Articles #kYBELE

The Primeval World https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/kybele-attis.html The Primeval World Kybele is 'Mother of the Gods,' 'Mother of the Mountains,' and 'Mistress of Beasts.' The Anatolian Earth Mother embodied the original fluid relationship between the constellation of all beings that gave rise to her voice even before time began. Primal Tradition Goddess, Great Goddess, Kybele, Lady Goddess of the Mountains Visit your small madness upon me, I pray, that the great madness shall pass me by. The Asiatic goddess and her cult-partner arose long before the classical era of belief. She is the Phrygian goddess of magic, wild things, and faith -- the dark mysteries of earth and nature. Phrygians originally worshiped their goddess in an aniconic fashion, like the Thracians who before being influenced by the Greeks never depicted their goddess anthropomorphically. (Bogh, 2007) Generally, she is characterized by a dual nature of unpredictable power and beneficent qualities. We are not proposing a discounted universal goddess theory or matriarchy (Gimbutas 2001). Instead we have to look for evidence derived from an experience of the sacred and artifacts. Arguably, it is a mystery religion, which requires undergoing ordeals, a death-like exerience and suffering. She is usually represented seated on a throne with a phiale (a libation bowl) and a tympanon. She has formidable, awesome, magical powers. People come to her to seek vengeance or justice, and she can possess individuals with madness or illness, or cure them from disease (Borgeaud 1996:27ff.; Roller 1999:156). Roller demonstrates, there is no divine Attis until Hellenistic and Roman times, but this doesn't preclude more archaic antecedents when the goddess was worshiped alone. Other symbols were later transferred to Kybele. The Roman version of the cult differs greatly from the cult in the ancient Phrygian homeland of Kybele. In the Paleo-Phrygian period (9th–7th centuries bc) there was still no influence from the Greeks. The Phrygians were said by Herodotos (VII, 73) to be immigrants from Thrace settling in Anatolia. According to modern theories, this would be in the late Bronze age -- 12th and the 10th centuries bc. The chthonic great goddess had myriad names (Matar, Kubileya, Kubaba) localized at different Mystery sanctuaries. Today's Anatolians are the indigenous population of the region according to scientific studies, and use a Turkish language name for Kybele, which is Sibel. The realities and specifics of prehistoric culture are closed to us. Like it or not we have to rely on ancient evidence to even imagine what she and her controversial cult were actually like. The mythical body is the body in the myth. In Phrygia, no records remain concerning her cult and worship, though there are numerous statues of seated women that archaeologists believe represent Kybele. Often she is also portrayed giving birth, indicative of her Mother Goddess status. The cult was never monolithic, but a power laced with amgibuity. We know the rites were very bizarre, including visionary communion, mystical sympathy with the world, the non-rational dimensions of human experience. This was an oracular cult with no body of doctrine, and no sacred books. It did have mystical psychoactive communion. "Orgia may have been earlier manifestations of cult than the formal mysteries, as suggested by the violently ecstatic rites described in myth as celebrated by Attis in honor of Cybele and reflected in the willing self-castration of her priests the Galli in the historical period. The orgia of both Dionysian worship and the cult of Cybele aim at breaking down barriers between the celebrants and the divinity through a state of mystic exaltation." Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis (Brill, 1985), p. 53 and 11–19. There is little doubt that the prepared sacred drink was intoxicating and intended to access altered consciousness or mystical communion in a ritual context. It flourished because it provided everyone with the same basic connection to underlying reality. We still feel the impact of the world around us in a series of personal relationships with such genuine radical metaphors. Kybele was worshiped in orgiastic rites, dissonant music, and wild dancing. This kind of bodily mysticism and psychosomatic liberation had only temporary effects each time — the period of the ekstasis (Turcan). But we don't hear how and why of the archaic practices. Our approach tries to penetrate the phenomenon itself, surrounding it from all sides, circumambulating and expanding it by increasing the volume -- amplification. The phenomenon is mythopoetical, not intellectual. But belief in a deity was subsumed in direct experience. Pre-rational experience is somatic -- our physical, animal, biological nature, felt sense experience, and emotions. Beneath the numbness or dissociation of disembodiment, the felt sense has been available as a constant stream of invaluable information. It manifests itself in direct contact which is more than a metaphor -- a vibrant experience.

