Welcome back. Quite an intense few weeks it’s been!
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:
I) the Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘Syndexioi’, as well as Mithraic antecedents and affiliated tendencies in Europe, Asia and North Africa
II) 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’
III) the MAGA regime which emancipated the Proud Boy rank & file and leadership and appears headed on a horrible trajectory towards funding the group to the tune of $100 million and turning it into the paramilitary force referred to as “Trump's army”
IV) the tragic emergence and perseverance of fascism from the history and culture of the West, which ties all of this together
I didn’t know that there was an Indiana Jones video game series; my favourite game is Lode Runner, a 2D platform game from 1983, so I’m a bit out of the loop when it comes to the genre. It makes sense that an Indi game exists given the franchise’s durability, the acting success of Harrison Ford, and considering the popularity of the Tomb Raider franchise, plus let’s face it, Laura Croft is a gender-swapped continuum of the Indi ideal type. In any case, the latest iteration of this Nazi-punching game: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s DLC The Order of Giants, features a Mithraeum element.
Some Feedback for Your Substack
I recently came across a history, religion & politics Substack that delves into the syndexioi / Mithraists quite a bit, one that is admittedly better written, researched and produced than this sorry blog you’re currently reading. It utilizes AI art, but is tastefully done with a subdued line-drawing feel, and includes many formal academic references. It contains many references to Plato, whose Rhetoric was an immensely useful read, still holds up, and I doubt that anyone’s written an improvement in all this time. I’ve read Politics and The Last Days of Socrates, though not since high school and an undergrad philosophy course respectively.
Respect to Plato; we’re living in a very different world now, but to some degree it’s one that was created by many of his intellectual frameworks, including his cave analogy, which presumably the syndexioi / Mithraists were aware of since they were such exemplars of it. Though Plato may have contributed to the perseverence of formalized slavery and legalized child abuse by not using his great influence to rid his society of these practices, he only bears one drop in the bucket of collective responsibility for these original sins. Aside from that whopper of a caveat, I enjoyed reading the numerous back issues before noticing a pattern:
There are lots of references to Nietzsche. This is fine, not my bag, but he’s a respectable western philosopher, for whatever that’s worth. I read Thus Spake and The Antichrist in high school and Beyond Good and Evil as part of an undergrad political philosophy course. The aphorism style of writing was both inspiring (“if a syphilitic lunatic can get published maybe I can too!”) and confusing (“why do people take this elitist’s rants so seriously?”) Still, it’s not Nietzsche I’m opposed to, nor his religious critique (I quite concur), it’s certain people who misappropriated him nearly a century ago: people that Nietzsche himself did not support.
The fascination with obscure pockets of “Indo-European” people living in rural Pakistan practicing a living form of polytheism in contrast with the surrounding Islam. Ok, that does seem interesting, but at the same time why such fascination with these particular people and not their darker-skinned neighbours?
Spengler (the weirdo “everything is a cycle” quasi-historian, not the Harold Ramis Ghostbusters character), perennialism and traditionalism. I can respect indigenous perspectives on the cyclic nature of reality, that’s completely fine. To some degree I can even respect a cyclic framework of history from a quasi-historian, even if it’s not an empirically correct one. I don’t have any issue with perennialism per se, I just think that the answer to the query is animism: the root and origin of all human spiritual pursuits (though I’m not a practicing animist). It’s good to learn about other faiths and forms of spirituality, as well as non-spirituality, and tradition (broadly speaking) can be a good thing.
When you put all of these pieces together, especially with the final element of the Substack’s focus on self-described “super-fascist” Julius Evola thrown in, you arrive at the views of someone who is either a fan of Steve Bannon, or of fascism, or both. Evola was a syndexioi / Mithras-worship advocate, the first chapter of Evola’s Heidnischer Imperialismus came out a few months after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, and it refers to “the tradition of the Aryans of Iran, which arose in the form of the warrior cult of Mithra, the avatâra of the ancient Aryan god of the luminous sky, the “Ruler of the Sun,” the “Slayer of the Bull,” the hero with torch and axe, the symbol of the reborn “through power,” whom a syncretistic but no less significant myth likens to the Hyperborean god of the Golden Age”. Anyone into Evola - the poster child of neo-fascist terror - is too disturbing for my taste, so I won’t be naming, linking or recommending this Substack here. I moved away from that platform in the first place because it was too welcoming of white supremacists, so I still read anything from there with an extra dose of scepticism.
Religion as Politics, Politics as Religion and Another Death Cult
Although I’m not suggesting a causal connection, on a purely symbolic level the September 10th assassination of Christian nationalist pundit and fundraiser Charlie Kirk and the assassination’s immediate aftermath fulfilled multiple parallels with the seven-runged Mithraic initiatory ladder and its ubiquitous affiliated imagery:
Corax (crow) / Mercury
Kirk’s accused shooter wore an eagle on his shirt, likely to blend in with the crowd and appear as a regular patriotic American, and there’s no evidence at this point suggesting he was anything but a regular patriotic American since he came from a Republican-voting gun-toting family. The Eagle is an American symbol and is sacred to numerous indigenous peoples of the Americas, but has more of a cultural legacy via the Roman Aquila to the eagle symbols of the Roman Empire’s derivative national powers, featured to this day on the flags of Albania, Serbia, Moldova and Egypt, and on many local, regional and national heraldic crests, though originally a syndexioi/Mithraic-affiliated symbol of the sky god Caelus.
