entities: ENT_ATTIS

The core table — every entity in the database, spanning gods, angels, demons, aeons, prophets, saints, heroes, spirits, monsters, personified abstractions, cosmological realms, and ritual categories. Use category to filter by functional type (146 values: Underworld Deity, Hero, Adversarial Being, Revealer Figure, etc.). Use tradition to filter by tradition. The short_note column contains a scholarly description with source citations.

Data license: MIT · Data source: jebboone/deitydb

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entity_id canonical_name greek_name tradition entity_type category primary_domains tags cult_scope primary_period evidence_confidence review_status inclusion_basis earth_association_score chthonic_flag serpent_flag short_note entity_class
ENT_ATTIS Attis   Phrygian vegetation deity / dying-and-rising consort Nature Deity vegetation; death and return; self-castration; pine tree; spring mourning; mystery cult; resurrection imported;vegetation Greek world Archaic-Classical/Roman reception A candidate_verified_name Literary attestation in classical/mythographic tradition; cult evidence varies by entity. 4 0 0 Attis is the Phrygian vegetation deity whose myth of self-castration, death, and resurrection formed the theological core of the Cybele mystery cult as it spread through the Hellenistic world and Rome. His myth survives in several variant versions: in the Pessinuntine version (Pausanias 7.17.9-12; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes 5.5-7), Attis emanates from the almond tree that grew from the blood of the castrated Agdistis, is loved by Agdistis, and in a fit of divine madness self-castrates under a pine tree and dies; Agdistis, in grief, persuades Zeus to grant Attis a form of resurrection — his hair continues to grow and his little finger moves. The pine tree under which he died became sacred to him. Catullus Poem 63 (the most vivid Latin literary treatment) dramatizes the ecstatic self-castration of an Attis-follower who becomes a Gallus (castrated priest of Cybele). The annual Roman festival cycle commemorating Attis (March 15-27) enacted his myth: the Day of the Arriving Reed (Canna Intrat), the Day of the Arriving Tree (Arbor Intrat — a pine tree carried in procession), the Day of Blood (Sanguem, March 24 — the Galli's ritual self-cutting), and the Day of Joy (Hilaria, March 25 — celebrating the resurrection). The importation of the Cybele-Attis cult to Rome in 204 BCE (the Magna Mater stone from Pessinus) brought Attis to the Roman world; Claudius formalized the full festival cycle. Attis represents the dying-and-rising deity archetype in Phrygian religion, paralleled structurally by Dionysus and Osiris in the Greek and Egyptian traditions. Vermaseren (1977) is the standard monograph; Roller (1999) pp. 139-165. deity

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