"Rome was uneasy with the wild and colourful priestesses of Magna
Mater" How often do you run across a variation of this phrase when
you delve into the history of the Cybelines in Rome? You will find
some variation of this theme in almost every single major work that covers
the topic, but how true is it?
If you have been reading these essays from our Maetreum website, you probably have already read an account of our locating the Rome Phrygianum despite the false references that were passed down from scholar to scholar that it, or the Maetreum itself were located under the southwest corner of St. Peters. No one prior to us examined this in terms of even being possible, it was just accepted as truth. As soon as we turned our attention towards this, it became immediately apparent that it had to be false on the simple basis that two structures cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The daughter of one of our priestesses who takes an interest in our research put it best........"the motto of Cybeline research should be, didn't anyone actually look?"
Let's actually look. By 204 BCE the Cybelines were hardly confined to Phrygia. We had been established in southern Italy for centuries centred at Cumae. We were already all around north Africa. It was common knowledge then that the famous Sibyls were all Cybeline in origin and in fact that when Apollonian male priests tried to displace them, they failed almost immediately and the women oracles quickly re-instated. The Greek mystery schools were open adaptations of Cybeline mystery and Greece, indeed the entire Mediterranean was littered with Phrygianae. Frequently overlooked by scholars is the simple fact that while Greek lacked a soft "C" sound, Phrygian did not.
When Magna Mater came to Rome She was welcomed and viewed as having saved Rome. It was popular in Rome to claim Phrygian roots by way of ancient Troy. "Rome was uneasy with the wild and colourful priestesses of Cybele"? hardly, they knew exactly who the Cybelines were. They let the Cybelines design the Maetreum on the Palatine which endured as long as it did because the priestesses insisted that the foundations be taken down to the bedrock. The Palatine was a prime location within the City of Rome, being the centre of Rome and the legendary location of Rome's founding. Consider who the Cybelines were. Consider that this was always a religion that celebrated wild spaces. Consider that in 204 BCE the Cybelines essentially had a blank check as far as Rome was concerned, after all, mere months after Magna Mater arrived in Rome, the very roman given the task of Her welcome went to Africa and defeated Hannibal, the greatest threat to Rome ever up to that time! So who's idea was it for the Roman Phrygianum to be built outside the city, across the river, on a hill that didn't even have a name at the time? Isn't it natural that the Cybelines would wish to live outside the roman metropolis? This must have been a huge relief to a lot of the roman senators! Potentially, the Cybelines could have wielded a major influence on the politics of the Senate and they actually asked to live outside the city. As for the colourful, having come from Phrygia, Cybeline priestesses gravitated naturally to the much more elaborate nature of Phrygian fabrics in dress and translated this into often more colourful versions of the basic stola and palla of the Roman women reflected in the adaptation of this more colourful expression of clothing by the matrons of Rome themselves.
Mons Vaticanus was on the west side of the Tiber and was about as "wild" as you could get and still be within easy reach of Rome. Before the extensive changes to the contours of the hill, it had two peaks with a slight depression between them. It was here that the Phrygianum was built. The very name of the hill means "hill of the seers". That's right, the famous Vatican and the hill it is named after is actually named for the Cybelines and their function as seers. The Cybelines weren't exiled to outside the city, they chose to be there.
Let's look some other places that haven't been looked at before. For the past 150 years virtually everyone writing research on the Cybelines in Rome concentrated on the Gallae priestesses. "Castrated male priests of Cybele wearing the dress of women that shocked to the core the staid Romans" Excuse me? Romans staid? What about the Mellissae? The priestesses that arrived in Rome were mixed Mellissae and Gallae. The matrons of Rome took to Cybele like fish to water, a few even commissioned coins with their own likeness as Cybele. More than a few tombs of matrons of Rome proudly proclaimed the occupant's status of a priestess of Cybele. Yes, throughout large periods of roman history roman men were forbidden to become Gallae priestesses and this is not all that difficult to understand, just read Catullus' poem 63 for the fear of being male and called to Cybele. However, never were the women of Rome forbidden to become Mellissae. Any attempt to impose such an idea on the matrons of Rome would have lead to an uprising. Remember, the Megalesian was the major holiday of Rome.
