Roger Pearse

Interesting - thanks. But... not a lot, as evidence of the cult of Attis at Antioch, is it? I don't think I'd treat either reference as sound.

There's something funny about all this. Was Attis really a cult mainly in the West? (Just beginning to wonder)

I looked at the inscriptions in a few pages. Cybele is always referred to as Mhtri\ (=Mother), Mhtros qeon (Mother of the gods), rather than by name. This... this is a bit vague.

God Fearing Atheist

Here's an interesting one. Damascius Vita Isidori 302:

Seems to incorporate several elements from the Attis mythos.

Roger Pearse

I've been trying to get hold of Damascius' Life of Isidore. The work is lost, but an epitome is preserved in Photius Bibliotheca. It's in volume 6 of Rene Henry's edition. (I did order it, but got vol. 4 instead! Reordered this weekend).

Where did your quote come from?

God Fearing Atheist

Zintzen's volume Damascii Vitae Isidori Reliquiae (Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1967). Though the body of the text is in Greek, the introduction and notes are in Latin, which I can't make heads or tails of.

Roger Pearse

Did you translate that portion from the Greek then?

Roger Pearse

Note the existence of a rather good article: Grant Showerman, The great mother of the gods, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, vol. 1 (1898-1901). p. 219, with loads of references to primary sources, online at http://books.google.com/books?id=DzZZAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1.

God Fearing Atheist

There wasn't any need to reinvent the wheel. I happened to find an English translation (from the same edition) in Tryggve Mettinger's "The Riddle of Resurrection: 'Dying and Rising Gods' in the Ancient Near East," which deals with the Baal cycle, Melqart/Heracles, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz and Asclepius (obviously).

ph2ter

Some comparative mythology again from me.

The origin of Galli could be traced back into the ancient Sumer. There existed the class of the lamentation priests under the name 'Gala' (Lament: studies in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond By Ann Suter). They where feminized men (eunuchs?) who were believed to be capable to communicate with the dead and with the divine. They were always connected with the transgression of gender boundaries and were counted with women. Myths about Inanna connect that trans-gender feature of the Gala with the ability to mourn and raise the dead. The lamentation rites included singing lamentations and playing the drum (balag) which imitated the sound of thunder.
Hittites in some way link the cult of Attis and Cybele with the Sumerian cult. There existed a Luwian cult describing the men filling a cymbal with drink offering, as the Galloi were known to do ("I have eaten from the drum, drunk from the cymbal" - Clement (Protrepticos, II, 15, 3) ), and singing "like a woman" (Taylor). Eating from the drum probably includes eating some form of milled grains, because thunder is connected in mythology with the mill. Inside the mill the vegetation god is killed in the form of grain. Thunder was perceived then as a stone arrow, and that was also expanded to the death by spear or by wild boar.
Hanged Inanna was revived and resurrected by the gala beings (gala-tur-ra=young gala and kur-jar-ra) which were created by Enki. They revive Inanna by sprinkling the food of life and the water of life:
The kur-jar-ra sprinkled the food (plant) of life on the corpse.
The gala-tur-ra sprinkled the water of life on the corpse.
Inanna arose. (Descent of Inanna)

(Some connection with the bread and the wine of the Eucharist come to my mind.)
Gala have the ability to appease the raging goddess Ereshkigala and afterward Inanna when she was mad at his husband Dumuzid.
After Inanna is revived being hanged three days and three nights, gala-demons then as a substitute for Inanna take Dumuzid into the Underworld. They found him under the great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba.
So, it was possible to revive Inanna because Dumuzid was killed instead of her. If Dumuzid is understood as a personification of the grain, then the food of life is his own body.
The great apple tree where Dumuzid was found surely stands there for The World Tree, which is actually the same tree which was cut in the memory of Attis "when the Sun arrives at the extreme point of the equinoctial arc". The main shrine of Inanna was known as Kulab and that is not etymologically very far from 'Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya' - Cybele.
The lamentation priests lament for the dead, for the disappeared gods and goddesses. They have the power to revive them and they really do that in the Sumerian myths. The same kind of lamentation is recorded for the god Tammuz, even in Jeruzalem.
So, we are dealing here with the common mythological heritage of the whole area from the Greece to the Mesopotamia in a huge time-span.

Gala beings of Sumer and the Galloi of Cybele are in close connection with The World Tree. Only there is possible to accomplish the contact with the gods and with the dead and also to revive them. But to revive some god the price is to kill another god and to do that in the exactly same place, under the World Tree. Shedding of blood and piercing and cutting the body of god is necessary. Hanging on The World Tree is a permanent method of execution. So, hanging and The World Tree are somehow connected. The World Tree turns as heaven turns around the North pole.

The Proto-Indo-european root for 'to move around' and for the wheel is *kwel/*kwol (*kwekwlo) and that root is very similar to the Semitic *galgal, the Kartvelian *grgar and the Sumerian gigir (gur-gur). English gallows comes from OG. *galg like Goth.galga, and there exist forms like galu treo, galwe tree. Greek ‘polos’ (‘pole’, around which things revolve) are of the same root as also are the German yule (*kwekwl->*yekwl). The pole, the gallows and the yule log are actually different names for The World Tree. German Odin is 'The Lord of the gallows' and also hangs from the World Tree.
The name for the place where the cross stood and where the Christian god was hanged and pierced was according to the evangelists 'Golgotha', which is from Aramaic gulgulta, Heb. gulgoleth. That word is cognate with the Hebrew word galgal meaning the wheel, the axis. Golgotha according to that shows some affinity with The World Tree rather than with the evangelist's 'skull'. The name of that place perfectly fits with the mythology and I can only speculate that the evangelists get that name from some mythological substrate which lies under the Gospel story and not from the name for the real place at Jerusalem.

Roger Pearse

These comments all appear to be assertions. I would suggest that we reject the lot, as most likely to be nonsense, in the absence of definite, specific evidence, which is produced right here.

In short, if you want to tell us about the Galli, please do; but documented facts only, with ancient sources. Most of what people say is hearsay. What sources record the origins of the galli? <hint>

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Johnny Skeptic

Most of the Gospels is hearsay.