Attis Sentence Examples

His worship was closely connected with that of the great mother Cybele and of Attis.

The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community, its date frequently being the 24th of March, the Dies Sanguinis of the annual festival of the Great Mother and Attis.

The taurobolium was probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis (q.v.).

The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation.

A bath of bulls' blood was much in vogue as a baptism in the mysteries of Attis.

Reitzenstein has shown (p. 81 seq.) that very probably the system of the Naasseni described by Hippolytus was originally derived from purely pagan circles, which are probably connected in some way with the mysteries of the Attis cult.

Like Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria, Baal and Astarte at Sidon, and Isis and Osiris in Egypt, the Great Mother and Attis formed a duality which symbolized the relations between Mother Earth and her fruitage.

Attis was also known as Papas, and the Bithynians and Phrygians, according to evidence of the time of the late Empire, called him Zeus.

His resemblance to Adonis has led to the theory that the names of the two are identical, and that Attis is only the Semitic companion of Syrian Aphrodite grafted on to the Phrygian Great Mother worship (Haakh, Stuttgarter-Philolog.- Vers., 18J7, 176 ff.).

It is likely, however, that Attis, like the Great Mother, was indigenous to Asia Minor, adopted by the invading Phrygians, and blended by them with a deity of their own.

Having become enamoured of Attis, Agdistis struck him with frenzy as he was about to wed the king's daughter, with the result that he deprived himself of manhood and died.

Zeus grants the petition as in the version of Pausanias, but permits the hair of Attis to grow, and his little finger to move.

Frazer, The Golden Bough (London, 1900), and Adonis, Attis, Osiris (London, 1906); Georges Lafay, Culte des divinites d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1884); Dollinger, Sectengeschichte des Mittelalters (Munich, 1890); Fr.

Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions (2 vols., Paris, 1905-6); Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris (1906); Ed.

Cybele was usually worshipped in connexion with Attis, as Aphrodite with Adonis, the two being a duality interpreted by the philosophers as symbolic of Mother Earth and her vegetation.

Like the Curetes, Dactyli, Telchines and Cabeiri, however, they represent primitive gods of procreative significance, who survived in the historic period as subordinate deities associated with a form of the Great Mother goddess, their relation to the Great Mother of the Gods, Cybele, being comparable with that of Attis.

In art the Corybantes appear, usually not more than two or three in number, fully armed and executing their orgiastic dance in the presence of the Great Mother, her lions and Attis.

By the side of the supreme god Medeus stood the sun-god Attis, as in Phrygia the chief object of the popular cult.

By the side of Attis stood Manes or Men, identified later with the Moon-god.

Frazer's latest view is that he is the old cult associate of Diana of Aricia (to whom he is related as Attis to Cybele or Adonis to Venus), the mythical predecessor or archetype of the kings of the grove.

Osiris, like Orpheus, is torn in pieces, and his head floats down every year from Egypt to Byblus; the body of Attis, the Phrygian counterpart of Adonis, like that of Orpheus, does not suffer decay.

And finally, just as the mother-goddess of south-western Asia stands in particularly intimate connexion with the youthful god of spring (Tammuz, Adonis, Attis), so we ought perhaps to compare here as a parallel the relation of Sophia with the Soter in certain Gnostic systems (see below) .

Sabazius was identified with Adonis or Attis (Atys), Cybele with the Syrian goddess; and many of the coarsest rites of the Phrygian worship, the mutilation of the priests, the prostitution at the shrine, 5 came from the countries of the south-east.

They may have been represented or impersonated by priests in her rites as Attis was, but they were also, like him, not actual priests in the first instance, but objects of worship in which a frenzied dance, with accompaniment of flute music, the beating of tambourines, the clashing of cymbals and castanets, wild cries and self-infliction of wounds - the whole culminating in a state of ecstasy and exhaustion - were the most prominent features.

These are all scenes in the ritual of the indigenous naturalistic religion which was spread, in slightly varying forms, all over Asia Minor, and consisted in the worship of the self-reproductive powers of nature, personified in the great mother-goddess (called by various names Cybele, Leto, Artemis, &c.) and the god her husband-and-son (Attis, Men, Sabazios, &c.), representing the two elements of the ultimate divine nature (see Great Mother Of The Gods).