There’s an affinity between the syndexioi/Mithraists and the Aquila by virtue of its use as a military standard and the high rate of military members amongst the cult’s membership, but the eagle is nonetheless quite distinct from the crow in both form and function. As symbol of the messenger god Mercury, the crow grade parallels the accused shooter’s desire to “send a message”, be it revenge for the anti-trans and anti-gay messaging of Kirk’s Turning Point enterprise and of MAGA more broadly, and as physically inscribed on the bullet casings with trolling messages referring to the video game Helldiver 2. As the messenger god, Mercury is also the patron deity of social media, and in the case of this shooting the platform of choice was Discord.
Nymphus (male bride) / Venus
This grade could apply to the tradwife, girlboss and now Turning Point CEO Erica Kirk, late bride and wife of Charlie who in his role as her potential boss propositioned her during a job interview, which would - under normal circumstances - be considered an act of workplace sexual harrasment.
This grade could describe the question asked of Charlie Kirk - about a minute before he was shot - regarding the number of American mass shooters who are trans (in case you were wondering, the number pales in comparison to the number who are cisgender: 1 (0.5%) trans person compared to 196 (97.5%) cisgender men and 4 (2%) cisgender women). It could also describe the alleged shooter's relationship to his trans female partner, or potentially describe the "If you read this, you are gay lmao” joke inscribed on one of the bullet casings.
Miles (soldier) / Mars
The mother of the alleged assassin had been photographed holding military-grade weaponry and it appears as though much of the family was well-trained in weapons usage and/or had a military background. In his September 21st Arizona memorial speech, Jack Posobiec told mourners to put on “the full armour of God”, an Ephesians 6:10 reference which itself derives from Saul/Paul’s experience of imprisonment by Roman soldiers.
At the memorial there was frequent description of Kirk as a martyr. Though there’s no etymological connection that I’ve found between the actual word ‘martyr’ and the name of the war god Mars, there’s certainly a strong connection between martyrdom and war itself, as it takes a certain willingness to be injured or killed and to potentially cause injury and death towards soldiers and civilians in order to either volunteer for military service or allow oneself to be conscripted. White House deputy chief of staff for policy and U.S. homeland security advisor Stephen Miller’s threatening “victory in his name” speech made allusion to Rome and to warriors; his statement that “they cannot conceive of the army they have awakened” similarly utilized martial symbolism. Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth both used warrior metaphors at the memorial, and various speakers pointed out how Kirk had originally hoped to attend Westpoint, the famed U.S. military academy (but did not mention that after Kirk’s rejection he blamed "a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion”).
Leo (lion) / Jupiter
Kirk was certainly lionized by Trump at the September 21st Arizona memorial: a genuine Hagiographical spectacle in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slipped up and confused Kirk with Christ; Trump’s campaign may not have eked by without Turning Point support in fundraising and get-out-the-vote outreach, especially among Trumpjugend demographics. More significantly, the “Notices bulge, OwO What's This?” furry meme inscribed on the bullet casing by the alleged shooter was misunderstood by conservatives as a trans reference instead of a trolling meme. Though the furry subculture may have its origin in generations of children exposed from birth to an abundance of anthropomorphic cartoon and fable animals, plushies, stuffies, and other comfort surrogates, breakfast cereal icons, corporate logos and sports mascots, it may also represent something much more primordial. The earliest human cave drawings feature therianthropic human-beast hybrids, perhaps reflecting the neolithic human desire to become one with the creatures they hunt (or are hunted by), or perhaps to reflect reverence upon the predator/prey cycle. Furries are nothing new; humans have dressed like animals for millenia. Gilgamesh and Heracles both went about in the skin of the lion as a method of symbolically adopting the ferocity of this beast, but in more practical terms, feathers and fur are warm and feel nice: the syndexioi/Mithraists knew this instinctively.
Perses (Persian) / Moon
Kirk was assassinated three days after the September 7-8 blood moon; this was coincidental, and regardless the blood moon was much more visible in the rest of the world than in North America. However, Utah Governor Cox did express some quickly quashed hope that it would be a foreigner and not a local who committed the assassination. It’s always easier to scapegoat someone from far away: immigrant, refugee, trans, leftist, anti-fascist, etc. than someone who is central to the culture and a bellwether of our contemporary chronically-online lives. The Romans likewise othered the Persians and fought against them, but also held a fascination with them bordering on obsession; the Mithraic order features this grade as a homage to them, as does the Mithraic ‘Nama’ greetings found inscribed in the Santa Prisca Mithraeum. Today Persia’s successor state Iran is one of the primary beneficiaries from the internal strife taking place in the U.S., something that, from an outside perspective, unfortunately appears as a looming civil war.
