Phrygia
Phyrgia, in modern day Turkey, was the homeland of Cybele and Attis, and their galli priests.
In the competition between Christian and pagan in the ancient world neither side hesitated to broadcast the most outrageous and shocking accusations against its opponents in the most inflammatory rhetoric it could muster. “In their very temples,” wrote Firmicus Maternus in the mid-fourth century, “can be seen deplorable mockery before a moaning crowd, men taking the part of women, revealing with boastful ostentation this ignominy of impure and unchaste bodies (impuri et impudici). They broadcast their crimes and confess with superlative delight the stain of their polluted bodies (contaminati corporis)” (De errore profanarum religionum 4.2). These infamous men, with their impure, unchaste, polluted bodies, were none other than the galli, priests of the gods Cybele and Attis, whose mystery religion constituted one of early Christianity’s major rivals. Time and again, Christian apologists cited the galli as representative of all they abhorred in pagan culture and religion. And of all the outrages of the galli, none horrified them more than the radical manner in which they transgressed the boundaries of gender.
“They wear effeminately nursed hair,” continued Firmicus Maternus,“and dress in soft clothes. They can barely hold their heads up on their limp necks. Then, having made themselves alien to masculinity, swept up by playing flutes, they call their Goddess to fill them with an unholy spirit so as to seemingly predict the future to idle men. What sort of monstrous and unnatural thing is this?” A century later, Saint Augustine found the galli no less shocking: “Even till yesterday, with dripping hair and painted faces, with flowing limbs and feminine walk, they passed through the streets and alleys of Carthage, exacting from merchants that by which they might shamefully live” (De civitate Dei 7.26).
Malibu Cybele
Inanna/Ishtar
The Mesopotamiam goddess Inanna/Ishtar. In mythological accounts, Inanna is rescued from the underworld by two beings described as "neither male nor female." Various classes of priests in Sumerian and Assyrian religion occupied alternative gender roles distinct from those of men and women.
It would be easy to dismiss the numerous references to galli in ancient literature, both Christian and pagan, as exoticisms equivalent to today’s fascination with gender transgression as evidenced by such films as M. Butterfly and The Crying Game. Unlike the modern figure of the transvestite, however, galli were part of an official Roman state religion with manifestations in every part of the Greco-Roman world and at every level of society. One finds the Roman elite worshiping Cybele with bloody animal sacrifices officiated by state-appointed archigalli; common freedman and plebians forming fraternal associations, such as the dendrophori and canophori, to perform various roles in her annual festivals; and the poor and slaves swept up by the frenzy of her rites, often to the consternation and alarm of their social superiors.
It is the widespread dispersion and great historical depth of the Cybele and Attis cult, as well as its appeal to multiple levels of ancient Mediterranean societies, that make its study fascinating on its own, not to mention its relevance to current debates concerning the social construction of sexuality and gender. The galli become even more interesting, however, when placed next to evidence of similar patterns of religious gender transgression from the Near East and south Asia, which suggests that goddess-oriented cults and priests are part of an ancient cultural legacy of the broad world-historical region Marshall Hodgson referred to as the “Oikoumene.”
In the discussion that follows, I will focus on three of the better-documented cases of goddess-centered priesthoods: the Greco-Roman galli, the priests of the goddess called Inanna in Sumeria and Ishtar in Akkad, and the hijra of contemporary India and Pakistan. The parallels between these priesthoods and the social roles and identities of their personnel are detailed and striking. Without ruling out dispersion as a factor, I will argue that these priesthoods are largely independent inventions whose shared features reflect commonalties in the social dynamics of the societies in which they arose, specifically, the agrarian city-state. The presence of goddess-centered priesthoods in the regions where the urban lifestyle first developed raises unexpected and challenging questions concerning the role of gender diversity in the origins of civilization....
Phyrgia, in modern day Turkey, was the homeland of Cybele and Attis, and their galli priests.
In the competition between Christian and pagan in the ancient world neither side hesitated to broadcast the most outrageous and shocking accusations against its opponents in the most inflammatory rhetoric it could muster. “In their very temples,” wrote Firmicus Maternus in the mid-fourth century, “can be seen deplorable mockery before a moaning crowd, men taking the part of women, revealing with boastful ostentation this ignominy of impure and unchaste bodies (impuri et impudici). They broadcast their crimes and confess with superlative delight the stain of their polluted bodies (contaminati corporis)” (De errore profanarum religionum 4.2). These infamous men, with their impure, unchaste, polluted bodies, were none other than the galli, priests of the gods Cybele and Attis, whose mystery religion constituted one of early Christianity’s major rivals. Time and again, Christian apologists cited the galli as representative of all they abhorred in pagan culture and religion. And of all the outrages of the galli, none horrified them more than the radical manner in which they transgressed the boundaries of gender.