Cybelines from the dawn of time have been sexual healers and practiced sacred sex. Today this is called ritual prostitution from the rantings of the second century Christian apologists. Were the Cybelines prostitutes? The institution of prostitution was always present in Rome. By law, prostitutes wore the tunic (male dress) rather than the tunica (female dress) and wore their hair short. So what was the dress of the Mellissae and Gallae priestesses? Both groups not only wore the tunica, but also wore the stolla and palla. The stolla and palla were reserved for matrons and married women of statue. They wore their hair long and styled with the exception of during Megalensia when the hair was worn wild and free. Cybeline choice of colour for both stolla and palla tended to be brighter and more colourful than typical for roman matrons but was essentially the same dress. Gallae priestesses sometimes added the Phrygian cap to their outfits to show identification with Attis. There is a world of difference between sacred sexual rites and prostitution but with the horror of the pleasures of the flesh that haunts Christianity to this day, this is often still overlooked.
So where do we get this "Romans shocked by the colourful, foreign, priestesses of Cybele" idea that is so prevalent in almost all the accounts of the Cybeline presence in Rome? The facts don't seem to bear out this idea. Scholars of the Classical period view the Greeks and Romans as the ancient epitome of civilization and have done so for the past 200 years or more. They have promoted an idealized picture of these cultures based on a limited examination of the realities of both of them plus almost all these scholars are men. Perhaps more importantly almost all research on Cybeline practice was done by Christians.
Never has a religion been subjected to historical erasure as ours has. Even a quick examination of second and third century Christian apologists reveals several interesting aspects. All other "gods and goddesses" are mocked as foolish beliefs of the uneducated, not so Magna Mater. She alone is acknowledged in vicious language that exposes the underlying fear and belief of these writers......She alone is referred to as very very real. By the end of the fourth century and beginning of the fifth there was a wholesale attempt to totally erase all statues, writings, temples and memory of Cybele, Magna Mater from the face of the earth. Even today scholars refer to the "cult" of the Mother Goddess unknowingly continuing a tradition of denial of a faith that had spread and was the major religion of the known western world! All one has to do to see the truth of this statement is merely open their eyes when examining the past. The pantheons left from the ancient world often feature Cybele at the peak of the pediments, above all the other gods and goddesses. Likewise, the various altars would arranged around the central altar to Cybele. What amazes me is that almost no account of the mythologies of Greece and Rome ever mention this when it is still in plain sight.
So what of the various other gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome? Weren't they the "religion" of the time? In a word, no. The various mythologies were teaching stories, morality stories. They served the same function then as comic book heroes and heroines do today, or perhaps more accurately as does anime and manga. Above all of them was Magna Mater. It was considered "impolite" or improper to tell stories about Her just as stories about the "Adventures of Christian God" would be considered poor taste if someone wrote them today. Just as Hinduism is often misunderstood by the West, the religious traditions of the period were in all probability no more pantheistic than Christianity is. Let's be honest here, a religion that has a devil, demons, angels, archangels, a Father, a Son and a holy Ghost is certainly no more monotheistic than one that uses various gods and goddesses as shorthand for aspects of a Divine that is unknowable by It's very nature since It includes all of creation. Indeed the belief in a larger than life male god on a cloud with a white beard is considerable less sophisticated if we are being completely honest.
When the Mithrians came to Rome it was considered necessary for a Mellissae Priestess of Cybele to watch over the rituals of the taurobolium. Consider, a religion for men felt it required to have the blessings of a representative of Magna Mater for their own rites! This presence confused many of the past researchers on Cybele who confused the Mithrian rituals as being Cybeline when in fact the Mithrian recognized Cybele as the Mother of Gods as well. It is important to note that the Mithrian traditions came from Phrygia as well and so this requirement of the major rite of initiation being overseen by a representative of the Magna Mater is not at all surprising. Further evidence is the simple fact that we find zero references to tauroboliums in Rome until the second century and well after the arrival of Mithrian practice to Rome. Later, when the Senate feared the potential power of the Cybeline priestesses over the Empire, they imposed an Archi-Gallus, or male overseer, on the Phrygianum. Always a loyal Roman citizen (and thus male) and never a transsexual, the Day of Blood rites, or self full ritual castration was out of the question so a taurobolium rite was substituted. Interestingly enough, Catholic priests and bishops soon adopted the full length robes, feminine dress as we have previously noted, around this same time and retain it to this very day. Also of passing interest is that the person receiving the taurobolium rites was expected to provide the bull. If they could not afford a bull to sacrifice, a lamb was considered a reasonable substitute. The taurobolium rite consisted of the blessed standing in a pit covered by gridwork while a bull was bled to death above, the blessed being then being bathed in the blood of the bull.........or lamb.
