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It is supported by Dr. Dr. J.G. Frazer has more especially developed this conception of the origin of sacred prostitution in his Adonis, Attis, Osiris.
G. W.: The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Deiterich, A.: Mutter Erde. Fraser, J. G.: Adonis, Attis and Osiris; Balder, the Beautiful; Psyche's Task. Grosse: The Beginnings of Art. Higgins, Godfrey: The Anacalypsis; Celtic Druids. Harrison, Miss Jane: Ancient Art and Ritual; Themis. Howitt, A. W.: The Native Tribes of South East Australia. Inman, Dr.
The devotee of Mithra or Attis on the Vatican Hill at Rome in the year 200 A.D. probably had as little notion or comprehension of the real origin of the sacred Bull or Ram which he adored, as the Christian in St. Peter's to-day has of the origin of the Lamb-god whose vicegerent on earth is the Pope.
Paul Jesus was 'a Saviour God, after the manner of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra', and who proceed to draw out obvious parallels between the sufferings, death, and resurrection of these mythological personages and the gospels of the Christian Church, surely forget that St. Paul was a Jew, and that there are some transformations of which the religious mind is incapable.
Theological myths suit philosophers, physical and psychic suit poets, mixed suit religious initiations, since every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and the Gods. To take another myth, they say that the Mother of the Gods seeing Attis lying by the river Gallus fell in love with him, took him, crowned him with her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her.
On the other hand we have also seen that certainly one early Christian sect, the Naassenes, while equally regarding the Logos as the centre of their belief, held the equivalent deity to be Attis, and frequented the Phrygian Mysteries as the most direct source of spiritual enlightenment, while the teaching as to the Death and Resurrection of the god, and the celebration of a Mystic Feast, in which the worshippers partook of the Food and Drink of Eternal Life, offered parallels to Christian doctrine and practice to the full as striking as any to be found in the Persian faith.
Syria had been the home of certain mysteries from an early day, for we read in the Old Testament of women mourning the death of Tammuz, the god of vegetation who dies and is born again. Now Adonis or Attis was the corresponding god of Phrygia, and all people of Syria were well acquainted with the cult which showed the mother-goddess mourning for her son.
Christian Legend, and traditional Folk-tale, have undoubtedly contributed to the perfected romantic corpus, but they are in truth subsidiary and secondary features; a criticism that would treat them as original and primary can but defeat its own object; magnified out of proportion they become stumbling-blocks upon the path, instead of sign-posts towards the goal. Mithra and Attis
Of all the Oriental cults which journeyed Westward under the aegis of Rome none was so deeply rooted or so widely spread as the originally Persian cult of Mithra the popular religion of the Roman legionary. But between the cults of Mithra and of Attis there was a close and intimate alliance. In parts of Asia Minor the Persian god had early taken over features of the Phrygian deity.
The Christian writer Firmicius Maternus, at one time himself an initiate, has left an account of the ceremony, without, however, specifying whether the deity in question was Attis or Adonis as Dieterich remarks "Was er erzahlt kann sich auf Attis-gemeinden, und auf Adonis-gemeinden beziehen."
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