmology AND a language for people to use from it (like ancient Shakespeares), it might even be fair to say that Mithras's closest relation is Mercury.

>>42531266
It's possible. Worth looking at.
>>42531249
>This would seem to derive from a similar concept as the pantheon of the 8 or 12. It's probably emanationism that would try to say that if the sun is the ultimate power on earth, then all forces in nature derive from it. Thus, the sun is the real seat of the Zodiac.
Emanationism would say something of that nature. You had three forces in ancient paganisms that held an emanationist model that would be clocked as the "ultimate" force.

1. The sun
2. The moon
3. Time

In the mystery schools of Roman territory, the fourth option of Mind came into being once the people were able to focus on things other than survival. This is where we get into platonism & orphism

Understanding the makeup of emanationism isn't too difficult if you understand historical vedic religion as a contrasting phenomenon.

>I think it might also be that the solar religion is a genuinely distinct cosmology. It doesn't take much of an imagination to think of primitive man looking up at the sun and valuing it.
It's important to remember that these weren't truly "primitive" people.
Where we are right now, due to Christianity, we look backwards and give an overlay of barbarist-primitivism to the ancients.
(Cont)

>>42531298
Sorry, not to say that Mithras IS Mercury. I meant that maybe Mercury in its pantheon plays the same ultimate role as Mithras in its pantheon. God's messenger and the hidden aspect of the sun are doing quite similar things. How the force of consciousness is represented in your cosmology may be a key distinction across civilizations.

>>42531302
But they weren't stupid, they didn't just think things without reason or cause. This is part of my issue with the theory of the bicameral mind, I think it assumes things in the wrong direction.

It's true they saw value in the sun, but they incorporated it into their mystery religions for a good reason. They had a developing logic on transformative states (meditative, ecstatic experience, etc) and were creating or finding correspondence between one thing vs the other.

Solar gods become popular due to the culture of rome as much as because meditation causes experiences of light to occur.

Astrological religions are popular in early pagan religions for a few reasons. But we can boil it down to a kind of "space bound" feng-shui. I can elaborate more in that if desired.

>>42531306
>But they weren't stupid, they didn't just think things without reason or cause.
Perhaps they did, but the only thing wrong with the assumption is the reduction of this into a binary. It's not that you are or are not bicameral. It is degrees of delusion. It is even the force of delusion, if we acknowledge that the highest purpose of consciousness is to delude itself. (This is a very twisted knot at the core of gnostic understanding, in my opinion.)

>>42531241
>Or perhaps it is not that drugs are not the sole centerpiece, but the power of drugs on the masses is as powerful as almost any ideology (and thus, one ought to be careful of both).
Drugs DID occur in Mediterranean religions, but for similar reason as to other paganisms across the world.

We need to remember - these folks were extremely "embodied" civilizations. This is a period of time BEFORE orthodoxy as a concept came into existence. What mattered to them was a concept of "correct practice".

Because they were embodied, not dissociating like we are today, they were capable of causing psychosomatic experiences to arise. Quite readily, infact, and to great extent.

Drugs were an extension of this. Wine, gasses, etc. these were used to induce ecstatic states for the practitioners & priests, so they could easily commune with the spirits and conduct business. When pagan cultures got a handle on transformative states without entheogens, they tend to abandon them except for specific medicinal rites. Cross compare vedic & meso American "medicine' rituals for clear insight on this.

We've forgotten all of this greatly, for a GIGANTIC amount of reasons.
>They saw them as forces to interact with.
Yep.
I mean they worshipped them, but worship then means something very different to what it means now.
Alot of relationships with spirits and deities was based on mutual respect and transactions. Mystery schools divurge from this and bring in the element of love.

Vis-a-vis temples, we had a cients who criticized them. But they did have a purpose.
That purpose was to create an IMMEDIATE psycho-somatic experience to arise in the person visiting them.

Same with statuary. It puts you into a mindful-meditative state of mind, wherein specific feelings can naturally arise. Which then fosters the experience of seeing deities, etc, with great ease.

Again, this is an embodied culture. Everything they did comes back to this. We forgot all that.

>>42531326
This is also the missing puzzle piece to Roman religion and it's incorporation into the state.

These people had varying levels of superstition, yes. But the religious world itself came out from the fact they were deeply embodied.

The bicameral mind is a deeply ironic idea, because it's actually how we modernly think in westernized cultures.

The ancients were not like this. They were fully conscious, they had a concept of self vs other.

