Porphyry documented that the Mithraic Leo grade initiation ritual involved honey applied to initiate’s hands and tongue, symbolizing purity of speech and action. Leo is also the grade associated with the Leontocephaline and its purificatory fire, and honey is used to soothe burn wounds. As such, the initiates—or rather, their lower nature, their ego, their nafs (in Sufi terms)—are wholly consumed by the fire and transformed; only their hands and mouth, speech and action, are revived or healed so that they may return to the world purified in mind, body, and speech as a “soldier of Mithras.” It may also be symbolic of the idea that the only thing that persists in the material world after one’s death/passage to the Other world are the speech and actions one leaves behind.
Accipe thuricremos, Pater, accipe, sancte, Leones;
Per quos thura damus, per quos consumimur ipsi.
“Receive the incense-burning Lions, Father; receive them, Holy One, through whom we offer incense, through whom we ourselves are consumed.”
—Mithraic verse painted on the wall of the Mithraeum of Santa Prisca
@Athanasius_45