The Rituals of the Gallae Transgender Priestesses

Content warning: This video discusses the ritual practices of an ancient religious sect, which involves some practices which may seem disturbing to modern sensibilities – in particular, those who are sensitive to discussion of self harm, blood, or the ritual sacrifice of animals. Viewer discretion is advised. 

What would you say if I told you that there’s an order of trans girl priestesses who practiced in the Mediterranean for a thousand years? 

And that we’ve got the evidence to prove it? 

And that this time, I’m not talking about the Enarees?

Have I got your attention yet? 

RELATED: The Enarees: The Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED

Previously on this channel, we talked about the Gallae, an order of transgender priestesses in Rome, who originally came from the near east, just like the Enarees did. 

Turns out there are a lot of trans feminine priestesses who came from the near east. I haven’t even covered all of them on the channel yet. Maybe there’s a connection between them all! I haven’t found that out yet. But I will, one of these days. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. 

The Gallae were the devotees of the goddess Kybele, who originated in Phrygia – central Anatolia, modern day Turkey – before making their way to the Roman Republic. 

We’ve done a general overview of them already, which you can find in a previous video. But the more I get into these topics, the more I realize there’s just too much information to cover in a single video. 

Besides, people frequently have questions about these topics after the fact, and even though I try to be thorough, I can’t possibly think of everything. So we’re jumping into the Gallae again. 

If you’re new to the channel, welcome. I’m Sophie Edwards, and this is We Have Always Existed. It’s a show where we explore the wealth of transgender history in the ancient Mediterranean. 

If you’re new to the topic of the Gallae, you may want to watch the previous video first. I’ll do my best to keep this self contained, but you may have some questions at the end, which that previous video will hopefully answer. And if it doesn’t, ask them in the comments below – maybe the answer will warrant yet another video. 

RELATED: Kybele and the Gallae

But one thing I didn’t cover in much detail is what we know of the spiritual practices of the Gallae themselves. 

I know the idea of better understanding the rituals of ancient trans priestesses is important to a lot of you. More than a few times, I’ve had various trans pagans show up in my comments wanting to know more. 

That was never my goal – not explicitly, at least. I’m a classicist, first and foremost. My interest is in the history, literature, archaeology, language, and culture of the ancient Mediterranean. But you can’t control how people find inspiration in your work, and that’s part of the beauty of creating. 

You also can’t control which work people find inspiring. For example, I thought the videos on Hypsikrates and Pelagius were some of my best work, but the analytics tell a different story. Whaddayagonnado? My trans masc videos just don’t do the numbers. 

RELATED: Hypsikrates, the Transgender Spouse of Mithradates

RELATED: Pelagius, the Transgender Saint

Trans guys, you wanna see more trans masculine history? I’d love to tell it, but you’ve got to do your part too. Share these stories with your bros, I can’t pay the bills when the video’s a dud. 

Anyway, what do we know about the worship practices of the Gallae? 

A lot, and not a lot, at the same time. 

After the rise of Christianity, many of the rituals and practices of pagans in the Mediterranean were lost. So we don’t have, like, a how-to guide. 

RELATED: Gender Transgression in Early Christianity

But at the same time, the cult of Kybele, and the worship practices of the Gallae, had been going on in the Mediterranean for a thousand years, perhaps more. That’s not the sort of thing you can permanently erase, no matter how hard you try. So we can still piece together a picture based on the elements that do survive, which is what we’ll be doing today. Much like a puzzle you buy from a thrift store, that picture is going to have a lot of gaps in it, but at least it’s something. 

As best we can, we’re going to explore the worship practices of the Gallae, as well as what we know of ancient mystery cults in general. From there, I’m hoping we can piece together something vaguely approaching some actual spiritual practices. We’ll do what we can, but I’m sure I’ll be missing some details. But, and I know you’ve heard me say this plenty of times before, at the moment this is the longest script I’ve ever written. So look, I’m not going to be able to cover everything. But that just means there’s more content for you all to badger me to make in future videos. 

Speaking of which, the idea for this video comes from one of the channel’s Patreon backers, Kate Wood. So, thanks Kate. If you’d like to support the channel, there’s a link to the channel’s Patreon in the description. Hundreds of hours of work go into each of these videos, and your support makes a big difference in helping me continue to make it for you. 

As well, if you like speculative near future sci-fi, you might be interested in my novel, The Bottom Line, which has been called “a surprisingly comforting read for dealing with… feelings of loneliness, obsolescence, helplessness and directionlessness” – William 

As I write this, my novel will soon be unavailable – my publisher is unfortunately closing up shop. But if you’re watching this in the future, I’ll have republished it myself, so check it out! 

I don’t want to pitch it too much, since you’re all here for trans history, but it’s hard to make it as a writer these days, and this is the widest audience I’ve got. 

Anyway, if you like the work I do, your support helps me to keep doing it. 

Without further ado… 

Chapter I: Misconceptions and Definitions

Before we dig too far into this, I want to take a moment to talk about definitions. I mentioned the phrase “mystery cult” earlier, and look, I know where your brain is going. You’re probably thinking of weirdo groups that isolate their members from their communities and families, centered around an unhinged authoritarian leader who demands absolute loyalty as well as financial support, who creates an “us vs them” mentality between the cult members and society at large, who’s preoccupied with money, who encourages antisocial behaviours that further isolate members from their previous communities, and who punishes anyone who wants to leave (Langone, 10). 

Things like MAGA, the Church of Scientology, Freedomain Radio, or the Heaven’s Gate cults. Did you know the Heaven’s Gate website is still online, by the way? It’s such a wonderful little piece of internet history, dark though its origins and results may be. 

The word “cult” has a lot of messy connotations in the modern world, but let’s hit the brakes. That’s not what we’re about today. 

As it turns out, language evolves, and the ways we use words in the past aren’t the same as how we use them today. 

For example, take the word “dictator” – in the days of the Roman Republic, “dictator” was an official government position. In times of great crisis, a dictator would be appointed, for the duration of the crisis, or for six months, whichever was shorter. He had much broader control over the state, but his job was to resolve the present crisis, and then resign his office (Boatwright, Gargola, and Talbert, 50). In fact, one of the most revered figures from the early Republic was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who was a political and military leader that retired and became a farmer. During a war with the Aequi, Cincinnatus was asked to become dictator to deal with the crisis. He defeated them in sixteen days, then laid down his dictatorial power and went back to being a humble farmer (Hillyard, 19-22). This wasn’t a job you gave to just anybody – they had to have great moral character. It wasn’t a problem until Julius Caesar declared himself DICTATOR PERPETVO – perpetual dictator – which is when he began his new career as a senatorial knife holder.  

So, Dictator didn’t have the same meaning in ancient Rome as it does today. 

The same is true for the word “cult”. 

“Cult” just refers to ancient practices in worship of a particular god. We’ll get more into that later in the video, but ancient mystery cults weren’t creepy in the way we think of cults today. At least, not to the people of their day (mostly). 

It’s been pretty difficult for scholars to piece together the details of these ancient mystery cults, so in many ways they are a mystery to us. 

But that’s not why we call them mystery cults – that’s just a coincidence. 

The “mystery” part of it is complex. In general, mystery cults were secretive, in that their practices were closed off to the general public. In Greek, the word for mystery cult is μυστήριον (mysterion), and once you were initiated, you were a μύστης (mystes). We don’t know the etymology of these words, but the Greek verb μυηιν (myein) means “to close”, so some scholars think that might be related. After all, you weren’t supposed to talk about the goings-on of your mystery cult – keep your mouth closed about it.

The first rule of mystery cults blah blah blah. 

We also need to toss out our idea of what a “religion” is. If you’re watching this video, based on my analytics, it’s a good bet you were raised in an Abrahamic religion, or at least in an area where an Abrahamic religion was culturally dominant. So, you’re used to a religion that has a sacred text as the central authority for things. But pre-Christian pagan religions didn’t have that. 

