 The Cult of Magna Mater, The Great Mother, is probably the oldest religion of all. The earliest Stone Age sculptures depict the Mother-Goddess, and an idol found in Catal Huyuk, 6000 years old, depicting her in the form I which she later became as Cybele in Phrygia, as a seated woman flanked by two leopards. The worship evovlved through the millennia, but the Goddess remained a symbol of the powerful forces in the Universe. Many different interpretations appeared, and cults have interacted and mixed ideas. Cybele embodied the fertile earth, a Goddess of Caverns and Mountains, walls and Fortresses, nature, wild animals, especially lions and bees, Her title ‘Potnia Theron', which is also associated with the Minoan Great Mother, alludes to her Neolithic roots as ‘Mistress of the Animals'. She became a life-death-rebirth Goddess with her consort son Attis. Her Roman equivalent was ‘Magna Mater' or ‘Great Mother'. The Cult of the great mother presents a complex picture insofar as an indigenous Minoan-Mycenean tradition intertwined with a cult taken over directly from the Phrygian kingdom of Asia Minor. The links between her story and tat of the Cult of Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah are quite obvious, and both cults influenced  each other heavily. The cults were widespread, Ezekiel mentions the female worship of Tammuz in his lamentation over the spread of paganism in Jerusalem. The ‘Great Mother' encompassed all things living and growing, all parts of the life cycle from birth to death. In its original form the ‘Life-magick of the cult was mainly directed towards healing and fertility. Later some parts of the cult began turning more and more mystical, seeking to use Life to reach deeper goals, often used in complement with ecstasy and secret rites. Both the priestesses an priests studied Life primarily, but the priests were the only ones studying Time using their dances and the priestesses Spirit and Entropy using their orgies and blood magick. This is in greater detail in ‘Secrets of the Ancients' section of this site, along with Innanna/Ishtar/Asherah.
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