https://5efa4d9bb68ea.site123.me/ I am the Triple Mother of Life, the mistress of all of the elements, the original Being, the Sovereign of Light and Darkness, the Queen of the Dead, to whom no God is not subject. I rule the starry skies. the boisterous green seas, the many--colored earth with all its peoples, the dark subterrene caves. I have names innumerable. In Phrygia I am Cybele; in Phoenicia, Ashtaroth; in Egypt, Isis; in Crete Rhea; in Athens Athena; in the Caucasus 'The Bird-Headed Mother'...Agdistis, Mariamne, Hekate, Hera. --Graves, The Golden Fleece Wild Darkness Kybele gives voices to mute places, a marriage of trees, rocks, and starry sky. Narrative gives a grounded sense of self. The margins are the center of the imagination. Reflecting her own cavernous interiority, she transforms inhospitable, harsh terrains into inviting primordial parks and riverbeds flowing with the imaginal. We yearn to float downstream; reverie moves us forward. Landscape is a provocateur. To see the beauty we must stop, breathe and absorb into the moment, the only reality we all really have. Some cultures create zoomorphic figures and geometric patterns to transform the vast land into a highly symbolic, ritual and social-cultural landscape. She speaks for their unspeakable immensity that reminds us we are truly small. Liminal places connect outside with inside across all experiential domains. Wandering off the path of hypermodernity, we are arrested, trapped in her magically woven web of poetic resonance. There is a synergetic relation between landscape, instinct and imagination that rekindles all as a unified field that is the mycelial root of sacred places of heart and mind. Relationships are the poetry of life and connecting with the land. Kybele is the earth from which we grow, our connection to dreams, the animal realm, our ancestors, and deep unconscious. She is the dust under our feet beyond those areas of origin that can be mapped, giving place a face in the present. What is this invisible ground whose image we carry in our souls where spiritual ideals merge with worldly realities? Isn’t it always right here, right now everywhere always, forever? The contextual background, the invisible environment, is the fundamental ground from which both mind and matter emerge, the luminous absolute space of reality beyond the mere absence of energy/matter. The radiant ground is the fundamental source. Psyche expresses the nature of things, including our own nature. Jung claimed, "every soil has its secret, of which we carry an unconscious image in our souls: a relationship of spirit to body and of body to earth." - CW XVIII Jung said, "The body is the original animal condition, we are all animals in body, and so we have to have an animal psychology in order to be able to live in it. […] Since we have a body it is indispensable that we exist also as an animal.” The animal is the instinctual level of the psyche. Hillman notes, "Our dreams recover what the world forgets. Forgotten pagan polytheism breeds in animal forms. In those animals are the ancient Gods:... The old Gods are still there in our dreams... The animals may go on like Gods, alive and well and unforgotten, in the ikons of our dreams and in the vital obsessions of complexes and symptoms..." The animal within is a guide. Dream animals behave in unusual ways and can even talk as they do in fairy tales. The path, track, or trail of an animal can be followed. They may appear at crucial 'soul junctures,' validating our direction, choices, and path. According to Jungian analyst Dennis L. Merritt: "To be truly human, Jung believed, and to reach our unique potential, we have to be in relationship to animals. This is both an outer relationship to animals and an intimate relationship with the collective unconscious, coming to terms with the animal in our inheritance." We can respond consciously to such animal spirits as we do to land, weather, and seasons of the soul. This bedrock of archaic psyche is the germinal image of images, a generative matrix, personification and inflection of deep universal principles. https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/cybele.html