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Updated: May 7, 2025
Nowhere, apparently, have these rites been more widely and solemnly celebrated than in the lands which border the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead.
A consideration of some of the Greek divinities who thus died and rose again from the dead may furnish us with a series of companion pictures to set side by side with the sad figures of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. We begin with Dionysus. The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as a personification of the vine and of the exhilaration produced by the juice of the grape.
Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius, and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8. That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of the ram born again into eternity." Pagan Christs, p. 315. Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153. Whether Mr.
But in Rome, the centre of Western civilization, it was otherwise: there it was the Phrygian god who was in possession; the dominating position held by the cult of Attis and the Magna Mater, and the profound influence exercised by that cult over better known, but subsequently introduced, forms of worship, have not, so far, been sufficiently realized.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 311 sqq. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 254 sqq. Manilius, Astronom. v. 206 sqq.: "Cum vero in vastos surget Nemeaeus hiatus, Exoriturque Canis, latratque Canicula flammas Et rabit igne suo geminatque incendia solis, Qua subdente facem terris radiosque movente" etc.
The drift from God is a movement of events, a propulsion of vital experience, not a parade of words to be diverted by other words. In the Babylonian and Assyrian mythologies we have the chief deities as Ishtar, Tammuz, Baal, and Astarte. In the Phrygian religion we have the Goddess Cybele and her husband Attis. Among the Greeks we have the Goddess Aphrodite and the God Adonis.
Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in the person of his representative, might be thought to be ultimately identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic prototype out of which the state religion of Attis was developed.
For the places which celebrated the death of Christ at the spring equinox were Phrygia, Gaul, and apparently Rome, that is, the very regions in which the worship of Attis either originated or struck deepest root. It is difficult to regard the coincidence as purely accidental.
Duchesne, who points out that the death of the Saviour was thus made to fall upon the very day on which, according to a widespread belief, the world had been created. But the resurrection of Attis, who combined in himself the characters of the divine Father and the divine Son, was officially celebrated at Rome on the same day. When we remember that the festival of St.
Flowers they bear, but secretly; little curious orchids, bodied like bees, eyed like spiders, flecked with the blood-drops of Attis or Adonis or some murdered shepherd-boy; pale scabious, pale cowslip, thyme that breathes sharp fragrance, "aromatic pain," as you crush it, potentilla, lady's slipper, cloudy blue milkwort, toad-flax that shows silver to the wind.
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