The Chat: Kybele

Chatting about the Great Mother and things that didn't make it into the episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the post show chat for Kibalay, Kubelet. The first thing I'd like to mention is that I have never recorded anything before, and once you get beyond the strangeness of hearing your own voice, uh, then listening back to it, I kind of discovered there were, I don't know, discrepancies in the sound, and I've been trying to learn different things, and so getting progressively better, I hope, each time. But this episode I tried. I remember listening to an episode of Blind Boy, and he was on, I don't know, he was somewhere, and he was recording from under a duvet, because it dampens the sound, so I kinda got that idea from him, and I recorded this entire episode, which although it was 45 minutes to y'all, it was like I I mean, I don't know, two hours, two and a half hours for me, from underneath the blanket, uh, around my computer. Uh, so hopefully it helped. There are some things I've also learned about the software that I'm using that will hopefully help. One problem that I consistently have is the uh clicks that I make. You probably have noticed that I have a lisp. It's a minimal lisp, but it it makes um I think it makes my mouth more juicy. Haven't figured out a way to totally get rid of those, but even with the ones you hear, I do a lot to try to edit them out or to try to m moisturize my mouth as it were, with uh varying degrees of success. So, anyway, hopefully the audio on that last episode sounded better. I'm not under the blanket right now. This is just a chat, and uh I had enough of that yesterday, anyway. So, moving on, um I had a lot of notes for this episode. I mean, you could see first of all that it was broken up into two episodes, and originally I wasn't actually even gonna talk about the Neolithic stuff, but I've had a fascination with Neolithic cultures for a very long time, particularly those where uh s societal structure is maybe matriarchy or uh egalitarian, which, to be honest, I believe is probably our experience as people for the majority of our time existing as people. Anyway, so I did end up wanting to talk about that. But even with the 45 minute episode that I did make, I cut out so much stuff. So much stuff, and even I mean in my I had several draft of drafts of notes and then drafts of outlines and then going through the actual work itself, so I'm gonna go through some of it, uh some of it from the outline anyway. So, here we go. The main book that I read, uh probably mentioned was Rawlers' 1999 book, and of course it has some information missing because that was written like or published I should say like 27 years ago. Things have subsequently changed, they've been discovered. Also, when you read an older book, the language and the way that they deal with certain things has certainly changed. So the way that Rawler would deal with transgender people is probably different than the way I would. That being said, she laid her book out in in entirely a um chronological order, and the so some of my notes were in chronological order, certainly the opening of my episode was chronological, just to kind of give an idea of where she came from, but I didn't want to just do a chronological one, and so after that, in my episode, I transitioned to talking about the Gali, and then about Addis, and then after that, we went into her symbols and her aspects and some of how she was worshipped because all of that changed over time. I don't know how interested people are in every little chronological detail and every little find and every little vase, and if you are, great, read Rawler's book. It's got quite a lot of detail in it. I myself am very interested in those sorts of things, but I think the general audience probably isn't. Hence the cutting of a lot of material, some of which we're gonna go through now. First, the language that was spoken in Phrygia, interestingly enough, is related to Greek. Again, at the time of Roller's book, there wasn't a lot of written Phrygian language, mostly, as I mentioned, inscriptions. There was another epithet that Matar had, whose meaning at that time was unknown, I don't know if it is now, Aryastin. Her appearance in Phrygia was there were some aspects that we saw all the way through her appearance, but in Phrygia she was a mature woman. She was standing upright. Her pose was always frontal. In contrast to the Neohittite Kubaba, hers could be frontal, but sometimes it wasn't. Uh in the Phrygian Mat or his hands, she would have a bird in her left hand, a raptor or a hawk, which is birds of prey. When birds of prey were absent, she may be shown with a lion. She also may be shown with sphinxes, which is something that definitely did not uh continue. But these predators symbolize her power and dominance over the animal world. So in her right hand, she would have a drinking vessel. This is a symbol that's pretty common in scenes, and it represents liquid offerings that she'll be receiving. So it's a way to mark that this person is divine and will be