Initiation into the Mysteries of Cybele

Initiation into the Mysteries of Cybele - the Taurobolium 

The high priest who is to be consecrated is brought down under ground in a pit dug deep, marvellously adorned with a fillet, binding his festive temples with chaplets, his hair combed back under a golden crown, and wearing a silken toga caught up with Gabine girding.

Over this they make a wooden floor with wide spaces, woven of planks with an open mesh; they then divide or bore the area and repeatedly pierce the wood with a pointed tool that it may appear full of small holes.

Hither a huge bull, fierce and shaggy in appearance, is led, bound with flowery garlands about its flanks, and with its horns sheathed; Yea, the forehead of the victim sparkles with gold, and the flash of metal plates colours its hair.

Here, as is ordained, the beast is to be slain, and they pierce its breast with a sacred spear; the gaping wound emits a wave of hot blood, and the smoking river flows into the woven structure beneath it and surges wide.

Then by the many paths of the thousand openings in the lattice the falling shower rains down a foul dew, which the priest buried within catches, putting his shameful head under all the drops, defiled both in his clothing and in all his body.

Yea, he throws back his face, he puts his cheeks in the way of the blood, he puts under it his ears and lips, he interposes his nostrils, he washes his very eyes with the fluid, nor does he even spare his throat but moistens his tongue, until he actually drinks the dark gore.

Afterwards, the flamens draw the corpse, stiffening now that the blood has gone forth, off the lattice, and the pontiff, horrible in appearance, comes forth, and shows his wet head, his beard heavy with blood, his dripping fillets and sodden garments.

This man, defiled with such contagions and foul with the gore of the recent sacrifice, all hail and worship at a distance, because profane blood and a dead ox have washed him while concealed in a filthy cave.

Taurobolium's literal meaning means 'the lassoing of the bull', but its allegorical meaning is the 'the mastery of one's inner-self'.  In Mithraic myth Mithras caught and subdued a bull (caught and subdued his animal self); he then slaughtered the bull (his animal-self) by a dagger thrust in the right side.  Through time the would taurobolium applied to the sacrifice of a bull and the baptism in its blood of a suitably prepared and mature Mithraic initiate.  On attaining the level of piety deemed necessary to enter the higher spiritual plane and eternal life, the initiate undertook the rite of the taurobolium to confirm his proto-divine state. 

Cybele was associated with the mystery religion concerning her son, Attis, who was castrated and resurrected. Her most ecstatic followers were males who ritually castrated themselves, and then assumed "female" identities by wearing women's clothing. These eunuch were referred to by the third-century commentator Callimachus in the feminine Gallai, and who other contemporary commentators in ancient Greece and Rome referred to as Gallosor Galli.

These castrated "priestesses" led the people in orgiastic ceremonies with wild music, drumming, dancing and drink. The Phrygian kurbantes or Corybantes, expressed her ecstatic and orgiastic cult in music, especially drumming, clashing of shields and spears, dancing, singing and shouts, all at night. Additionally, the dactyls (Greek for "fingers") were small phallic male beings associated with the Great Mother, Cybele, and part of her retinue.