The closest thing they had to a central text was Homer and Hesiod, but they weren’t exactly holy texts – other mythographers deviated from their ideas all the time, and nobody showed up at their door with pitchforks and torches. 

There were temples to the gods, of course. The most famous is probably the Parthenon, the temple to Athena on the Acropolis at Athens, but there are plenty more of them. But it wasn’t the sort of thing where you’d attend service once a week (Bowden, 14). Rather, you’d spend a lot of time thinking about your relationship to the gods on a daily basis (Bowden, 6-7). 

But the god of Abraham is, MOSTLY, don’t @me, considered to be a loving, caring god who wants the best for his followers. The Torah, the Bible, and the Qu’ran are full of moral lessons to help teach you how to be a better person (amid all the messed up junk, I KNOW, don’t @me). 

With stories about pagan gods, sometimes the moral lesson is the gods are petty assholes and they’re going to ruin your life just because they feel like it. People were still devoted to the gods, to varying degrees, just like they are today. But that might not necessarily save you from an awful fate. 

For example, are you an ancient Greek with epilepsy? If so, your seizures wouldn’t be considered a result of abnormal brain activity, like we understand them to be today. Instead, it would be because the god Pan seized you and started violently shaking you. That’s why we call it a seizure. It might also be because the moon goddess Selene cursed you and made you crazy, which is where we get the term “lunatic” from (Eloge, Ross, & Cooper). 

What about a crop failure? Somebody must have done something to upset Demeter, the goddess of the harvest.

Was there an earthquake, or a tsunami? That’s because the earthshaker Poseidon was in a kerfuffle about something. Tides go in, tides go out, you can’t explain it. Must have been Poseidon. 

And if you see someone, or something, struck by lightning? That’s Zeus’ handiwork right there. 

Maybe lightning strikes the CN Tower so often because Zeus thinks it’s amusing. You don’t know. You can’t explain it. 

Maybe it’s Thor on top of Mount Olympus! 

This guy always bugged me. I don’t know where he comes across being so smarmy about this – Thor didn’t live on Mount Olympus. It’s a completely separate mythology. Zeus threw lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. Thor lived in Asgard. 

I can’t believe I’m taking Bill O’Reilly’s side in an argument…

Anyway, you’d do your best to honour the gods, in the hope that they’d bestow favour upon you. And sometimes they would, but sometimes they did destructive things because they were angry, and sometimes even their most devoted humans would be caught in the middle of it. 

So let’s recap – mystery doesn’t mean mystery, cult doesn’t mean cult, and religion doesn’t mean religion. Forget everything you know about these words. In fact, forget every word you know. Forget English altogether. These aren’t words, they’re just sounds.

Mrol mrol mrol

blibroid florx fnantriew

brekekekex, koax, koax.

Chapter II: Gaze Into the Eyes of Our Ancient Sister

When it comes to understanding the cult practices of the Gallae, one of the best examples we have is a funerary portrait of a Galla priestess. I’d actually come across this statue before, but I think I kind of just brushed past the fact that we have an actual sculpture of one of the Gallae, which is pretty incredible. So, let’s take a moment here to look more closely. 

A while back, we explored the grave goods of an Enaree priestess from modern day northern Afghanistan. We had a chance to look through her stuff, and even got to see an illustration of her actual body, lying in the grave. If you saw that video, you know how exciting it was. 

But we didn’t get a chance to see what her face might have looked like. With this sculpture, we do. 

And, here she is. You and I, all of us, right now, are gazing into the face of one of our trans sisters. It dates to the second century CE. 

If that doesn’t strike you with an enormous sense of awe, may I suggest you check to make sure you still have a pulse. In fact, if you don’t think this is awesome, you’re probably on the wrong channel. Go ahead, unlike, uncomment, unsubscribe, unsign up for Raid: Shadow Legends, unplug your computer, throw it into the ocean, and run off screaming into the forest, never to return. 

In fact, I might join you. I could use a digital detox. 

This funerary portrait is about 1.2 metres tall and wide (Nongbri), and was supposedly found at a site called Lanuvium, which is about 30 kilometres southeast of Rome (Wardle Vol. I, 375), though it’s possible it may have been found in Rome itself (Della Giovampaola, 505). It was donated to the Capitoline Museum back in 1737 (Nongbri) by a wealthy family that had holdings in Italy all over the place, which makes its providence difficult. 

That really sucks, because based on what I can tell, this portrait is one of two things. 

It does resemble what we see on the sides of tombs. The Romans buried their dead along the road outside the city’s walls, which was an ancient tradition that spread across the empire (Kraus and Von Matt, 97). Some of the better preserved ones have sculptures that seem similar – one could easily imagine our Galla portrait on the side of a tomb like one of these two – the tombs of Caius Calventius Quietus, in the foreground, and Naevoleia Tyche. I’ve seen our Galla referred to as tomb portrait (Beard, North, and Price Vol. 2, 211). 

Here’s a video of a funerary marker, that’s part of the collection at the Royal Ontario Museum, here in Toronto. Its display is mostly text, but one could imagine our Galla portrait in a similar location. 

It’s also been described as “votive” (Giovampaola, 505), which might imply it was part of an altar to the goddess. And one could also imagine this being part of an altar like this one as well, hm? 

Either way, this leaves us with a lot of questions. 

Was this a tomb marker for the grave of a Galla priestess? In some ways, it seems unlikely, since the Gallae were often spoken of derisively in literature. But then, that logic makes a carefully, beautifully sculpted piece like this unlikely in the first place. Ancient writers often spoke derisively about the cult practices of the Gallae, but this portrait has all of it displayed proudly. If this was a tomb marker, what other wonders might we have found inside that tomb?

Or, if it’s part of an altar, what else might we have found in that area? What else might we have learned about the Gallae and their rituals? 

Unfortunately, we don’t know. 

This is still an incredible find for trans history in its own right, to be sure. It dates to the 2^nd century CE (Beard, North, and Price Vol. 2, 211) – the 100’s – which makes this the oldest portrait of a trans person I’ve found so far – perhaps the oldest one, period. But it can also tell us a lot about the elements of the rituals our ancient sisters used in the worship of their goddess. 

As far as we know, the Gallae never wrote down the specifics of their cult worship. But this portrait is the next best thing. Paired with the literary evidence we have, we can build a pretty clear picture of what the religion of the Gallae was like.  

Let’s take a closer look at them. 

Chapter III: Ancient Trans Girl Fashion

Let’s start with her clothes. What’s she wearing? 

It all just seems like a bunch of robes, so you might assume she’s wearing a toga. But the toga wasn’t the only piece of clothing Romans wore. In fact, it was really only men and prostitutes who wore togas. Non-prostitute Roman women would wear a different garment – a stola (McElduff, 73-78). 

They look pretty similar – both of them are just drape-y cloth. But they were worn differently. It’s hard to tell by looking at ancient sculptures, but a toga wouldn’t actually cover your whole body. Instead, you’d wear a tunic underneath, and the toga would only cover part of it. For an example of what I mean, here’s a photo from the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Wear a Toga!” activity day. See what I mean? Man’s plaid shirt makes it much more obvious how a toga would have fit. Looking at our Galla portrait, it’s clear that’s not what she’s wearing – she’s wearing a stola (Beard, North, and Price Vol. 2, 211). 

To get a better look at how that would have been worn, here’s another sculpture of a Galla priest, which again, I kind of just glazed over in the original video. Two of our ancient sisters – their faces, their styles, their practices. And we get to experience them, two thousand years later. It’s beautiful stuff. 

