Roger Beck is Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto.

• 1. Introduction to interpreting the mysteries: old ways, new ways ; 2. Old ways: the reconstruction of Mithraic doctrine from iconography ; 3. The problem of referents: interpretation with reference to what? ; 4. Doctrine redefined ; TRANSITION: FROM OLD WAYS TO NEW WAYS ; 5. The Mithraic mysteries as symbol system. 1. Introduction and comparisons ; 6. Cognition and representation ; 7. The Mithraic mysteries as symbol system. 2. The mithraeum ; 8. Star-talk: the symbols of the Mithraic mysteries as language signs ; 9. The Mithraic mysteries as symbol system. 3. The tauroctony ; Conclusions

This makes for an interesting eclectic journey through one of the most mysterious cults in the Roman Empire... Throughout the book this interpretative scheme is filled out with impressively meticulous analysis of the textual evidence, the symbolic structutre of the mithraeum, and the tauroctony.