From: Thyagi@cup.portal.com (Thyagi Morgoth NagaSiva)
Subject: Cybele and Transgender/sexualism
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
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930425 

Charles Hope writes:

Rome was under attack by barbarians, they sent for advice to some Oracle,
and she said Worship Cybele and you'll be saved. They did, they were.

Cybele was the quintessential wiccan goddess, there was Her and her son &
lover, Attis. Yucky idea if you ask me. OK the book says she was Phrygian,
from the neolithic matriarchal society Catal Huyuk (Turkey). Worshipped 1st
as Black Stone (that Kaaba in Mecca ring a bell maybe????) Carried to Rome
in 205BC to save them from Hannibal.


Response:

Is there some relation between the name 'Cybele' and the phenemenon of the
'sibyl'?  Your paragraph above seems to indicate there might be.

My understanding is that Islam was founded on the remains of a goddess
cult or two.  Many Muslims would not like to hear that. ;>


You:

It gets more interesting. Romans called her Great Mother (Magna Mater),
could be the reason why so many of those Mary statues in Europe are black,
prob. IS connected to that Ka'aba they've got in Mecca, 3rd cent. AD She was
supreme Goddess in Lyons, France . . . Attis was castrated and formed into
a pine tree . . . she should be worshiped on 25 Mar . . . in Rome it was
an ecstatic cult, her priests wore drag, worked themselves up in dance and
castrated themselves in order to initiate to her, lived their lives as women.
They wore make up and jewelry and the whole bit.

Only other such primitive transsexualism I know of goes on in India (where
else?) where they do that castration thing under some meditation maybe, I
forget by now...there's a book on that.)

Of course, that excepts that weird Russian / Romanian 18th cent. Xian cult
that did all kinds of self-castration too, I forget their name.


Response:

I'd love to get details or references on any of the above.  My own exploration
of this issue has only extended to a brief examination of the Zuni 'berdache'.
_The Zuni Man-Woman_, by Will Roscoe, University of New Mexico Press, 1991
probably has some interesting things to say about them.  I've yet to
procure it.

Any details or references on:

Ecstatic cults in Rome, India, Russia/Romania (Christian too?) which
exhibit any type of transsexualism or transvestitism, male OR female
(though I expect mostly the former will be found ;>).


Thanks for your interesting posts, Charles. :>


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