MYCOLOGY & MYTHOLOGY Asiatic Cult of Kybele, by Iona Miller 2020

https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/kybele-attis.html

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.

The idea of life, projected onto the trans-rational cosmos, sexualizes it. We know the rite produces sympathy with the Mystery-Deity and the madness of her grief, jealousy, and ecstasy and therefore our own. The fused state and merging are pre-rational; oneness with everything is trans-personal.

Such experiences were insured with shamanic entheogenic initiation. At the dawn of religion, instead of mere confusion, the Great Mother instilled reverence for pre-rationality codified into a system for living. She is about perennial problems of human existence, the problem of humankind in nature, fate, and death.

Rebirth is the theme of the self-regenerating goddess. The material world is revealed in its animated glory. It can also be a terrifying encounter that assumes a new 'identity' from moment to moment.

It fosters healthy, secure attachment with a somatic approach to establishing what was missed in early life. Trauma healing cannot happen without somatic resources, it is also true that healing cannot happen without including the dimension of meaning-making through which humans make sense of our worlds. 

The effects of collective trauma, violence and oppression are passed on from one generation to the next; our early relationships can be disrupted. This produces a population of people who struggle to form healthy, sustainable bonds. Relationships can feel unsafe, intimacy can produce anxiety, and people can oscillate between codependency and isolation. 

Symbolic meaning is inherent in self-referential encoding of the material and symbolic aspects of events. Fabulism is a way of exploring myth, allegory, and fable as a means of comprehending the complexities of human nature. Our notions about the nature of the world is our worldview.