Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, November 07, 2001

Adonis or Tammuz, and the Descent into Hell

Byblos, possibly the oldest city of the Phœnicians, was famous in the millennium before Christ for its magnificent temple of Astarte (Punic, Tanit). It was high up, not far from the sea, and masonry which might be from it is sometimes still found. The object of veneration, in the open court of the temple, was what the scriptures call an Asherah—a phallic stone, a pillar or obelisk. Astarte was the goddess of love. A handsome young male god, Adonis was associated with Astarte. A goddess of love had to have a lover.

In about 400 AD, S Jerome (340—420 AD), translator of the Greek bible into the Latin Vulgate, wrote in his Commentary on Ezekiel:

Hence as, according to the Pagan legend, the lover of Venus, a most beautiful youth, is said to have been slain, then raised to life again, in the month of June, they call the month of June by his name, and they have a solemn celebration in it every year, in the course of which his death is mourned by the women, and afterwards his resurrection is chanted, and praised.

Jerome, Migne 25:82

Jerome lived a long time in Palestine and is referring to Tammuz. He is commenting on the well known passage in Ezekiel:

And behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

Ezekiel 8:14

Centuries before Christ, according to the scriptural prophet Ezekiel, the lamentations over Tammuz, followed by jubilation over his resurrection, had spread from Babylon to Judaea. The goddess, whom Jerome calls Venus, is the Sumerian Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar, Phœnician and Hebrew Astarte, Germanic Eostre, whence Easter!), and Tammuz was identified by later writers with the Phœnician Adonis (Adoni, “My Lord”). The Greeks took the title as proper name and called the lover of Venus (Aphrodite, Astarte, Ishtar), the beautiful young god who died and rose again every year, Adonis. So, Adonis simply means, “the Lord” or “My Lord”, a title of the Babylonian god, Tammuz.

Before 3000 BC, the youthful god Tammuz (Sumerian, Dumuzi) was known in Sumer as a god of fertility and of new life. He was a shepherd. He was a “healer”. He was “the faithful son”, (Sumerian, Dumu-zida) and a suffering saviour. The lamented death and joyful raising of Tammuz occurred every year and corresponded with the natural cycle of vegetation. Life died with his death at the end of spring, effectively the summer solstice in June, when the near eastern sun burns up the vegetation, and revived with his return from Hades, meaning death, when the autumn rains or floods watered the parched fields. Without him, there could be no life.

Tammuz dies and descends into the lower world. Inanna however would not stand aside and accept the god’s death and she rescued him from it, braving Hell’s terrors searching for him. While Inanna was below, the streams of fertility on earth dried up, nature languished and love was impotent. The great gods heard the petition of mortals, and the queen of the lower world was forced to compromise. Inanna was sprinkled with the Water of Life (semen) and allowed to depart from the underworld with Tammuz. At each New Year, held initially at the autumnal equinox then at the spring equinox in Babylon (Akitu), the king temporaily abdicated, took the role of the god and, in a ritual marriage called the “hierogamos”, married the High Priestess playing the role of the goddess. A bridal bower was erected on the Ziggurats for the sacred couple, and doubtless every village did the same.

The later “hierogamos” happened on 11 Nisan, close to the Jewish festival of Passover which was doubtless a new year ceremony originally. Judaism will have had the same ritual marriage, depicted as God marrying Israel, and hinted at in the marriage at Cana in John’s gospel, and the many references to Israel as God’s betrothed but unfaithful lover in the Jewish scriptures. The Jewish ritual of Tabernacles, held on 15 Tishri (c 30 September), has common features with the marriage ceremony—but reflecting the earlier period of the new year ritual—including the decorating of booths, identifiable as the “huppahs” (bridal bowers) of the traditional Jewsih marriage. The Rabbis dropped the hierogamos after the Jewish war, declaring Tabernacles and the Feast of Unleavened Bread that accompanies Passover to be merely harvest festivals.

Tammuz’s death was mourned by his consort, Inanna (Ishtar or Astarte), his mother and his sister. The day of mourning over Tammuz in Babylonia, the seventeenth day of Dumuzi, was every year the occasion of a general commemoration of the spirits or memories of dead relatives. Maids and matrons anointed and bathed the pale effigy of the handsome Tammuz, laid it on a bier clad in a red robe, and mourned and burned incense to the god, keening and exposing their breasts in sorrow, chanting their dirges to the shrill music of flutes. At the summer’s end came the autumn rains and floods, when the glad tidings of the resurrection spread and joy succeeded the lamentations. It is this lamenting that is mentioned in Ezekiel in the context of the Jerusalem temple, plainly implying that elements of Tammuz worship happened in the temple.

The Jewish calendar has a fast in June, supposedly mourning the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans—a later rationalization, like all Jewish festivals. For Christians, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, are the continuation of the death and resurrection festivals of Pagan fertility gods, and the Christian human blood atonement can hardly be considered more civilized.

Jerome wrote from Palestine observing on a remarkable coincidence. McCabe translates it:

This Bethlehem which is now ours, and is the most august spot on earth, was foreshadowed by a grove of Tammuz—that is to say, Adonis—in the cave where the infant Christ once wailed the lover of Venus had been mourned.

S Jerome, Letter to Paulinus, Migne 22:581

Since a resurrection is a raising from the dead, it is hard to see why this cannot be one.

Christians deny that Tammuz, and therefore Adonis, were “resurrected”. They say the alleged resurrection of Tammuz by the goddess Inanna has had to be assumed, because the end of both the Sumerian and the Akkadian texts of the myth of The Descent of Inanna has not been preserved. Christians also claim S N Kramer’s publication in 1960 of his translation of The Death of Dumuzi proves that, far from rescuing Dumuzi, from the Underworld, Inanna sent him there. They say a line in a fragmentary and obscure text is the only positive evidence that, after being sent to the Underworld, Dumuzi may have had his sister take his place for half the year.