Maybe trans girls will be watching my videos in the year 4000, who knows. By then, though, we’ll probably have invented some other way to experience media, like data crystal uplinks to the hyperweb via an anti-attenuator frequency harmonic. Don’t look at me like that, it makes perfect sense; this bit is going to slay a couple millennia from now. 

Unfortunately, I can’t find a better photo of this piece. It’s supposedly in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, but I looked all through the place and couldn’t find it anywhere. Maybe I missed a spot – the place is pretty labyrinthine. But it’s probably more likely that she’s not on display, maybe because of how Italians have always been annoying prudes about anything to do with sex or gender. 

But then again, there are statues with dinks, snatches, and boobs fully exposed for all the world to see. Nobody ever said Italians made any sense… 

Anyway, this girl’s outfit is also a stola. Compare it to this sculpture of Livia Drusilla, the wife of Augustus, and with this sculpture of Aulus Metellus, a 1^st century BCE senator. The Galla’s outfit clearly resembles Livia’s outfit more. 

Besides, we’re told they dressed like women. 

Marcus Tarentius Varro described a scene of the Gallae doing their thing, and says they were, quote, “decked out in charming stolas”. 

So, this ancient fashionista would have been seen as wearing women’s clothing. But what about what’s on her head? 

It’s a sort of turban/tiara combination thing. I guess some of them had ear flaps they tied under their chin (Vermaseren, 97), but I don’t see that on our portrait. There are some little plaques with portraits in the tiara, and I know it’s hard to see, but those are portraits of Jupiter, and of Attis, an important figure in the mythology of Kybele. 

Attis is also on her little chest plaque, and it’s hard to tell if that’s a necklace or if it’s pinned to her stola. 

And her hair? That’s a bunch of ribbons tied into her long, curling locks, a distinctly feminine style (Beard, North, and Price Vol. 2, 211). In general, Roman women had longer hair than men did, just like today. But also, no self respecting Roman man would spend his time weaving ribbons into his hair like a woman. In fact, the Roman historian Suetonius even pointed this out when criticizing Nero, quote: 

He was so very shameless in his concern for dress and the care of his person that he would always have his curls arranged in a pile on his head and, on his trip to Greece, even had them flowing down behind.

– Suetonius, Life of Nero, 51

It was notable and weird for Nero to have long hair, or to spend any time making it look nice. That was a passive, feminine activity, not befitting of a proper Roman man (Barman, 3-5). 

But clearly, our two gals here had no interest in performing masculinity. 

So let’s recap – ancient trans girls wore women’s clothing and hairstyles and jewellery. We’re told they wore makeup as well, but that doesn’t really come through in the portrait we have. 

Where’d they get their drip? 

They went door to door, asking for clothes and donations, in exchange for telling fortunes (Vermaseren, 97). So, trans girls have always been into thrifting, I guess. 

Embracing their femininity was part of their ritual, clearly. Otherwise, why do it? 

Well, you and I know why, of course…

Chapter IV: Ancient Trans Girls Loved Noise Music, Too

There are some musical instruments depicted on our sculpture, including some percussion instruments, and as a drummer myself I’m particularly excited to check them out. 

Now, as we mentioned back in the original video on the Gallae, the goddess we’ll be referring to as Kybele goes by many names. 

The earliest inscription we have of her comes from Phrygia, where she’s referred to as Matar Kubileya, which means “mother of the mountains” in the Phrygian language. That’s clearly where Kybele comes from. But she’s also referred to as Meter Thea, the mother goddess, and as Meter Theos, the mother OF the gods, Mater Magna, the great mother, and more (Roller, 2-3). Further, her myth was conflated with the other mother gods as well, like Rhea and Demeter (Roller, 119). We’re going to stick with Kybele though, to keep things simple. 

Kybele has her origins in Phrygia, so it’s not surprising we see evidence of her worship in the parts of the Greek world closest to there. There are depictions of her in places like Smyrna and Miletos, on the west coast of Asia Minor, dating back to the 6^th century BCE. From there it spread, and by the 4^th century BCE we find devotions to her in pretty much every Greek city (Roller, 119-120). 

Her first significant appearance in literature, though, comes from the Homeric Hymns. The Homeric Hymns are a collection of poems written in epic style, which were traditionally attributed to Homer. But we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Homer who wrote them, yadda yadda that old song and dance. We’ve been down this road before. For some reason we don’t call the writer Pseudo-Homer though. They all have different dates, but the general consensus is that most of them were written roughly around the time of Homer, which was the 600’s or 500’s BCE (Richardson, XII). 

Now, the Galla portrait we looked at is from the 2^nd century CE, which is several hundred years later (Beard, North, & Price, 211). We really don’t know much about the specific rituals the Gallae had when they started in Phrygia, or when they moved to Greece. Even the sources we have in the Roman Republic era are pretty sparse. It’s only during the Imperial period that we get more detailed stories about them. But even though this is several hundred years before the portrait we looked at, as you’ll see, there are still some parallels. 

The Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods is pretty short. It reads, quote:

I prithee, 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. And so hail to you in my song and to all goddesses as well!

– Homeric Hymn XIV

What does this tell us about Kybele? 

Well, she likes noise. 

It talks about a number of different musical instruments. Three of them are depicted on the portrait we looked at a moment ago, but do we know what these instruments were actually like? 

Actually, yeah, we do. 

Let’s take a look. 

The flute referred to is something called an aulos (αὐλός), which is a sort of double flute. You can see the woman in the background playing it here, on this mosaic from Pompeii’s “House of Cicero” (Wardle Vol. I, 334). The Romans called them tibiae, and if you know your anatomy, you might recognize that as the name of the larger bone in your lower leg, your shin bone. I’ll keep calling it an aulos though, to keep it simple. 

These were more popular in ancient Greece than Rome, but the Romans did have them as well (Wardle Vol. I, 20). Besides, the Gallae came from the east anyway. The Romans did have other types of flutes, including panpipes and even bagpipes (Wardle Vol. I, 136, 164), but the Homeric Hymn specifically uses the term αὐλός. 

Now, sometimes people played two auloi of the same size, but sometimes it was two different sizes. You’d have a bass flute, which you played with your right hand, and a treble flute, which you played with your left. If we look at the Galla portrait, it’s clear she has two different auloi. 

There’s a lot about these we don’t know. Since most of them would have been made of wood or reeds, only a few metal ones have survived. And of those, we don’t have any mouthpieces, so we don’t really know how they would have been played (Wardle Vol. I, 20). Modern reconstructions of them have to take some creative license, but they end up sounding like a mix between a harmonica, a clarinet, an accordion, and an air raid siren. 

According to the poet Pindar’s twelfth Pythian Ode, Athena invented the aulos because she wanted something that would mimic the wails of the gorgons Euryale and Stheno after their sister, Medusa, was beheaded by Perseus. And yeah, I hear it. 

So it’s not the bright chipper sound you might think of as a flute today. 

This translation refers to rattles and timbrels, but that really doesn’t do these things justice. I’ve seen “timbrel” translated as tambourine and drum, and rattles as castanets, clappers, and cymbals. But that doesn’t give us much of a picture of these things. 

So, let’s take a look at some of the different percussion instruments the Romans had, and compare them with some modern instruments. C’mon, let’s head over to my drumkit. 

We’ll start with their cymbals. 

You can see the pair of them in our Galla portrait, connected with a rope, or a strip of leather. 

In some ways, they look pretty similar to what you might think of as a cymbal today, like this – this is my crash cymbal. And just like my crash cymbal, the ancient ones are round, and have a small hole in the centre, from which you’d suspend it (Wardle Vol. I, 330). They also have a bell in the middle, with a bow surrounding it. And just like my crash cymbal, the ancient ones are made of bronze. But they weren’t played the way most cymbals are played today. 