receiving offerings. In that same light, later on in the Greeks and the Romans, when we see the tympanum that's in her left hand, that's not her playing it. It's sort of symbolizing this is what you're going to do for her. Uh, and the drinking vessel is in that same light. Her representation in Phrygia and honestly in Rome as well, and probably throughout, is is one where her anatomy is not really emphasized. So in here, she's heavily draped with thick material. You can't really make out anatomy on her. Uh, she's got a tall, tiered headdress with a long veil that extends to the hem of her skirt. The veil may be tucked into her belt. So I've mentioned she doesn't have any consorts in Phrygia, but she is shown with attendants sometimes, and we know they're attendants because they are smaller than her, like they're very small. There are some figures from Gordian, which are in that style. They have no headdress, they have a bare upper torso, they're holding a bowl in the right hand. They are beardless, and so the figuring is that they were youths. I kind of wondered when I was taking these notes if they were gauli since they were beardless, but the bear upper torso doesn't really fall in line with that, and so I do kind of think that they were youths and not uh golly. So, scooting down to Rome, I wanted to talk more about her purported Trojan heritage. Her involvement with Aeneas is much more complex than I mentioned, but essentially she was believed to have protected him during his journey, uh, again forming her as a protect protectress, which she always was. Um, and I don't know if I mentioned it, but Mount Ida, there are two of them, both of them are associated with her as her birthplace, and the one in Turkey would be by where Troy is. Uh so that Mount Ida connection would really be linking her her there. And then just a note to kind of expand her reach, which I mentioned in the piece that she went where Rome went, and some of those areas included Spain, Gaul, Britain, the Rhine and Danube valleys, and North Africa. So she really did spread quite beyond her birthplace. Changing directions entirely, Mar is Gna. The word Gali, where it comes from, Rawler says that the word showed up for the first time in Hellenistic literature, and that it could be coming from Galatos or Galatian, which were the Celtic people who settled in Phrygia in the early 3rd century BCE. I had watched a very long lecture by Dr. James Ritfeld, which I've linked in the show notes of the first episode, where he said that the word would was coming from Sumerian, rather that Ga meant great and loo man, and had listed some of the names of the priests of Inanna, I believe, or Ishtar, and that those priests would have similar titles. So Rickfeld says it is a Sumerian word, or that it was a word that had been around in a different culture, and Rawler says it was perhaps the name of a Celtic culture. Staying in the Gauli lane, I wanted to expand a little more about the legal cases in Rome with the Gauli slaves that I mentioned. Uh there were two. This is the first, and in 101 BC, a slave of Servalus Capio had castrated himself in the service of Magnemater. And he was exiled from Rome as a result. Rawler mentions, and it makes sense to me, that that might not have been such a bad deal for him, as he was a slave in Rome, probably didn't want to be a slave in Rome, presuming that he was free when he was exiled. The second case is in 77 BC, there was a slave named Genusius, who received an inheritance from a freedman. He was a priest of Matar, the slave Genusius, and he was also castrated as a as a priest. And he was denied that inheritance, uh and this is what it says in the text, on the grounds that he was neither a man nor woman, he was not allowed to plead his own case, lest the court be polluted by his obscene presence and corrupt voice. One thing that I didn't mention, and this is not but sort of related to the Gal Gala Gali, is that there were I didn't mention that there were priests and priestesses who were not castrated, and that the priesthood in Greece and Rome as well, for those who weren't castrated, it was something that patricians did engage in, that noble families did align themselves with martyr, and that to serve in the priesthood itself was something that was desired, it was not a badge of shame. Again, the problem with the Romans was not even the castration itself, but that the the priests who were castrated were powerful, and particularly that they were cast in a feminine light, and in Rome that was not how things worked, that was not the power structure that they desired. Anyway, so moving on to Addis, there are more stories of Addis that I didn't talk about. There was one that if you listened to the end of the episode, the other episode, Emperor Julian talks about Addis being exposed as an infant rather than Kibele, and him being led into a cave by a nymph and she saves him. I'm not familiar with that one. I didn't really read it in the book, but as with any story, there are a ton of different Addis stories. There's even one of like Addis being the object