Few scholars will deny that Tammuz did die and returned to life. Whether he was sent into Hades by Inanna or was rescued by her, he certainly died. Hades was the kingdom of the dead. If he stayed dead, then the vegetation stayed dead! When the winter rains came, the vegetation revived, in fact, but Christians say the god of vegetation stayed dead. Tammuz was obviously restored to the upper world at this point, whether rescued by Inanna or replaced by his sister for a season. As a vegetation god, he was resurrected to allow the land to become green again. If this outcome is not clear in the tablets remaining from Sumer or Babylon, it is plain enough from the scores of legends that have come from the original one—particularly myths of the gods with whom Tammuz was identified.

“But you cannot be sure of these identities”, plead the Christians. Certainty is the Christians’ trickery. Reasonable people are sure enough! The Christian bishop, Cyril of Alexandria, like other writers of the time, confused the cults of Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris. The reason is their similarities. A god had been slain and had risen from the dead, and the god had different names in different countries. Cyril relates the whole legend of Adonis and identifies Adonis with Tammuz, and then with Osiris. He says the celebration was ancient:

The Greeks invented a solemnity in which they mourned with Venus for the death of Adonis, and then affected to rejoice when they found returning from Hades him whom they sought, and this ridiculous ceremony took place in the temples of Alexandria down to our own time.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah 2:3

Modern Christians have to declare ancient ones as fools, to escape from these plain statements, or accept the obvious. Forced to concede that these were indeed dying and rising gods, in desperation, Christian apologists argue that, if they “saved”, it was not from “sin”. They saved physical human life from starving to death, not souls from damnation. That is true enough, but they leave out that vegetation gods evolved into ethical gods under Persian influence. People living in towns were invited to worship the same gods as the country folk but in their urban environment the purposes of the worship changed from simple fertility magic to an exemplary death to save the human soul. The very symbols of these urban religions reflect their origins and cannot be gainsaid. Christians cannot abide evolution. They want everything to be created perfectly formed. This is a reason why.

Adonis

The mysteries, whether Egyptian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Persian, Phrygian or Greek are much older than Christianity. Plutarch relating the life of Alcibiades in his Lives describes the sailing of the Greek fleet for Syracuse in the year 415 BC:

It was an evil omen that the festival of Adonis fell in those days. Numbers of women bore images, like dead bodies, and held mock funerals, and they mourned and chanted the solemn hymns.

Like Tammuz, Adonis was the male vegetative principle. Mortally wounded by the animal of winter, the boar, he died but was resurrected to be with his beloved consort mother Astarte. Each year he suffered this cruel death, descended into Hades, was resurrected and ascended into Heaven. Each year his death was bewailed and an effigy was buried. The next day he arose to great rejoicing and his ascension to Heaven was enacted to end the festival. S Augustine says of the Adonis ceremony:

In most cities of the east Adonis is mourned as the husband of Venus and… his wound is exhibited to the spectators.

Migne

Adonis’s mainly female devotees would join with Astarte each year weeping for her lost son, then would join in the rejoicing when he was restored to life. Christians disparage the worship of Adonis as never important and as restricted to women. Yet its importance, whether it was restricted to women or not, is acknowledged in the Jewish scriptures by Ezekiel’s need to scold the women of Jerusalem who wept for the dead Tammuz at the gate of the Temple. Indeed it is likely that the growth of Christianity in the first century depended on the emotional attraction of a dying son to women. Most of the first Christian devotees were women and still are.

Myths are modified and enlarged as time goes on, or until they are set in stone in a sacred book. Lucian, Plutarch, and Cyril give the legend of Adonis and Astarte, just before non-Christian gods were categorized as demons and believing them was called a sin. The Phœnician version of the myth stems from at least 1000 BC.

King Cinyras yielded to a passion for his daughter Myrrha at a harvest festival and she gave birth to the lovely child Adonis. Or Astarte was his mother, having fallen in love with Cinyras. The king exposed the infant on a mountain, but nymphs adopted him, and he grew to be a handsome hunter. While hunting one day, Astarte saw and was besotted by him. She “copulated with him and embraced him unceasingly”, says bishop Cyril of Alexandria. This offended Mars, who fancied Astarte, and in the form of a wild boar he killed Adonis on a hunt. Astarte, overcome with sorrow, sought everywhere for her lost love, even descending to the lower regions, but Pluto’s wife had also adopted him as a favourite, and would not let him go. Eventually, they agreed to divide the year into halves, and each had Adonis for half of the year. When Astarte announced this to her friends and worshippers, the event was made a feast or celebration.

For these supposed barbarous people, gods and mortals were not remote from each other. A goddess could love a handsome mortal youth and gods could seek out beautiful mortal women. It explained the birth of gifted and deformed children, and unexpected births. Pagans had not yet been converted or pressed into the service of the God who damned the whole human race for one woman’s weakness, or eternally incinerates people for indulging their utterly natural feelings.

An imposing temple of Astarte stood at Paphos in Cyprus in the first millennium before Christ. A great white pillar in the courtyard showed the nature of the worship. Doves cooed amorously amongst the pillars. In more puritanical times, instead of a symbol of love, which they had been for obvious reasons, they were deemed a symbol of peace. The Greek cross decorates these Cretan ruins from a millennium before the crucifixion. In the temple of Paphos, were the pairs of horns—thought by Gimbutas to symbolize the female reproductive system, which has a similar shape—as in Crete and the star and crescent as in modern Mohammedan Turkey.

After the fall of Crete, the Phoenicians had extended their rule and civilization to the island of Cyprus, a day’s sail away across the Mediterranean, and established the second center of the cult of Astarte and Adonis. It was a replica of Byblus. Cinyras was a real name of Phoenician kings of Cyprus, and this legendary Cinyras was the son of the mythical king Pygmalion, who fell in love with a statue of Astarte and took it to bed. Later, Ovid (43 BC-18 AD) made Pygmalion the sculptor who fell in love with a statue. Pygmalion, Cinyras and Adonis were all said to be handsome and amorous, and to have instituted the religion of love among the Phoenicians, who annually celebrated the death of Adonis, the mourning of Astarte, and the glorious reunion of the spiritual lovers.

