Pine-Cones and Pollen

(December 6, 2024) The deity of Attis came to represent the successful integration of the 2 Druid power classes, the motion/emotion power class and the life power class. Thje deity was a later development occurring after deity personification had started to occur.

The earliest reference to Attis is by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (84 BCE to c. 54 BCE) This is the poem where Attis in a fit of anger accidentally castrates himself.

• On the high seas Attis carried a swift rate
• He touched Phrygia with his foot with eager desire like a forest
• and he went to the dark woods, the redeemed places of the goddess,
• stimulated there by a raging rage, by wandering minds
• He rolled down to himself a sharp weight of flint.
• Therefore, as she felt her limbs left without a husband,
• even the fresh ground is stained with blood alone
• she took a light typan in her hands,
• trumpet, Cybelle's trumpet, thy mother, the beginnings,
• and every time the back of the bull is held with the hollow fingers
• she was bent on singing these things to her trembling companions
• "Go to the high groves, Gauls and Cybeles together,
• go together, wandering cattle of Lady Dindymena,
• strange places which they sought as exiles
• I have carried out my suit as a guide for me
• You have taken swift safety and wild beasts of the sea
• and you devoured the body of Friday with too much hatred,
• cheerfully recalling the errors of the era.

According to Roman Ovid's (43 BCE – 18 CE) "Metamorphoses" Attis ended up transforming himself into a pine tree instead of being killed. Pine pollen is blown around by the wind which is the archetypical motion power. So pine pollen coming from a pine cone represents the involvement of the motion powers with the life powers.

Attis is written several ways in Greek: Ἄττις, also Ἄτυς, Ἄττυς, Ἄττης." In Akkadian these are respectively: AT.T.IS, AT.US, AT.T.US, AT.T.ḪS = Monitor of astrology-magic of the Woman (Selu/Selene), Monitor of the Originator (Su), Monitor of astrology-magic of the Originator (Su), and Monitor of the astrology-magic of covering (night sky). All these terms refer to monitoring the astrological motion powers of the night sky for use by the life powers.

Yet by the time Greek travel author Pausanias ( 110 – c. 180) visited Pessinus, a major city in Phrygia and the supposed source of Attis, and Cybele, he heard a different story. In this story encountered a separate rage deity, the hermaphrodite deity Agdistus. 

The word Agdistus is spelled in Greek as Ἄγδιστις which is the Akkadian phrase AGu-Du-ISu-Tu-IṢu = "Anger manifesting the Woman's (Selu/Selene) astrology-magic for scarcity." He was irrational anger personified. As a personified power he was new deity which developed only after the lordification of the divine started. The story he heard went like this:

Zeus, while asleep, spilled some of his semen on the earth which gave rise to Agdistis. The other gods were afraid of this dual sexed deity so they cut off its male genitalia and from this grew an almond tree (almonds correspond to testes). The daughter of the Phrygian river-god Sangarius picked an almond from this tree and placing it in her bosom she became pregnant. She gave birth to a son Attis who was abandoned in the wild. Attis was cared for by a male goat, and grew to be a divinely beautiful youth and Agdistis fell in love with the boy. But Attis was sent to Pessinus to be married to the king's daughter, and when the marriage hymn was sung Agdistis appeared and in a fit of jealous rage magically drove both Attis and the king crazy so that they castrated themselves. Attis died from his wound but Agdistis, repenting for what he had done, persuaded Zeus that Attis's body should never decay. In another passage (1.4.5), Pausanias tells us that a mountain at Pessinus was called "Mount Agdistis," and that Attis was said to be buried there.

So the rage of Attus was explained as deriving from Agdistus leaving Attis to represent the power class integration. Separating out emotions into their own deities was a later stage of deity lordification. 

Reference

Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina poem 63, in Commentary on Catullus by E. T. Merrill, Ed Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1893.  http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0472.phi001.perseus-lat1:63

(May 5, 2023, updated December 6, 2024)  Image is that of a flying god or goddess (Hu or Ayu) trailing pollen behind and stopping something with its outreached arm. The text indicates it is the god Hu who has been cursed.

Translation in Akkadian (Levant Text 60.159)

1. ḪeLa Ku  Wa (Levant Text 60.159.1) 

In English. 

1. The Healer's (Hu) involvement is cursed.

Previous Hebrew Translation Attempt

1. Belonging to Himelek

References

(Dec 16, 2023) This resinous honey has a distinctive flavor, with stronger notes of spice compared with its flower honey cousins. Almost 90 percent of the world’s pine honey comes from Turkey. Today's beekeepers transport bees to pine forests on the country’s Aegean coast. There the bees collect honeydew from the residue left by a scale insect species – Marchalina hellenica which feeds by sucking the sap of pine trees, mainly the Turkish Pine (Pinus brutia) and, to smaller extent, Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis), Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Stone Pine (Pinus pinea). It can be found in the cracks and under the scales of the bark of these trees, hidden under the white cotton-like wax it secretes.