JesusA (imported) wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2011 8:23 pm
In the ancient Mediterranean world, March 24 was celebrated as the Dies sanguinis, or Day of Blood. Some theologians believe that the holiday is the precursor/origin of the Christian holiday of Good Friday.
Dies sanguinis was the festival day on which worshipers and priests of the goddess Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, slashed themselves and bled to sprinkle pine boughs and the Mother’s statue with their blood. This was also the day on which young men castrated themselves to become priests to the goddess, to become Galli.
The day following Dies sanguinis was the celebration of Hilaria, the “Day of Joy” (also known as Hilaria Matris Deûm). This was a celebration of the day of resurrection of Attis, the consort of the Mother of the Gods. It was a day for the celebration of resurrection, fertility and the return of springtime to the world.
The site for the largest ceremony in Rome for Dies sanguinis was later taken over by Christians to erect the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter at the heart of the Vatican. The testicles of those castrated in honor of the Mother of the Gods were ritually interred at a site that was later covered by the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore†, the largest church in Rome dedicated to the “Mother of God.”
The faith in the Mother of the Gods was the most powerful rival to early Christianity in the empire. It has been argued by scholars of early Christianity (see especially Susan Elliott in the Bibliography (
http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17583) on the Non-Fiction Board) that Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians was written largely in reaction to the prevalence of the faith of the Mother of the Gods in Galatia. Its attempt to dissuade Christians from circumcision is seen as a way to distance Christians from the Galli who were castrated as an article of their faith. Roman law equated castration and circumcision as, apparently, did many early Christians and castration was practiced by many of the early Christian faithful. At least one sect of the very earliest Christian sects believed that all true Christian males should be castrated, and the belief recurred among Christian sects as recent as the Skoptsy, who flourished up until the beginning of WWII in Romania.
FOOTNOTE:
†Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over the Boston Archdiocese for nearly 20 years while he ignored repeated pleas from the mothers and aunts of abused children, coddled offending priests, and demanded silence from victims until—after the number of cases exceeded 500—he was forced in 2002 to resign his post, is today the archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
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Been browsing Frasier's Golden Bough?
This subject almost demands quoting the Roman poet Catullus - Poem 63 one of the great poems of antiquity which depicts the self castration of one of the galli and his remorse on waking the next morning minus his manhood. Also something anyone interested in castration should read.
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... ullus.html
(This amazing poem No. 63 of Catullus, written in a strange meter found nowhere else, is an evocation of a cult which emigrated from Asia Minor to Rome in the 1 c. B.C. It is based on the worship of the turreted Mother Goddess, Cybele, who is served by emasculated priests called Galli/ae. As a study in religious frenzy it is matched only by Euripides' Bacchae in the Greek world. Reading it in the original, one cannot avoid shivering with anticipation and fear. One should note that cults involving practices as strange as self-emasculation have not disappeared in our time, on the contrary they seem to have a new half-life in this century.)
XIV "ATTIS"
Over the high seas in a quick boat carried, Attis
When he had reached the Phrygian forest, with desire
Touched with his foot the shore and came unto
The dark places of the goddess, hidden in deep forests,
Driven there by raging madness, his mind wandering away,
With a sharp piece of rock he tore off the weights of his groin.
And when he saw that his body was now without man,
Staining with fresh blood the soil of the earth,
Then with snow white hands he took the tambour up,
Your tambourine, O Cybele, O Mother your rites,
And shaking with slim fingers the hollow hide of the herd
Began to sing to her comrades in trembling tones this:
"Come, come together to the high forests of Cybele,
Come now, wandering herd of the lady of Dindymus,
Like exiles seeking a new home, seeking new places,
Following my lead, following me as leader, O my friends,
You have endured the raging water, the wildness of the sea,
And un-manned your bodies by greatest hate of Love.
Make you joyous the heart of our Lady with wandering steps,
Let hesitation disappear from your minds. Come now, follow
To the Phrygian home of Cybele, to the forest of the goddess,
Where the Phrygian player sounds a low note on his curving horn,
Where voice of cymbals clash, where the drums resound,
Where women wearing ivy wreath toss their heads in ecstasy,
With sharp screams performing the holy rites of Our Lady.
There the wandering band of Our Lady is forever fleeting"
As Attis, now a woman, sang these words to her companions,
The band suddenly with trembling tongues uttered a howl,
The tambour roared back, and hollow cymbals clanged,
The moving chorus with hastening feet now comes to Mt Ida,
Ever green. Wildening, breathing heavily, driving mind, Attis
The leader, with drum beating, goes through the darkest forest,
Leaping like a calf unused to the yoke, untrained, wild.
The devotees moving fast follow their fast foot leader,
And so when they touched the home of Cybele, exhausted
From great labor, even without eating they fall into sleep,
Slow slumber with sliding languor slipped over their eyes.
All the crazed madness of mind vanished in gentle restfulness.
...
Note the change in the gender of pronouns after the castration and the "eunuch calm" reference in the last line I quoted. (the poem goes on. Urge those interested to read the rest)
Transward