Greek influence set in and Astarte became Aphrodite, Venus. She was the one deity of the Cretans, though near the end of Cretan history, the strong young god who is to fertilize the divine mother began to appear.

Adonis was the god of Byblos in the Lebanon. This cult spread from the Byblos to Athens in Greece and Alexandria in Egypt and thence to Rome. In Babylonia, the festival was in the month of Dumuzi (June), and the Greeks seem to have adopted the same season, though some writers put it in the spring. At Byblos the solemn celebration was in the spring. In Palestine, the mysteries of Adonis seem to have taken place close to the Passover in the spring. In Athens, women made little “gardens of Adonis”, flowers and plants set round a bier, and wept over the god whom Aphrodite loved. In Alexandria, women put little statues of Aphrodite and Adonis on couches, and arranged fruit and flowers and cakes round them, and mourned.

Antioch, only a few miles down the coast from Byblos was another centre of the worship of Adonis. Was it by coincidence that Antioch was the first centre of Christianity in the wider Empire? The whole tradition of Adonis closely resembles that of Jesus. According to Sir James Frazer, the festival to Adonis at Antioch coincided with the appearance of a star, the morning star representing Venus or Ishtar, his mother. Jesus also was associated with a star, the star of Bethlehem. The birthplace of Jesus identified by early Christians was a shrine to Adonis! According to Jerome, Hadrian desecrated the cave in Bethlehem associated with Jesus’s birth by consecrating it with a shrine of Tammuz-Adonis. Jerome was excusing the opposite crime—the conversion of an ancient shrine to Adonis to a Christian purpose—because in the time of Jerome the Christians had taken over the Empire.

Adonis is also closely similar to Attis, and aspects of Attis and Cybele worship in many ways resemble that of Adonis and Astarte. Attis and Adonis were both Tammuz, but Attis was the Adonis of the Phrygians. Astarte is the Semitic version of Aphrodite. P Lambrechts hopes to show that Adonis was not resurrected, claiming there is no sign of it in early texts and pictorial representations of Adonis. The four texts that speak of his resurrection are quite late, dating from the second to the fourth centuries AD. Lambrechts argues that Attis, the consort of Cybele, does not appear as a “resurrected” god until after 150 AD. The hope is to suggest that these ancients cults took the resurrection idea from Christianity!

Attis and the Great Mother Goddess, Cybele

North of Phoenicia and Palestine in ancient times was the kingdom of the Hittites, an Indo-Eurpean race who were at one time powerful enough to take Babylon. A goddess like Astarte was, with a sky god, a great deity of the Hittites. A Hittite monument shows three figures, possibly the sky father, the earth mother, and a divine son. Later, the Phrygians, who covered the region from the west of the Hittite kingdom to the Dardanelles, had a noted cult of a slain and resurrected god.

The worship of Attis in association with that of the Great Mother of All Things, Cybele, came from Phrygia in Asia Minor. The great deity of the Phrygians was a nameless mother of the gods, the old mother-earth goddess. Cybele, as the Greeks named this goddess, remained the supreme deity, but a young male god was associated with her. Attis was a comely young shepherd who was loved by Cybele. There are two versions of his death. In one he was, like the Syrian god Adonis, slain by a boar sent by Zeus, in the other he castrated himself in madness sent by Cybele his mother out of jealousy, and bled to death, under a pine tree. At the spring festival the death of the god was mourned until he was resurrected by the Great Mother when grief turned to joy. Ovid tells us Cybele was Attis’s virgin mother. On the great festival the pious male devotees of Cybele castrated themselves and held up the bloody organs to the heavens to make themselves eligible for the priesthood, the Galli.

Herodotus tels us about an Attis who was killed during a hunt for a boar. Attis was the son of a king, Croesus of Lydia. The king dreamt Attis would be pierced by an iron weapon. He sought to keep his son from such dangers and refused to allow Attis on a hunt for a boar that was ravaging Mysia. Attis, embarrassed at his father’s mollycoddling persuaded him that a boar could not kill him with an iron weapon. The king appoints Adrastus, a Phrygian, who had earlier been purified of the accidental killing of his brother, to watch over Attis. Adrastus cast his spear at the boar but missed and the weapon pierced the king’s son, killing him. Adrastus was forgiven by Croesus, but killed himself on Attis’s tomb.

Herodotus claims to be telling history, but his critics say he was too inclined to accept myth as historical, an inclination he shares with the Christians. The Attis of Herodotus might have been part of an older myth of Attis before he was associated with Cybele, or it might have been legendary, Attis being the real historical son of Croesus, and named after the Phrygian god. One way myths accumulate new material is from historical figures named after or otherwise associated with the god having their historic deeds transferred to the god.

There are many versions of the myth of Attis and Cybele. Attis was a handsome Phrygian shepherd, the “Good Shepherd”, the son of Cybele. In the original Phrygian version can perhaps be seen an original identity of the god and the goddess in that the goddess was born an immensely powerful hermaphrodite deity, who was castrated by the worried gods to make her female. The hermaphrodite was called Agdistis and where its genitals fell to the ground sprang up an almond tree. Nana, a nymph of the river Sangarius, dropped one of its fruit on to her lap and became pregnant, but she exposed her baby boy and he was brought up by a goat, and adopted by some shepherds. Thus he became a humble shpeherd but was so beautiful that Agdistis, now the Goddess Cybele, fell in love with him.

