Brideman of Mithras

The second grade elevated the initiate to the Bridegroom or Nymphus. For this, as an element of ritual transvestitism and initiatory humiliation, he wore a bridal veil (which hid away his face, hence another name for this grade was Kryphios-Cryfios, the Hidden) or even dressed in female attire, and he was joined in a mystical marriage to the Father under the patronage of the planet Venus-Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who happens, not coincidentally, to rule the sign of Taurus the Bull. It was she who impersonated cross-dressing. Thus the Nymphus is depicted as a woman in the persona of Venus in a fresco in the Parenti Dipinte Mithraeum near the Terme Maritime in Ostia. This is a being in the process of metamorphosis; hence metaphorically it was used for a little person or “doll,” the pupa, and applied as well to that stage in the development of the insect within the chrysalis, like a bee in waiting, preparatory for the role of honey in the higher grades of the Lion and the Persian.

The cross-dressing may have entered the tradition through the worship of the Babylonian Baal and his female counterpart, the “mistress” Beltis, which is merely the feminine version of Baal’s name. This would have a close relationship to the next Mithraic grade of Soldier, in accordance with both the astrological mythology and the actual gender-exchanging rites of the Baal cult, where women, in addition to dressing as men, took up arms. We might compare in Christian tradition the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, in which the Sacrificial Lamb is supposedly married to His Church, a marriage ritually repeated in the sacrament of Ordination of the Catholic male priesthood.

It may be significant that Herodotus, probably in a garbled version, records that the term that Persians used for Aphrodite was Mitra[1]. Thus, the initiate under the patronage of Venus again achieves another identification with the persona of god. The emblem for this grade was the crescent diadem of the goddess, the bridal torch to light his way to the nuptial chamber, and an oil lamp. This last indicated his ascension to the new grade, for when the veil was removed, which is the nuptial gesture, he became revealed as the new light (neos phos). The Christians ridiculed this rite, for only Christ, as they claimed, was the Bridegroom, the Sponsus, whereas the Nymphus had not achieved celestial light, but had been thrown, according to them, only into darkness and squalor[2]. But the Christian agape or “love-fest” Baptism-Eucharist ritual seems to have sometimes involved just such, fiercely denied, homoeroticism[3].

Among those following was a young man with nothing on but a linen cloth. They tried to seize him; but he slipped out of the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Naked man with naked man.

Thus the Christians interpreted the male bride’s elevation as debauchery, for since he is Nymphus to the Father and a male deity, it is difficult to avoid the assumption that some kind of ceremonial sodomy was enacted, especially since the symbolism of such an act in antiquity was as the intensification of virility by the transfer of semen[5]. Nevertheless, two scholars claim that the male bride is an impossibility, and a third waxes eloquent about the enforced sexual abstinence of the military life[6], disregarding the fact that its impedimenta, the support staff that included a horde of prostitutes, always accompanied the army, and homoeroticism of warriors is documented in the epic tradition about Achilles and his cousin Patroklos. Moreover, sexual hazing and humiliation, with no implications of femininity, are characteristic of induction into male societies. The monuments, in fact, document that the candidate was naked for various grades of the initiation; this appears to have been a preliminary even for those who led to investiture. It was said that the Nymphus ritually “pours out the cup of his heart” upon a statue of Mithras.[7]

The Nymphus grade is symbolic in an ascending series of rejection of the feminine materialistic role in procreativity; hence their exclusion from a cult that aspired to spiritual rebirth. Thus the highest grade of spiritual Father appears to have required sexual abstinence—at least heterosexual abstinence—as we saw in the sepulchral inscription by the wife of Kamenius, who laments, along with her children, the death of her husband from her chaste marital bed. This principle recalls the classic Persian dualism that characterized both Zoroastrianism and Gnostic thought, in which the material world was considered to be the domain of corrupted, fallen existence. Women, of course, had their own exclusive Mysteries. In Greece, such was the Thesmophoria, and in Rome, the Bona Dea.

It is also characteristic that the initiation rituals involve an act that in other contexts might seem humiliating or embarrassing, thus reinforcing the injunction of secrecy about the cult’s activities. In the context of the supposed characteristic Roman dread of effeminacy, we would counter that the Mithraists were significantly more sophisticated than is commonly assumed. The symbolism and philosophical speculation are certainly quite intricate, leading to countless revelations of the inherent divine design of the mythological system. Such speculations must have occurred, especially to the better-educated of the Mithraists, in particular through the influence of the visionary Eucharist.

The crescent emblem is another expression of the “cup of the heart” and is typical of the feminine, passive, wet, cold nature of the womb (in which regard we should recall that Taurus is an earth sign and is ruled by Venus, the Nymphus’s corresponding planet). Thus the entire grade may be considered a way of honoring and propitiating the goddess. In this way, she is present yet hidden, as represented by Mithras’s former consort Anahita, with alabastron and veiled head, emblematic of her secrets and subtleties. As men, assuming this role of Nymphus brought the active solar element into the womb, bringing new light where it had not previously been, hence the emblem of the torch or oil lamp. This sexual act, as sacred marriage, is represented as the conjunction of the diadem and crescent, as the Sun filling the Moon—Venus as the bringer of dew.

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