Cybele

[Tamrin]

The Cult of Magna Mater

[Excerpts - Article by Anders Sandberg - Linked Above]

The Cult of Magna Mater, the Great Mother, is probably the oldest religion of all. The earliest stone-age sculptures depict the mother- goddess, and an idol found in Catal Hüyük, 6000 years old, depict her in the form she later became worshipped as Cybele in Phrygia, as a seated woman flanked by two leopards. The worship evolved through the millennia, but the goddess remained a symbol of the powerful female forces in the universe. Many different interpretations appeared, and various cults have interacted and mixed ideas.

Not much is known about her worship in ancient times, but in her incarnation as Cybele in ancient Phrygia she started the cult which would later evolve into the cult of Magna Mater in Rome. As a small child she was put out into the wilderness to die, but instead of killing her the panthers and lions nurtured her, and she grew up into an intelligent, beautiful and headstrong woman. It is not impossible that she was a child mage who was later deified. She invented pipes and drums, and also magickal medicines which she used to heal sick children and creatures on the Phrygian countryside. She became friend of not only the animals and people, but also the satyrs and other supernatural beings. She fell in love with prince Attis, but their love-story was tragic; The intense love of the divine Cybele was too much for the mortal prince, and he went mad, castrated himself and died. Cybele, driven mad by grief, roamed around to sound of pipes and drums seeking her lost love.

The links between this story and the cult of Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah are quite obvious, and both cults influenced each other heavily. Attis was identified with Dumuzi and Tammuz, other dead and resurrected gods. The cults were widespread, and Ezekiel mentions the female worship of Tammuz in his lamentation over the spread of paganism in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 8:14).

In the end, the cult vanished together with most other mystery cults of the antique era as Christianity took power and Rome was plundered. However, the cult was tenacious and left many tracks. St. Peters Cathedral in the Vatican is built right on top of the old temple of Magna Mater, and some parts are presumably left under the foundations. Cybele was worshipped under the names Kubaba and Kuba in Arabia, and Khaba in Mecca was originally a shrine to her. Many early Christians identified her with Mary. In the second century an ex-priest of Cybele named Montanus proclaimed that Christ was an incarnation of Attis and that women were the agents of the Great Mother and could prophesy as well as men. Naturally Montanism was declared as a heresy in the 4th century and it was crushed, at least according to orthodox history.

Proto-Cybele, Catal Hüyük, Turkey, c. 4,000 B.C.E.




Roman depictions of Cybele



Fountain, Plaza de Cibeles, Madrid

[Tamrin]

May 10, 2009 11:34:26 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

The lion theme may be found elsewhere, as in the following illustration, with presumably three "masters" with the goddess Cybele (identified by the chariot drawn by lions).

Le génie du compagnonnage faisant le tour di globe,
print, 19th century, Bibliothèque nationale de France

"The Spirit of Brotherhood Makes the Earth Turn"
shows unity and brotherhood between all men

W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance,
Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2006, p.32

(Thanks Bro. Dianne, previously I only had a black & white example)

[Tamrin]

Cybele's Testicular Clamp

River Thames, London

[/b]

[British Museum Site - Linked Above]

[/center]

This unnerving instrument, covered with tiny deities, was apparently utilised in mystical ceremonies, probably associated with the oriental goddess, Cybele. 11¸" long and made of bronze, it resembles the castration clamps used by ancient vets and is thought to have been employed on human 'volunteers'. Remorseful after his infidelity to Cybele, Atys castrated himself and her more enthusiastic followers were apparently willing to adopt a similar lifestyle. The clamp's presence in the River Thames may either have been due to a pagan desire to preserve it or a Christian desire to destroy it.

[Tamrin]

Cybele and the East

[Excerpt - Chapter 6, The First Missionary War by Michael Routery - Linked Above]

In the Eastern empire the destruction continued; a law in 397 ordered that stones from destroyed temples were to be used in public works projects such as road repair, building of bridges, aqueducts and fortifications, which indicates the magnitude of destruction going on. John Chrysostom led a death squad through Phrygia (Turkey) killing all the third gendered devotees (galli) and other worshipers of the Great Goddess Cybele that they came across; the lynching party was praised by the Patriarch of Constantinople. He thanked Chrysostom for leaving Phrygia "without sons her whom they called the Mother of Gods". The Church particularly hated the tradition of Cybele, whose unpatriarchal practices (prominence of women, transgenderism, homosexuality including lesbianism, direct experience of divinity through ecstatic dancing and music and sex) went so against their own, and whose personal brand of spirituality and immense popularity among the poorer classes was felt as a serious competition. Three centuries earlier Augustine, one of the prime shapers of Christianity called Cybele, a 'demon' and a 'monster' and declared that "The Great Mother surpassed all the gods ... not by reason of the greatness of her divine power but in the enormity of her wickedness". Cybele, the Great Goddess known as Magna Mater in Rome, had extremely ancient roots in Anatolia but had entered both Greece and Rome at a very early date and was celebrated with ecstatic worship. After Justinian, Valentinian II officially banned her worship, making it illegal for citizens to visit her temples. And in 390 Theodosius issued a law directed at the galli and other gender-variant and homosexually inclined males: "All those who shamefully debase their bodies by submitting them, like women, to the desire of another man, and in giving themselves to strange sexual relations, shall be made to expiate such crimes in the avenging flames, in view of the people". It isn't an accident that St. Peters was built on the spot on the Vatican hill where her temple had stood.

[Tamrin]

The Phrygian language
Translation of Phrygian scripts

[Excerpt - Article by Mel Copeland - Linked Above]

Cybele was represented in art wearing a crown shaped like a turreted city wall and riding in a chariot drawn by lions. She was attended by maenads like those of Dionysus and, more particularly, by the Corybantes. These were young male divinities who danced in armor, clashing their shields and spears. The Greeks identified the Corybantes with the Curetes, who behaved similarly while attending the child Zeus in Crete. Cybele's male worshipers accompanied their own dancing with the music of shrill flutes, drums, rattles and cymbals. Her priests castrated themselves in honor of Attis.

Although a foreign goddess with no place in the Greek pantheon, Cybele had shrines in many parts of Greece. She was perhaps the leading representative known to the Greeks of the Classical Age of a universal type of mother-goddess that had been worshiped in the Mediterranean region since prehistoric times. Such a goddess personified the regenerative forces of nature, of animals as well as vegetation. She usually had as a consort a younger god, such as Attis, who was subordinate to her [Apollodorus 3.12.6; Apollonius Rhodius 1.1092-1152; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.102-105, 10.686-704, 14.535-555; Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods 14; Hyginius, Fabulae, 191; Virgil, Ciris, 163-167]

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Place de la Nation

[Marianne, as Cybele, wearing a liberty cap, on a chariot pulled by lions, with symbolic figures,
including an artisan holding a mace and wearing an apron, framed by twin pillars]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The central monument, "The Triumph of the Republic", is a bronze group by sculptor Aimé-Jules Dalou. It was set up to mark the centenary of the French Revolution, at first in plaster in 1889 and then in bronze in 1899. A personification of the Republic, looking towards place de la Bastille and thus creating a Republican axis still frequently used for popular demonstrations, stands on a globe in a chariot pulled by lions and surrounded by various symbolic figures.