Note 266.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

As regards the adjacent religions, the idea that a mortal might enter into this mode of communion with the divinity was probably an ancient heritage of the Phrygian religions, for it crops up in various forms. The priest of Attis was himself called Attis, and, therefore, probably had loving intercourse with the goddess, and the later mysteries of Kybele extended this idea and offered to every votary the glory of a mystic marriage;266.1 it was the unconscious stimulus of an immemorial tradition that prompted the Phrygian heresiarch Montanus to give himself out as the husband of the Virgin Mary.266.2 It also appears as a fundamental tenet of the Sabazian mystery and of the Hellenistic-Egyptian Hermetic theosophy. The simple ritual-fact, namely, that a woman serves as the bride of the god, could probably be traced far afield through many widely distant peoples. According to Sahagun,266.3 the human sacrifices of the Mexicans had sometimes the purpose of sending away a woman victim into divine wedlock. In pre-Christian Sweden we find a priestess generally regarded as the wife of the god Freyr, and enjoying considerable power from the connection.266.4 Similar examples can be quoted from modern savage communities. Therefore if we find the same institution in the Mediterranean, we shall not think it necessary to suppose that it was an import from Babylon or from any Semitic people. As regards the Minoan worship, it is legitimate at least to regard the legend of Pasiphaë and her amour with the bull-god as an unfortunate aetiologic myth distorting the true sense of a ritual in which a mortal woman enjoyed this kind of divine communion, and here again we should mark a religious affinity between Crete and Phrygia. And it is likely that the idea was not unfamiliar to the Hellenes, though the record of it is scanty and uncertain. According to the early Christian fathers, the inspiration of the Pythia of Delphi was due to a corporeal union with Apollo akin at least to—if not identical with—sexual intercourse. Of more value is Herodotus’ definite assertion that the priestess of Patara gained her inspiration by her nuptial union with Apollo. In the rare cases where the cult of a Hellenic god was administered by a priestess we may suspect that a ἱερὸς γάμος was part of the temple-ritual; in the two examples that I have been able to find, the cults of Poseidon at Kalaureia and of Heracles at Thespiai, the priestess must be a maiden, as on this theory would be natural.267.1 The maiden-priestesses of the Leukippides, the divine brides of the Dioskouroi at Sparta, were themselves called Leukippides; in all probability because they were their mortal representatives in some ceremony of holy marriage.267.2 But the most salient and explicitly recorded example is the yearly marriage of the Queen-Archon at Athens with Dionysos, the bull-god, in the feast of Anthesteria, the significance of which I have discussed elsewhere.267.3 It seems that the Queen by uniting her body with the god’s, unites to him the whole Athenian state and secures its prosperity and fruitfulness; this historic fact may also explain the myth of the union of Althaia, Queen of Kalydon, with the same god. Finally, let us observe that nothing in any of these Hellenic records suggests any element of what we should call impurity in the ritual; we are not told that these holy marriages were ever consummated by the priest as the human representative of the god; or that the ceremony involved any real loss of virginity in the maiden-priestess. The marriage could have been consummated symbolically by use of a puppet or image of the deity. We may believe that the rite descends from pre-Homeric antiquity; the ritual which the Queen-Archon performed might naturally have been established at the time of the adoption into Athens of the Dionysiac cult, and there are reasons for dating this event earlier than 1000 B.C.268.1