of obsession of a local king who chases him around trying to rape him, and then I think Addis castrates the king, and then the king castrates him, and Addis dies. Something like that. Also interesting to note that Addis dies of castration, where I mean, there's no explanation of why he dies from castration, because it doesn't kill other people. It certainly doesn't kill the priests. So that is never explained. Also, the story of Addis, in Greek myth, anyway, it runs along a common theme of a goddess desiring a mortal and then destroying him in the process, like Adonis. So this was a theme with which the Greeks were already familiar, and Addis fit right in. So Agdistus, who features in the Greek stories as Martyrs or Kibele's alter ego and sometimes rival, was a name that she was called in Phrygia, but in Phrygia there is no mention of her being intersex. That's something that comes with the Greeks. One thing of note, the name for Kubaba, the hieroglyph for Kubaba, I did mention that the symbol for bird is in the name, that's true. How it's written is it starts with the hieroglyph for Deus, showing that this is a divine being, and then the symbol ku followed by the hieroglyph for bird, and then the symbolic symbols baba. Interestingly, the name Baba also appeared on inscriptions in Phrygia. Baba would have been the dedicator. The Greek form is Papa, which was an alternative name for Attis in the Greco-Roman cult. So there, even in Neohittite times, there is some connection with the goddess. Keeping in mind that Attis in Phrygia was the title of the priesthood, it also could have been a connection with the king. So it may not be that here's evidence of the god Attis, but I found that an interesting tie between Kubaba and Kibele. There was another type of depiction of Attis that I didn't mention beginning in the Hellenistic period. This is from Western Anatolia, from Ionia. There was a terracotta figurine of a youth lying on his back. He's wearing the peaked hat associated with Addis. This is flappy, floppy hat, sorry, looks like a Smurf hat. Uh he's wrapped tightly in fabric except for his genitals. And the fabric is like swaddling, or it's like a death shroud, one of the other, so it could be showing death by castration, or it could be showing him as an infant. And figurines of this nature were also found buried in Rome, showing with his clothing pulled back, exposing his abdomen and genitalia. I mentioned that Addis had his own uh celebration in Rome called the Hilaria. And I also mentioned that z what we know about it was written by an author who is Christian, who was uh biased and trying to denigrate paganism in general. So I don't know how much we could actually trust what it says. Especially considering that in my opinion and through this reading, that the castration that Nagali did were was not spontaneous. It was not they got caught up in the moment and castrated. It was something that they thought about. It had very severe implications in their future, especially in Rome. So I really don't think it would have anything that you would do spur of the moment, even with the trance-like, frenzied sort of music that went on. So, anyway, I'm just gonna read out a a little very quick summary of what was said to have happened during the Hilaria, take it with a grain of salt. The celebration was a commemoration commemoration of the castration and death of Attis. It would start with his death under a pine tree. Every day there would be something different, so you would have a day with his death underneath a pine tree, cut down the tree and suspending the image of Attis and carrying the image to the temple. The next day the tree is laid to rest at the temple of Magda Mater. It's accompanied by beating shields of priests of Mars. Uh the next day there would be a frenzy of mourning devotees whipping themselves to sprinkle altars and effigies with blood. Some of them would be performing self-castration. The next day would be Addis' rebirth. The day after that is a day of rest. After that they would be bathing Kibeli's sacred stone, so it would be purification. Uh the next day you would have initiation into the mysteries near the Phrygian sanctuary, and mourning for his death and rejoicing in his resurrection is the general theme of the celebration. Some additional connection with the the noise and the banging was explained by the Greeks that uh well Kibele was heavily syncretized with Rhea, who was the mother of Zeus, and if you remember, Zeus's father, Kronos, was eating the babies, and so Zeus himself was hidden away. Uh he was protected by the Id the Dactyls, who were given charge to protect baby Zeus. They lived among the lower regions of Mount Ida, so they're called the Ideandactyls. So that's Kibele's Domain right away. One of the ways that they protected Zeus was by disguising the noises he would make by making loud noises. And so, in the Greek mindset, ah, that makes sense, this is why we have loud noises. So she was also syncretized, as I mentioned, with a number of goddesses and associated with a number of gods. Gaia, the mother of