Gods did not occur because of a bicameral mind. They occured, if anything, because these people had deeply UNIFIED minds. They didn't have a choice other than to be mindful. They were constantly in contact with every aspect of their life, for good or bad. Because they were rooted in real experience, that meant they could experience strange audio-visual & psychosomatic phenomenon. Transformative states

The realm of religion and magic became ways to navigate, understand and helpfully utilize those states here and now.

In early civilizations, this starts out with survival and family cults, but gradually moves towards wisdom instead.

>>42531186
>"For a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much like a rich man feels any law that can be enforced with a fine is but a price that can be paid to break it."

You are about to witness something so horrific that you will wish you never summoned that bastard (again) to this planet to start with.

>>42531353
Rome was a republic first, then becomes an empire later. In both circumstances, rome recognizes "oh fuck, when we do these things something actually happens."

The Republic sets up (faulty though it may be) a system to coordinate & incorporate mystic phenomenon into the fold. Ideally to prevent itself from destruction, ensure good harvests/economy & to enjoy life. Mystery schools introduce the hidden aspect of wisdom.

The empire then expands their control to try and mitigate the experience of strange phenomenon but allocate all benefits of it towards the state. This doesn't become successful until Christianity enters the fold and introduces

A) Hate for the body
B) orthodoxy.

Prior to that, Rome is figuring out ways to use mystery schools and various deities to foster it's strength and expand its territory. They were quite successful at this, because they were willing and able to use all these forces at their disposal.

The pagan politicians criticism of the new Christian empire was on alot of different fronts. But one of which was that by abandoning cults like mithraism, they had stripped important infrastructure away from the empire, causing it's decline.

They were correct about this, IMHO.

>>42531237
I have read that he might have been introduced to Rome through the Cilician pirates. They were defeated by Pompey and were allowed to settle in Roman territory. Mithras or Mitra was a very popular deity in Anatolia.

>>42531365
What happens to astrology & mystery schools like mithraism, etc, at this time, is that they become christianized, forced underground and utilized only by criminals & criminal elites.

The corrupt class of Rome that had converted to Christianity and started promoting sectarianism knew these things were effective. They just didn't want the people to have access to them. They're calling up mithras, ancestral spirits, etc behind the scenes and using it to control the state and conduct criminal enterprise. Meanwhile they kept the population in a state of 'psychic malaise' (dissociation)

What used to be free use to everyone, now becomes used only by the criminal-elite class. Saturn is demonized, but becomes supplicated by the criminal-elites to control the market and societal boundaries. Mithras becomes lucifer, but the criminal-elites use him to gain control over treaties, pacts, sovereignity (magical & material).

Non Christian civilizations still have a generally free access to magico-spiritual infrastructure, but the education on how to properly utilize it has become poorer. The further we drift away from the ancients, deeper into post-christianity, the more confused we become.

Consider all these spiritual organizations that used to exist prior as a variety of intersecting public infrastructures. Each one having their own purposes and impacts on private and public life. Got problems with the family? Go to vestia. Want transcendence? Mystery school. Healing? Doctors and their god asclepius abound. Economic and harvest worries? Saturn and the ancestor/domestic spirit cults. Want to get good at a particular interest? Guilds abound with their gods and will teach you the skills of your trade.

Want to experience true beauty? Touch something deep? Go to the sacred groves, the wild places and the temples and shrines.

(Cont)

>>42531426
So on and so forth

We are experiencing the long term psychic damage of these infrastructures being gutted, prohibited and taken over for hostile purposes.

Its the psychic equivalent of global warming. The church is the spiritual equivalent of the plastics & oil industries.

These diseases, the devastation of the world, etc, they're the outcome of the psychic damage that's been accumulating for two thousand years. Eventually it's gonna blow up.

Part of researching mithraism and it's intersecting cults should be to figure out HOW it benefitted the romans, and how it's being perverted/utilized by the criminal-elites of the modern world. If you understand what these mystery religions and cultus were doing and why, you can start a peasant rebellion and take the infrastructure back.

>>42531365
To what extent might Mithras go against the interests of the empire, and who was in the right?

After all, temples are like proto-corporations, so to project backwards our current model of a deep state, we'd be looking for rogue uber rich temples who set the stage for everything else. Not saying that's exactly what happened, but that would be the equivalent.