When you think of a cymbal, you probably think of it in terms of its place on a drum kit. I know I do. But what we think of as the modern drum kit didn’t begin to coalesce until the mid-1800’s (Sharkey). Before then, cymbals were played by a cymbal player, who most often would strike two of them together. That’s how the Romans played them, too. 

But they were also a lot smaller. For example, here’s my ride cymbal. It’s the largest cymbal on my kit – 51 centimetres in diameter. And here’s my splash, which is my smallest cymbal – 25 centimetres. About half the size. 

If you live in a backward country that uses a far sillier measurement system, by the way, one foot is just over 30 centimetres. 

The Galla portrait we have isn’t necessarily to scale, so let’s take a look at another picture. Here are some Roman cymbals, which are 11 centimetres in diameter, so, less than half the size of my splash. I know it’s kind of hard to get an idea from a photo, so here’s the lid of my hand cream, which is 10cm in diameter. These cymbals would be slightly bigger than that. They’re in the Cairo Museum (Hickmann, 456). 

Here’s another pair – these are the largest ones I’ve been able to find. They’re just over 20 centimetres in diameter, so still a bit smaller than my splash. They’re in the Met, in New York (Hickmann, 457). 

Let’s take another look at that mosaic we looked at earlier. This gives us an example of how these cymbals would have been played. 

But here’s another example – this is a sculpture of a satyr playing cymbals, with baby Dionysus on his shoulder. You can tell it’s Dionysus because of the grapes, and I know you can’t see it here but the statue has a small tail above his butt, so yeah it’s a satyr, just a more handsome satyr than what we usually see. This one is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Napoli, Italy. It looks like he’s playing the cymbals Turkish style, which is where your arms move in the opposite direction when you strike them together (Wardle Vol. I, 330). That changes the sound – if you watch cymbal players in an orchestra, they’ll often play them that way. 

They also used cymbals in other instruments. Here’s one called a scabellum, which was called a kroupalon or kroupezion in Greek. Here’s a sculpture of a satyr playing one, along with an aulos. It’s essentially two blocks of wood, with metal inside them. You’d have a sandal that attached it to your foot, then tap it to keep the beat. In between the two wood blocks, you’d have tiny cymbals that would tap together to make the sound (Marcuse, 300, 461, Zanker & Ewald, 119). 

Here’s another cymbal-related instrument they used, a crotalum, or krotalon in Greek. I know that sounds similar to the kroupalon we just talked about, but it’s not quite the same thing. These were essentially clappers, with two cymbals attached to sticks. They were played mostly by women, and usually as part of a dance (Wardle Vol I, 337). These particular clappers are in the British Museum. 

Alright, what about drums? 

Drums are usually made of more perishable material – wood and leather. So of course, it’s hard for something like that to last very long. The best depiction we have of them is from that awesome mosaic from Pompeii we looked at a moment ago, so let’s bring that one up again. Nice. 

So based on this, we can see the drum is pretty wide and shallow, and you play it with your hand. 

Compare that with my floor tom here, which is 38 centimetres deep, has legs, and is played with a stick. My snare is a little closer, but even it’s much deeper than the one we see in that mosaic. It really doesn’t seem like a tympanum and a kit drum have much in common. 

In fact, it seems to have more in common with a tambourine, if you removed the jingles. 

Was there a skin on both sides of a tympanum, or just one? We don’t know. There are plenty of different types of drums that have both – for example, the drums on my kit have both, but a djembe only has a skin on one side. And we don’t have any, like, schematic drawings that would help (Wardle Vol. I, 369). 

Now, here’s where it gets a little weird. See, we do have parts of a drum that survived from the Roman era, and as far as I know it’s the only one. It was dug up in 1968, in eastern France near Strasbourg. The resident of the grave was around 20 years old, and probably died in the 3^rd century CE (Hatt & Thevenin, 34). This is a photo of it (Hatt & Thevenin, 38), but yeah it’s a crummy black and white photocopied photo from the 60’s, so it’s really hard to see what the hell we’re looking at. 

Fortunately, we have an illustration of what it might have looked like (Hatt & Thevenin, 37). And, yeah, that looks even more like a tambourine, doesn’t it? Weirdly enough, I couldn’t find anything even close to this depicted in art. All the drums I’ve found look more like the one we saw on the Galla funerary portrait. Maybe this was a makeshift drum. 

That, plus the fact that Kybele herself is sometimes holding them – here she is seated in a chariot pulled by lions – makes me think the Gallae would more likely have used round drums, more like my snare here. 

Alright, we’re done with the drums now, let’s head back to my study.  

So, she likes drums, cymbals, and bassy flutes. This tracks with what we know about the worship practices of the Gallae. The poet Ovid describes a scene during the Megalensia, a festival devoted to Kybele, which took place on April 4^th. 

Let the heaven’s eternal axis turn three times, and Titan thrice hitch, thrice free his horses, then the Berecyntian flute’s curved horn will blow, and the Idaean Mother’s feast begin. The eunuchs will parade and pound the hollow drums, and their clashing bronze cymbals will ring. She will ride on the soft necks of her acolytes, howled along the city’s major streets. The stage roars, the shows call…I have much to ask, but the strident cymbal’s clash and the claw-pipe’s chilling noise scare me.

– Ovid, Fasti IV, 183-186, 189-190

“Berecyntian” is an epithet for Kybele, which refers to Berecyntus, a mountain in Phrygia (Lewis and Short). Same with “Idaean”, that refers to Mount Ida, southeast of the ruins of Troy. That jives with the Homeric Hymn as well – it talks about how Kybele likes hills and valleys. 

And of course, “the eunuchs” refers to the Gallae. 

I couldn’t figure out what a “claw-pipe” is, but the original Latin refers to harsh sound in general. Maybe the translator is referring to an aulos. 

Now, the Romans really didn’t like any of this. 

The poet Horace, a contemporary of Vergil and Ovid – he’s the “carpe diem” guy, you know, seize the fish or whatever, describes the sound of the tambourine as “saeva“, or cruel (Carm. 1.18.13-14), and Ovid tells us they’re “inanis“, or worthless (Fast. 4.183). On the other hand, cymbals, to Ovid, “terret“, or are frightening (Fast. 4.190), and the poet Propertius says they’re “rauca“, or harsh (Prop. 3.17.36). Seneca describes the sound of the horns in a similar way (Ag. 689), while Lucretius says they feel threatening because of their “raucisono cantu“, or harsh sound (Bremmer, 563). 

So, music was an important part of the rituals of the Gallae. They played wind instruments and percussion, and apparently, they also shrieked and screamed, in imitation of the wolves and lions that Kybele liked, and in mourning for the dead Attis – but more on that later. 

There’s another bit I want to pull from that Ovid quote, though – “She will ride on the soft necks of her acolytes, howled along the city’s major streets.” There are multiple references to their “soft necks”, which I guess was a sort of Roman shorthand for effeminacy, sort of like “limp wrist” might be today. 

But we actually have a depiction of this. It’s on an altar the Gallae used, which, again, is such an awesome thing to discover. This object is currently in the Fitzwilliam Museum, part of the University of Cambridge. 

This side of it shows Kybele in the middle, flanked by two Gallae, who are wearing Phrygian caps, like Attis. The way they’re standing, it looks like they’re mourning Attis, which was an important part of their practices – I said we’d get to that later, alright? Geez, so impatient. Kybele herself is holding a branch in one hand, and a bowl of fruit in the other, much like the Galla portrait we looked at earlier, neato (Tillyard, 284). 

Another side shows that procession Ovid talked about. We can see four Gallae carrying some cult symbols of Kybele on a bier, which I today learned is the thing a coffin rests on when you carry it in a funeral procession. They, too, are wearing Phrygian caps. In the middle of the bier, there’s a big throne with a footstool – Kybele is shown sitting on a throne pretty regularly in Roman art. On top of the throne is a basket, which we figure is full of Kybele-related cult objects. There are two smaller Gallae on it too, which are probably sculptures and not actual Gallae (Tillyard, 285-7). 

