CYBELE and ATYS (Neo-Hittie; Phrygian)
The story goes that when one of
Zeus' would-be sex partners rejected him, Zeus wouldn't take no for an
answer. While his victim, Cybele, slept, the great philanderer spilled
his seed on her. In time she gave birth to Agdistis, a hermaphroditic
demon so strong and wild, the other gods grew afraid. In their terror
they cut off his male sexual organ and from its blood sprang an almond
tree.
The river Sangarius had a daughter
named Nana who ate the fruit of this almond tree. When, as a result, she
delivered a boy child nine months later, she put the child aside to be
exposed. But infant death was not to be his fate. Taken care of by the
shepherds, he soon became healthy and handsome -- so handsome his grandmother,
Cybele, fell in love with him.
The boy, Attis, wasn't aware of Cybele's love, but what would it have mattered? In time, he saw the king of Pessinus' beautiful daughter, fell in love, and wished to marry her. The goddess who grew insanely jealous and angry, drove Attis mad for revenge. Running crazy through the mountains, he stopped at the foot of a pine-tree. There, while he rested, he castrated and killed himself. From his blood sprang violets while the tree took care of his spirit. Body and spirit might have been safe, but still his flesh would have decayed had not Zeus stepped in to aid Cybele in Attis' resurrection.
Since then, a yearly ritual has
been performed to purify the body of the dead Attis. The priests
(referred to as Galli or Gallae) are emasculated to emulate him. A pine
tree is chopped down, covered with violets and carried to the shrine of
Cybele on Mt. Dindymus. There Attis is mourned for three days. Then, when
Cybele brings him back to life, there is a wild and joyful celebration.
ADONIS and APHRODITE
And Adonis, while still a boy,
was wounded and killed in hunting by a boar through the anger of Artemis.
Hesiod,however, affirms that he was a son of Phoenix and Alphesiboea; and
Panyasis says that he was a son of Thias, king of Assyria, who had a daughter
Smyrna. In consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, for she did not honor
the goddess, this Smyrna conceived a passion for her father, and with the
complicity of her nurse she shared her father's bed without his knowledge
for twelve nights. But when he was aware of it, he drew his sword and pursued
her, and being overtaken she prayed to the gods that she might be invisible;
so the gods in compassion turned her into the tree which they call smyrna
(myrrh).
Ten months afterwards the tree
burst and Adonis, as he is called, was born, whom for the sake of his beauty,
while he was still an infant, Aphrodite hid in a chest unknown to the gods
and entrusted to Persephone. But when Persephone beheld him, she would
not give him back. The case being tried before Zeus, the year was divided
into three parts, and the god ordained that Adonis should stay by himself
for one part of the year, with Persephone for one part, and with Aphrodite
for the remainder. However Adonis made over to Aphrodite his own share
in addition;
but afterwards in hunting he
was gored and killed by a boar.
PATTERN
A famous
myth associated with a god who appears in a variety of guises in the ancient
eastern Mediterranean. The myth involves the young male consort of a mother
goddess figure. The young god is born, becomes the lover of the mother
goddess, but then is killed in his prime while hunting a wild boar, which
gores him in the groin. The mother goddess buries her beloved and mourns
him. This story was told in ancient Sumeria of Inanna and her lover Dumuzi,
in Assyria of Ishtar and Tammuz, and in Greece of Aphrodite (Roman: Venus)
and Adonis (cf. the Egyptian Isis and Osiris). It generally has been interpreted
as a vegetation myth intended to explain the seasons, with the young male
consort symbolizing the coming and passing of summer, although this interpretation
has been challenged. (A similar myth is told in Greece of Demeter and her
daughter Persephone, again with antecedents in the ancient Near East.)
In Asia Minor (and, more particularly, in Croesus' Lydia), a similar tale
was told of the great earth mother Cybele and her lover Attis (symbolized
by a pine tree). Perhaps in commemoration of Attis, Cybele was served by
eunuch priests known as Galli, who initiated themselves into her cult by
castrating themselves with a piece of flint.