The first century CE saw the arrival of Mithra and Jesus and a suddenly more important Attis in the Roman world. Of the three, Jesus was the least popular. All three were "dying sons" sacrificed in the name of the Deity which was merely a patriarchal twist on the various mystery school teachings where the descent to the underworld and then rescue was always of a daughter and was a way of teaching about the cyclical nature of the universe, not to be taken as literal. The Gnostic branch of Christianity was in fact and open and honest mystery religion patterned directly after the Cybeline mysteries and the various mystery schools of Greece that followed it. Up to this time only the Cybeline mysteries had a dying son/daughter, the daughter aspect almost always overlooked by historians hung up on how she became one rather than the fact she was one. The other primary example of a dying son before the first century was Horus.
Shortly after the death of Yeshua Nazaret, a revolutionary (today
we'd call him a terrorist) who failed in his attempt to lead a Jewish
revolt against the Romans and institute a Jewish theocracy in Judea, a
figure history knows as Paul, born Saul of Tarsus had a "conversion"
from a hired thug for a Sadducee High Priest to a follower of Yeshua he
Mithrianized and renamed Jesus Christ from the Hellenistic christ
themes of dying and resurrected consorts and the Greek translation of
Yeshua. Tarsus at the time of Saul's childhood was a centre of the
Mithrian faith which would later be fully merged under Constantine as
what we know today as christianity. In Saul's day it was somewhat
different. That earliest christianity was separated by two branches
that had opposing ideologies. The original followers of Yeshua felt the
new religion was for the Jews only and required one to first and
foremost be a good Jew. Saul was pitching a wider net claiming no one
need be born Jewish, convert to judism, be circumsized or observe
Jewish law in order to be "saved" by the return of the resurrected
"Jesus" which was due any day. Not surprising since Saul during his
time as a hired thug persecuted the Jewish followers of Yeshua prior to
his "conversion". Modern critical scholars have reached a near
consensus that only seven of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul
were genuine, 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians,
Philippians, Philemon and Romans. The others were crude second century
forgeries: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, Colossians and 2
Thessalonians. The gnostic themes the epistles widely regard as
legitimate are consistent with the later claims of gnostic christians
of "secret" doctrines handed down by Saul (Paul). The common elements
of these first century christians was the layered outer teachings and
secret (gnostic) inner teachings.
Paul came to a bad end after annoying Nero enough to be arrested
around 62 CE. He died sometime during 64 CE, the same year of the great
fire that destroyed Rome.
The Rome of 64 CE was quite different than the historic Rome most of us
are familiar with. Most of the city was slums, poorly constructed on
winding, narrow roads wood framed structures with overhanging upper
stories. The myths about the great fire of 64 CE that destroyed most of
Rome came to us via the historian Tacitus who was the source of the
"Nero fiddled (played his lyre actually) while Rome burned. Other
sources tell us that Nero, who was out of the city at the time the fire
started, raced back to Rome and actually joined the bucket brigades
attempting to control the fires. By the time of the fires, Nero was
definitely not popular with the Senate and Tacitus was one of those
Senators.. He was blamed with scapegoating the early christians with
the fire. PBS, as part of a forensic history series called "Secrets of
the Dead" revisited the facts as we know them today and came to the
conclusion that the fire that destroyed Rome was much more likely to
have been started and aided by christian zealots just as Nero claimed.
Professor Gerhard Baudy of the University of Konstanz in Germany spent
15 years studying ancient apocalyptic prophecies and part of that study
showed that the christians had been circulating texts for years
predicting and even glorying in the destruction of Rome by fire: "In
all of these oracles, the destruction of Rome by fire is prophesied.
That is the constant theme: Rome must burn. This was the long-desired
objective of all the people who felt subjugated by Rome."
Two years later, 66 CE, the Jews revolted once again against Rome. This
failed attempt ended with the cruifiction of Peter the following year.
The book of Revelations was written a mere 30 years later and quite
clearly can be seen to equate all evil with Rome. The christians
shortly thereafter extended this hatred towards the state religion as
well, the Cybeline faith and even the source of most of their own
mythology, the Mithrians. The christians once again had schism, this
time between the gnostic, or inner mystery school and the new school
that viewed the outer teachings as literal.