>>42531353
>The bicameral mind is a deeply ironic idea, because it's actually how we modernly think in westernized cultures.
Do we think differently today, or do we merely think about our thinking differently? In other words, all we have from the ancients are things they wrote down. If we translate it literally, we get differences. But if we recognize that there was a lack of not merely words and characters, but memes or literary reference to state ideas in the same way that we can today.

Perhaps the bicamerality is the growth or loss of language and knowledge itself. Fluid in its process, no final destination. Some people today are highly advanced and some people are regressing relative to only 100 years ago.

>>42531453
>to what extent
Try all of it. It's like summoning a lion into a room with another lion, or anything less than a lion. Only one thing is going to walk out, and it will be a lion.

>>42531368
That sounds right. That connects it right into indo-iranian people again. Anatolians had long term connections with indians.

>>42531460
>So who owned the machine after Caesar broke into the Temple of Saturn in 49 BCE? The RepublicEmpire transition is precisely a transfer of institutional ownership:

>#1 — The imperial household: the throne becomes the treasury. The senatorial aerarium (in Saturn's temple, run by the Senate's quaestors) was eclipsed by the emperor's own treasuries — the fiscus (imperial-province revenues), the patrimonium/res privata (the largest landholding on earth). And the emperor owned the two chokepoints: money (the gold/silver mines and the mint were imperial) and food (Egypt was the emperor's personal domain — senators forbidden to enter — and Egypt was the granary; whoever held it held the annona, the dole that kept the mob quiet). The throne didn't just capture the treasury-temple; it became the treasury and absorbed the commanding chokepoints.

>#2 — The senatorial aristocracy: the great landowners. Their wealth was land — the latifundia, slave-worked estates, plus lending. Pushed out of commerce and into land by old law, they were the agrarian-rentier aristocracy: vast, but politically subordinated and no longer collectively controlling the treasury they once ran. Old money, demoted to junior partner.

>#3 — The equestrian order: the managerial-financial operators. This is your "administrative/steward-scribe" factor, where the financial machine was actually run. The equites had been the Republic's publicani — the tax-farming corporations (the nearest thing to shareholder companies, "owning" the right to collect taxes for profit). Under the Empire this was nationalized: the emperor replaced private tax-farming with salaried equestrian procurators and staffed the great fiscal prefectures (Egypt, the annona) with them. Owners of a privatized revenue stream became salaried operators of the emperor's.

Wasn't Mithras a horse god? Should we attribute Mithras' popularity to mere legionnaires or to the culture centered around the equestrian class?

>>42531469
I think the point of the equestrian class isn't just the horses themselves (although that could express a geneology of the cult, if we go back to when the Persian king sacrificed like 100 horses in his own grave) but the idea of an officer class distinct from a warrior class. That officer class is the true ruling class of any society. If they are paid off, then that title transfers to whoever does the paying off, which in our modern case would be the military-industrial complex, whose core operation is in currency, credit, and protecting foreign markets. For much of history, it has been more naval than any other form of military. In the ancient times, this is both Phoenician and Cilician. In medieval times, it is Venetian. In our times, British and American. (Also, brief stints of Portuguese and Spanish in there, supported by the Vatican).

Shit. I normally don't take 4chan number mysticism seriously, but the digits on my last post are very fucking ominous >>42531453
>To what extent might Mithras go against the interests of the empire, and who was in the right?
Well, consider the fact that mithras establishes material AND magical sovereignty for worshippers.

For the post-christians, that's a direct challenge to the emperor and the political project of Roman empire. There's a reason mithras was powerful with the Roman soldiers. Supposing we did not see Christianity take over, we may have seen a mithraic military junta instead.

Ultimately, far as who's in the right, I side with the pagans and the worshippers.
>After all, temples are like proto-corporations
This is a Christian understanding. Temples aren't really like proto-corporations. It's hard to explain, but it's different. The access to them was open to everyone, priest or not. They were public infrastructure.

This is what made them vulnerable to the Christian terrorists acting on behalf of the criminal-elite run empire. They could just waltz in, take over and kill/destroy the place. Especially once soldier loyalty switched from Mithras to Christ.
>so to project backwards our current model of a deep state, we'd be looking for rogue uber rich temples who set the stage for everything else. Not saying that's exactly what happened, but that would be the equivalent.

Well, wouldn't say that either. There's logic to it, but it misses out some of the other issues - such as the fact that the deep state existed and it was comprised of criminal elites, not really their temples.