Cybele loved him intensely but Attis fell in love with a nymph and jealousy overcame the mother. She could not bear the thought of his marrying and in a rage cast a spell of madness on Attis and he castrated himself at the foot of a pine tree. As his life blood dripped to the earth violets sprang up. Cybele was grief stricken and thus it was that death and sadness entered the world. Cybele, full of remorse took the body to a cave and wept. She placed the spirit of the dead youth into the pine tree, begging Zeus that the boy’s body would not decay, and instituting his worship on the anniversary of his death each year under the priesthood of the castrated Galli.

In another version, Cybele had a child by Attis, but Meion, the king of Phrygia killed Attis and the child leaving Cybele distraught and grieving to the mournful beat of a drum. An oracle told the Phrygians that to escape a famine they had to bury the body of Attis and revere Cybele as a goddess. Attis was buried at Pessinus but strengthened by this worship she used her power to restore Attis to life, and they were reunited, thus bringing nature back to life and hope and salvation into the world. She founded the cult making Attis the priest and the pine tree sacred, and the two were worshipped in Phrygia. In the Lydian versian, perhaps heard by Herodotus, Attis, like Adonis was killed by the boar of winter.

Just as Jesus acknowledged Yehouah as his senior, Cybele, the mother, is the senior of Attis. Like Yehouah, whose anger at mankind’s disobedience could only be assuaged through the death of his son, Cybele’s jealous anger could only be assuaged through the death of her son.

Cybele

Worship of Cybele arose in the prehistoric Phrygian Empire. She was worshipped for over 500 years as the Mater Deum Magna—Great Mother of the Gods, and of men, animals and plants. She was a mother of nature and a Mountain Mother—her shrines were often on mountains and in caves. She was identified with several other mother goddesses including Demeter and Gaia. She was, in her loving and comforting aspect, the equivalent of Isis, Hera, Juno and the Christians’ Mary. But she also had a destructive aspect in which she signified the unknown, the unconscious and mysterious, the magical and intuitive qualities women in particular are considered to have. She is then Astarte, Luna, Hecate, Kali. Cybele was represented by a black stone set in a silver statue. The main centre of the cult came to be Pessinus in Galatia.

In the war against Hannibal, the Roman authorities consulted the Sibyllene Oracles, and found one that forecast the expulsion of the foe from Italy if the Idaean Mother of the Gods were established in Rome. A delegation of distinguished Roman nobles to the Greek king Attalus I Soter of Pergamum (241-197 BC) negotiated the move. The meteoric stone that represented the goddess was installed in a temple on the Palatine Hill in the heart of the city in 204 BC and the Megalensian Festival was extablished. Two year’s later the Punic War against Hannibal ended. The cult brought eunuch priests in brightly coloured robes, perfumed, carrying begging bowls, playing shrill flutes, tambourines, drums and cymbals, dancing wildly and whipping themselves.

The Romans were not averse to foreign wonders. Tarquinius Superbus had allegedly bought the Sibylline Books from the Sibyl of Cumae, an old foreign woman. A priestly college called the decemviri had been set up in 367 BC to follow Greek rites in interpreting them when consultation was needed. In 293 BC, an epidemic had ravaged Italy and consultation of the Sibylline books led to the bringing of the healing god, Aesculapius from Epidaurus to Rome. A delegation of nobles had returned with the snake that represented the god. It is said to have slithered from the ship and settled eventually on the spot on the Tiber Island where the temple of Aesculapius was built and dedicated in 291 BC.

The Romans had also consulted the Sibylline Books at a critical time in the first Punic war in 249 BC. Celebration of the Secular Games was commended on three nights, with victims sacrificed to Dis Pater and Proserpina. Then, not long before the attack by Hannibal, earlier in the second Punic war, the Sibylline Books recommended building a temple on the Capitoline Hill to Venus Erycina, a Phoenician version of Venus worshipped until then at Eryx, a town in the north west of Sicily.

So, it seems that the Romans negotiated the transfer of Magna Mater to Rome in desperation, as they had been in the other cases, but that was not so. The Romans had already turned the second Punic war in their own favour, and Hannibal looked precarious. The Romans had taken control of Spain, and Hannibal’s relief army had been defeated there in 207 BC at the battle of Metaurus. Magna Mater came to Rome just as the Romans were going to win anyway!

The arrival of Magna Mater related to the belief of the Romans that they had their origins in Troy. The Romans were keen on Hellenism, but were too proud to want to seem culturally indebted to Greece. The Trojans had been rivals and enemies of the Greeks, though even this story was Greek. Hellanicus of Lesbos in the fifth century BC, had claimed that Rome had been founded by Aeneas and Odysseus. By the end of the third century, Romans had accepted the canonical version that Aeneas was the founder, a legend perhaps related to the fact that the Etrurians seem to have come originally from Asia Minor. The story was widely accepted by the third century BC, the people of Segesta in 283 BC, when they rebelled against the Carthaginians, appealing to Rome for assistance on the grounds of their common origin with Aeneas.

Installation of her on the Palatine Hill was largely symbolic of Rome’s fancied origins, rather as Moses symbolises the fancied origins of the Jews. Roman intellectuals liked the association with Greek history, but preferred it not to be dependency. The anniversary of her arrival became an annual celebration, and the worship of Attis was permitted in the cult. Roman citizens could not be priests of Cybele, but praetors supervised the sacrifices and ceremonial, though the Galli undertook the rites themselves.

In fact, Cybele had already been worshipped in Italy since the sixth century BC—in Locri in southern Italy—as an inscription on an ancient monument shows. So, a Great Mother was much closer at hand, if a novel goddess had been needed. Of course, the Locri Mother would not have served the nationalistic purposes of the Roman rulers, to identify Rome with Troy.

