It's almost summer!

Thanks for reading, and here are more addenda to Mithraism As Proud Boy Prototype: Underground Clubs of the Syndexioi and Pueri Superbi based on items I’ve read this past month, covering the following four themes: 

1) the Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘Syndexioi’, as well as Mithraic antecedents and affiliated tendencies in both Europe and Asia 

2) the self-described Western Chauvinist Proud Boys who I've referred to in Latin - the language of the Roman Empire that defined the West - as ‘Pueri Superbi’

3) the MAGA regime which emancipated both the Proud Boy rank & file and leadership and (I genuinely hope that I’m wrong on this) appears to be molding the group into the paramilitary force referred to as “Trump's army”

4) the West’s disturbing historical and cultural connections to fascism, which ties all this together

Here we go once more:

Ancient News 

There's an interesting interview at The New Mithraeum with Peter Mark Adams, author of the upcoming Ritual and Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mithras: The Secret Cult of Saturn in Imperial Rome.  Adams makes the case for connecting the tauroctony with Gilgamesh killing the Bull of Heaven (I've made the same comparison in the past), and to a figure in the ring of a Hittite monarch, and to a statue of Nike slaying the bull.  He also agrees with the late Manfred Clauss - who passed in January - that there are only three practical Mithraic grades (Corax, Nymphus and Miles), with the upper four (from Leo to Pater) being the domain of the priesthood, and with the petrogenesis symbolizing the initiate achievement of the third and defining grade.  If true, this would sync up with my comparison that most Proud Boys do not ascend beyond the third tier, leaving the upper four initiatory ranks to various populist / nationalist leadership figures both within the group and outside of it: McInnes, Tarrio, Stone and Trump.

A newly discovered Mithras relief is on display in Zeugma.  The deity’s name has also been in the news in two regards: firstly, in light of recent tensions with Pakistan over Kashmir, India, the Mitra civil defence training and disaster response has been ramping up.  Secondly, fundraising is also ongoing for a group called Friends of Mithra: the Madras Institute to Habilitate Retarded, Afflicted, which does important work despite its acronym using an extremely dated term. 

Continued Punishment

In the last issue of this newsletter discussed a pun, and I posed the possibility that there may be others.  The corona (crown) is a recursive pun, playing a role as a symbol of the Heliodromus or Sunrunner grade.  It describes our local star’s hot and outermost plasma atmosphere and represents the curved shape of the Sun along with its emanating rays of light.  It also symbolically imbues the authority of a monarch with the sun’s divine powers to grant or take life as many royal crowns are representations of the sun itself.  It’s a crown which may symbolize the sun, but also a part of the Sun itself, which looks like a crown.

Pueri Superbi Leadership 

The former Proud Boy member Juan Cadavid has taken the far-right pipeline, helping the “White Lives Matter” neo-nazi group hang a 14 words banner with near Los Angeles in 2022 and joining Patriot Front: a key player in the Active Club network.  But what of Proud Boy leadership, past and present?

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was a keynote speaker at a 2020 event organized by Christian nationalist and antisemite Nicholas Fuentes.  Fuentes recently faced battery charges for pepper spraying a woman and pushing her down the steps of his home in November 2024 and has dined with fellow antisemite Ye (Kanye West) at the White House, making McInnes and the Proud Boys one step removed from the president through channels other than just Roger Stone.  Meanwhile, current leader Enrique Tarrio briefly met Trump at Mar-a-Lago to give thanks for commuting his sentence.  Tarrio then posted a Mothers Day dedication and photo of himself and his Mom with Trump.

El Mundo del Señor TACO 

Trump recently posted as a Pater wearing a mitre (a word with possible Mithraic origins, namely from the Proto Indo-European root “*mei- "to bind, attach" (source also of Sanskrit mitra- "friend, friendship," Old Persian Mithra-, god name)”.  No disrespect to the late Francis, but much has been appropriated (a-Pope-iated?) into the Church from Mithraic or broader polytheistic sources: the Pope’s Pontificus Maximus title being a key example.  However, being the source of appropriation by MAGA is another matter.  In response to Trump’s posting, the New York State Catholic Conference wrote “Do not mock us”.  

My piece argued that Trump’s actions have embodied the characteristics of the top three initiatory levels of the syndexioi / Mithraists: Perses, Heliodromus and Pater.  In the guise of Pater he embodies all of the major personifications of the grade’s Saturn numen: grim, godfatherly, timely, abundant and strangely interested in the killing of babies.  In a similarly cruel fashion, Trump has called for for 20,000 new officers to aid deportations.  Where’s he going to get 20,000 new ICE officers?  Perhaps by hiring members of a certain violent and xenophobic men's group?  Getting rid of habeas corpus will certainly make it easier to detain and deport immigrants, if the deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is to be believed.

Ogling a Third Term

Congressman Andy Ogle wants to amend the constitution to give Trump a third term in order to “correct the disastrous course set by the Biden administration”, having already “broken the chains of DEI by eliminating federal programs”, while Shane Trejo - former chair of the Michigan 11th Congressional District Republican Committee and former co-host of the “Blood Soil and Liberty” podcast - stated that “Trump is the Caesar figure that America has needed.” with his Third Term Project.

History May Rhyme, but it’s Not Always an Exact Rhyme.

Finally, Naomi Klein¹  recently pointed out how “often a lot of the discourse on Trump and fascism tends to look backwards and just assume that everything that we’re seeing now has happened before. So there’s kind of like a checklist around like, “OK, well, Mussolini did this,” or “Hitler did this and they’re doing it.”  And you’re there with your checklist waiting for attacks on the courts, attacks on universities, creating an out group. But the danger of that is that we don’t see what is actually new about our moment in history.”   

Well, that’s it for this month.  See you in July, and in summer!

1  Klein and I had mutual friends and crossed paths about a dozen times in mid-1990’s Toronto.  She was always extremely nice to me as was her husband, who I once briefly worked for.  I thought the The Shock Doctrine was prescient, and I’m happy for her literary and journalistic success, but I differ from her on one particular contemporary geopolitical issue.