Once they joined ship, Christianity then became the deep state. Pagan authors in the area comment on in non stop. Even pagans outside the Mediterranean-levant, who on occasion initially have friendly relations from Christians, began to write negatively about them operating as a criminal deep state, targeting all aspects of psychic & material infrastructures.

>>42531460
>Do we think differently today, or do we merely think about our thinking differently?
We (in the west) think vastly differently in comparison.
We are extremely disembodied.
China is also like this, but it's generational difference. Old ass Chinese people experience the world like it's 40k. Post red guard are like us. YOUNG Chinese people (gen z and alpha) are living like it's 40k again (and this vexes the state to no end)

I bring up this dichotomy in China for a reason. Non westernized, non Christian cultures, are still frequently encountering and experiencing strange phenomenon, such as deities and spirits. It's quite normal for them. They're more embodied.

SOME Latin countries have this happening as well, such as mexico. But it's a little more difficult because the Catholicism in Latin world is really a folk paganism that also worships Jesus. This puts it in a tense situation with the church, which is constantly tearing at itself for control.
>Perhaps the bicamerality is the growth or loss of language and knowledge itself. Fluid in its process, no final destination. Some people today are highly advanced and some people are regressing relative to only 100 years ago
I just don't think it's an accurate measure. We have BECOME bicameral, but we have done this because we are dissociating almost 24/7.

The fact we are having this conversation entirely through the computer is great evidence of this. Look around at America and the west, people don't know why they're doing things at all. They have lost all context of continuity with their body and environment.

>>42531500
>I just don't think it's an accurate measure. We have BECOME bicameral, but we have done this because we are dissociating almost 24/7.
Isn't this just a function of language, particularly written language, and engagement with all forms of media? Are these embodied ancient Chinese people watching cartoons? Somehow, I think not. I think it is basically abstract thinking that you're referring to. I agree, it's a weird paradigm because it's both something we celebrate as a rise, and yet it also appears to be a fall in other senses. You might even say this is the continued fall from Eden.

>>42531517
Eden is a funny reference to pull in. It shows the problem.
The issue at hand isn't language through written form, when I refer to the computer. The issue is that you and I could only HAVE this conversation, especially at the length we have had it, through the computer. We are forced to engage with each other in a dissociative way on this topic.

This also contains criticism for modern internet technologies (smart phones, etc). It would be somewhat different if we were both accessing this through a desktop (something you REALLY had to *choose* to turn on and use) and in a culture that did not despise having a body and being embodied.

Again, this is not normal. Nothing about the era you and I live in, is normal. It's not normal to be constantly dissociating. Look at the way, for example, American prots speak about Jesus and God and conflating everything they think,feel or experience to him.

That's not normal. It wasn't even normal for the ancients. It's a dissociative symptom, which mimics schizophrenia. We are dissociating so often we may as well be constantly asleep.

>>42531530
As a final note before I disappear to attend to real world duties - that dissociation is also why westerners cannot and do not typically experience strange phenomenon anymore.

In order to actually see spirits, gods, etc, you need to be embodied. Some level of mindfulness is required. If things were normal, we would all of us, on average, be having sporadic contacts with strange phenomenon. Some less or more than others.

We don't have that because we are unaware of literally everything happening within and around us. The organ we use to interact with and see things depends on mindfulness, but that organ has been attrophying from lack of use.

How are you going to notice the unhappy satyr in the parking lot, when you can't even properly notice what you're feeling and why?

Has nothing to do with abstract thinking (though that is relevant). Has everything to do with the fact that all our mind is being caught up in constant, miserable, dissociation. We are disconnected from ourselves and the world around us thoroughly.

>>42531217
>a conspiracy around 186 BC.

Analysis: https://themetropole.blog/2026/04/16/the-night-city-of-the-bacchanalian-conspiracy/
>This response has led scholars to read the scandal as a reflection of the state’s anxiety about unsanctioned urban organizations.

>>42531482
the age of war is ran by the men born of ash trees the ash kin nazis

>>42531540
Super interesting posts. Going to read them carefully. Thank you

>>42531588
nordic israelism slop, shoo christian.

>>42531530
Another way to avoid disassociation is to walk around in public a lot and bring your work with you. It doesn't completely prevent it, but it will break up your longer spurts into shorter spurts, and I think this makes for a dramatically better mental health when you have nothing else better to be doing. I think people live overly rigid lives which fundamentally causes the desire to disassociate.

>>42531999
>nordic israelism slop, shoo christian.
explain your logic
]

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Does anyone else see the dragon, or is it just me?