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"Blessed is he who, being
fortunate and knowing the rites of the gods, keeps
his life pure and has his soul initiated into the
Bacchic revels, dancing in inspired frenzy over the
mountains with holy purifications, and who,
revering the mysteries of great mother Cybele,
brandishing the thyrsos, garlanded with ivy, serves
Dionysus." [The MAENADS. Euripides,
Bacchanals
75]
"I pray thee, clear-voiced
Muse, daughter of mighty
Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods
and men. She is well-pleased with the sound of
rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes
and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions,
with echoing hills and wooded coombes."
[Homeric
Hymn 14, To The Mother of the Gods]
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Rich-haired Rhea 1, also called Opis 5, or
Cybele (after Mount Cybele in
Phrygia), or Cybebe, or
Dindymene (after Mount Dindymus in
Phrygia), or Agdistis,
or "The Mountain Mother", or "The Mother of the
Gods", or "The Great Goddess", was highly
worshipped in Phrygia
with orgies, and is mostly remembered for having
protected Zeus by wrapping
a stone in clothes and given it to
Cronos to swallow, as if
it were the newborn child that he wished to
destroy.
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Uranus' hate against
his children
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Rhea 1 became queen of the universe when her
brother and husband
Cronos castrated and
dethroned their father and ruler
Uranus. The cause of that
revolt and Castration of
Uranus is to be found in
Uranus' wicked nature;
for he, acting as an stern tyrant and hating his
own offspring, hid some or many of his children
(the CYCLOPES and the
HECATONCHEIRES)
away in a secret place on earth, or as some say,
cast them into Tartarus, which is a gloomy place in
the Underworld as far
from Earth as Earth is from Heaven. But
Uranus' wife
Gaia grieved at the
destruction of her children, and being strained and
stretched with so many gigantic beings inside her,
planned the destruction of her own husband and his
rule as a way to set them and herself free.
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Cronos' ambush
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In order to overthrow him,
Gaia persuaded the
TITANS, who were also her
own children by Uranus,
to attack their father; and when
Cronos received from his
mother an adamantine sickle with jagged teeth, he
found the courage in his heart to come out from a
hiding place as Uranus by
night approached Gaia
longing for love, and cut off his father's
genitals, throwing them into the sea behind his
back.
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Like his own father
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This is how Cronos
became the ruler of the universe. But having come
into power, he soon forgot the purpose of his
revolt, and shut his brethren up in the same dark
depth where they had been before. And what worse
was: Cronos was
prophetically informed by his parents that he would
be dethroned by his own son. This is why he started
to swallow his offspring at birth: his firstborn
Hestia he swallowed, then
Demeter and
Hera, and after them
Hades and
Poseidon.
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Rhea 1's stone
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When this procedure had become routine, Rhea 1,
tired of being so often pregnant yet never a
mother, decided to deceive her husband by wrapping
a stone in clothes and giving it to him to swallow,
as if it were the newborn child
Zeus. Some say that when
Rhea 1 brought the stone to
Cronos, he, believing the
stone to be a child, bade her offer milk to the
baby. Rhea 1 then pressed her breast, and the
flowing milk created the stars that are known by
the name of the Milky Way.
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Gives birth to Zeus
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Having thus deluded her husband, Rhea 1 went to
Crete where she gave birth
to Zeus in a cave in Mount
Dicte or in Mount Ida. And while the child was fed
by the NYMPHS Adrastia 1
and Ide 3, the daughters of Melisseus 1, on the
milk of Amalthea the goat, the CURETES who guarded
the cave clashed their spears on their shields in
order that Cronos might
not hear the child's voice.
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Arcadian tales
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The Arcadians affirm that when Rhea 1 gave
birth, before Zeus, to
Poseidon, she declared
to Cronos that she had
given birth to a horse. Apparently
Cronos had no reason to
disbelieve his wife, for gods are capable of
anything, and so Rhea 1, who had laid
Poseidon in a flock of
lambs to live with them, gave him a foal to swallow
instead of the child. This account has been
considered to be both foolish and wise, for wisdom
at times appears as foolishness, being sometimes
difficult to tell one from the other, specially
when riddles and hidden meanings are suspected.
And the Arcadians also asserted that in a
wonderful mountain near Methydrium, Rhea 1
enlisted, when she was pregnant with
Zeus, the giant Hopladamus
as an ally against
Cronos, whom she feared
might attack her, adding that it was in that place
that the substitution of a stone for the child took
place. The stone itself, however, was shown at
Delphi, and olive oil was
poured on it every day, and on special occasions
unworked wool was placed on it. And some believed
that Zeus was born in
Arcadia; for otherwise
they had not said that Rhea 1 caused a stream to
break forth between Triphylia and
Messenia in order to
have water to bathe in after giving birth to
Zeus.
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Another tale
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In any case, the stone concealed by Rhea 1 in a
garment went down the throat of her husband, who
believed to swallow a child. Some say that Rhea 1
gave the child to Hera, who
took it to Crete; for they
think that neither Hera nor
Hades nor
Poseidon had been
swallowed by Cronos, who
instead had cast Hades to
Tartarus, and Poseidon
under the sea. They add that when
Cronos realised that he
had not swallowed Zeus but
a stone, he started to hunt the child, whom
Hera had taken to
Crete, to be nursed by
Amalthea, and protected by the noise created by the
CURETES or the
CORYBANTES.
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The Mother of the Gods
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It is on account of this noise that Rhea 1, the
Mother of the Gods, became the patroness of
cymbals, and the lions yoked to her chariot, they
say, are those which then roamed in
Crete. For the cymbal or
tambourine, as well as the castanets, have ever
since been used to perform the rites of Rhea 1 or
Cybele, the Mother of the Gods. This rites, it has
been noticed, have a resemblance with those
exhibited in the worship of
Dionysus 2, the reason
being that this god, having been driven mad by
Hera, came to
Phrygia and was there
purified by Rhea 1, learning from her the rites of
initiation, as also did Oenone 1,
Paris' first wife. And
there has been no little speculation about these
customs, whether they originated in
Phrygia or in
Crete; for these two have
many names in common, like Ida and Dicte. And the
same could be said of the
DACTYLS, who learned
their skill to work iron from Rhea 1; for though
they were the attendants of the goddess in
Phrygia, they are also
related to Crete.
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Cybele, identified with
Rhea 1
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Demeter and
Leto
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It was Rhea 1, they say, who persuaded
Demeter to moderate her
grief and her wrath for the loss of
Persephone, accepting
to share her daughter with the Lord of the
Underworld:
"Come, my
daughter; for far-seeing
Zeus the loud-thunderer calls you to
join the families of the gods, and has promised to
give you what rights you please among the deathless
gods, and has agreed that for a third part of the
circling year your daughter shall go down to
darkness and gloom, but for the two parts shall be
with you and the other deathless gods: so has he
declared it shall be and has bowed his head in
token. But come, my child, obey, and be not too
angry unrelentingly with the dark-clouded Son of
Cronos; but rather increase forthwith for
men the fruit that gives them life." [Rhea 1
to Demeter.
Homeric
Hymn to Demeter 460]
And she has also been counted among the
goddesses who attended Leto
when she was about to give birth to
Apollo in Delos.
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