Acts that are taboo in any culture usually are acts that possess great power in spiritual terms. Robert Graves and Sir James Frazer both recognised this fact. Food that is prohibited originally was considered sacred rather than 'dirty'. The pig was a symbol of the Great Goddess and its flesh was consumed as a sacred Communion Rite. In the realm of the gods, sexual intercourse between parent and child or sister and brother often produce the most powerful offspring. In ancient civilisations, rulers often married a sibling to keep the line pure and the sacred power undiluted.
Myths that originally promoted these practices later were infected with prevailing social attitudes against incest. Thus, the introduction of the concept of intoxication that prevents at least one of the participants from full knowledge of the nature of his/her action and the idea that a curse must be linked to an act of this sort.
In the older versions of the myth, the participants may be forces of Nature rather than gods in human form. For example, in one tale, the 'Lord' who is Attis ultimately is born of a relationship between the seed of a castrated hermaphrodite and the daughter of a river. The genealogy is as follows: Cybele or Kybele, the Great Mother Goddess, was 'born from stone', issuing from a Rock or Sacred Mountain. In some myths, the god of the sky mates with the Rock or Mountain to produce the Goddess but she predates any tales of her own conception and indeed often was worshipped in the form of Meteorite, a Stone fallen from the Sky.
Myths mutate as they are stolen, borrowed or assimilated in the cultures of invaders and the myth of Cybele is no exception. In Greek myth, Cybele was downgraded into a woman who was desired by the God Zeus but who spurned his advances. He therefore very characteristically planted his seed while she slept. In another version, while Zeus slept, he simply spilled his seed upon the earth which is, of course, the Great Goddess in her primal form. She gave birth to an hermaphrodite named Agdistis. In fact, Agdistis and Cybele probably were one and the same originally but in this version of the tale of Agdistis, the gods were so threatened by the potency of one who was both male and female that they castrated him/her. From the severed manhood of Agdistis or from the blood grew an Almond Tree. The fruit of this tree was consumed by the daughter of a river god named Nana and she gave birth to Attis.
Nana was a Virgin naturally and the birth of a child was simply 'not on' in ordinary social terms. She therefore exposed the child in time-honoured ancient fashion. Like so many heroes and godlings exposed on mountaintops or locked in coffins and set adrift upon the waters, the infant Attis was rescued and raised either by a he-goat or by shepherds. In the course of time, he became an exceptionally handsome youth, attracting the desire of his own mother or grandmother Cybele.
He, however, had fallen in love with a mortal priincess. The Great Mother could not stomach this and cursed him with divine madness. Attis then castrated himself beneath an evergreen. Violets were created by his blood. His spirit entered the evergreen or Pine.
Here you see a naked woman embracing a tree that has been cut almost to the root. Apples are strewn on the surrounding ground. It is a work by Steven Kenny. When I saw it, I thought of all the Tree Myths and in particular, the myths that involve castration and rebirth. I cannot pretend to know the mind of the artist, but to me, this painting speaks eloquently of Attis whose priest castrated themselves and who often threw their discarded genitals into the 'lap of the Goddess'. Each year, an Evergreen was cut almost to the root, an image of Attis was nailed to the trunk and it was carried through the streets while devoted worshippers wept loudly to the accompaniment of flute, drum, sistrums and cymbals. This frenzied mourning often culminated in the act of self-castration. The Tree then was taken to a cave or crypt where it was wrapped in a burial shroud and where it remained for three days. In the dead of night, his devotees then would proceed to the cave and the cry would be heard: 'He has risen!'
This painting evokes the Christian Pieta, where the Mother of God cradles the body of her crucified Son and Lord in her arms tenderly.
The photograph above shows a lovely statue of the Pieta against the background of the Cross. This statue once graced St. Mary's Cathedral in Middlesbrough. The Cathedral alas was destroyed by arsonists in May of 2000.
The Cross is the Tree, ladder to Heaven and instrument by which rebirth as well as martyrdom is effected. As a phalllic symbol and Tree that points to heaven while living, the Cross itself is the solar wheel and the axis mundi.
