Cybele

And they're like, okay, great, you can stay.

There's a little bit of apprehension with the cult of the Magna Mater because it was heavily influenced by the Phrygian and Anatolian goddess Cybele.

So with... foreign mystery cults and foreign gods, there's apprehension at first, but then it moves into, okay, you can be here as long as you're paying taxes and you're doing X and you're doing Y and you're doing Z.

And many people, many high ranking officials, leaders, and even emperors would join mystery cults.

The Isis one is often considered to be, like, it was considered to be extremely exotic because the priests would castrate themselves to become-

I was just gonna ask you about Cybele.

Yes, um-

Is that, is that how you pronounce it? C-Y-B-E-L-E.

Cybele, yeah.

Cybele.

And so you get kind...

Yeah, Cybele and Isis and the-

The gods in days of yore made choice of such trees as they wished to be under their protection.

The oak pleased Jupiter, the myrtle Venus, the laurel Phoebus, the pine Cybele, the lofty poplar Hercules.

Minerva, wondering why they had chosen the barren ones, inquired the reason.

Jupiter answered, "That we may not seem to sell the honor for the fruit." "Now, so heaven help me," said she, "let anyone say what he likes, but the olive is more pleasing to me on account of its fruit." Then said the father of the gods and the creator of men, "O daughter, it is with justice that you are called wise by all.

If envy shall choose to carp at it, so long as it cannot imitate, why let it carp? I have gained glory enough in that you, and others like to you, have quoted my words in your writings and have thought me worthy of being long remembered.

Why should I stand in need of the applause of the illiterate? Fable One.

The Ass and the Priests of Cybele.

He who has been born to ill luck not only passes an unhappy life, but even after death the cruel rigor of destiny pursues him.

Um, Rhea is another, another expression of this.

Um, Cybele was another harvest deity, but worshiped under the moon.

Also Dionysus and Bacchus were lunar gods as well that were worshiped in orgiastic fests, [lip smacks] um, often, yeah, not really discriminating of man and woman, right? You could basically have sex as sex in their minds.

It's all, if it's all sacred and then, then an orgy is, is good if it's, if it's done sacredly, if it's done for the right, m- you know, occult reasons.

Words of dire import from Cumae's prophetess were noised abroad.

Bellona's priests with bleeding arms and slaves of Cybele's worship with ensanguined hair howled chants of havoc and of woe to men.

Arms clashed, and sounding in the pathless woods were heard strange voices.

Spirits walked the earth, and dead men's ashes muttered from the urn.

No decency of language is there here, no regard for the manners of the table.

You will hear all the fool talk and squeaking tones of Cybele.

A grey-haired, frenzied old man presides over the rites.

He is a rare and notable master of the art of gluttony, and should be hired to teach it.

Gali literally means the half men, the part men, part women.

and it is not this governmental decree and it's not for this very utilitarian purpose that they are doing this it's because they are trying to connect better to the feminine as men and so they dress in dresses they wear jewelry they act very feminine and they are everywhere it's a big group, surprisingly, and you see them, they actually get adopted, and Cybele gets adopted into the Roman Empire amongst all the different gods that they have by 200 BCE.

And they become an official part of the Roman Empire.

And so we know they exist, the writings of Paul in 1 Corinthians, when he's talking about, and this is 50, right, about 50 CE, when Paul's writing about the eunuchs, well these guys exist they're part of the roman culture but he's not saying anything about these men who are choosing to dress like women who have removed their genitalia and he's not addressing this in any way shape or form he's not saying like nope we should cast them out and we should reject them and they're not a part of our religion because they chose to do that they are just left to do what they will and so while we don't have any hard evidence of like hey These priests of Galilee were baptized into the Christian church.

Sometimes they were stationary, but...

They were the priests of Cybele, the great mother of the gods, or Agdistus in Greek, Latin.

These priests used to wear female garb.

They had long hair.

Um, one of the great examples of, of someone, of a person in antiquity who was living in, you know, a multicultural world is the Nazianze preacher, who has this great sermon in the, in the Refutation of All Heresies, sometimes ascribed to Hippolytus, but I just call him the Refutator because it is an anonymous text.

And it's this sermon where he's, he's saying that, "I found Christ in all these mysteries," including mysteries that most people have never heard of, like the mysteries of Attis and, and, and Cybele or, or, or Kybele, if you prefer, and, and he's got Osiris in there, and Isis, and he's clearly knowledgeable about, you know, a ton of, like, phallic imagery, which is like, oh my God, you know? Does a Christian talk about this stuff? You know, like, but he's just, like, this ...

He's, like, literally this walking encyclopedia, and you're like, "What world is this guy coming out of?" You know? Like, this is what he talks about, and also the Gospel of Thomas, you know, which he ...

So at any rate, it, like, this is a very highly multicultural world, and for whatever reason, even though we pride ourselves in being multicultural too, our academies are actually [laughs] really boring places sometimes.