The Strange Journey of a Blood-Soaked Mother Goddess
Cybele’s transformation from wild mountain mother to Roman matriarch
Her name was Cybele. She emerged from the dry plateaus of Asia Minor before 600 BCE, perhaps long before. She was a mother goddess — the mother of the gods, of people, and nature itself.
Because she was the mother of wild nature, her worshippers often depicted her with lions and celebrated her with abandon. She was demanding — her priests castrated themselves when they dedicated themselves to her, and on the “Day of Blood,” they worked themselves into a frenzy, slashing their own arms, whipping themselves, and spinning so as to splatter their blood everywhere.
She became one of the most important goddesses in the ancient world, and her worship shows us just how differently ancient religion worked compared to our modern beliefs.
Cybele may have been one of the most ancient goddesses in the world. In Çatalhöyük, an Anatolian site that ranks as one of the oldest settlements in the world, archaeologists found figurines of a mother goddess, flanked by lions (a signature of Cybele), that date to 8,000 years ago.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around an expanse of time like 8,000 years. But to give you some context, this figurine was made about 3,500…
