E. Cybele, the Great Mother

Cybele is one name under which the mysterious power of bringing forth life was venerated.^[173] In Asia Minor reverence paid to such power can be traced back to 6000 B.C., but the most direct ancestor of Cybele seems to have been the Hittite deity Kubaba.^[174] The center of Cybele’s worship was in Pessinus, where a sacred stone, believed to have fallen from heaven (from Pesein ‘to fall’), was worshipped as the goddess.^[175] She also ruled over Mount Ida near Troy, and for this reason the Romans also called her the Idean Mother.

The myths that grew up around Cybele are known in various versions, all of which are further complicated by the figure of Attis, her youthful companion.^[177] It is impossible to reconcile these stories with each other, but the main features are these: The goddess loved Attis, but he was unfaithful to her and in sorrow over his infidelity he emasculated himself and died. Cybele mourned him, but in the end, Attis was restored to life and deified. The core of the myth is the typical explanation of the changing seasons by an agriculturally oriented society: Cybele is Mother Earth; Attis is the god of vegetation. In the spring (the youth of Attis) the two of them are in love, but when summer comes the fruits are harvested, the fields are barren, and Attis is dead.

March 15 Canna inlral: “Entry of the reed” (Canna).

Worshippers remembered on this day the early life of Attis when he was abandoned among the reeds of the river Gallus and rescued by shepherds. March 22 Arbor intrat: “Entry of the tree” (Arbor).

On this day a pine tree was cut before sunrise,because Attis died under a pine tree. An image of Attis was attached to the tree, solemnly carried into the tem­ple, and laid out as though it were a dead body. Lamentations followed and continued through the next day, which was a day of mourning accompanied by fasting.

March 23 Day of Mourning:

The Salii, dancing priests of Mars, per­formed their sacred dance, and the mourning and fasting continued. March 24 Dies Sanguinis : “The Day of Blood.”

Fanatic worshippers flagellated them­selves with leather scourges and sprin­kled their blood upon the altars. The music of cymbals, drums, flutes, and horns incited the faithful into frenzied dancing, loud and howling singing, while they inflicted all manner of in­jury upon their bodies, including bit­ing themselves.^[181] This was also the day on which some, driven to unre­strained frenzy, emasculated them­selves and thus identified themselves

with the deity. They believed that by this act they achieved a particularly intimate relationship with Cybele.^[182] March 25 Hilaria : “Day of Rejoicing.”

During the night prior to this day, “Attis” was buried.

March 26 Requietio : “A day of rest.”

March 27 Lavatio : “Day of washing.”

The statue of the goddess was taken to a river and washed, then, in festal proces­sion, it was returned to the temple. Flowers, singing,and dancing were a part of this procession.

The cult of Cybele must have included several office holders such as the Cannophori, those in charge of the proper performance of the first day’s solemnities. Women were admitted to this group of functionaries, a fact that distinguished Cybele’s from other cults that limited the priesthood to men.^[183] The Dendrophoroi were responsible for the pine tree, but those who dedicated themselves fully to the service of the goddess by emasculating themselves were called the Galli.^[184] Their chief was called the Archigallus. In Rome only Orientals were originally permitted to serve in the hierarchy. Later this restriction was abolished and we hear of several Roman men and women who served as priests and pries­tesses of Cybele. Her temple, like others, needed many servants to take care of everyday necessities and the sacred objects. Among these were musicians and singers, whose number, according to the testimony of ancient authors, must have been very great.^[185]

Cybele was a chaste goddess, “beautiful and kindly,”^[186] whose religion was one of salvation. This is vividly illustrated by the rite of the Taurobolium, in which the fresh blood of the bull flowed upon the devotees as they stood in a pit under a grate.^[187] This ceremony, so reminiscent of a “baptism by blood,” elicited criti­cism from later Christian authors who ridiculed the gory proceed­ings and contrasted them with the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus.^[188] Elements which appeared symbolically in Christian baptism were presented very realistically in the rite of the tauro- bolium.

