This is interesting, from the mysteries of the suffering gods:

“The version of Arnobius–Timotheus is the most interesting one. According to it, Zeus found his mother Cybele sleeping in the mountains. Zeus, filled with incestuous desire, tries to possess her but fails. His semen flows out on a mountain rock, which becomes pregnant and bears the androgynous Agdistis (Agdestis), a being of male/female nature. This Agdistis, like the androgynes of Plato, was extremely mighty and had strong sexual feelings toward both men and women. The gods are afraid of Agdistis’ debauchery and so they send to him the god Bacchus the Liberator. He gives wine to Agdistis and when this creature, Agdistis, is asleep from drunkenness, Bacchus castrates him. Agdistis thus loses his male nature and changes into a womanly nature– the Earthly (the second) Cybele. But the drops of the blood of Agdistis nourish the soil and it bears a blooming and fragrant tree. The nymph (the daughter of the river god Sangarias) puts the branch of the tree under her clothes. She then becomes pregnant and bears a son, who is Attis, the bearer of the male sex of Agdistis. The earthly Cybele meets Attis and falls in love with him, because in reality he is her own half of herself. But the relatives of Attis want him to be the husband of the daughter of the king. During the wedding, party Cybele-Agdistis enters the palace; she is in a fury. Everybody feels horror. The king castrates himself, the princess cuts her breasts off. Attis runs to the forest and there castrates himself, too. Then he dies from the loss of blood. The earthly Cybele is full of repentance. She prays to Zeus (Phrygian Sabasius or Papas?) to resurrect him and make him eternally youthful and immortal. Resurrected Attis, together with Cybele-Agdistis, ascends into the celestial world (apotheosis)

FOLLOW UPS!

I want to bring up this line of discussion to the main blog, from the comments:

Rebecca writes….

relating to what i said earlier about love and creativity and suffering and resurrection, love and alcohol diminish the boundaries of the self. facilitate mystical experiences

Tim writes….

have you ever read terence mckenna’s food of the gods? among other things, the premise is that primate use of mushrooms caused them to develop consciousness, and the continued use of these fungi was compatible with a matriarchal society. basically, because everybody would trip out and have a huge dionysian orgy, and the only way to trace lineage was then through the mother, because anyone in the tribe could be the father. but basically the book details how you start out with this sort of situation, but then over time move on to other intoxicants, which are less potent on down the line until you are at beer or wine. basically, the idea is that the patriarchal societies, as they developed suppressed entheogenic drug use, because it was too dissolving of boundaries of the self, property and parental lineage.

anyway, between that stuff, and the talk about the green honey, wine, and other intoxicants, i feel like you have to start really looking into related ritual drug use, as well as shamanic voyages to the under/otherworld as afforded by those drugs

Also I remember reading something today about how Dionysus was the only (or one of the only) Greek god wherein worshippers were understood to have the god within them as well as external to them.

Also, related to ritual drug use, I found this book which may be interesting called “Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion“