I seem to recall one of my Latin teachers mentioning that Mithras' birthday was December 25th (hence why Christians chose that day to celebrate Christmas), but that seems a minor point, if it's even true.

Have you tried the Wikipedia?

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Was Mithras actually a person? From what I've read, the closest he is to an actual person was a possibly basis for him in the various Mithridates'.

Not all of Wikipedia is useless, as long as they provide citations/links.

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I thought the Mithradatii were named after Mithra, not Mithras...weren't several of the Mithradatii around before Mithraism was actually formed? Or perhaps I'm thinking of before it was first practiced by Romans. I wonder what a world with Mithraism as the major religion would be like.

I agree that Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a research source for major works. But the good thing about it being so popular is that there is such an amount of people there that, at least for most "mainstream" topics (which, given the amount of people who participate, is quite large) any errors are usually pretty quickly fixed.

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I was under the impression that Mithra was his female aspect, as many ancient near-eastern dieties had a consort/wife or female form. Had not found concrete data on this, but a couple passing references in books a while back.

Oh, you wanna see butchered? Try taking Persian names, putting them INTO JAPANESE and THEN back into English! I.E. "The Heroic Legend of Arislan/Arslan/Arusuraaan/Arsuran". Entertaining watching if you like anime and you like your pretty, but a bit baffling when you explain to someone else that, yes, this IS supposed to take place in ancient Persia in about the year 300, and has about the same amount of history and cultural authenticity thrown in as trying to get a picture of, say, Druidism and the Saxons from Arthurian legend.

From that you get one Pharangese, ::cough:: paladin ::cough:: priestess of the goddess Mizra.

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Are you sure that Mithra and Mithras are the same person? I've seen sources that state otherwise. But who knows, I very well might be wrong.

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Considering the history of Western dominance... Similar to ours in a lot of ways; different in others. Masculine focus. Polarized. Difficulty with grey ideas/boundaries. Ideas of heirarchy that reinforce the status quo.

A lot of the mythology and iconography was hijacked by Christians. So was the dualism between good/evil: it isn't in Judaism.

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All I know about early Judaism is that in a "Highlander" episode he says that the Jews adopted the concepts of good/bad and demons from Zoroastrianism...and as much as I like the show, I questions its accuracy form time to time. ;)

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All I really remember is having been raised by Jehovah's Witnesses they banned Christmas (like everything else) as pagan and actually one of several solar festivals occuring about that time adopted by the early church.

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But wasn't Mithra/Mithraic worship connected with the Sun? I know that no emperors were "officially" Mithraic, but it seems to me that a soldier who campaigned in the East, like Aurelian, might have adopted it. Hence, in a roundabout way, there might be a connection.

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So, that's what i've heard about Mithra, but saddly i'm not a proper historian, so it essentially come from bad occultism books and other doubtfull sources...
Mithra was a solar masculine divinity from the ancient persia (prezoroastrian), which generaly take the apearance a a bull. His cult was celebrated in lil caverns (sory, i'm french, so the vocable can seems strange) : this was a mysteries religions, it mean with symbolical and ritualised scenes, in the same way as the mysteries of Eleusis. There was a strong relationship with the blood : the iniated was immerged in the blood of a bull. I remember me something about a scale, with 7 steps, each one in a different metal (this last thing seems more like an occultist legend than an historic fact, i dont think that babylonian was using complicated alliages).
There is a lot of books which speak about Mithra...

Uh, two last "exciting" things about it : it seems that the roman empire was hesiting between adopting christiantiy or Mithraism...
And I've heard of some "pre-neoplatonicians" (lol) around the fall of constantinople, coming back to the mithriac rituals.
And, last but not least, wine brotherhood, in france, which are based on some more or less copy of masonic rituals, begin to incorpore mithraic elements at the end of the 19th century.

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