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+778+. When and on what grounds he was accepted as one of the Olympians is not clear; perhaps it was on account of the importance of vine culture, perhaps from the mysterious character of his cult, the enthusiasm of divine inspiration reflected in the frenzy of the worshipers, or from these causes combined; his later name, Bacchus, which seems to refer to cultic orgiastic shouting, would appear to indicate this element of the cult as a main source of his popularity.
The religious leaders, representing and enforcing the tribal tendency of thought, in the course of time gave more and more definite shape to the cult; perhaps Zoroaster was a preëminent agent in this movement. Ethical purification, as a matter of course, went hand in hand with cultic organization.
With all these it was necessary to establish relations, and while the methods employed varied slightly according to the nature of the object of worship, the fundamental cultic principle appears to have been the same for all. Several different methods of approaching the Powers appear in the material known to us, and these may be mentioned without attempting exact chronological arrangement.
It was at so early a period that it was brought into cultic connection with supernatural beings that its initial forms escape us. +392+. It seems not to exist now among the lowest peoples. There are no definite traces of it in the tribes of Oceania, Central Africa, Central Asia, and America.
When god and stone stand together in a community, both revered, they may be and generally are combined into a cultic unity: the stone becomes the symbol or the abode or the person of the god. It was, doubtless, in some such way as this that a stone came to be identified with the Magna Mater of Pessinus.
Her title "maiden" may be compared with the Semitic title "mistress," mentioned above, and with the names expressing family relations, "sister," "mother" only this particular designation defines her simply as an unmarried female divinity. The "corn-maiden" of modern European folk-lore may be the cultic degradation of an old deity.
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