These second century literalist christians spewed every vile charge at
the Cybeline faith possible. Most of the worst openly misogynistic and
homophobic writings attributed to Paul were forged during this period
and were actually aimed directly at the Cybeline faith rather than
women in general. All other gods and goddesses they openly mocked, but
for Magna Mater was reserved fear and loathing that showed their
underlying belief in Her. Much
of our own research has used their rantings to recover our practices in
Rome since they did such a complete job later on of removing references
to the Cybelines they themselves had not written. One
particularly amusing rant concerned a Galla priestess who liked lesbian
sex and was told she should have cut off her tongue instead of her male
parts given her taste in lovers. Some things haven't changed much.
During the time of Claudius the first known case of a Roman citizen becoming a Galla (transsexual) priestess is recorded. Gens Claudius had a rich association with Magna Mater dating back to Her first arrival in Rome when the soiled reputation of Claudia Quintas was redeemed when she alone was able to pull the barge carrying the Magna Mater from Pessinus free from the muck at Ostia on it's last leg of Her journey to Rome. Livy, who was Claudius' tutor in history as a child, wrote of this account and no doubt it made a large impression on the teenager. We do know for certain that the Meglamensia was reaffirmed as the primary religious season during his time. At least one historian attributes the increased importance of Attis to the time of Claudius but the Attis statuary and images did not become common until almost a hundred years after his reign. Claudius warned the early Christians when approached to mediate a dispute in Alexandria that whoever was first to restart hostilities would learn what Rome's displeasure could mean.
In 103 CE a Battakes from Pessinus travelled to Rome to fortell of Roman victory in the current strife and was given the honoured right of addressing the Senate. The Senate pledged support of Pessinus in the conflict and promised the dedication of yet another Maetreum but while still addressing from the rostra, a plebeian tribute named A. Pompeius and his thugs attacked the Battakes with insults of womanishness (duh, she was a Galla priestess) and drove her from the platform. Within days Pompeius lay dying of fever within a few days. Some evidence hints that Battakes gave a prophecy that when Rome turned from the Magna Mater, Rome would fall during her address to the Senate.......and indeed this is exactly what happened almost exactly 200 years hence. Just as had happened during the Punic Wars, the position of Magna Mater was once again confirmed and acknowledged in terms of Rome itself. While some historians, Vermaseren included, talk about an archi-gallus from this period, there is no mention of this term or office at all prior to Antoninius Pius (138-161 CE) recorded anywhere reputable.
While Rome remained Cybeline officially, the new Mithrian faith and
the Attis variation gained much popularity with the Roman centurions,
the christians were not particularly liked mainly because the constant
battles between their rival variations. In 135 CE Emperor Hadrian
erected a temple to the Cybeline avatar Aphrodite on the spot reputed
to be the hill of Calvery. The new literalist christian fraction all
but declared open warfare on the Mithrians failing to understand that
it was they who had appropriated (via Paul) Mithrian theology and not
the other way around.
It is important to note that the gnostic school of Christianity was in
many ways a Jewish version of the Cybeline mysteries. They held Sophia
as the Magna Mater and gnostic gospels acknowledged Her primary place
in their "pantheon". Some Marianist catholic traditions to this day
preserve much of the elements of Cybeline ritual and many had to be
re-introduced into mainstream catholism due to the church's inability
to wipe out the practices. Gnostic christians were largely the victims
of the literalist school and were reviled equally by the literalists
with so called pagans. Today we would call these literalists
fundamentalists and then as now they were dangerous bigots bent on
wiping out any group that did not agree totally with their warped
vision of theology. They had taken the teaching and morality myths
common to the mystery schools rewritten with "Jesus" as the central
figure rather than Attis, Mithria or others and pushed it as literal
truth and ruthlessly suppressed any gospels that even hinted at gnostic
"truth" underlying them.
What was the hidden agenda in the ruthless suppression of the gnostic
traditions and the catholic church? Striking is that virtually all the
so called gnostic heresies placed a high value on the feminine, divine
and otherwise and equality of the sexes in general. The Monatists even
held that a second coming of christ would be as a woman. Monatism
sprang from Phrygia as a clearly Cybeline version of christianity. Some
suspect that Monatus was a Galla Cybeline priestess who returned to a
male role in order to better be heard in a world rapidly attacking the
feminine divine and mundane. The Roman church was diametrically opposed
to equality of the sexes and quite openly misogynistic in it's
teachings.