Heliodromos (Sunrunner) / Sun
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab the Sun has unexpectedly become increasingly active when it should be in a lull. Kirk’s assassination occurred in sunny Utah. The sun itself is the turning point of our solar system, what our planet and all our neighbour planets revolve around, and Turning Point is also the name of Kirk’s cult of personality created with Tea Party and Koch brothers’ money and expertise. Kirk was driven to the site of his assassination in a car and not a chariot like the sun god Helios, but he was certainly described in Apollonian terms as a true golden boy, including in the right-leaning Sun tabloid chains in the U.K. and Canada. The September 14 memorial in Washington D.C. and the September 21 memorial in Arizona both took place on Sundays, due to the utility and practicality of being the Christian days of worship and part of our collective weekend and also a day with a far longer pre-Christian solar-worshipping history.
The Arizona memorial occurred on the final day of summer, before the Autumn Equinox began, when the Sun appeared directly above the equator and when the plane of Earth's equator passed through the geometric centre of the Sun's disk, ending astronomical summer, and midway between summer and winter solstices when the Sun is farthest from above the equator.
“We will defend beauty and light”, Stephen Miller promised, making use of the conventional Manichean metaphors and ascribing Apollonian virtues towards the deceased Mr. Kirk, upon whom the sun has finally set.
Pater: Father / Saturn
The accused assassin’s own dad turned him in; the FBI only bungled the case and had to release those they had falsely accused. This is indicative of the father’s overriding loyalty to Daddy Trump and to patriotism over and beyond any familial bonds, despite heartland MAGA members’ pretense of valuing the family.
Strangely - or perhaps fittingly - Charlie Kirk’s own father Robert Kirk was Project Architect for Trump Tower in New York City.
Standing Back or Coming to the Forefront?
Will they ‘stand back and stand by’ as Trump directed them to do after Charlottesville? It remains to be seen if Attorney General Pam Bondi will reign them in and get them to drop their lawsuit or if they will succeed in extracting U.S. taxpayer money in order to rebuild their movement. Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio has spoken up about the censorship of the left, though at this point he justifies it as revenge, arguing that MAGA Has Figured Out How to ‘Play Dirty’. In October 2021 PDX Proud Boys surrounded and intimidated the press outside a Eugene, Oregon Turning Point USA event with Proud Boys seeming to act as event security, so they have been keeping an eye on Charlie Kirk for some time and will likely find ways to capitalize off the power vacuum following his death. Some two dozen Proud Boys even patrolled Kirk's Arizona memorial.
Now Tarrio is putting the onus on the government to act, stating that “the FBI and DHS are a lot nicer than we are. So shut the fuck up and clean your city up. You won’t like it when the B team pulls up”, offering for his followers to do what the government is unwilling to do in paramilitary form. Miami Proud Boys have gone so far as to advocate the lynching of antifascists.
MAGA and TPUSA: Who’s the Dog and Who’s the Tail?
The MAGA regime was fully intertwined with and depended upon Charlie Kirk, who bragged about “sending 80+ buses full of Patriots to DC to fight for this president” for the January 6th coup (though he only succeeded in sending seven busloads of insurrectionists). Kirk, in his final podcast episode (unbeknown to him at the time), expressed typical false claims in addition to anti-black racism when he advocated increased incarceration of African-Americans, which would partially explain the overwhelming percentage of white attendees at his memorial, as would Turning Point’s exclusively white 86-member board of directors and advisory council and an overwhelmingly white staff which does feature the African-American antisemite Candice Owens.
Kirk confused arrests with convictions, equated arrests with guilt, ignored the over-policing of Black communities, the higher frequency of Black people being stopped by the police, the higher rates of wrongful convictions and the higher rates of poverty as a causal factor in crime. Former national field director Crystal Clanton - TPUSA’s second-highest official for five years - once texted “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story” to another TPUSA employee.
Kirk’s death sparked calls for civil war and violent retribution against political opponents and was followed by announcement that statues of Charlie Kirk will be erected on campus, reminiscent of the hero-worship practices of some of the world’s worst dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.
Beneath the banner of the Turning Point hakenpfeil (hooked arrow) logo at the Arizona memorial, Tucker Carlson - both dogwhistling and displaying cognitive dissonance - suggested that “humus eating” Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus, even though Jesus was a Jew and according to Christian theology was required to die to redeem humanity of sin. Trump has threatened to deploy troops to Portland and authorized them to use 'full force’, designated grassroots and decentralized antifascist collectives as "domestic terrorist organizations”: an extension of the blame hoisted upon them for the January 6th Capitol riots before the right turned and took credit for this event once it was politically expedient to do so, and all despite right wing terror attacks drastically outpacing those by left. In a move crazier than anything I could have previously imagined in my worst paranoid dystopian nightmares, Trump now plans to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” and to activate the NSPM-7 national security directive to target pre-crime America. In case you missed it, by “these dangerous cities”, he’s talking about American cities: Los Angeles, Washington, Portland, Chicago and New York. Everyone other than MAGA is now officially antifa.
Well folks, that’s all for now. See you in a few weeks when all the world’s problems will have been worked out and everyone’s living in peace and harmony and we all get as much ice cream for dessert as we like.
