Day Fourteen: The Cult of Attis

For the great number of people who missed class today, here's a little back story on Attis: He was the child of Agdistis, who was the child of either Hera sponaneously reproducing or a man jacking off on a rock. Agdistis was a hermaphrodite and was wreaking havoc, so the gods tied its man parts to a tree while it slept. When it woke up, it jumped back and became female. Unfortunately, "she" soon died from blood loss (menstration implications?) and a tree grew from "her" blood. A while later, a princess sat under said tree and a pomegranite/almond fell onto her lap/breasts, depending on the version. She gave birth to Attis.

Attis was raised on "he-goat milk" (your guess is as good as mine . . .) and, being the son of a tree and the grandson of a rock, he was a very handsome young man. He is also rumored to have been related to King Minos (symolism of goddess?). He was so handsome that Cybele, the goddess of the earth, fell in love with him. He did not reciprocate and decided to marry a woman named Sangarius. Cybele was so angry that she showed up at his wedding in all of her goddess-y fury, which drove him mad to the extent that he castrated himself and died from the blood loss. Cybele/gods/somebody was so upset that he was resurrected into a pine tree.


Now we come to the exciting part!

The Cult of Attis supposedly began around 1200 B.C. It involved going into the forest and cutting down a pine tree. The tree was decorated with ornaments and carved figures of Attis and Cybele, and everybody danced around in a frenzy and cut themselves, believing that the spattered blood might resurrect Attis. Every year, a few men would get so impassioned during the festival that--get this--they would willingly castrate themselves. These men would then hit the figure of Cybele with their, ahem, severed limbs, then run wildly through the streets and throw their *cough* limbs into the doorway of a house. That house was responsible for giving them women's clothes.

Note: none of this is made up. Seriously.