Unfortunately it doesn’t show them actually playing their instruments, but on a third side, there’s a tree – the different Attis stories usually have a tree in them – with a drum, aulos, and cymbals hanging from it. So, this altar would certainly have been a place where the Gallae offered up their worship to the Great Mother Goddess.  

So, 2200 years ago, trans girls were marching through the streets of Rome making harsh noise music and weirding out everyone around them. 

Dolls who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it, I guess. 

Chapter V: Trees, Fruits, and Nocturnal Emissions

What else do we see on this portrait? 

In her left hand, she’s holding a bowl of fruit and nuts, just like Kybele is on the altar we looked at a moment ago. It’s easy to just accept that as a symbol of fertility, which makes sense for a mother goddess. And, yeah, that’s part of it, but also, there are some almonds there, and that’s an important bit. 

According to the 2^nd century CE Greek writer Pausanias, a monster named Agdistis was born after Zeus fell asleep and had a wet dream. 

Seriously, take this quote:

Zeus, it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground.

– Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece, 7.17.10

What else could that be? Incredible stuff. 

Anyway, it dripped down on the Earth – I’d hate to be standing in the way of that one – and Agdistis popped out, the intersex icon with two sets of genitals. They were just a little too chaotic for everyone to deal with though, sounds like some trans girls I know, so Dionysus tied her foot to her dick while she was sleeping. I’m not sure what he was planning to accomplish here, but when she woke up she started thrashing around, and tore off her, yeah. 

It fell on the ground, and an almond tree sprouted from it, because that’s how things go in mythology. 

The almond tree grew, and a young girl picked some almonds from it and put them down her shirt. They absorbed into her chest and impregnated her, and… what?

ANYWAY, she gave birth to Attis. 

So, almonds were an important symbol – not a cymbal, we talked about those already – a symbol for the cult of Kybele. Any ritual practices they had would almost certainly have involved almonds. 

What about her other hand? That’s three myrtle branches. Myrtle had A LOT of different uses in Greco-Roman ritual, and I’m not going to get into all of it here. But it was associated with Venus, since she was holding myrtle when she was born. It was also used when making a victory crown from a non-violent victory, like if you won at the Olympic games. They were also worn to sacrifices or banquets. And in Rome, the Romans and Sabines were said to have purified themselves using myrtle when they joined forces and became one people (Blakely). But also, E. M. W. Tillyard describes the branch on the Kybele altar we looked at earlier as a pomegranate branch, which is associated with Hades and Persephone, and with fertility in general. I’m not enough of a horticultural archaeologist to know which of these it is. 

Mary Beard says the mystery branch would have been used as a sort of sprinkler (211), though she doesn’t elaborate, and I haven’t been able to find any details beyond that. We do know the Gallae would sprinkle their blood on the statues and altars of the temple of Kybele though, so maybe that’s what it was used for. 

Chapter VI: Dixi Flagellato! Bene Facere!

We also see what looks almost like train tracks, draped near her left shoulder. What’s that? 

It’s a whip, probably leather, with knucklebones tied into it. The Gallae would use that for self flagellation. And the stick with a bearded head on either end of it is the handle – it’s draped over her shoulder (Vermaseren, 99-100). The other Galla statue we looked at – the full body one – also has a whip draped around her neck, which you can see if you look closely (Vermaseren, 115). 

When the Gallae prepared for their ritual castration, they would whip themselves until they bled using one of these things. 

Why? 

It’s easy to just assume this was an expression of self-hatred, which is what our ancient sources tell us. The Gallae would re-enact the death of Attis, and part of that included lamentation at the act of self castration. And like, alright, that’s one possible explanation. But we don’t have any written sources by the Gallae themselves, only from observers and onlookers. 

Catullus, for example, in poem 63, talks about the Gallae in detail. The poem’s final lines read, quote:

Great Goddess, Goddess Cybele, Goddess Dame of Dindymus, far from my home may all your anger be, 0 mistress: urge others to such actions, to madness others hound.

– Catullus, Carmina LXIII

In case that isn’t clear based on the context, he’s begging Kybele not to make him a Galla. And this is one of the kinder treatments they receive in Roman literature (though maybe, least unkind might be a more accurate description). 

That poem is mostly focused on Attis, as he castrates himself — err, sorry – it documents his journey through his gender confirmation surgery – and yeah, it does talk about how much he regrets it, quote: 

I was the gymnasium’s flower, I was the pride of the oiled wrestlers: my gates, my friendly threshold, were crowded, my home was decked with floral garlands, when I used to leave my couch at sunrise. Now will I live a ministrant of gods and slave to Cybele? I a Maenad, I a part of me, I a sterile trunk…Now, now, I grieve the deed I’ve done; now, now, do I repent!

– Catullus, Carmina LXIII

So the self flagellation may have been an emulation of Attis’ regret, or a way to channel their own regret into their rituals. 

But look, not to brag or anything, but I’ve met a lot of trans girls. And I don’t know anybody who regrets transitioning. Girls who regret certain aspects of it? Sure. Girls who wish they’d done it a little differently? Absolutely. Girls who wish the people in their lives were better to them through the process? Of course. Girls who wish the world wasn’t so bloody hostile to us? Uh huh. But girls who regret the whole thing? No. 

I’m not saying detransitioning is not a thing. People do detransition. But look – the regret rates among trans people are really, really low. If you’re trans, you know this already. But if you’re not, you might have heard a lot of nonsense about how so many of us regret transitioning, and that just doesn’t reflect reality. 

There’s one paper in particular I want to talk about here. It’s a meta-analysis, which is a type of study where researchers review a bunch of other papers on a topic, to try and combine data points that match with each other. This can help you get a clearer picture on a topic, since larger sample sizes are in general a good thing for scientific research. Anyway, this paper, by Bustos Et Al, seems to be the largest on transition regret. It reviewed 27 different papers, with a combined 7,928 different trans people who’d gotten some form of gender affirming surgery – a third were transmasculine, the rest were transfeminine – and looked at the rate of regret for these surgeries. 

They found 77 regretted getting their procedure. 

That’s 77, out of 7,928. The study said that’s less than 1%, but that’s like saying Julius Caesar died more than 10 years ago. In fact, it’s 0.0097%. Less than one one hundredth of one percent. And of that tiny number, more than a third expressed only “minor” regret. 

For comparison, another study, led by Kerry D. Solomon, found LASIK eye surgery has a regret rate of about 4.6%. As a result, they said, “LASIK surgery should be considered among the most successful elective procedures.”

So look, I’m not saying it’s impossible the Gallae regretted their transitions. But I don’t trust non-Gallae to tell us about them in a way that’s fair to their experience. Margaret Dierdre O’Hartigan wrote a piece on the Gallae in a trans feminist zine called TransSisters, which is truly awesome, but she put the way I feel about this really succinctly, quote:

If there is one thing that having been both male and then female has taught me, it is that no one who has not gone through a similar transformation can be trusted to explain or to speak for us.

– Margaret Dierdre O’Hartigan, TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism #4, 18

So, I’m reluctant to trust what men have to say about the Gallae. Of course they’d be weirded out by it. They’re men. Men don’t like the idea of being women, just as women don’t like the idea of being men. 

[freezeframe] if you’re a man who takes umbrage to that last statement, check in with yourself – you might not be as much of a man as you think. 

So, what’s the reason for the flogging? 

I’d like to present a possibility. 

The Dies Sanguinis – the Day of Blood – was celebrated on March 24^th of each year. This was part of a long celebration of the Great Mother, which began on March 15^th. During the Dies Sanguinis, they would ritually castrate themselves, but they would also whip themselves until they bled. Then, they would sprinkle the altars and icons in the temple of Kybele with their blood. 