Eryx, the home of the Venus of Erycina, had already been transferred to Rome, and the shrine dedicated to the mother of Aeneas as an ancestress of Rome. Similar considerations seemed to have been applied when the decision was made to bring in the Great Mother Goddess from Mount Ida, in Ovid’s account. When Livy related the incident of the transfer, he mentioned nothing of any legend, saying simply that Rome procured the goddess from Attalus of Pergamum. Many said she had come from Pessinus in Galatia, and it is still often said that she did. But the Romans sent a legion into Galatia 15 years later under the command of Vulso, and Cybele’s priests, the Galli, came out to meet the soldiers, greeted the Roman general and predicted a victory for him over the Galatians. She was still ensconced in Pessinus and so cannot have been transferred to Rome. It was plainly not the shrine taken to Rome at all. Varro confirmed that the goddess moved to Rome came from Pergamum and was handed over by Attalus.

It seems the meteoric stone had been on a shrine on Mount Ida, was moved by Attalus to Pergamum, and then was presented to the Roman delegates. Mount Ida was not the only shrine to Cybele, nor even the only one in Anatolia, since the one at Pessinus remained, and Vermaseren (Cybele and Attis) has explored the matter. The point of Mount Ida is its connexion with the Trojans in mythology—not just the myth of Aeneas but the myth of origin of the Trojans themselves. They it was who allegedly set up the worship of the Great Mother. Even Livy admits that her title was Mater Deum Magna Idaea, showing she came from Mount Ida.

How did the mistake arise that the goddess had been taken from Pessinus? It is simple. Pessinus became, in later times, the most important shrine to the goddess in the region. About the beginning of the first century BC, a priest of Pessinus officially visited Rome and addressed the Senate. Writers of the time assumed therefore that the Roman goddess had originated in Pessinus.

If the goddess was not moved to Rome because of difficulties in the Punic war, what was the reason for bringing her to Rome in 204 BC? P Cornelius Scipio had savaged and demoralized the Carthaginian campaign in Spain. He arrived back in Rome to acclaim with a nominayion for consulship and talk of his leading an invasion of Africa. Scipio would have been the popular choice of leader in any such venture. However, leading aristocrats were doubtful that such an adventure was sensible, despite Scipio’s success hitherto. Scipio was given the province of Sicily, the obvious place for an invasion of Africa, but without the authority to recruit soldiers. It was in this atmosphere of mixed enthusiasm and skepticism that the Sibylline oracles were consulted. Both the cautious faction and the adventurous one got succour from the prophecy associated with the goddess. The cautious faction thought it implied that Hannibal should be driven out first. Scipio’s venture, on the other hand, seemed to be promised victory too.

Also relevant was the conclusion of the Roman war with Macedon about this time in the Peace of Phoenice. Philip of Macedon had been allied to Carthage, and the Roman armies were being stretched to accommodate several fronts. This peace was signed by Attalus of Pergamum as one of the main signatories as well as the state of Illium that had not been directly involved in the war. Thus Rome, Troy and Pergamum were linked in the peace treaty. So, the arms of the Magna Mater seemed to encompass this treaty too in her mythical connexions. The alliance of Rome and Pergamum, together with other eastern states had the dula effect of relieving the Romans from a front they could do without while seeming to sulfil mythical beliefs held by the nation—the Roman self-image of being Trojans.

The earliest known inscription to Magna Mater in Spain, which only became Roman because of the Roman victory over Hannibal, is dated as late as 108 AD and none are certainly later than the one found at Cordova dated 238 AD. These dates will roughly mark out the peak of the cult’s popularity. The cult of Attis was probably never independent of her. The High Priest or Archigallus of Cybele was identified with Attis.

Her priests, the Galli, were self emasculated eunuchs with hair perfumed and dressed with oils. Priests, priestesses, acolytes and initiates celebrated her rites with fast music and wild dancing until in a frenzy the participants exhausted and finally mutilated themselves by castration becoming candidates for the priesthood. Even the phlegmatic Romans were shocked at first by these rites and at first Roman citizens were banned from participating in them. The ban was not lifted until the beginning of the Empire but then Attis and Cybele worship became one of the three main religions along with those of Isis and Mithras. In his Lament of Attis, Catullus (87 BC-54 BC) describes the myth as it was enacted in its mutilatory rites, and their tragic consequences. It made its last appearance under the Pagan revival of Eugenius in 394 AD.

A Roman lustrum was a purification rite involving the sacrifice of an animal and here on a Roman frieze of the first century BC is a skilful carving of the preparations showing a bull, a ram and a boar being readied for slaughter, according to means. The bull, with tassels on its horns, is attended by two slaves, the wealthy noble and his son looking on. The ram is for a poorer person, and the boar seems to be for the soldier, boars being a popular symbol of the legions, and also associated with Attis. This was the Taurobolium, or its precursor.

Cybele’s most solemn ritual was the Taurobolium, attested from the second century AD. The fourth century Spanish poet, Prudentius, described this rite, which consisted of the slaying of a bull on an open platform. The blood flowed through the slats of the sacrificial platform. The neophytes who stood beneath the platform allowed the blood to pour over the different parts of their body and they moistened their lips with it. The descent into the pit was regarded as a burial, and the sprinkling with blood signified the beginning of a new life. The initiate standing below thereby became “born again”, at least in the later tradition. People who could not afford a bull made do with or ram, a criobolium, and so were “washed in the blood of the lamb”.

The Calendar of the Festival

In Rome, the festival of Cybele and Attis was at the vernal equinox in the spring. During the reign of Claudius shortly after the crucifixion this was from 15 to 27 March. Though the cult had been brought to Rome on the prophecies of the Sibylline oracles, even Romans were shocked by the festival and were forbidden to join in until the time of Claudius according to a late Byzantine source. Previously the ceremonies had been held privately in the temple of Cybele on the Palatine Hill and only Phrygians participated.

