Note 91.2 — Chapter V · The Predominance of the Goddess.

It is not till we come to the neighbourhood of Ephesos that we can speak positively of goddess-supremacy. Artemis, as the Greeks called her here, is admittedly πρωτοθρονία, the first in power and in place. Her brother Apollo himself served as the στεφανηφόρος of the Artemis of Magnesia, that is, as her officiating magistrate,91.2 and Artemis of Magnesia we may take to be the same aboriginal goddess as the Ephesian. Certain features of her worship will be considered later in a comparative survey of ritual and cult-ideas. I will only indicate here the absence of any proof of the Semitic origins of the Ephesian Artemis,91.3 and the associations that link her with the great mother-goddess of Phrygia. When we reach the area within which this latter cult and its cognate forms prevailed, we can posit the predominance of the goddess as a salient fact of the popular religion imprinting indelible traits upon the religious physiognomy of the people. The god Attis was dear to the aboriginal Phrygian as to the later generations, but he was only the boy-lover, the young son who died and rose again. The great goddess was supreme and eternal; and her power spread into Lydia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Galatia, and far and wide in the later period across the sea. Her counterpart in Cappadocia was Mā, the great goddess of Comana, in whose worship we hear nothing of the male divinity. In this wide area, governed by the religion of the Great Mother, we can trace a similar ritual and something of the same religious psychology in the various peoples: orgiastic liturgy and ecstatic passion, a craving for complete identification with the goddess that led to acts of sexual madness such as emasculation; also a marked tone of sorrow and tenderness in the legends and religious service. In following back to its fountain-head the origins of this cult, we are led inevitably to Minoan Crete.