User:PlaneBeast2009/sandbox

Attis and Cybele
Attis became a fertility god, the mythic consort and son of Cybele, a castrated, dying, and rising god of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) Goddess. But his castration was unique and controversial. Cybele and Attis remained prominent until the fourth century CE. In Rome, the priests were called Galli.The river Sangarius had a daughter named Nana who ate the fruit of this almond tree. When, as a result of her snack, Nana delivered a boy child 9 months later, Nana exposed the child. This was an ancient method of dealing with unwanted children that usually led to death, but did not in the case of such important figures as Romulus and Remus, Paris, and Oedipus . Infant death was not to be his fate, however. Instead, reared by the proverbial area shepherds, the boy soon became healthy and handsome—so handsome his grandmother Cybele fell in love with him.The boy, whose name was Attis, was unaware of the love Cybele bore him. In time, Attis saw the king of Pessinus' beautiful daughter, fell in love, and wished to marry her. The goddess Cybele became insanely jealous and drove Attis mad as revenge. Running crazy through the mountains, Attis stopped at the foot of a pine tree. There Attis castrated and killed himself. From Attis' blood sprang the first violets. The tree took care of Attis' spirit. Attis' flesh would have decayed had not Zeus stepped in to assist Cybele in his resurrection.

Cybele
Cybele was a goddess who originated around 1200 BCE in Pessinus, Phrygia, near Mount Agdistis, in central Asia Minor, now Turkey. This mountain was personified as the Great Mother Goddess Cybele of Asia Minor, Mother Earth. She had dominion over wild beasts – in art her throne was flanked by lions or she drove a chariot pulled by lions. She was a goddess of caves and was worshiped on mountain tops (Vermaseren). Known as “The Mother of All Gods,” her religion spread around the Black Sea, and to Greece by the sixth century BCE, where she was celebrated by a Homeric Hymn to “The Mother of the Gods":Cybele was also the mistress of wild nature (symbolized by her constant companion, the lion), a healer, the goddess of fertility & protectress in time of war. In 186 BCE the Roman Senate, recognizing a potential menace, suppressed the worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, known to the Romans as Bacchus. b