Claudius admitted the ceremonies to the official religious calendar of Rome, some say, to counter the growing influence of Isis worship. The chief priests or archigalli of the religion from then on had Roman rather than foreign names. The calendar was:

• 17 March—The “reed bearers” enter and a six year old bull is sacrificed.
• 22 March—A pine is felled representing the death of the god. The acolytes and initiates proceed to the Temple of Cybele with the sacred pine bearing the effigy of the god in its branches. The tree is laid to rest at the Temple of Cybele.
• 23 March—The “day of blood”. The sacred pine tree and an effigy of Attis is buried in a tomb and a day of mourning, fasting, sexual abstinence, self-flagellation and self-mutilation commemorating the Mother’s grief follows. The High Priest playing the part of Attis draws blood from his arm and offers it as a substitute for a human sacrifice. That night the tomb is found brightly illuminated but empty, the god having risen on the third day. Initiates undertake the Mysteries and are baptised in bull’s blood at the Taurobolium to wash away their sins whereupon they are “born again”. They then become ecstatic and frenzied and recruits to the priesthood, castrate themselves in imitation of the god.
• 25 March—Hilaria: the resurrection of Attis and the onset of spring is celebrated with a sacramental meal and a day of joy and feasting. Those who castrated themselves become Galli—cocks—dress in women’s clothes and wear perfumed oils.
• 26 March—A quiet day of rest and recovery;
• 27 March—The conclusion of the festival with a procession in which the statue of the goddess, meteorite embedded in her brow, is majestically carried to her temple and a series of religious dramas and entertainments follows.

Sir J G Frazer in the Golden Bough cites a formidable list of Greek, Latin, German and Arabic authorities for all this. Christians might ignore the lot, but can they ignore what one of their own saints saw himself, and even participated in?

In 384 AD, Augustinus, a young African went to Rome to teach rhetoric and saw, in March 385 AD, a festival that he described later when he had become so famous that ever since he has been called S Augustine. Augustinus however was not then a Christian, and although Constantine had declared Christianity the received religion in 325 AD, many Romans still honoured Pagan gods and goddesses. Augustinus wrote that “nearly the whole nobility of Rome”, meaning all educated men, were Pagans. Rome had a score of popular religions, and Augustine saw the annual procession through the streets of Attis and Cybele.

The priests of Cybele, were celebrating their holy week. On March 17, priests and devotees carried reeds in procession, as today Catholics carry palms on the first day of Holy Week. Five days later, in a yet more solemn procession, the priests bore to the temple on the Palatine Hill, the sacred figure of the handsome young god pale in death, bound to a pine tree crowned with violets. Attis was dead, and the procession went its way in ceremonial mourning.

The next day was the “Day of Blood”. Attis had bled, and so the priests gashed themselves to make the blood flow, and at one time some devotees in their passion, cut off their genitals and held aloft their sacrifice to the mother and her divine lover. Drums thundered, howls of lamentation rose, and the eunuch priests tore their flowing robes. Attis was dead.

Then he rose from the dead. It was the Hilaria, a popular Roman festival, when all things were lawful, because hearts rejoiced to know that Attis had returned to life. Two days later, the priests took the black phallic stone with a silver head, which was Cybele, for a ritual bath in the Almo. They returned rejoicing through Rome with horns blowing and drums throbbing, while the spectators embraced each other, sang songs and cracked vulgar jokes. The spirit of love was born again. S Augustine describes this from direct experience—he helped in it.

At the same time as the Pagans, the time we now call Easter after a northern goddess, Eostre, a version of Cybele, the Christians had a Holy Week beginning with a palm-bearing procession, and five days later they mourned before the figure of a pale young god nailed to a cross or a “tree”, as the ancient accounts called it, and two days later again they went into a frenzy of rejoicing because he had risen from the dead. Augustinus must have looked at the two, the pale young Attis on his tree and the pale young Christ on his cross, and wondered, but the ceremonies of Cybele were centuries older than those of the newly adopted religion of Christ.

Christians jeer at the emasculation originally involved in these rights, but Origen (185-254 BC) did the same. Was he copying the Galli in his enthusiasm for piety, using Matthew as justification?

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Matthew 19:12

Both Clement of Alexandria and the fourth century Christian writer, Firmicus Maternus mention some form of sacred meal in Attic rites. It involved food and drink, but they do not say what, and used the drums and cymbals characteristic of the goddess’s ceremonies. The sacred food seemed to be kept in a drum and the sacred drink in a cymbal. From them, we can construct an initiation catechism thus:

I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbalum, I have carried the kernos, I have crept into the bridal chamber, I have become an initiate of Attis.

The kernos was some sort of vessel, perhaps for carrying sacred objects and the bridal chamber hints at a “hierogamos”. It seems the the Eleusinian mysteries have influenced Attis worship, for we find at Eleusis the formula:

I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the cista. Having wrought, I have put back in the calathus and from the calathus into the cista.

M J Vermaseren says wine and bread were forbidden during the Attis festivals, concluding that they could not therefore have been consumed in the sacred communion of Attis and Cybele. One could equally well conclude the opposite. Bread and wine were forbidden during the period of the festival precisely because they constituted the sacred repast, and could not be profaned by unsanctified bread and wine consumed in this period.

Christian Parallels

What was achieved by these rites. Firmicus Maternus, in his work on the mistakes of profane religions, says that when the night of mourning of the dead Attis was over, a light was brought from the tomb and the priest anointed the neophytes, saying:

Be glad that our god is saved, for we also, after our toils, shall find salvation.

This initiation is thought to have been offered in a sanctuary to Attis called the Phrygianium on the Vatican Hill, where now stands the Church of St Peter! He added that through the resurrection of Attis, Cybele was comforted and got on with her task of reviving the cereal crop. This Christian Father makes the link clear for us between the salvific meaning and the vegetative meaning.

Christians try to deny any connexion between Attis and Cybele worship and immortality of the soul or any other type of salvation. Their argument is the usual one that no texts have been found that actually say it, even though the myths themselves say all that is necessary:

A general atonement by a Redeemer is not Hellenistic. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, die so are mourned and return to life. Yet it is nowhere said that salvation (soteria) comes by their death. Soteria of a sort may come from their return to life, as from the assurance that they will do so in due season.