Another element in the worship of Cybele which irritated Christians was an otherwise obscure rite of initiation which took place during the night preceding the Hilaria. As is usual with mystery religions, little is known about the rite itself, but some elements of it have been preserved by Clement of Alexandria, according to whom the person just initiated uttered these words: “I have eaten out of the drum, I have drunk out of the cymbal, I have carried the Cernos, I have slipped into the bedroom.”^[190] Some kind of eating and drinking took place in this ceremony which had a sacramental effect, making the person a “mystes” of Attis. The similarity to the Christian eucharist is obvious and one wonders whether St. Paul, who received his education in Asia Minor and must have known about the mysteries of Cybele, was influenced by these ideas when he wrote to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?... I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God... ”^[191] Firmicus Maternus also compared the pagan and Christian “communion” and could offer no differentiation except the lame comment that what the devotees of Cybele drink is “the cup of doom,” what they eat “brings death and punishment,” while Christian communion brings salvation and life.^[192] The meaning of going “into the bedrom” is not known. Whether there was a real or symbolic sacred marriage remains unresolved, but it is clear that the devotees believed that they had had an experience of mystical union with the divine.

These, then, were the chief characteristics of the cult of Cybele. It was a religion deeply rooted in the soil of Asia Minor, and even in later times it preserved many ancient elements. The goddess often was pictured riding on a lion or flanked by lions, giving ex­pression to her power over wildlife and nature. Her divine power also controlled the creative forces of the earth and the myths which arose about her were expressions of her great mystery, that of bringing forth life. Thus, the worshippers of Cybele were given answers to the greatest and most ancient concerns of humanity, those of life and death. These concerns were centered in the idea of the earth, for it was a common observation of ancient people that every living thing comes from earth and eventually returns to it.^[193] Cybele, the Great Mother, touched sensitive chords in the human soul and the response was highly emotional; to the issues raised by Cybele, rational, sensible answers could not be given and would have been inadequate. Her worship was characterized by communication other than intelligent speech, i.e., the expres­sion of thoughts in articulate sounds. Dancing — uncontrolled movements of the limbs of the body and the head, twisting and whirling—was one of these. In such dancing the worshippers seemed to lose their individual identities and to merge into a divine presence.^[194] Music — that is, sounds in melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic combination — was another such means of com­munication; ancient authors mention a multitude of musical instruments which were used in the festival. Whether this music was a planned, organized communication or simply spontaneous noise-making no one knows because no examples of ancient music have survived. But we know the music’s effect: it was ecstasy,^[195] a supernatural rapture which put devotees into a state of mind in which they became vehicles for the proclamation of the divine will. Prophecy was a part of such frenzy,^[196] which over­whelmed men and women alike.

Religious frenzy led some followers of Cybele to a quite different conclusion: these unfortunates castrated themselves and many of them afterwards put on female clothing and affected female behavior. Severing of the genitals has been understood primarily as an attempt to conform to the goddess as closely as possible, to assimilate oneself to Cybele, so as to be able to serve the goddess more perfectly.^[198] Castration, however, changes a man into a condition which is “neither male nor female,” and from this vantage point the religious significance of the act becomes much larger. The castrated devotee received a new identity be­yond sexuality; he became an androgynous person and thus re­turned to the primordial state of undifferentiation. Thus a castrated person is like a virgin. And the reason why so often in ancient religions virginity was a prerequisite for visiting the sanctuaries or serving the divinities^[199] is that a virgin or a castrated person, as one in an “in-between” state, was believed to be able to perform a mediating function between God and humanity.

We shall discuss the importance of clothing later;^[200] right now let us try to understand what the Galli may have believed when they exchanged male attire for female attire. As described by Apuleius, and as criticized by Augustine, this was a repulsive show, but from the vantage point of the religiously motivated, it was an attempt to merge male and female: the deficiency that arises from the condition of being a “male” was compensated by adding the “female” in the form of dress. Thus, the male was completed and the androgyne restored.^[201] The practice of chang­ing clothing belonged to the baptismal ceremonies of the early Christians, too. Since baptism symbolized the “new man” in whom the image of God was restored, this was made visible by the new garment worn by the “reborn” Christian. Paul uses the imagery of dressing and undressing when he speaks about “put­ting off the old nature” and “putting on the new nature”^[202] and when he says that in baptism a person “has put on Christ.”^[203] Being “dressed in Christ” as in a robe symbolized the merging of Christ's nature with that of the newly baptized person: the result was a new person in whom the primordial division had been reversed. Paul adds immediately in the next sentence: “There is no male or female.”^[204] In their religious enthusiasm, Cybele’s devotees reached for salvation in henosis with the divine; that they did this in ways abhorrent and unacceptable to us does not detract from their piety and dedication.