Now look, when it comes to giving yourself the snip, even if you want to do it, it’s going to hurt. A lot. What might you be able to do to relieve that pain? 

The Romans did have opium, which is what we use to derive a number of different pain relieving medications today. We’ve found capsules with opium residue inside of them throughout the Levant and Egypt. They’re fairly consistent in design as well, which suggests there was actually a standardized system of production and distribution of the stuff. The Greek writer Dioscorides even tells us about the technique he used to harvest it, which is pretty fun. But they mostly either added a bit to their wine to use as a sleep aid, or took a lot of it to end their own lives, which wasn’t considered a sin in the pre-Christian era (Matyszak). 

It might have been used for pain relief, but there isn’t much in ancient literature about it. Even Paul of Aegina, a Byzantine doctor we talked about in the original video on eunuchs, doesn’t mention it in his section about relieving pain (Section 40).

And even if the Romans did use it for pain relief – and to be clear, they may have, there’s just very little in terms of literary references to it – it may not have been easy to come by, especially for the Gallae who, by and large, were confined to the temple of Kybele except for during the festival. 

Also, they might have used it – again, there are very few references to opiates in the literature, and nothing at all from the Gallae themselves. We don’t know. 

But that aside, what else might they have done to work themselves up to doing the deed? 

For this, let’s take a look at a concept called conditioned pain modulation. I’m super not a scientist, I’m a historian. This is my very basic understanding and interpretation of science, but if you know more about this stuff than I do and I’m off base here, please let me know. 

But basically, conditioned pain modulation is part of your body’s pain control mechanism. When you experience two different types of pain, your brain perceives one of them as less painful (Ruhr-University Bochum). This might make sense to you intuitively – for example, my girlfriend told me when she gets dental work done, she sometimes digs her fingernails into her palm to distract from the feeling. I do the same during laser hair removal sessions. 

Could the Gallae have used a similar technique to control the pain during the Dies Sanguinis? 

Maybe. I don’t have any sources I could use as evidence for this, but then again, we don’t have any sources from the Gallae themselves at all. 

So unfortunately, that’s gotta go in the maybe box. But still, it’s important to note that self loathing isn’t the only possible explanation for the self flagellation of the Gallae. 

There are also a whole lot of religious traditions that include self flagellation, plenty of which are still around today. Some of those are based around Christianity, and are practiced as a form of repentance. 

That’s not self-hatred though – Christians don’t hate themselves by definition. It’s a recognition of the sin inherent in all people, and an attempt to purify their souls for Christ – but look, this video isn’t about Christianity. 

Some pagan traditions will include self flagellation in their worship practices as well. This is really not something I’m familiar with, so I apologize if I get something wrong here. I’m not a wiccan. So instead, I’m going to rely on the words of Thista Minai, a queer writer about witchcraft. In her book, “Casting A Queer Circle: Non-Binary Witchcraft”, she talks about the use of a scourge, or a whip, in ritual circles, quote:

The scourge is a cross-quarter tool representing discipline and endurance. Ritual flagellation can be seen as a sort of counterpoint to the sacred meal. Both are concerned with the sacred potential of physical experience, but while ritual food and drink brings us nourishment and pleasure, scourging brings us insight gained through suffering.

Pain applied skillfully, intentionally, consensually, and non-injuriously can be a powerful tool for personal revelation and transformation. Physiological responses to pain can help us break out of old mental habits, and inducing that state in a carefully crafted ritual atmosphere can let us replace self-destructive patterns with constructive thinking and new potential. 

– Thista Minai, “Casting A Queer Circle: Non-Binary Witchcraft”, Pg. 41

It’s interesting that Minai contrasts the use of pain with the pleasure of a feast. And we do know the Gallae took part in a feast shortly after they self flagellated, and shortly after they were inducted into the order – we’ll take a closer look at that later. 

So, did the Gallae use self flagellation in this way? Again, we don’t know. I wish we had their thoughts on this. 

But the point is, the Gallae didn’t necessarily practice self flagellation because they hated themselves. I’ve provided two other possibilities, neither of which are even mutually exclusive. 

Chapter VII: The March Festivals in Honour of Attis

Alright, so we have a bunch of elements of the worship of the Gallae. We even talked about one of the festivals – the Megalensia, oh April 4^th (Vermaseren, 124). But that’s not the only festival we know of when it comes to their worship. 

Part of what we know comes from the Roman scribe Furius Dionysus Philocalus, who created a calendar for the year 354 CE, which outlined a whole bunch of different important dates in the Roman world. It’s a pretty interesting little text, In particular, he tells us about some dates in March, which were part of a festival to Attis. 

This March festival, interestingly, seems to have replaced the April Megalensia we talked about earlier. Remember, the source we used for the Megalensia is Ovid’s Fasti, which was written in the early 1st century CE, and Furius Dionysus Philocalus’ work is from 354. For comparison, imagine a festival in your country from the 1700’s, if your country is even old enough to do this. If it’s still being celebrated today, chances are, it’s changed at least a bit since then. It’s thought that the March festival as we’re about to explore it properly coalesced during the reign of Antoninus Pius, who reigned from 138 to 161 CE, though it had probably been celebrated for centuries before then (Fishwick, 194). 

Now, these festival dates follow the myth of Attis, so to properly understand them I think it’s a good idea to tell the tale of Attis. We talked about that in the previous video on the Gallae, and touched on it a bit earlier, but whatever, here it is again. A few different sources talk about it, but we have two key sources. 

One of them is Pausanias, a 2^nd century CE Greek who wrote a sort of travel guide to Greece of his day. 

The other is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, because of course it is. 

Anyway, they contradict each other in some ways, but here are the basic beats of Attis’ life. 

Zeus had a wet dream, it dripped on the ground, and Agdistis – who, remember, was associated with Kybele – was born. Dionysus tied her dick to her foot and it tore off, from which an almond tree grew. A young maiden picked some almonds from the tree and put them down her shirt, which absorbed into her chest and impregnated her. 

She gave birth to Attis, and abandoned him by a river. He was nursed by a goat, before being found and raised by a shepherd family. 

He grew up to be hot, and Kybele/Agdistis fell in love with him – remember, she’s basically his grandma. It’s really weird I know, but Greek mythology is full of this sort of thing. Anyway, Attis was into another girl, so Kybele was separated from her hot boy, which made her sad. So she did what any lovesick lady would do – she made him go mad and castrate himself. Then he collapsed under a pine tree and died. But she felt bad about it after, so Zeus made Attis immortal. 

So, the festival days commemorated Attis’ life. 

Let’s take a look.

MENSIS MARTIVS XV: CANNA INTRAT

The first day of the festival was Canna Intrat, which fell on the 15^th of March. You might recognize that day as the Ides of March, and you might think of it as the day a certain salad was skewered by several surly senators. The Ides of March sounds sinister to us because of Shakespeare’s line “beware the ides of March” in his play Julius Caesar, but it was just a day. Every month had an ides. It’s just how the Romans counted their days. The ides of a month is in the middle of it – either the 13th or the 15th, depending on the month, corresponding with the full moon. The nones corresponds with a quarter moon, and shows up on the fifth or the seventh. And the Kalends is always on the first of the month, which is where we get the English word Calendar (Ostberg).

Anyway, Canna Intrat is Latin, which means “the reed enters”. As in, reeds you find on the shore of a river, y’know? This might commemorate the first day of Attis’ life, where he was abandoned by the river, but it might also symbolize his unfaithfulness to Kybele. Another group of followers of Kybele, the cannophori (reed-bearers), harvested some reeds, and carried them through the city to the temple of Mater Magna. They also led a bull along in the procession, to be sacrificed to the goddess, as a fertility ritual. This seems to have been a much more solemn procession – no screaming or clanging here. (Vermaseren, 114, Fishwick, 195, Turcan, 44). Either way, we think this ritual was established by the emperor Claudius (Nock, 156), who ruled from 41 to 54 CE.