In some versions of the myth of Attis, he pledged eternal chastity to the Mother Goddess. When he broke that vow, his manhood was forfeit.
The fruit of an Almond is a Nut and it is no accident that a slang term for male testes is 'Nuts'. Nuts are an ancient symbol of fertility and Yuletide traditions of stuffing the stocking with Nuts and Fruits mirror ancient rites.
Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother of God inherits the mantle of Kybele. The insistence of Christianity upon this and upon Christ's chastity corresponds to the most ancient traditions of the Great Mother and her Son as undiluted pure examples of Male and Female. Virgin in this context is pure Woman rather than a woman who never had intercourse and never gave birth. Virginity in ancient mystery religions was a magical trait that could be restored or renewed and was not something that would be lost irrevocably with the loss of the maidenhead.
Mystery religions or cults are secret religions and it is more than possible that the myriad conflicting accounts of Attis and Cybele resulted from incomplete knowledge or deliberate misdirection.
Some of the conflicting ancient sources of the myths include:
From Ovid's Metamorphoses 10: 'Pines, high-girdled, in a leafy crest, the favourite of the Gods' Great Mother, since in this tree Attis Cybeleius doffed his human shape and stiffened in its trunk.'
From Ovid's Fasti 4:
'What causes the impulse [of the devotees of Kybele, Cybele] to self-castrate?’ I was silent. The Pierid began: ‘A woodland Phrygian boy, the gorgeous Attis, conquered the towered goddess with pure love. She wanted to keep him as her shrine's guardian, and said, 'Desire to be a boy always.'
He promised what was asked and declared, 'If I lie, let the Venus I cheat with be my last.' He cheats, and in the Nympha Sagaritis stops being what he was: the goddess' wrath punished him. She slashes the tree and cuts the Naiad down. The Naiad dies: her fate was the tree's. He goes mad, and imagines that the bedroom roof is falling and bolts to Dindymus' heights.
He cries, 'Away torches!', 'Away whips!' , and often swears the Palestine goddesses have him. He even hacked his body with a jagged stone, and dragged his long hair in squalid dirt, shouting, 'I deserved it; my blood is the penalty. Ah, death to the parts which have ruined me!'
'Ah, death to them!' he said, and cropped his groin's weight. Suddenly no signs of manhood remained. His madness became a model: soft-skinned acolytes toss their hair and cut their worthless organs.
From Statius, Silva 1:
The hollow caves of Phrygian Synnas Attis bedewed with the bright drops of his own blood'
N.B. Red stone was quarried from these caves.
From Nonnus, Dionysiaca 20:
'A dream came to Bakkhos (Bacchus)--Eris (Discord) the nurse of war, in the shape of Rheia the loverattle goddess, seated in what seemed to be her lionchariot. Phobos drove the team of this dream chariot, in the counterfeit shape of Attis with limbs like his; he formed the image of Kybele's charioteer, a softskinned man in looks with shrill tones like the voice of a woman...
Dionysos spent five years laying siege to a city in India.
While Bakkhos was thus despondent, came a messenger in hast through the Skythian mountains from divine Rheia, sterile Attis in his trailing robe, whipping up the travelling team of lions. He once had stained with a knife the creative stalk of marriage-consecrating youth, and threw away the burden of the plowshare without love or wedlock, the man's harvest-offering; so he showered upon his two thighs the bloody generative drops, and made womanish his warm body with the shearing steel.
This was the messenger who came driving the car of goddess Kybele, to comfort discouraged Lyaios. Seeing him Dionysos sprang up, thinking perchance he might have brought the all-conquering Rheia to the Indian War. Attis checked the wild team, and hung the reins on the handrail, and disclosing the smooth surface of his rosy cheeks, called out a flood of loud words to Bakkhos--
‘Dionysos of the vine, son of Zeus, offspring of Rheia! Answer me: when will you destroy the woolly-headed nation of Indians and come back to the Lydian land? Not yet has Rheia seen your black-skin captives; not yet has she wiped off the sweat from your Mygdonian lions after the war, beside the highland manger, where the rich river of Paktolos runs; but without a sound you roll out the conflict through circuits of everlasting years! Not yet have you brought a herd of eastern lions from India as a token of victory for the breeder of beasts, the mother of the gods! Very well, accept from Hephaistos and your immortal Rheia this armour which the Lemnian anvil made; you will see upon it earth and sea, the sky and the company of stars!’