The issues touched upon, however briefly, in this review of the cult of Cybele are so close to many concerns of Christian theology that the question must be faced: what is the relationship of Christianity to the worship of Magna Mater in Asia Minor? This is a complex problem. In the following pages we shall try to find those answers that shed light on the role of Mary in Christian piety and faith. Our study will focus on two Christian phenomena in Asia Minor that were contemporary with the cult of Cybele: the book of Revelation, with its central image of the “woman clothed with the sun,” and the Montanist movement, in which women seem to have played a greater part than in other congre­gations of the early church.

But first, let us summarize what we have thus far discussed. Fertility goddesses were personifications of all those forces in nature which represent reproduction and life. Caelestis was “plu- viarum pollicitatrix,” as Tertullian said,^[205] “the promiser of rain,” that gentle mystery that fertilizes land and people, that energy in the sky that rules over and controls the stars and the moon, the night air and all celestial phenomena. Similar statements could be made about the other goddesses whose chief characteristics we reviewed, and so it may be said that a fertility goddess is the conqueror of aridity and dryness, i.e., conditions that would impede the generation of life. She is, as the great emperor Julian said, “the very goddess whom some call Venus, others Juno, whom still others regard as the natural cause which supplies from moisture the beginnings and seeds of everything, and points out to mankind the source of all blessings.”^[206]

She is the principle and cause of all generation,^[207] the universal mother, mother of gods and man.^[208] What did pagans have in mind when they said “Mother of the Gods”? Julian gave this defi­nition:

She is the source of the intellectual and creative gods, who in their turn guide the visible gods: she is both the mother and the spouse of mighty Zeus; she came into being next to and together with the great creator; she is in control of every form of life and the cause of all generation; she easily brings to perfection all things that are made; without pain she brings to birth, and with the father’s aid creates all things that are; she is the mother­less maiden,

enthroned at the side of Zeus, and in very truth is the Mother of all the Gods.^[209]

Thus, for ancient Greeks and Romans a goddess represented everything that femininity meant and stood for. That in physical life this had sexual connotations should be neither surprising nor offensive. It is possible, for example, that in the temple of Caelestis in Carthage the cult included sexually explicit rites similar to those of Hierapolis; at least Valerius Maximus and Augustine^[210] definitely mention Carthage when they condemn the “im­moral” practices of the pagans. If so, the worshippers of Caelestis did nothing more than recognize an aspect of physical life in which the divine reveals itself.

We can express ourselves only by using images of existing realities,^[211] and the image most readily available with respect to the origin of life is the union of sexes. Because we experience in their union the beginning of a process of creation, “male” and “female” are understood to have a primordial origin. Pagan mythologies tell of cosmic unions which led to the creation of the universe. The Bible speaks of God and his word, or God and his spirit, as the primary creative forces. Whether it is pagan or Judeo- Christian tradition that one follows, prior to the coming into being of the universe there was an androgynous energy or force in which “male” and “female,” potentially present, were united. Life began when “male” and “female” issued from this force as differentiated powers. A goddess, therefore, is that half of the divine which presides over and represents female functions, just as a god does with respect to male functions.

As we have seen, the image of the divine female is an extreme­ly complex religious phenomenon about which no single com­prehensive statement can be made. Many goddesses, for example, represented evil forces and negative elements in the world. These would require a study beyond the scope of this book. Our concern is the relationship between the image of Mary in Christianity and the pagan goddesses of fertility. Already it seems clear that the Mariological principle, i.e., veneration of the motherhood of Mary, is much more indebted to pagan belief and practice than many scholars are willing to admit. As we consider the role of these goddesses in pagan faith and piety, the conclusion seems inevitable that Mary eventually fulfilled the same role and filled the same need in Christian theology and piety.

Fundamental to Christian theology is the idea of a primordial creation which was corrupted by sin and a new creation in which the process of separation will be reversed and the union of divine and human will be restored. Mary is the feminine half of the divine activity which results in a new creation, i.e., the beginning of a process which leads to salvation. Mary is the female aspect of God the Redeemer, just as God’s “Word” or Spirit was the cooperating principle in the primordial creation. Without Mary there is no divine conception and birth, no beginning of a new race, no new heaven and earth.

We now turn to chapter 12 of the book of Revelation, to the woman “clothed with the sun.” Is she an echo of the pagan goddess?