“They wear effeminately nursed hair,” continued Firmicus Maternus,“and dress in soft clothes. They can barely hold their heads up on their limp necks. Then, having made themselves alien to masculinity, swept up by playing flutes, they call their Goddess to fill them with an unholy spirit so as to seemingly predict the future to idle men. What sort of monstrous and unnatural thing is this?” A century later, Saint Augustine found the galli no less shocking: “Even till yesterday, with dripping hair and painted faces, with flowing limbs and feminine walk, they passed through the streets and alleys of Carthage, exacting from merchants that by which they might shamefully live” (De civitate Dei 7.26).
Malibu Cybele
Inanna/Ishtar
The Mesopotamiam goddess Inanna/Ishtar. In mythological accounts, Inanna is rescued from the underworld by two beings described as "neither male nor female." Various classes of priests in Sumerian and Assyrian religion occupied alternative gender roles distinct from those of men and women.
It would be easy to dismiss the numerous references to galli in ancient literature, both Christian and pagan, as exoticisms equivalent to today’s fascination with gender transgression as evidenced by such films as M. Butterfly and The Crying Game. Unlike the modern figure of the transvestite, however, galli were part of an official Roman state religion with manifestations in every part of the Greco-Roman world and at every level of society. One finds the Roman elite worshiping Cybele with bloody animal sacrifices officiated by state-appointed archigalli; common freedman and plebians forming fraternal associations, such as the dendrophori and canophori, to perform various roles in her annual festivals; and the poor and slaves swept up by the frenzy of her rites, often to the consternation and alarm of their social superiors.
It is the widespread dispersion and great historical depth of the Cybele and Attis cult, as well as its appeal to multiple levels of ancient Mediterranean societies, that make its study fascinating on its own, not to mention its relevance to current debates concerning the social construction of sexuality and gender. The galli become even more interesting, however, when placed next to evidence of similar patterns of religious gender transgression from the Near East and south Asia, which suggests that goddess-oriented cults and priests are part of an ancient cultural legacy of the broad world-historical region Marshall Hodgson referred to as the “Oikoumene.”
In the discussion that follows, I will focus on three of the better-documented cases of goddess-centered priesthoods: the Greco-Roman galli, the priests of the goddess called Inanna in Sumeria and Ishtar in Akkad, and the hijra of contemporary India and Pakistan. The parallels between these priesthoods and the social roles and identities of their personnel are detailed and striking. Without ruling out dispersion as a factor, I will argue that these priesthoods are largely independent inventions whose shared features reflect commonalties in the social dynamics of the societies in which they arose, specifically, the agrarian city-state. The presence of goddess-centered priesthoods in the regions where the urban lifestyle first developed raises unexpected and challenging questions concerning the role of gender diversity in the origins of civilization....
vice.com
The Chill Roman Priests Who Castrated Themselves and Worshipped a Goddess
TJ Bowden In Identity
Three years ago, notorious men’s rights website Return of Kings hailed the virtues
of the Roman empire in an article titled “The Roots of Masculinity in
Ancient Rome.” “If we men want to renew our civilization…” its writer
queried, “why not begin by adopting the very way of life that ushered
our civilization into the once-great civilization it has been in the
past?”
It’s no understatement to say that the alt-right loves the classics. Their all-white vision of retrograde masculinity in a toga is about as accurate as Marvel’s Thor is a depiction of Norse mythology—but it’s not a new one, either. We've been using the Romans to prop up our power narratives since their empire fell, reimagining them every time to align with whatever our current model of authoritarian virtue happens to be.
In reality, Rome was a multicultural empire where people of non-Roman descent could and frequently did attain citizen status, and where previously non-Roman customs and gods were adopted across the empire. Though still oppressive and toxic, ancient Rome’s sexual and gender norms were vastly different from any we have today—and nowhere is that clearer than the priesthood of Cybele, which became an integral part of Roman state religion after its introduction in 204 BCE.
Watch: Ex-Scientology Leader and Trans Icon Kate Bornstein on What It Takes to Survive
Hyper aware of their status as an arriviste civilization compared to their Greek, Etruscan, and Carthaginian neighbours —and that they'd lifted their state religion and much of their culture from the Greeks—the Romans were obsessed with the idea that Rome had been founded by survivors from the mythical city of Troy, a near Eastern city-state destroyed by Bronze Age-era Greece. This granted the Romans the same provenance as the cultures around them and justified their claim to the Greek gods and cultural touchstones of the Trojans.
In their quest to prove their Trojan roots, Rome adopted a powerful goddess called Cybele from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey, insisting that she was the lost mother goddess of ancient Troy and that they needed to reunite her with her people. This included stealing her sacred stone and importing it to Rome with a great deal of fanfare (because stealing other people's cultural treasures always does).