all life, Rhea, as I've mentioned, also Demeter, their cults were kept separate, but they shared symbols and they exemplified motherly devotion. Which again I find really interesting because this is was not her symbology in Phrygia at all. She was not a a maternal figure in Phrygia. She was a very severe mother. It was mother in a protective sense, but I digress. Uh, she was also associated with Hecate. Uh associated with Pan and Dionysus in regards to her cult rights, as they were similarly ecstatic. Uh, I did mention she was associated with Hermes because he would conduct mortals into her mysteries. She also was worshipped alongside Artemis' cult in Ephesus. I mentioned that she had an association with caves and springs. I did not go into that very much, but I found this article written about a temple that was found in Serbia, in Roman Serbia, that was very interesting, and I'm just gonna read the quote that I copied here. We found that the temple's orientation followed the direction of some infrasound and low frequency vibrations, most likely originating from an underground flow of water. These frequencies would have increased the effect of rituals by enhancing the psyche of the participants due to the influence of these low vibrations on human brain waves. This suggests the builders of this temple had some sort of knowledge of this effect. I'm sure that this also occurred in many other temples to many other gods and goddesses, but particularly interesting that she has had and had had an association with springs and water and with caves. Uh she had a temple room off of a temple to Zeus in the Greek world that I guess it had started in a cave, it was removed from the cave, and they made this room and her temple to look like a cave, to uh influence the way that people thought about her while they were in it. If you've ever been in a cave, certainly it does feel different. There are a lot of caves and places that I've lived here in the state of Virginia where I am right now, there are a ton of caves. It is a feeling when you're in them, and I could just imagine the effect that that had, the feeling of awe uh on the worshippers. Also, if you do consider Gaia at least was the uh was Mother Earth, but if you do consider certain goddesses to be the earth itself, and you are inside of the earth praying, certainly that would have quite an effect on you. Speaking of worship, uh her mystery cults are something I find extremely interesting. They came up in Greece, they were practiced within the Greek world throughout uh well, once they started, because they weren't there right away, but they continued on through the Roman period. They were a members-on area, they were very supportive of each other. So if you were a member in the cult, they were really more than it's it's not like today where people maybe just go to church. They were your support system, they helped each other out financially, also that they were composed of citizens and non-citizens, and so you would have citizens, freeborn foreigners, and freed men as well. So people who had been enslaved and were freed. They were all part of this community, they all helped each other out. Uh, in later decrees, only women served as priests, so in later times men were not allowed to be priests in these cults. Her worship in Greece and Phrygia, as I've mentioned several times, because I think it's important, was personal worship within the cults and without them. If you were in the cult and you were worshiping her, you were in a way trying to get in contact with her. She was a goddess that would be there to be in contact with you. She was not a distant goddess. So in Greece, we find hundreds of votives, just votives, which are personal devotion, devotional items, to her much everywhere. Um and also in in Phrygia as well. Like I said, most of the inscriptions that we found are are things that were devoted to her, and the names on those inscriptions would be the person who devoted it or who you were devoting in honor of. In Greece, she did have a festival called the Galaxia. It was it took its name from a porridge of milk and barley consumed during the festival. That's all I know about it. I don't know what they did during that festival. And uh scrolling down, it looks like that is it. I hope you enjoyed these uh three rather long episodes. I didn't know the chat would go this long. I don't know at this point if I'll make a meditation or not. I'm really not sure if it's useful to people or how popular it is. But there may be one, and if there is, it will probably be out tomorrow because I do try to put these near each other. Um so, Shine, that's it, Aharja. Um hope to see you next week. Again, next week will be a surprise to you and I at this point, because I don't know what I'm gonna be talking about. It may be something small. These episodes took quite a lot of work and quite a lot of time to make, so perhaps I'll do a you know, a big topic like this and then something small next week just to give myself a little bit of a break. Erenos. Uh see you next week. Have a good week and enjoy. Bye bye.