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/lit/ - Literature

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23100226 No.23100226 [Reply] [Original]

What are the best books on the cult of Mithras? Books on other initiatic cults are welcome too
>inb4 just Google
i want your expert opinion, i dont want to waste my money on garbage books.

>> No.23100865

Come on /lit/ i demand an answer

>> No.23101046

>>23100226
Unfortunately, there are basically none.
The Mithraic mysteries are largely forgotten. Few documents remain, among them a single incomplete ritual where the materials used are not known (For specific herbs, no modern translation has been discerned. They may be extinct species.)

Its just an aspect of history we don't have many remnants of.

>> No.23101062
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23101062

Romans and Greeks wrote about them in excerpts. What would you like to know OP?

Secondary sources suck absolute ass. You're going to have to delve into classics btw.

>> No.23101087

>>23101062
Anything, really

>> No.23101096

>>23101087
Your best bet is probably to look for books on ancient mystery religions in general, with a healthy section on Mithraism.
Mithraism itself just isn't documented well enough to fill out an entire book. Other than reading the classical second-hand sources, which is probably your best bet as that's literally all we have and any books about it would just be rehashing that or pure speculation, basically nothing survives.

>> No.23101106

>>23101096
>Other than reading the classical
>second-hand sources

If you wrote a book about Islam and Scientology, today, would you be a primary or secondary?

>> No.23102119

Interesting thread with an awful choice of an image. Nevertheless, https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/literary_sources.htm

>> No.23102405

>>23100226
Not an Evolafag, but he wrote a short book on it which isn't bad

>> No.23102480

>>23102119
what are you some kind of freak? we don't cotton to chomskyhonks around these parts. scram

>> No.23102485

>>23100226
Nothing that isn't mostly speculation mixed with some fragmentary historical anecdotes. Nothing much tangible survives of most similar ancient traditions

>> No.23102493
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23102493

>The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
>picrel
Start with these.