Could you talk more about agdistis? It seems they're a deity who is considered nonbinary which 😳 i can't believe I haven't come across them before!! What are their celebrations like, esp from a queer point of view? (I'm @arkefthos, this is my main)
oh MAN YES LET'S GET INTO IT
Agdistis is an entity from Phrygian and Anatolian mythology - adjacent to and overlapping with the Greek pantheon. if you are familiar with the goddess Cybele, Agdistis can be considered either her child, an aspect/epithet of her, or a piece of her that was cracked off by a traumatic event. my experience is mostly with that third way.
Agdistis is described using some fucked up language in the myths, but we could consider them bi-gendered, intersex, trans, nonbinary, or bi-sexual in the sense of their physical body having both "male" and "female" secondary sex characteristics. any of those modern terms would be correct, I think (and here I use "trans" in the sense popularized by Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, and their contemporaries, as opposed to the more popular usage among younger folks today - anyone who transgresses binary gender).
primary sources on Agdistis include Arnobius and Pausanias. their language around this entity is super dehumanizing, so be aware of that going in. the myths tell stories that overlap and diverge, some making Agdistis an independent goddess, some making them an alter ego of Cybele, etc, as I mentioned above.
@flamingkorybante (aka Rocket) and I first encountered Agdistis in the (foundational, and dated but still valuable) book Hermaphrodeities by Raven Kaldera in... 2015? when the two of us worked with maybe six other ritualists to call in a variety of trans(ish) deities and let the attendees of the ritual interact with them for healing and affirmation. it was a hell of a ritual, and Rocket has detailed the months that followed that ritual. (here's a Drive link to the PDF of that book.)
as of now Rocket and I are building up a pretty simple mystery cult around Agdistis and their story, especially their sexy-madness rampage across the Mediterranean region and their subsequent death at the hands of Dionysos.we have not come across any historical evidence of them having a proper cult in ancient times. as a result, this work relies heavily on divination which makes it very likely that others will have different interpretations of them them than we do! they are a complex being with a serious trauma history alongside a LOVE of partying.
so the process of figuring out their celebrations is a beautiful and joyful work in progress! here are some things we do.
there are three main festivals when we devote attention and activities to Agdistis: Anthesteria around February, the Friday of NYC Pride (the Drag March) in June, and @trans-rite in November
we consider them an ancestor and honor them alongside our other queer and trans ancestors of spirit
we make offerings on the full moon (the moon itself does not seem super significant, but it is a nice recurring schedule) - they do not seem picky about what we offer, but particularly like almonds, mugwort smoke, pine, and sweets. their favorite is if you cry and shout and share your bad feelings with them so they can eat them
there is a short poem in Latin that we refer to as "the couplet," which can be used to invoke them, or to offer a trigger or painful emotion to them: "Dea, Magna Dea, Cybebe, Dea Domina Dindymi, demitte me tuo furor parvu, obsecro, ut furor magnum pertransit me." It calls to Agdistis's Mother and translates to "Goddess, Great Goddess, Cybele, Lady Goddess of the Mountain, visit your small madness upon me, I pray, that the Great Madness may pass me by."
they also really like to be invoked on your way into a party!
we are working with @dionysiandevotee to schedule an AMA about Agdistis and the Agdistine Order over on Reddit sometime in the next month, so if that's a platform you use, keep an eye out.
finally, if you like, here is the essay on Agdistis that Rocket and I wrote in 2018. the daemon has calmed down with us a little since then but they can be INTENSE. please take care, the essay talks a lot about sexual assault and transphobic violence in the context of both mythology and modern life.
The Passion of Agdistis: Gender Transgression, Sexual Trauma, Time Travel, and Ritualized Madness in Greco-Anatolian Revival Cultus
this response was probably more than you bargained for. good luck and have fun! reach back out if you have any questions.
“To the magickal observer, the throats and mouths of the priests of the weird and secret rites are tubes and tunnels, cisterns and sewers which go down, deep into the elemental levels of being. There at the bottom of this magickal passageway we can find the deep ones of unspeakable evil, who being protectors of the magickal wand in all of its erect glory, are also the gods of gold and fire and all enlightenment. Here or there, to be more precise, there is no obscenity, there is only the exchange of energy. In the areas of those sewers into which vast amounts of blood have been poured, as nearby as slaughter-houses and meat packing establishments, one finds also such deep elemental contacts. This is surely evil; but it is also very powerful magick. Modern society has created these places of moral danger through its Judeo-Christian ethics, which is foreign to the ancient morality of Atlantis and Lemuria. The Christians, who eat the flesh and drink the blood of their god, practice in sublimated form this ancient eating of the divine wand of power and swallowing the sacred cream. But this religion of the dying god has been false in its understanding of the ancient priesthood, which as been driven into the darkness and dampness of the washrooms and baths. The ancient priesthood of darkness lives on, for it has the strength of eternity. Eventually it will come to destroy Christianity and the morality of denial in passion and lust.”
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