A D Nock, Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation

Apparently, what is unique about Christianity is that Christians are saved by the death of their God—typical Christian double talk—sophistry in fact—and even from their greatest thinkers. Nock wants Christian salvation to differ from the salvation meant by the Greek word “soteria”—Greek gods did not deliver salvation by their deaths like the Christian god, but by their coming back to life. Presumably, then, if Christ had died and stayed dead, Christians would have been no less saved, and the resurrection is incidental. It could not be more plainly the opposite. It is Christ's supposed return to life, his resurrection, that holds out to Christians their hope of salvation from death. It is exactly as Nock describes it for the worshippers of the Greek dying and rising gods like Attis. These events, like the Christian Easter celebrations, are commemorated each year, so salvation depends as much on death as on resurrection, as resurrection has to be preceded by a death, and death by a resurrection for all these gods. The sheer dishonesty, even of prominent Christians theologians is breathtaking. A god who dies and returns to life in his myth does not do it as an interesting story. Myths are constructed to explain rituals. Here a god is resurrected. What could that mean to his worshippers?

A latter day apologist, S Gasparro will not allow the use of the word “resurrection” in this context apparently because dying and rising gods did not die then rise again but just went away for a while then returned. He tells us that there is no trace in contemporary sources of a “resurrection” of Attis, but rather the certainty of his survival, either in the form of physical incorruptibility or in that of his constant presence, religiously defined, in the cult. This is more double talk. Jesus is thought of in just these ways. His physical body was not corrupted by death and he is considered to “live”, meaning he is constantly present. He rose from the dead—in short was resurrected—and his worshippers joyously celebrate it annually. Exactly what is the difference at the center of these rites. There is none, whatever Christians try to kid themselves.

Attis, the “Good Shepherd”, was extremely popular in the Empire around the time of Christ. His death and resurrection were celebrated at the time of year we call Easter. The “reed bearers” of Attis compare directly with the palm bearers of the entry into Jerusalem and the procession of the tree compares directly with the procession along the Via Dolorosa today when believing Christians enact the carrying of the cross, symbolically a tree. The effigy of the god Attis on the tree meant that ritually the god was hanged from a tree, like Jesus. The High Priest draws blood to symbolise the shedding of blood by the god for the good of men, just as Jesus is believed to have shed his blood for the salvation of believers. The brightly illuminated empty tomb directly parallels the Christian legend, the god having risen on the third day. The resurrection was celebrated with a sacramental meal and initiates baptized with blood to wash away their sins were “born again”, as it was described.

Christians emphasize that any clear statement of being born again occurs only on a late inscription dated to 376 AD and could be influenced by Christianity. Accepting that possibility, under the syncretism of official policy, the implication remains that something similar must have preceded it, supposing that ancient ceremonies cannot just have had utterly unfamilar purposes imposed upon them. There are common earlier inscriptions that speak of the gods being guardians of the souls or spirits of the initiate, implying a post-mortem protection that itself must imply a continuation of the personality after death.

In countries where Attis was revered, 25 March was adopted as the date of Jesus’s passion and crucifixion rather than the moveable feast that was elsewhere adopted as Easter. Hilaria, 25 March is precisely nine months before the official birthday of Jesus on 25 December. It is therefore the day on which Jesus was considered to have been miraculously conceived of God. The Church celebrates it as Lady Day. One of the titles of Cybele was “Domina”—the Lady! It is difficult for anybody rational to regard all of this as coincidence. Christians are simply ostriches.

Clay statues of the gods were made in ancient times just as tawdry statues of saints are sold today at Catholic shrines. Attis was depicted in his death throes drenched in blood, then serene after his resurrection, androgynous, released from his worldly sins and surrounded by solar rays. Or he was shown as a child, naked and dancing for joy. Cybele was depicted much like the virgin Mary with a baby or babies. An ancient figure of a Madonna and child in a church at Enna in Sicily was actually Cybele in her role of corn goddess (Demeter) and her daughter Persephone. The church was on a site formerly dedicated to the goddess. Pope Pius IX had the statues moved to a museum. The Black Madonnas of Italy are also on sites dedicated to Demeter, and the virgin of Chartres Cathedral was taken from a Pagan alter.

Discussion

Great Mother

There are some points I cannot agree with, but on the whole, as a brief introduction, this is one of the most concise and informative pieces I have seen written about the subject. A few small points though.

Mater Deum Magna should read Mater Deum Magna Idaea (MDMI) “Great Idaean Mother of the Gods”. Although Magna Mater is sufficient in Her Latin aspect. As a preference, I do prefer the Phrygian standard of “Matar” though, with the epithet of Kubileya. It would seem that the Phrygian word “tiveia” was applied to Her as well, meaning “divine she”.

The site of a sanctuary to Attis on the Vatican Hill is where now stands the Church of St Peter!

This is incorrect. The Metro’on of Cybele stood where St Peters stands today. The black stone which was Her “symbol” was smashed by christian activists in the late fourth century AD. One can only speculate what atrocities were committed upon the temple and the sisters within. If the savage death of Hypatia is anything to go by, it would have been a terrifying and horrific destruction.

She first buried Attis at Pessinus but then used her power to restore him to life and they were reunited…

Matar resurrected Attis as her daughter, as so eloquently told by Catullus. This fact is forever ignored. The actual story is quite beautiful.

The resurrection was celebrated with a sacramental meal and initiates baptised with blood to wash away their sins were “born again”.

The Taurobolium was intitated later, after the revision of the rights of Roman citizens to enter into Her service. A fine example of this has been excavated at Neuss am Rhein. The original rites are unknown. Though the emascualtion was of course, essential. The conditions for entry into the priesthood of the Matar, are somewhat the terms used today for transsexuals to be able to live the life they need to. Although, the ancient rites were complimentary, whereas today, they are merely a control element.