Were the cannophori Gallae? I can’t find much information on them one way or another, but they seem to have admitted non-Gallae into their ranks as well (Vermaseren, 115) so at least some of them were not. 

After the Canna Intrat, there was a nine day period of fasting and abstinence. They wouldn’t eat bread, certain meats and fruits, or drink wine. Some of the most devoted… devotees… of Kybele and Attis would avoid these things altogether, but they were particularly important during the fast. This is supposed to represent the time where Kybele was denied the companionship of Attis (Vermaseren, 115). 

No mention is made of the Gallae at this point that I’ve seen, but they must have been part of it. I mean it’s not like they have anything better to do, you know? They’re the primary devotees of the Kybele and Attis cult, they must have done something here. 

Imagine a convent of nuns not doing anything on Christmas, y’know? 

MENSIS MARTIVS XXII: ARBOR INTRAT

So, we know Canna Intrat means “the reed enters”. Can you guess what Arbor Intrat means? 

It’s not a trick question – the tree enters. Y’know, like with Arbour Day, the tree day? No? Did nobody do anything for Arbour Day when they were kids?

Anyway, this is the day where the tree enters. Not the almond tree though, the pine tree. You know, the one he died under after his GRS funding wasn’t approved so he chose a DIY approach? 

This one is led by another group, the dendrophori, or tree-bearers. They used the Greek δένδρον though, instead of the Latin ARBOR. Whatev. The dendrophori were mostly made up of people who worked in the Roman lumber industry – professional wood cutters and timber sellers. Early in the morning, before sunrise, they cut down a pine tree. They also sacrificed a ram, and let its blood flow through the roots of the tree. Then, we’re told they attached an effigy of Attis to the tree with purple ribbons, and carried it in a procession to the temple (Vermaseren, 115, Turcan, 44). 

But take a look at that altar we looked at earlier – the tree has a bunch of stuff hanging from it – drums, cymbals, auloi. And this is clearly a pine tree too, look at how many pinecones there are in there. They decorated this thing like a Christmas tree. 

Oh geez, y’all are going to start hanging Attis figures from your Christmas trees now, aren’t you? I can’t be held responsible for trans girls who start hanging Attises from their Christmas trees. 

Anyway, after they laid the tree down in the temple in like, a funeral style, as though it were Attis. Then they began banging on drums and cymbals, and shrieking and wailing, in mourning over Attis’ death – the primary sources I read don’t say it specifically, but that’s gotta be the Gallae. The dendrophori were probably not Gallae, so it’s most likely the Gallae were part of the ritual, but not the only ones. 

Anyway, they did this all day long, and into the next day, which would have set them back quite a bit in their voice feminization training but I guess a priestess’s gotta do what a priestess’s gotta do, huh?

MENSIS MARTIVS XXIII: THIS ONE DOESN’T HAVE A NAME

March 23^rd was a day of mourning for Attis. 

There was a performance by the SALII, who were an order of priests devoted to Mars. They’re referred to as jumping priests, so I guess it’s some sort of acrobatics? 

CIRQUE DU MARS

March is named after the god Mars, after all. Makes sense he’d be involved somewhere. 

They’d also blare their trumpets and beat their shields while they marched around the temple of Kybele, while the Gallae mourned from within (Vermaseren, 115, Turcan, 45). Maybe they even joined in on the jam session. I can’t imagine the noise. 

Maybe it’s like the air show. I always make a point to be out of town when Toronto’s air show is on. If you lived near the temple of Kybele, maybe you’d take the opportunity to visit your relatives in the country on March 23^rd. 

MENSIS MARTIVS XXIV: DIES SANGVINIS

Here we are. Skip this part if you’re squeamish. 

During the Dies Sanguinis – the day of blood – the Gallae would whip themselves until they bled. They might also beat themselves with pinecones, and cut their shoulders, chests, or arms with knives. This, combined with not having eaten for nine days, would have put them in a very intense state. 

Then, they all partook in gender affirming excision together, and sprinkled their blood on the different sacred objects in the temple. That would include the altars, and the effigy of Attis, and assumingly the tree as well. 

Then, they’d have their lower stomach tattooed, probably with some images of Kybele and Attis. This inducted the new Gallae into the order. 

That night, they carried the tree – remember, it’s supposed to represent Attis – on a bier, and carried it to a grave, where they buried it. They kept mourning and shrieking as they did so – I imagine their throats are pretty raw at this point. When the mourning finishes, a priest anoints their throats, and says to them, quote:

Θαρρείτε μύσται του θεού σεσωσμενου έσται γάρ ήμίν έκ πόνων σωτηρία.

Be of good heart, you novices, because the god is saved. Deliverance from distress will come for us, as well (Vermaseren, 116). 

MENSIS MARTIVS XXV: HILARIA

Rejoice, for he is risen! No, not Christ. That’s on a different day, though amusingly I happen to be writing this on Easter Sunday. 

Hilaria is a noun that means like, merriment, rejoicing, joyous celebration, that sort of thing.  

March 25^th commemorates the resurrection of Attis, which took place the day after the spring equinox – the first day where the day is longer than the night. I know the spring equinox is usually on the 20th, but remember, they hadn’t invented the Gregorian calendar yet. The Roman calendar doesn’t exactly match up with ours. 

During this period, they’d have a triumph, which was a type of Roman parade usually reserved for generals who’d won an important military victory. The emperor would be at the head of the triumph, along with an idol representing Kybele, and a bunch of expensive art and other stuff loaned by the local rich guys. Following Kybele and the emperor were people of different social classes, including the upper class equites and senators, citizens, and freedmen. They’d be wearing all sorts of different masks and disguises, which is maybe why it was open to everyone – you might not know who was behind the mask. Behind them, the Gallae would be playing their drums, cymbals, and auloi, and  when they got to where they were going – which isn’t clear, from what I read – there was a big feast (Turcan, 46). 

The quote from the DIES SANGUINIS earlier might have happened on this day. It makes more sense based on context, anyway. We’re not sure (Vermaseren, 116).

But there’s another ceremony which may have taken place on this date, or on the DIES SANGUINIS. I’m talking about it here just to try and space things out. 

Anyway, we don’t know much about the specifics of the rite itself, but we know it was sort of like a secret passage to enter. This was a common thing among ancient mystery cults – the Eleusinian Mysteries had a similar entrance ritual. 

Anyway, there are a couple of different versions of it, but they say more or less the same thing.  

Clement of Alexandria gives us the most complete version, quote:

έκ τυμπάνου εφαγον, έκ κυμβάλον επιον, έκιρνοφόρησα, ύπό τόν παστόν ύπέδυν

From the drum I have eaten, from the cymbal I have drunk, I have carried the knowledge, the room I have entered.

Clement of Alexandria – Exhortations, 2.35

Firmicus Maternus tells us this was the phrase they used in order to be given entrance to the temple. He also adds “I have become an initiate of Attis” to the end of his. 

And like, I think about this sort of thing sometimes, y’know? 

Like, are you ever out somewhere, and you see a chick who looks cool and you’re pretty sure she’s trans, but you don’t want to say anything because “hey I noticed you’re trans” is not a good icebreaker if she is trans, and REALLY not a good icebreaker if you’re mistaken and she’s not, but also you don’t know what else to say so you just sort of gently smile at each other knowingly, sort of, but also not, because again you’re not sure? 

We do have the flag, but that’s becoming more recognized and the world is becoming more, ehhhhhhh. 

But our ancestors have given us a gift – initiate of Attis. 

Sort of like the handkerchief code gay boys used to use, or calling each other a “friend of Dorothy”, maybe “initiate of Attis” can be a similar code word for us.  

