Cybele and Attis

Addenda1 on left hand tantra and the kundalinî snake-power Near Eastern kundalinî-serpents The snake seems to have an important role in the iconography surrounding Cybele and Attis: Two serpents are seen ascending to the head of the goddess (here missing – with her hand she holds a small lion). Marble monument found at Sardis, M.J. Vermaseren, Corpus cultus Cybelae Attidisque (CCCA), 1900, vol 1, Asia Minor, no. 459. From Phrygia comes this altar dedicated to the ”goddess Angdissia (Agdistis is another name for Cybele)”. On one of its 4 sides it bears the picture of a snake coiled around itself, CCCA,1, no. 158. An altar of unknown provenance now in Ankara CCCA 1, no. 857 (not shown) has on its right side a snake, on its left side a lion with its paw on a bull’s head (?). In the picture below two snakes are coiling upwards towards the head of Cybele (in an insciption underneath identified with Artemis) enthroned on lions. Small snakes are also seen ascending from the head of the two lions, and they stand on the heads of two bulls. A winged Nike is extending a leaf crown towards her. At her right hand Demeter. Above the left snake a crescent moon on which stands an eagle, the bird of ecstasy. To the right an altar, and to the left a slender tree symbolizing the polarity of nature between spring promoting vegetation and summerheat/fire killing the vegetation (and Attis). Marble relief probably from the beginning of the 3. cent. AC., probably found at Kula, CCCA,1, no. 485. To my book “Yhwh’s Temple and Paradise”, The mystery of Sunrise, Paradise, Snake and Divine Presence in the biblical Temple Theology, 2022. 1 Attis with Phrygian cap and two snakes with lion’s heads, CCCA,1, no. 222-3. Left: Bronze medallion from Lydia. Cybele with two lions standing on a bull’s head and a deer’s head. Underneath the bust a serpent, CCCA,1, no. 493. Silver cover of a cinerary urn with Cybele and Attis with a long pedum. Their quadriga is surrounded by ecstatic dancing warriors and is heading towards Aion carried by Atlas and towards the world pillar. A snake is coiling up the world pillar and a small snake is ascending behind Aion. A snake is also seen ascending from the resting Tellus. From North Italy, 3.cent. AC. (?), CCCA 4, no. 268. The motif is about ecstatic ascension to heaven of the soul, and the snakes stand for ecstasy as raising of the kundalinî-power. Cybele has a tympanum at her right hand used in the ecstasy creating music. The items above are, except the last one, all from Asia Minor, and the goddess enthroned on lions or leopards is a motif going back to prehistoric Catal Hüyük. The same goes for the curved stick or club and the lion/leopard killing the bull. In the wall paintings at Catal Hüyük a multitude of hunters are seen attacking the divine bull (of giant size compared with the hunters). Most of the hunters are armed with curved sticks as throwing clubs, and much later the killing of the bull, the taurobolium, had to be performed with some kind of weapon for throwing (cf. the Greek verb ballô =”throw” included in taurobolium). The hunters have a leopard’s skin fastened to their waists. The Cybele-cult is obviously a religion with very archaic features. The goal for the servants of Cybele and the Great Syrian goddess was ecstasy seen as the union of opposites (male and female) in an androgynous mind reached by cutting off the male genitalia. Agdistis was originally a very strong androgynous hunter feared by both gods and men, but made drunk by Dionysus and then bereaved of his manhood. Acc. to the myth told by Pausanias (Descr. 7,19) Attis as punishment for his plan to marry (i.e. realize an existence as male) was possessed by divine fury during which he castrated himself. The ecstatic frenzy could be seen as raising the serpent power, fusing the left and the right snakes together. Canosa was an ancient Greek colony in Southern Italy. In a book from 1817, A.L. Millin, Description des Tombeaux de Canosa, you can find some beautiful drawings of vases found in the graves from probably the 3rd cent BC. Plate no.3 shows scenes from the underworld, one of them is the punishment of Sisyphos. He is seen pushing an enormous rock while flogged by a fury with the skin of a leopard and with two snakes on her forehead. Plate 13 shows the madness of Lycourgos. The madness is obviously infused into him by a fury with a snake coiling along her left arm and with its head touching him. She is followed by a leopard and has the same two snakes on her forehead. This, I hope, gives some impression of how widespread the notion of murderous instincts as infused by the serpent power and spirits from the underworld is. Richard C. Steiner has found early Semitic language used in some serpent spells on the walls inside the pyramid of Unas (Early Northwest Semitic Serpent Spells in the Pyramid Texts, 2011): By copulating with the "mother of all snakes", the "two-headed" Pir-Pir, “ double snake-double snake" he has won her as his beloved and as his guardian against poisonous snakes threatening the king's mummy. These hostile snakes are seen as snakes from Byblos (Kbnnw) and are therefore addressed in an ancient NW-Semitic language and warned not to harm the god of Byblos, Khai-taw ("the burning one" - the deceased Pharaoh is identified with the god of Byblos, Resheph = "the burning"). This female double snake activated by sex is best understood as raised serpent power, as kundalinî. The picture below shows the two Paradise trees flanking the cosmic omphalos(mountain) and the kundalinî serpent coiling 3½ times round the rock (A.J. Wensinck, Tree and Bird as Cosmological Symbols in Western Asia, Verhandlingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wettenschappen, 1921, vol. XXII, fig. 13.) The snake in Revelations That the dragon (Greek: drákôn ="huge serpent") in Rev 12 is the tantric kundalinî-snake Leviathan, "the coiled one" is seen from 1) the seven heads (ldn in Ugrit has 7 heads). 