Before he had finished, Bakkhos called out angrily--‘Hard are the gods and jealous . . . Hera keeps me back from victory . . .’
Lydian Attis answered these words of Dionysos: ‘If you carry this starry shield of the sky inviolate, my friend, you need not tremble before the wrath of Ares, or the jealousy of Hera, or all the company of the Blessed, while All-mother Rheia is with you; you need fear no army with bended bows, lest they cast their spears and strike Helios or wound Selene! Who could blunt the sword of Orion with a knife, or shoot the Waggoner with earthly arrows? Perhaps you will name the nor strong father of Deriades: but what could Hydaspes do to you, when you can bring in Okeanos?
‘Be of good courage: to the battle again! For my Rheia has prophesied victory for you at last. The war shall not end until the four Seasons complete he sixth year. So much the eye of Zeus and the threads of the unturning Mora have granted to the will of Hera; in the seventh lichtgang which follows, you shall destroy the Indian city.’
With these words he handed the shield to Bromios; then he tasted the feast, and cheered his heart with umixed cups of nomorepain wine. When he had satisfied his appetite at table, once more he touched up the flanks of his lions with the whip, and guided the hill-ranging car on the road back to Phrygia. He drove along the heights above the Kaukasian valleys, the Assyrian peaks and the dangerous Baktrian mountains, the summits of Libanos and the crests of Tauros, until he passed into the Maionian land. There he entered the divine precinct selfbuilt of Rheia, mother of mighty sons. He freed his ravening lions from the yoke straps, and haltered them at the manger which he filled with ambrosial fodder.'
I have copied this tale as it is interesting in describing a meeting between the messenger of the Great Goddess Kyble, Attis and their devotee, Dionysos.
Elsewhere, Attis is described in similar terms as follows: 'Attis: is the recipient of special honor amongst Phrygians, for being minister of the Mother of the God'.
One can peer further into the mists of time to find parallels between Attis and the Sumerian shepherd king Dumuzi. Attis indeed often is depicted as a shepherd himself. Dumuzi the Shepherd is chosen by the Great Goddess Inanna as consort but he is found to be unworthy when she returns to the Earth (Aboveground) after her visit to the Underworld. His life thereby is forfeit as the laws of the Underworld demand a life as the price for her freedom and she proclaims him to be the Sacrifice.. Dumuzi is not willing, however and flees from the priests of Ereshkigal, Lady of the Underworld. His flight mirrors that of the ancient god Ba'al when HE seeks to avoid payment of his debt to Mot, Lord of the Underworld. Dumuzi as Ba'al before him ultimately is discovered and the Sacrifice is completed.
The Goddess who pronounces the doom upon her consort King/Beloved mourns him. In some fashion, she has offered that which she loves most as her sacrifice to allow the Earth to be fertile again. It is the Sacrifice of Attis/Adonis/Dumuzi that frees the Earth from the grip of Death. As the Great Goddess is Nature Herself, she cannot serve as Sacrifice. It is the blood of her Consort/Son that quickens her and ultimately effects his rebirth.
Who then are the Galli, the unmanned priests of the Great Kybele, who emulate the Sacrifice of the Beloved, the self-castration of Attis? What power does castration endow upon them? The Galli in fact must have believed themselves to be Agdistis, both male and female. Only by sacrificing the male portion of themselves could they experience the power of the Goddess. Their power to procreate remains external rather than internal, becoming the very gift of fertility to the Earth.
It is fascinating to realise that one of the Emperors of Rome in the person of Elagabalus was a follower of Attis. His religious fervour was mistaken by many for sexual perversion and yet every act described in the 'history' of his reign can be identified as traditional practices of the cult.