However, Cybele did not Romanize easily. Instead, she caused the Romans a great deal of anxiety by touching them right where it hurt: their fragile and tender masculinity.
Roman masculinity was a lot like the worst version of present-day toxic masculinity, with the act of penetration itself standing in for today’s aggressive performance of heterosexuality: A Roman man penetrated others regardless of gender. In doing so, he demonstrated his superiority and mastery over his partner (or, more frequently, his victim), and by extension the virility and dominance of Rome itself over the rest of the world.
Read more: The Gilded Age Starlet Whose Sexual Assault Prompted the 'Trial of the Century'
It was essential that Roman men were never penetrated, willingly or not—it was not only a failure of the individual's masculinity, but an attack on the collective identity of the state. Their understanding of gender was so closely tied to the body that even the involuntary removal of male genitalia was enough to remove the victim from the social category of manhood. The idea that anyone would willingly remove themselves from it and all the privileges it entailed was anathema to the way they thought about gender, power, honor, and shame.
Cybele herself may have begun as an entity known as Agdistis, a being of great power who was both male and female and bore the most beautiful man in the world, Attis. Agdistis, or Cybele, then fell in love with him and punished his marriage to a mortal woman by driving him to castrate himself. Overcome with remorse, they brought about his resurrection every year, bringing with it spring and the regrowth of vegetation.
In another version, Attis is a mortal priest, castrated by a king as punishment for defending himself against rape. In retaliation, Cybele sent a wild boar to ravage the region until locals placated her by ritually mourning Attis' death once a year. Yet another has Attis willingly castrating himself to ensure the fertility of the land and embraces a bi-gender identity, allowing them to serve Cybele as priest, lover, and charioteer in perpetuity.
Whichever version they followed, all of Cybele’s priests (known as galli) performed voluntary self-castration in honor of Attis as their final initiation into the cult. Afterwards, they dressed in women's clothing and presented as women for the rest of their lives.
"Their extraordinary gender expression made them marginal and transgressive."
It is impossible to attempt to divine the gender identity of individuals after their death, especially when they came from a culture that constructed gender differently from our own. However, it is a reasonable assumption that, while some of the priests may well have been cis men who felt the divine call, many others were trans feminine people who recognized themselves in Cybele’s priesthood and found a space in which to embrace their true identity.
Certainly, while most Roman men and the state itself was disgusted by galli, enough citizens who were assigned male at birth saw value in becoming one that the Senate felt the need to enact legislation to prevent citizens from joining.
Despite this, Rome could not admit it had made a mistake and send the goddess home. That would be an admission of failure and a great loss of face, and they had already made Cybele an integral part of their claim to Trojan heritage. It would mean giving up their ruling house's claim to divine ancestry through descent from Aeneas, the Trojan son of Venus and one of the mythical founders of Rome.
Their solution was to divide the cult in two: They enclosed the galli within their temple precinct for most of the year and appointed a Roman official in charge of Cybele’s public festivals, the only time the galli were allowed out into the city. Eventually, the priesthood was even opened up to non-castrated citizen men, changing its nature entirely.
Despite this, non-citizens continued to join the galli through the traditional method of self-castration and led processions through the streets of Rome, right up until the end of religious tolerance after the state adopted Christianity as the official faith. The galli are even thought to have spread across the empire, getting as far as Catterick in the north of England.
"The galli were a paradox,” says Morales. “Their extraordinary gender expression made them marginal and transgressive, but the official incorporation of their cult into Roman religion made them central and conferred legitimacy. They were both dehumanized because of their eunuch status and also close to divine because of their close relationship with the goddess."
Roman men may not have liked the galli , but they understood that the empire needed them, and it explains how a group of gender non-conforming people ended up so integral to Rome’s political legitimacy and claim to power. Rome was far from perfect, but it was a lot more interesting and diverse than right-wingers are willing to acknowledge.
It’s no understatement to say that the alt-right loves the classics. Their all-white vision of retrograde masculinity in a toga is about as accurate as Marvel’s Thor is a depiction of Norse mythology—but it’s not a new one, either. We've been using the Romans to prop up our power narratives since their empire fell, reimagining them every time to align with whatever our current model of authoritarian virtue happens to be.
In reality, Rome was a multicultural empire where people of non-Roman descent could and frequently did attain citizen status, and where previously non-Roman customs and gods were adopted across the empire. Though still oppressive and toxic, ancient Rome’s sexual and gender norms were vastly different from any we have today—and nowhere is that clearer than the priesthood of Cybele, which became an integral part of Roman state religion after its introduction in 204 BCE.
