Another link was religion.  Both had temples to the Mother in the form of Artemis or Kybele.   The ecstatic rites of The Mother, contempory observers said, were one and the same with those of Dionysus.   The patriarchal rationalists of Greece and Rome did not understand ecstasy.  But the (Cybeline) Sibylline Oracleswere famed, and Rome enlisted their help when threatened by Hanibal’s Carthage.  ‘Bring Cybele to Rome!’ was the demand.  But the Roman Matrons failed to comprehend how a Goddess could be worshipped in the form of a stone. To focus devotion through such an icon is still common in India, however, and it has parallels with the Black Meteoric Stones of Giresun Island and of Mecca.

A preferred form of Kybele was something looking like a matron, a drag queen or a eunuch.  Actually these forms were very appropriate.

The Mother was a wise Older Woman at the height of her powers.   Attis, the name of Her Consort, was a handsome, virile man, maybe a shepherd.  Men were symbols of detumescence and vegetal decay before re-growth.  We may see their relationship with the Mother in certain Hacilar statuettes.   Year by year, a succession of prime young men were selected, feted, and ritually killed.  Later, as with Osiris and Apis in Egypt, and with the Torobolium in Phrygia, an animal was sacrificed instead.

In fact any man who wished to serve in Her Temple had, ritually and honorably to castrate himself.  Their testacles garlanded Artemis.  (Indian Sadhus may emasculate themselves to gain self control).  These eunuchs were known as Galli in Phrygia.   At the Ephesian Artemisium they were known as Megabyzesafter the Persian Conquest, or Essenes, to which sect, some say, St Paul belonged).

In the Phrygian and Cretan worship of The Mother, Corybant acolytes (assistants) would beat cymbals andtambourines to induce ecstasy.   This could also be done by narcotics, and  Castenada gives fascinating insight into hallucinatory drugs used in Mexican shamanism).   Celebrants of the Dionysic (God of Nyssa’s)Mysteries had Afyon’s opium poppies close at hand.  Plenty of wine too!  Such ecstasy is often contrasted with Apollo’s religion which emphasized rational control.  This, apparently, is much more to the Indo-European taste.

Mystery religion, evolving costly Initiation in order to learn Secrets of Life, was extremely popular and widespread for the period of Classical Greece and Rome.  Eliade’s anthology, ‘From Primitives to Zen’ has excellent abstractions from classical sources.  One dramatizes the Torobolium from the view point of the Christian opposition.  A second piece, from ‘The Golden Ass’ by Apuleus, describes the rites of Isis.  A third is from Euripides’s famous book on Bacchus’ (=Dionysus’) frenzied worship.   This tells dramatically of miracles and of frail women tearing wild-animals limb from limb.  (The largest temple to Dionysus was atTeos, a short boat trip from Efes).

Thames & Hudson’s ‘Athenian Red Figured Vases’ well illustrates the religion of that time.

Ecstasy is a shamanic technique, conducive to an altered state of mind. Such psychic change may be used for ‘religious’ purposes, such as astral projection (OOBE), healing, and to give insights into the Nature of All.   Eliade’s books on The History of Religion: ‘From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries’ and his‘Shamanism’, should also be consulted.  The Turkic world knows routes to ecstasy in the dervish dance, in repetitive, rhythmic folk-dances and in patterns of rhythmic drumming, the way of Central Asian shamans.  For illustrations, Mehmet Siyah Kalem cannot be bettered.

Much archaeological information has been gathered about the early forms of Anatolian religions from the excavations of Neolithic, Old European hüyüks between the Danube River and the Aegean Sea and on the plains of South Russia.  Not only do we have foundations of actual temples and a plethora of decorated ceramics and figurines of The Mother.  We also have ceramic models of the temples including furniture and worshippers. These were probably made as votive offerings.  Interestingly the bread oven was a feature of Neolithic worship. We may note the lexical links to fýrýn=Turkish for oven, farine= flour in French, and to ‘fornicate’, that is to practice patriarchally-disapproved-of-sex.  The community oven was where women would collect, gossip, and marvel at the pregnancy-like rising of the bread.

Numerous Neolithic hüyüks in Turkish Thrace are as yet unopened.  Thrace was the source of Phrygianorgiastic and ecstatic worship of The Mother.  Her worship spread thence, via Samothrace Island, to Phrygian centres such as Pessinus.   This potent capital is situated near the Ancient Egyptian Prime Meridian, the upper reaches of the Sakarya (=Sangarius) River, and beneath an isolated range of monumental mountains, called Sivirihisar Daðlarý (=Dindymene in Classical Times).

The codification and analysis of Old European Neolithic artifacts at UCLA by Gimbutas, and such books as her ‘Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe’ have revolutionized cultural understandings.  They are a major foundation for this article.  The Archaeology Museum at Ankara has another famed collection of relevant materials.

A further major source for this work, cross-referenced with the above, has been Florence Mary Bennett’sdefinitive, Classical study of ‘Religious Rites Associated with the Amazons’.  She draws attention to the ‘confusion of sexes’ (which can mean both ‘mixed up’ and ‘joined together’), associated with Cybele’s worship in Phrygia and at Sardis in Lydia.  In part this refers to the hermaphroditic statues, which are half God, half Goddess and which gave rise to false ideas about the one-breasted Amazons.  Such Androgynes are also found in India.  As with Yin and Yang, the Idol or its symbol embodies divine contrasts.

Bennett’s work is complex and closely woven.    In one section, she makes reference to a late Heracles(=Hercules) tradition.  As a punishment, this Hero is forced by the Queen of Sardis, Omphale to cross-dresswith her, exchanging soft women’s garments for his rough animal skin and club.  He then is forced to sit and spin amongst young girls who mock him and beat him with their shoes.  The Myth probably has a ritual origin, for maidens and youths were often flogged at The Mother’s temple altars.  So much for the patriarchal life!  In passing, we may note that the Egyptian Priests told Herodotus that Heracles had been worshipped by them for 19,000 years and that the Greeks ‘were children since they kept no records’.