Cybele and Attis by Deanne Quarrie, D. Min.

I first “discovered” Cybele in my research for Bendis (my Priestess name).  It appears that the two are very closely related with evidence found of both in Thrace (modern day Bulgaria).  There is a temple in Bulgaria to this day that was for Cybele.  She came up again for me in my research of drumming and priestesses.  You see many images of her with her frame drum.

She can be described as …

“A mountain-dwelling goddess of holy madness … a full-breasted mature woman, crowned and carrying corn and keys, arrayed in a robe containing all the flower colors of the Earth.” [i]

Ah – and how Zeus could not penetrate her but spilled his seed upon the Earth, which was of course, also her, as her body!  (Could it be that he could not penetrate her because she chose to be made love to without penetration, that, for Cybele, there was more to the act than procreation?  That Cybele, herself, preferred the love of a woman?)

The child of this fertilization being Agdistis, was born of both sexes, and when he was grown, Dionysis, in an attempt to make his life easier, castrated him.  From his blood, sprang the almond tree.

Nana picked up this fruit of the almond and in placing in next to her skin, became pregnant and birthed Attis.  Attis was beautiful and adored by Cybele but I suppose like all beautiful males, chose to turn his affections to another.  Being the Great Mother, Cybele knew of this unfaithfulness and when caught, he castrated himself in contrition.

It has only been recently that I have been able to look at this part of the myth with any comfort.

If I look at what Dionysis did to Agdistis and then look at what parents and physicians do to children born today who are hermaphrodites, their intent being to make their lives easier by removing one sex, I completely understand the story.   The sad thing today is that parents and physicians often make this choice for the child while still in infancy instead of waiting to see how the child matures. 

If I look at Attis, as feeling as though he were a woman, trapped in a man’s body and who loved Cybele as a woman loves a woman, then I understand his desire to change his body to not only love her as a woman, but to be in her image – to be a woman.  In today’s world when men have sex change operations, to surgically remove the penis and create a vagina, I have heard that the majority continue to love women in lesbian relationships, rather than partner with men, as one might think.

We hear a lot today of the plight of the transgender, the man trapped in a woman’s body and a woman trapped in a man’s body.  Because I know how life begins in the woman with all fetuses beginning as female and the propensity to be either, it seems such a simple thing to see how this can happen.  I also know that this is nothing new.  This is something that has been for as long as there have been humans.  If it has happened since the beginning of the human race, how can it be  “unnatural?”

I know that this myth of Cybele and Attis was celebrated as a springtime festival – with the blood of Attis lives resurrected once more in the Spring.  However, in my reading, years ago (I did not save my references), I also saw stories in which Cybele made the promise that when Attis was reborn after he bled to death, he would be reborn as a woman.  And so, the significance of this seems to me more relevant.

Were I to wish to honor Cybele in ritual, the symbols I would choose would be a frame drum, corn, rainbow colors, a pine branch, and a large black rock.  I would have the frame drum, because I know that the priestesses of Cybele played the frame drum in their rituals.  The corn would represent her as the nourishing mother who provides with abundance.  I would use ribbons of many colors for her rainbow-colored robe.  The pine branch would honor Attis and his love for her.  Finally, the large black rock would represent the huge mountainous presence of her body as the Mountain Mother.  In ancient times, this stone was thought to be a meteorite and the stone that Zeus was thought to have raped.  Such was her power!

I would love to think that acceptance and yes, even embracing differences could be accomplished without violence. I see the violence happening and know in my heart it is not the way, for with the violence comes an even greater resistance.  Let us call on Cybele and ask for ways to be more loving and compassionate on both sides of this divisive behavior. She has that power!

(Meet Mago Contributor) Deanne Quarrie.

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[i] Monaghan, Patricia, The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines, Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 1997