2) the "fiery red" color, Rev 12,3. 3) more or less identical with the panther. 4) the goddess riding the panther (the Hindu-goddess riding the tiger, already in Catal Hüyük the goddess is seated on a leopard). 5) a strong sexual connection: "Babylon, the mother of the whores". 6) the orgy uniting men and goddess (the marzeah):"the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk from the wine of her fornication", 17,2. In the Acts of Thomas 4th act ch. 32 the serpent overcome by Thomas says: "I am son to him that girdeth about the sphere; and I am kin to him that is outside the ocean, whose tail is set in his own mouth... " The snake was enamoured by a beautiful woman and therefore provoked a young man to have unlawful intercourse with her and afterwards killed him, 34. The primordial double-serpent in Zohar ”Come and behold, Jacob knew that Esau had to cleave to the tortuous serpent. As a result, in all that Esau did, he acted as slyly and crookedly, just like another [138b] tortuous serpent. This is as it ought to be. This agrees with the words of Rabbi Shimon, "And Elohim created the great seamonsters (tanninîm)," which refer to Jacob and Esau, "and every living creature that glides” (Gen. 1:21), refers to the levels between them. By necessity, Jacob needed to behave wisely against the other serpent. Zohar I, 138a-b2. Jacob and Esau are here treated like the primordial twins identified with the primordial duality also seen as the two ascending snakes3 of the caduceus symbolising duality ascending to unity and balance. That the serpent is thought of as having cosmic dimension is seen from the words that follow: ”For that reason, one he-goat is sacrificed monthly, to draw the serpent to his place so that he will be separated from the moon.” A water-stream having its origin in BINAH goes down to MALKUT (the lowest of the 10 sephirot, i.e. the feet of Adam Kadmon) and returns to NETZAK and HOD and from there it goes to (the loins) YESOD (”the righteous man”). This circling stream is also ”Leviathan”, cf. the following quotations from Zohar4: Acharei Mot: Verse 35 You may say that when the streams reach this spot, namely MALKUT, they stop and don't come back, yet immediately following that, it says, "To the place where the rivers flow, thither they return 2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Zohar/Genesis#15b This motif is thoroughly dealt with by Julius Schneider: ”Die kosmogonischen Zwillinge und das Säulenpaar im Tempel”, SYMBOLON, Bd.6, 1968. pp. 25-55. 4 Quoted from the online translation https://www.zohar.com/zohar. 3 (lit. 'return to go')" (Ibid.), for the river never stops its waters. "They return:" To where do they return? He aswers: They "return" to the two pillars, Netzach and Hod. They "go" to this Righteous, which is YESOD, to seek out blessings and joy. This is the secret of what we learned, "This is the Leviathan, whom You have made to play therein" (Tehilim 104:26). It is the righteous. The spring above (BINAH) is identified with the Paradise river going out of Eden, Gen 2,10. (Verse 209). The left twin of this water-snake is the evil one: Bereshit B: Verse 283 There is a serpent below, from the left side, that swims in all the rivers. It comes to the side - THE LEFT SIDE, BECAUSE IT CAN ONLY DRAW SUSTENANCE FROM THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RIVERS. Its scales are strong like iron, REFERRING TO ITS JUDGMENTS, WHICH ARE VERY STRONG. It draws sustenance FROM THE SINS OF LOWER BEINGS and invades the place. All lights in the rivers are thus darkened before the serpent. Its mouth and tongue are blazing fires… Bereshit B: Verse 286 This serpent is death in the world, BECAUSE IT ENTICED EVE WITH THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THUS BROUGHT DEATH TO THE WORLD. It penetrates the closed intestine of man - the appendix, which is to the left -FROM WHICH IT DRAWS SUSTENANCE. Another serpent, which brings life, is located in the right side, WHICH IS THE GOOD INCLINATION - THE ONE THAT BRINGS LIFE TO MAN. Both sides - THE GOOD AND EVIL INCLINATIONS - accompany man, as has already been explained. Bilaam is counted a prophet on the same high level as Moses but of the ”Left hand”: Balak: Verse 162 "And there arose not a prophet since in Yisrael like Moses" (Devarim 34:10). They said that one such did arise but not in Yisrael, rather among the nations of the world. Who was he? That was Bilaam. We have already explained this matter that just as there is no one like Moses in the higher crowns, there is no one like Bilaam in the lower crowns, this one in the aspect of holiness and that one in the aspect of the left…