The Cult Dossier · No. 007 · Ancient Mystery Cult
Cult of Cybele and Attis
Magna Mater; the Galli
c.7th c. BCE – 4th c. CE · Phrygia (Anatolia), then Rome
I. ANTIQUITY — THE MYSTERY CULTS
Fully religious — Roman state cult from 204 BCE
Who led it
The Archigallus (chief eunuch-priest) and the Galli, self-castrated priests who wore women's dress, bleached hair, and processed with cymbals, tympana and flutes.
What it worshipped and taught
Cybele, Great Mother of the gods, and her consort-son Attis, who in the myth castrates himself under a pine tree and dies, then is restored. Priests re-enacted the castration on the Day of Blood. Initiates could undergo the TAUROBOLIUM — standing in a pit beneath a grating while a bull was slaughtered above, being drenched in its blood, and emerging reborn for eternity (in aeternum renatus).
Who was in it
Cybele; Attis; Agdistis; the Archigallus; Roman importers Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica and the matron Claudia Quinta.
How it ended, or where it stands
Suppressed with the rest of Roman paganism.
The dead
—
Of note
Irreversible bodily commitment as the price of membership — the extreme historical form of the sunk-cost mechanism modern groups reproduce with money and confession files.
A SOURCING CAVEAT THIS ENTRY OWED THE READER, AND IT IS THE APPENDIX D PATTERN AGAIN. The pit, the slatted platform and the initiate drenched from below are described most fully by PRUDENTIUS, in the PERISTEPHANON — A CHRISTIAN POLEMICIST WRITING AROUND 400 CE, CENTURIES AFTER THE RITE BEGAN AND WITH EVERY REASON TO MAKE PAGANISM LOOK DISGUSTING. Modern scholarship, Robert Duthoy in particular, has questioned it in detail, and THE EARLIER INSCRIPTIONS DESCRIBE SOMETHING LESS GORY AND LESS ELABORATE. The taurobolium happened; the blood-shower staging may be a late development, a distortion, or both. SEVEN GROUPS IN THIS DOSSIER ARE KNOWN MAINLY THROUGH THEIR ENEMIES' VOCABULARY AND THE BIAS ALWAYS RUNS THE SAME WAY — stranger and filthier than they were. This is the eighth.
A SOURCING CAVEAT THIS ENTRY OWED THE READER, AND IT IS THE APPENDIX D PATTERN AGAIN. The pit, the slatted platform and the initiate drenched from below are described most fully by PRUDENTIUS, in the PERISTEPHANON — A CHRISTIAN POLEMICIST WRITING AROUND 400 CE, CENTURIES AFTER THE RITE BEGAN AND WITH EVERY REASON TO MAKE PAGANISM LOOK DISGUSTING. Modern scholarship, Robert Duthoy in particular, has questioned it in detail, and THE EARLIER INSCRIPTIONS DESCRIBE SOMETHING LESS GORY AND LESS ELABORATE. The taurobolium happened; the blood-shower staging may be a late development, a distortion, or both. SEVEN GROUPS IN THIS DOSSIER ARE KNOWN MAINLY THROUGH THEIR ENEMIES' VOCABULARY AND THE BIAS ALWAYS RUNS THE SAME WAY — stranger and filthier than they were. This is the eighth.
Its timeline
- 204 BCE Under Hannibal's threat, Rome imports the black meteorite of Cybele from Pessinus on the instruction of the Sibylline Books.
- 191 BCE Temple dedicated on the Palatine; the Megalensia games instituted, 4–10 April.
- c.40 CE Claudius fully legalises the cult and admits Roman citizens to the priesthood.
- 15–27 March, annually Canna intrat; Arbor intrat (the pine felled); 24 March Dies Sanguinis, the blood-letting and castrations; 25 March Hilaria, resurrection joy; 27 March Lavatio.
- 390 CE Last dated taurobolium inscription.
- 394 CE Suppressed under Theodosius I.