Mother Church * Church of the Mother
The Cult of Cybele
A Near Eastern goddess whose worship spread from Phrygia into Greece, Rome and other neighboring cultures. Even in Athens' Agora there is a temple dedicated to her which is known as the Metroön or "Temple of the Mother". Cybele was involved with sacred prostitution, sacrifice in the form of castration and fertility rituals focusing on Attis, one of the many vegetation-gods. The cult of this Phrygian goddess has resulted in archeological monuments ranging in time from 6.000 BCE to the end of the Roman Empire, and recent finds have established that she was also worshipped among the Thracian peoples. She was identified with the Greek goddess Rhea. The Cult of Cybele includes almost all ingredients of the ancient Mother-goddess devotion, giving a very unique review.
Other names and titles:
Agdos is a name for Cybele, when she takes the form of a rock.
In his work on the Christian Black Virgins and their origins, Ean Begg relates Cybele to the Ka'aba.
"Her name is etymologically linked with the words for crypt, cave, head and dome and is distantly related to the Ka'aba, the cube-shaped Holy of Holies in Mecca that contains the feminine black stone venerated by Islam" Begg, p.57
Cybele, like the Ephesian Artemis and many other goddesses, was also venerated in the form of a black stone. Once this stone had been brought to Rome, both stone and goddess were worshipped in the Roman Empire until the 4th century CE.
A Roman name for
this goddess was Mater Kubile, and sometimes also simply Magna Mater, meaning "Great
Mother".
Article from Britannica.com:
Ancient Oriental and Greco-Roman deity, known by a variety of local names; the name Cybele
or Cybebe predominates in Greek and Roman literature from about the 5th century BC onward.
Her full official Roman name was Mater Deum Magna Idaea (Great Idaean Mother of the Gods).
Legends agree in locating the rise of the worship of the Great Mother in the general area
of Phrygia in Asia Minor (now in west-central Turkey), and during classical times her cult
centre was at Pessinus, located on the slopes of Mount Dindymus, or Agdistis (hence her
names Dindymene and Agdistis). The existence, however, of many similar non-Phrygian
deities indicates that she was merely the Phrygian form of the nature deity of all Asia
Minor. From Asia Minor her cult spread first to Greek territory. The Greeks always saw in
the Great Mother a resemblance to their own goddess Rhea and finally identified the two
completely.
During Hannibal's invasion of Italy in 204 BC, the Romans followed a Sibylline prophecy
that the enemy could be expelled and conquered if the "Idaean Mother" were
brought to Rome, together with her sacred symbol, a small stone reputed to have fallen
from the heavens. Her identification by the Romans with the goddesses Maia, Ops, Rhea,
Tellus, and Ceres contributed to the establishment of her worship on a firm footing. By
the end of the Roman Republic it had attained prominence, and under the empire it became
one of the most important cults in the Roman world.
In all of her aspects, Roman, Greek, and Oriental, the Great Mother was characterized by
essentially the same qualities. Most prominent among them was her universal motherhood.
She was the great parent not only of gods but also of human beings and beasts. She was
called the Mountain Mother, and special emphasis was placed on her maternity over wild
nature; this was manifested by the orgiastic character of her worship. Her mythical
attendants, the Corybantes, were wild, half-demonic beings. Her priests, the galli,
castrated themselves on entering her service. The self-mutilation was justified by the
myth that her lover, the fertility god Attis, had emasculated himself under a pine tree,
where he bled to death. At Cybele's annual festival (March 15-27), a pine tree was cut and
brought to her shrine, where it was honoured as a god and adorned with violets considered
to have sprung from the blood of Attis. On March 24, the "Day of Blood," her
chief priest, the archigallus, drew blood from his arms and offered it to her to the music
of cymbals, drums, and flutes, while the lower clergy whirled madly and slashed themselves
to bespatter the altar and the sacred pine with their blood. On March 27 the silver statue
of the goddess, with the sacred stone set in its head, was borne in procession and bathed
in the Almo, a tributary of the Tiber River.
Cybele's ecstatic rites were at home and fully comprehensible in Asia, but they were too
frenzied for Europeans farther west. Roman citizens were at first forbidden to take part
in the ceremonies--a ban that was not removed until the time of the empire. Though her
cult sometimes existed by itself, in its fully developed state the worship of the Great
Mother was accompanied by that of Attis.
The Great Mother was especially prominent in the art of the empire. She usually appears
with mural crown and veil, seated on a throne or in a chariot, and accompanied by two
lions.
She was regarded as the giver of life to gods, human beings, and beasts alike.
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