The Cult of Mithras | Secret Societies 1 | Roman History | Extra History

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Fun fact about the cult of Pythagoras: they were allegedly so put off by irrational numbers that you weren't even told about their existence until you made it to the higher tiers. edit for some context: These guys lived in a world where all math was based on geometry and modern algebra was well more than a millennia away. In that respect, the idea of a number that you couldn't measure with a ruler and a compass being some kind of abomination isn't THAT silly.

Man, I'd love it if in some ancient text somewhere, someone who was denied membership to one of these cults wrote out the ancient Roman equivalent of "Why won't those stupid idiots let me in their crappy club for jerks?" lol.

Funnily enough, I begin my Vampire: the Masquerade campaign tonight, and the Cult of Mithras play a huge role in the lore of that game

Who controls the British crown?~ Who keeps the metric system down?~ We do, we do~

Fun fact: the Dionysian cult was chthonic (focusing on gods and rituals relating to death) and discussed wine as a metaphor for death and rebirth.

The spectrum between what we know today as Organized Religions, Occult Rituals, gentleman's clubs, labor/trade unions/guilds, fraternal orders, and insurance companies is such a fascinating area of history. Not quite fully religious, not quite fully political, not quite fully social, and not quite fully economic, but including aspects of all. It's something that doesn't really compute for us in our thoroughly modern contemporary culture.

the scorpion giving the bull the clamp is such a bizarre detail lol

One of my favourite places to visit is the London Mithreum! Its an awesome underrated and free place to visit. They use lights and fog to rebuild the temple, it is breathtaking.

AFAIK the oldest secret society known was the cult of Ceres and Persephone at Eleusis, from where the word "mystery" as commonly used stems ( a "mystery" was originally just a religious rite based on an event of its founding mythos, but since theirs were the ones whose existence was the most well-known, while also being the most unknown, it ended with its current meaning).

I was about to ask who the pater of the EC society was, but then I realized it's Zoey. Of course it's Zoey.

I remember how Raised by Wolves had Mithraism take Christianity's place and thinking how unrealistic it was. Christianity's whole strength was in NOT being a secret society with elite membership. If Mithraism was to spread the way Christianity did it would have had to reorganize significantly.

0:52 IS THAT THE FIRST FULL ARM EVER DRAWN??

God I've been obsessed with Mithras and his cult for so long, so glad yall are doing a video on it! I hope there will be mentions of Sol Invictus and the Tauroctony

Mithras (well, the ghosts of his worshippers) appeared briefly in Mark of Athena, a book in the Percy Jackson series

Please do the Greek war of independence of 1821 against the ottoman empire next I've been asking for this since the first episodes of the sengoku Jidai!!

How can there be a series on "secret societIES", plural? Aren't all these groups just subsets of the Order of Assassins in their endless, globe- and history-spanning battle to keep alien artifacts out of the hands of the Knights Templar?

Real talk - LOVE THIS! You need to tackle the Eleusinian Mysteries!!

I hope yinz cover the Hermetic Orders of the 20th century, such as The Golden Dawn

There's actually one possible missing link that could explain the noticeable discrepancy and evolution of Mithras and that is the royal cult of Mithras in Commagene and later Pontus, it's actually interesting how the Persianate religions of the areas adopted the elements of Zoroastrian religions that most fitted their scaled-down versions of the Persian imperial cult often focusing on the role of the king as an enactor of the law of Mazda, the Heavenly God's master of armies and champion, a role that was taken in the Heaven by Mitra quite often. In synthesis, Azura Mazda gives unto Mitra the solemn duty of enacting his will and Mitra gives unto the emperor his solemn duty to enact his, it's basically a martial hierarchy based on vows of loyalty and pledges of allegiance, something Mitra is the god of, something that is important for a king and his generals and "vassals". At times the more esoteric and difficult to grasp Asura Mazda was simply dropped as what was important to the royal cult was the idea of Mitra as a god that fights evil and upholds the cosmic order, duties he can then entrust to the king as his earthly aid de camp thus giving him a heavenly mandate. It's an interesting theory one that I would say holds water