Watch: Ex-Scientology Leader and Trans Icon Kate Bornstein on What It Takes to Survive
Hyper aware of their status as an arriviste civilization compared to their Greek, Etruscan, and Carthaginian neighbours —and that they'd lifted their state religion and much of their culture from the Greeks—the Romans were obsessed with the idea that Rome had been founded by survivors from the mythical city of Troy, a near Eastern city-state destroyed by Bronze Age-era Greece. This granted the Romans the same provenance as the cultures around them and justified their claim to the Greek gods and cultural touchstones of the Trojans.
In their quest to prove their Trojan roots, Rome adopted a powerful goddess called Cybele from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey, insisting that she was the lost mother goddess of ancient Troy and that they needed to reunite her with her people. This included stealing her sacred stone and importing it to Rome with a great deal of fanfare (because stealing other people's cultural treasures always does).
However, Cybele did not Romanize easily. Instead, she caused the Romans a great deal of anxiety by touching them right where it hurt: their fragile and tender masculinity.
Roman masculinity was a lot like the worst version of present-day toxic masculinity, with the act of penetration itself standing in for today’s aggressive performance of heterosexuality: A Roman man penetrated others regardless of gender. In doing so, he demonstrated his superiority and mastery over his partner (or, more frequently, his victim), and by extension the virility and dominance of Rome itself over the rest of the world.
Read more: The Gilded Age Starlet Whose Sexual Assault Prompted the 'Trial of the Century'
It was essential that Roman men were never penetrated, willingly or not—it was not only a failure of the individual's masculinity, but an attack on the collective identity of the state. Their understanding of gender was so closely tied to the body that even the involuntary removal of male genitalia was enough to remove the victim from the social category of manhood. The idea that anyone would willingly remove themselves from it and all the privileges it entailed was anathema to the way they thought about gender, power, honor, and shame.
Cybele herself may have begun as an entity known as Agdistis, a being of great power who was both male and female and bore the most beautiful man in the world, Attis. Agdistis, or Cybele, then fell in love with him and punished his marriage to a mortal woman by driving him to castrate himself. Overcome with remorse, they brought about his resurrection every year, bringing with it spring and the regrowth of vegetation.
In another version, Attis is a mortal priest, castrated by a king as punishment for defending himself against rape. In retaliation, Cybele sent a wild boar to ravage the region until locals placated her by ritually mourning Attis' death once a year. Yet another has Attis willingly castrating himself to ensure the fertility of the land and embraces a bi-gender identity, allowing them to serve Cybele as priest, lover, and charioteer in perpetuity.
Whichever version they followed, all of Cybele’s priests (known as galli) performed voluntary self-castration in honor of Attis as their final initiation into the cult. Afterwards, they dressed in women's clothing and presented as women for the rest of their lives.
"Their extraordinary gender expression made them marginal and transgressive."
It is impossible to attempt to divine the gender identity of individuals after their death, especially when they came from a culture that constructed gender differently from our own. However, it is a reasonable assumption that, while some of the priests may well have been cis men who felt the divine call, many others were trans feminine people who recognized themselves in Cybele’s priesthood and found a space in which to embrace their true identity.
“The
galli were represented as objects of disgust in
literature—voluntary
self-castration was not what a good Roman man did—but there is no
evidence that the priests themselves internalized this humiliation," Dr.
Helen Morales, a classicist from the University of Santa Barbara, tells
Broadly.Certainly, while most Roman men and the state itself was disgusted by galli, enough citizens who were assigned male at birth saw value in becoming one that the Senate felt the need to enact legislation to prevent citizens from joining.
Despite this, Rome could not admit it had made a mistake and send the goddess home. That would be an admission of failure and a great loss of face, and they had already made Cybele an integral part of their claim to Trojan heritage. It would mean giving up their ruling house's claim to divine ancestry through descent from Aeneas, the Trojan son of Venus and one of the mythical founders of Rome.
Their solution was to divide the cult in two: They enclosed the galli within their temple precinct for most of the year and appointed a Roman official in charge of Cybele’s public festivals, the only time the galli were allowed out into the city. Eventually, the priesthood was even opened up to non-castrated citizen men, changing its nature entirely.
Despite this, non-citizens continued to join the galli through the traditional method of self-castration and led processions through the streets of Rome, right up until the end of religious tolerance after the state adopted Christianity as the official faith. The galli are even thought to have spread across the empire, getting as far as Catterick in the north of England.
"The galli were a paradox,” says Morales. “Their extraordinary gender expression made them marginal and transgressive, but the official incorporation of their cult into Roman religion made them central and conferred legitimacy. They were both dehumanized because of their eunuch status and also close to divine because of their close relationship with the goddess."
Roman men may not have liked the galli , but they understood that the empire needed them, and it explains how a group of gender non-conforming people ended up so integral to Rome’s political legitimacy and claim to power. Rome was far from perfect, but it was a lot more interesting and diverse than right-wingers are willing to acknowledge.
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