Mithra Tattoo Meaning

The covenant, light, sacrifice, and the bull-slayer born from rock on the solstice.

Mithra is the ancient solar god of the covenant — the deity of light, the sun, contracts, and the kept promise, worshipped from the Vedic hymns of India through Zoroastrian Persia to the secret bull-slaying mysteries of the Roman Empire, the all-seeing guardian of oaths and the bull-slayer born from rock. To carry Mithra is to carry the covenant, light, and sacrifice — the solar god who guards every oath and promise, the all-seeing witness of the kept word, and the bull-slayer of the mystery cults born from rock at the turning of the year.

Mithra has his roots in the ancient Indo-Iranian world, and in the Vedic tradition of India he appears as Mitra — one of the Adityas (solar deities) of the Rigveda, a god associated with the sun, the morning light, and, above all, with contract, covenant, and friendship (his name itself can mean 'friend' or 'contract'). Mitra is the divine principle of the kept promise — the god who presides over agreements, oaths, and the bonds of faith between people.

Mitra appears in the Rigveda paired with the great god Varuna, and together Mitra and Varuna govern the cosmic order (rta) and the moral order of the universe: Mitra governs the day and presides over covenants and human agreements, while Varuna governs the night and presides over judgment and the deeper, sterner order. As the daytime god of covenants, Mitra is the upholder of promises, the guardian of the agreements and bonds that hold society together, the divine sanction behind the given word. Mitra is the ancient solar god of contract, covenant, and the faithfully kept promise. The Vedic Mithra is Mitra, the god of the kept promise — rooted in the ancient Indo-Iranian world, appearing in the Rigveda as one of the Adityas (solar deities), a god of the sun and morning light associated above all with contract, covenant, and friendship (his name meaning 'friend'/'contract'), the divine principle of the kept promise who presides over agreements, oaths, and bonds of faith, paired with Varuna to govern the cosmic order (rta) and moral order — Mitra governing the day and covenants, Varuna the night and judgment — the upholder of the agreements and bonds that hold society together.

The relationship between the Vedic Mitra, Zoroastrian Mithra, and Roman Mithras is debated — the Roman mystery religion may have been a largely new creation that borrowed the Persian name and some iconographic elements rather than a direct transmission. Over 400 mithraea (Mithraic underground temples) have been excavated across the Roman Empire from Britain to Syria. The tauroctony (bull-slaying) image is found in virtually every mithraeum — its precise symbolic meaning is unknown because the Mithraic mysteries left no written theological documents; our entire knowledge comes from archaeological evidence. The December 25 birthday of Mithras and the parallels with early Christianity (the meal shared with bread and wine, the emphasis on resurrection, the winter solstice birth) were noted by early Christian writers including Tertullian and Justin Martyr, who argued the similarities were diabolic imitation. Franz Cumont's Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra (1894 CE) established Mithraism as an academic field; subsequent scholars including David Ulansey have proposed that the tauroctony represents a star map depicting the precession of the equinoxes.

Mithra across cultures

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