The chief priests or archigalli of the religion from then on had Roman rather than foreign names.

The Archgalli was a purely Roman invention, in keeping with the pragmatic structure of the religio Romana. It is uncertain whether the Archgalli actually replaced the Battakés (the traditional high priestess of the order) or not.

The term Galli or Gallus was, as you so rightly say, a phlegmatic Roman derision. Again, Catullus got the names correct with Galla and Gallae, the feminine forms being applied because that is what they were. It seems extremely difficult for modern scholars to think of transsexuals as anything but vain sexual creatures. A pity, because transsexuals constantly out-perform the majority of the population with regards to intellect and intelligence. There are many studies available on the web for this.

In our rather more enlightened and knowledgable age, post all empowered church, you would think that the so-called professionals would realise what is staring them in the face, rather than merely take for granted what the papers say. The papers being, of course, the classical literature produced by conservative Latin thinkers.

For more information, from a subjective but well researched point of view, the cyber-Metro’on at www.aztriad.com is an excellent resource. In the modern world, it is surprising that those who endeavour to educate, often overlook the obvious, perhaps not to them, but certainly to those who question constantly.

From Mike

I value comments like yours. I shall add them to the updated page. You might wish to read that page which is not the same as the one you have read, although it contains some of the same stuff. You might want to add or change what you had to say.

I mention Catullus on this page, but I admit I have not read his poem. He was a bit of a strange and passionate young man. Could he have been using poetic license in referring to Galla? Was he writing from personal experience. Is there any significance in his choosing the name Lesbia for the object of his apparently heterosexual passion?

Was Catullus a woman in a man’s body who eventually castrated himself but had nevertheless preferred sex with women. Would that have made him consider sex with “Lesbia” as Lesbian? Barmy, perhaps, but interesting!

Great Mother

She was a nameless deity, being called merely Matar (mother), though the name Kubileya was sometimes used as well, perhaps this was the source of Cybele, being that the Phrygian and Greek languages bear quite a similarity, the Phrygians coming from Thrace as they did.

Carmina 63 “On Berecynthia and Attis” (I’ve never heard it called the “Lament of Attis”) was written by Catullus either during his service in Bythnia, or after his return. You know, you have hit upon a, as far as I am concerned, mystery there. Lesbia. Why did he choose the name Lesbia for his beloved Clodia? It is altogether possible that Catullus had transgendered “leanings”, and the love he felt for Clodia was sapphic (another misuse of the word, but it fits rather nicely).

Catullus had first hand experience of the home of our Great Mother, in his years diplomatic service, and being as he was, susceptible to the more romantic notions of the age, I am of the opinion that he felt some kind of awe in the gender diversity that the worship of Matar dictated, seemingly. I believe it is well documented that Catullus was bisexual. The obvious respect that Catullus showed in Carmina 63 was very rare, and indeed still is.

Sex is a biological condition, fixed by chromosones. Gender however is much, much different, and it this that permeates the stories of Matar and of Attis. I find it intriguing that the surviving Phrygian inscriptions refer to Gelaros or Gallaros as “sister in law”. For many, many years it was thoguht that the origin of the term Gallae came from the River Gallos, but perhaps this was a coincidence. Not knowing the full grammar and etymology of the language of Phrygia, it might be supposed that Galla meant “sister”. This would be in keeping with the feminine aspect of the order.

Catullus did not castrate himself, his poem was not about himself, it was a “minor epic” about the Matar/Attis story. I would most like to think that the story Catullus tells is the true version, after all, he was closer to the source and more interested in it than any other writer of his age. But I keep an open mind, and it may be that he was told the story differently, but adapted it to give it it’s tragic bent.

Your right though, it is a fascinating area to research. I’ll tell you what I feel. Catullus heard the tale from a local in Bythnia. He wrote it down as he heard it, though adding his own Romanised etymology, for the benefit of his audience. He attempted to use the Galliambic pentameter for it, though struggled somewhat, the poem doesn’t flow nearly as well as native Anatolian literature, but that could be because of the Latin.

Catullus was deeply in love with Clodia, but to mask his interest, he used the tales he had heard of the undoubtedly deeper love shared between women, and called her Lesbia. Perhaps this is wrong enitrely, as Lesbia was a popular name at the time! Whatever, there is no doubt from the tone of the poems he wrote to her, that he was writing as a man. Men, however creative and artistic, have a pragmatic approach to love poetry, compare these works to the works of Sappho for instance.

Today, we think totally differently from then. Love today has been tainted with shame and guilt, even more so has sex. What we read into these poems now, was then quite normal for some schools of thought. An Epicurean lives life for the present, for once you die, that is the end of you. But in Catullus’ time, this was a perfectly normal and common belief, that there is no eternal life. Nowhere do you hear of a Roman citizen praying for a happy afterlife. They were, above all, practical people. Funny if you don’t understand the religio Romana, but it does all fit together quite logically with a Roman mindset.

The thing that annoys me most, is the insistance that Gallae were merely castrated men. The whole outlook of the priestesses was female in aspect, even in the prostitution rites they undertook as cleansing for returning soldiers, it wasn’t sex between men, top and bottom, it was a union between male and female, though not between man and woman. This concept is difficult for some to comprehend. Being brought up in today’s society, we have been indoctrinated into a very narrow and bi-polaric view of gender that is quite out of context, and has no foundation in history. You have always had machismo, and you have always had femininity, but you have also had gender diversity, not sexual diversity, but gender diversity. Siberian shamans, the Zuni man/woman beliefs, the Berdache tradition in North America, all are based around ideas of gender that we cannot accommodate, because no matter how liberal and tolerant we may think we are, we are not, due to the very real presence of christian indoctrination. It’s in our blood so to speak.

This is why I find it so interesting, the distinction between what we think we know now, and the actuality of different cultures in time, a vast chasm that patriarchal academia cannot cross.

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