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On a stone urn, which contained the ashes of an Archigallus or high-priest of Attis, the same idea is expressed in a slightly different way. The top of the urn is adorned with ears of corn carved in relief, and it is surmounted by the figure of a cock, whose tail consists of ears of corn.
An unhealthy, degenerating asceticism, drawn from pagan sources, began with the monks and anchorites of Egypt and culminated in the spectacle of Simeon's pillar. The mysteries of Eleusis, of Attis, Mithras, Magna Mater and Isis developed into Christian sacraments the symbol became the thing itself.
Certainly the Romans were familiar with the Galli, the emasculated priests of Attis, before the close of the Republic.
This is the Attis of many forms, of whom they sing as follows: 'Of Attis will I sing, of Rhea's Beloved, Not with the booming of bells, Nor with the deep-toned pipe of Idaean Kuretes; But I will blend my song with Phoebus' music of the lyre; Evoi, Evan, for thou art Pan, thou Bacchus art, and Shepherd of bright stars!"
If that was so, his resurrection coincided exactly with the resurrection of Attis.
But in the next section the writer jumps from the Assyrian to the Phrygian Mysteries, saying, "But if the Mother of the Gods emasculates Attis, she too regarding him as the object of her love, it is the Blessed Nature above of the super-Cosmic, and Aeonian spaces which calls back the masculine power of Soul to herself."
Above, pp. 146 sqq.; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 59 sqq. James Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. "Blein." Hogmanay is the popular Scotch name for the last day of the year. See Dr. Above, p. 139. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 309-318.
Both tales might claim the support of custom, or rather both were probably invented to explain certain customs observed by the worshippers. The story of the self-mutilation of Attis is clearly an attempt to account for the self-mutilation of his priests, who regularly castrated themselves on entering the service of the goddess.
John the Baptist in June has succeeded to a heathen midsummer festival of water: that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August has ousted the festival of Diana; that the feast of All Souls in November is a continuation of an old heathen feast of the dead; and that the Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter solstice in December because that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun; we can hardly be thought rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the other cardinal festival of the Christian church the solemnisation of Easter may have been in like manner, and from like motives of edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the Phrygian god Attis at the vernal equinox.
It is therefore a reasonable conjecture that he played the part of his namesake, the legendary Attis, at the annual festival. We have seen that on the Day of Blood he drew blood from his arms, and this may have been an imitation of the self-inflicted death of Attis under the pine-tree.
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