MENSIS MARTIVS XXVI: REQVIETO

On this day, everyone rested, because oh my goodness would they have needed it. 

There isn’t much to say about this one, so instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to have a rest, because I’ve been writing for like 3 hours straight at this point. 

Catch ya later, I’m going for a bike ride. 

MENSIS MARTIVS XXVII: LAVATIO

Ah, that’s better.

Lavatio means bath – an appropriate activity after a sweaty bike ride. This was another very solemn, serious ritual. It involved another procession – the cult of Kybele loved its processions – where the archigallus would carry the Kybele stone in a chariot from the temple to the Almo, a small tributary of the Tiber River that flows through Rome. From there, he would dip the stone in the river and coat it with ash. He’d do the same with the other tools and religious items, as well as with the chariot itself. 

Then, he’d ask the Mater Magna if she wanted to return to Rome. I guess she always did, because after that, they’d return her to the temple, but this time it was a much more festive procession. They’d dance along the way, while being showered with flower pedals (Vermaseren, 123-124, Turcan, 46-47). 

Scholar Maarten J. Vermaseren says the return was “a gay affair” (124), which means this is evidence of the very first gay pride parade, wow! 

MENSIS MARTIVS XXVIII: INITIVM CAIANI

We know the least about this day. In fact, this one might not even be a part of the festival of Kybele. 

There’s just so little we know about this one that I’m not going to get into it. 

Chapter VIII: What Can This Tell Us?

This festival was likely celebrated across the empire. There are a few different ways we know this. 

First off, there are plenty of cult icons and altars to Kybele we’ve found across former Roman territory. This includes modern day Turkey, which is not at all surprising since the Gallae came from there originally (Vermaseren, pl. 12, 13, 15, 16). 

There are also a bunch from Athens, mostly discovered in Piraeus, which was Athens’ port (Vermaseren, pl. 21, 23, 24). 

This one was found along the Via Appia, a road going from Rome through the south of Italy (Vermaseren, pl. 42). Take a look at the tree, and what’s hanging from it – that’s an Attis tree. 

Here’s the entrance to a shrine dedicated to Attis in Ostia, a port town near Rome (Vermaseren, pl. 43), and a statue of Attis reclining from within the same shrine (Vermaseren, pl. 44). 

Here’s a fresco of a procession in honour of Attis, from Pompeii (Vermaseren, pl. 46). Could some of the people in the audience here be Gallae? 

Here’s a silver dish, from near Mediolanum – modern day Milan (Vermaseren, pl. 53). There’s Kybele, and beautiful Attis by her side, in a chariot being pulled by lions. 

Here’s a marble relief showing the death of Attis, which was found in Glanum, a bit south of Avignon, in France (Vermaseren, pl. 63). 

Here’s a sarcophagus depicting an archigallus – the high priest of the Gallae, who, remember, was not an actual Galla (Vermaseren, pl. 66). This one was found near Porto, in Portugal. This one’s from Porto as well – it’s an archigallus honouring Attis (Vermaseren, pl. 68). 

This one has Kybele along with Hermes and Hecate – it’s from Egypt (Vermaseren, pl. 72). 

This one’s from near Dusseldorf (Vermaseren, pl. 75), and this one’s from Trier (Vermaseren, pl. 76). 

Here’s an Attis from Andetrium, modern day Croatia (Vermaseren, pl. 78). 

And here’s one from Tomis – modern day Constanta, in Romania (Vermaseren, pl. 77). It’s where Ovid lived out his final years after being exiled from the empire – the Kybele cult made its way out there, too. 

You get the point. We’ve found evidence of the cult of Kybele and Attis all over the place. But that isn’t necessarily evidence the Gallae were there. After all, there were non-Gallae Romans who paid tribute to the Mater Magna as well. 

But that’s not all we have. 

We’ve also discovered a grave in Britain, with clear evidence it belongs to a Galla priestess. We won’t go in depth into that here – that deserves its own video, and this one is already long enough. But it’s pretty wonderful that such a thing exists. So that tells us the Gallae did have a presence outside of Rome (Pinto & Pinto). 

The literary evidence can help us too. In fact, it’s none other than Saint Augustine who tells us about them. 

Saint Augustine was an early Christian figure whose philosophical writings ended up greatly influencing the theological underpinnings of the church. If you were to make a list of the most influential Christians of all time, Saint Augustine would be on there. Born in the year 354 CE, he eventually became the bishop of Hippo, a city in Roman North Africa, in modern day Algeria, before dying in 430 CE. 

He wrote a number of texts, but his most famous one is De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos – On the City of God Against the Pagans, or just City of God. He sets aside an entire chapter of Book VII to rail against the Gallae and the cult of the Great Mother, which opens with, quote:

A lot to pick through there, and perhaps I’ll do so more if I ever do a video addressing ancient transphobia. But for our purposes today, it’s noteworthy that Saint Augustine saw the Gallae in Carthage, parading through the streets and asking for donations – just like we know they did in Rome as well. 

So, we have clear evidence the Gallae had a wide ranging presence across the ancient Mediterranean. The cult of Kybele and Attis was practiced broadly, including the festivals devoted to them. e,

But when you look at that Saint Augustine quote, it’s pretty clear how much disdain he has for the Gallae. And he’s not alone there. In fact, one of the great ironies I found while researching and writing this video was how many of the sources we have about the Gallae are openly hostile to them. 

Firmicus Maternus, for example, gives us the closest thing we have to a direct quote from the Gallae. But before he does so, he says, quote:

They have a particular sign and a particular response, in which instruction of the devil is transmitted to them in the meetings of these very sacrileges.

Firmicus Maternus – De Errore Profanarum Religionem, Chapter 18

Now, the Gallae were practicing a religion, it’s true, and modern trans girls, by and large, aren’t. He also lived during the reign of Constantine I, when Christianity was absolutely still an underdog, and had been persecuted for centuries. Constantine put an end to that persecution, but that wouldn’t have put an end to anti Christian attitudes any more than the 13th Amendment in the United States abolished racism. So in one respect, it’s understandable that he wouldn’t think terribly highly about pagans. 

That said, if you know anything about moral panics, I’m sure you’ll recognize the ingredients here. 

His work is called “De Errore Profanarum Religionem” – On the Error of the Profane Religions. And the word profane had similar connotations in Latin as it does in English today – unclean, offensive, wicked. Just like Saint Augustine’s work – On the City of God Against the Pagans. 

Clement of Alexandria, too, gives us some important details on their worship, and he’s perhaps even harsher. 

Just before he tells us the secret password of the Gallae, he says, quote:

If I go on further to quote the symbols of initiation into this mystery they will, I know, move you to laughter, even though you are in no laughing humour when your rites are being exposed. Are not these symbols an outrage? Are not the mysteries a mockery?

– Clement of Alexandria, Protrepicus, Chapter 2 Verse 14

Harsh, yes? 

But here’s the thing – if it weren’t for these guys and their desire to condemn the Gallae and their rituals, we wouldn’t know many of the details we do know about them today. 

They wanted to crush the Gallae, and now we’re talking about them today, because of their words. So, there’s that.  

Maybe along with the rest of this video, that can bring you some comfort. Yes, qui oderunt – those who hate – refuse to shut up about us. They rant about us nonstop, constantly spreading awful lies about us to rile up their base. If the multimillionaire pundits can get the unwashed masses to spend their energy hating a stranger, that helps distract from the thousands of ways their billionaire masters are screwing everybody, every single day. 

But our trans siblings looking back on this time, thousands of years in the future, might see the likes of Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, or Donald Trump, and learn about us in that way. 

And as sickening as that might seem, the fact that they can’t shut up about us ensures that we’ll be remembered. 

Similarly, we don’t know much about the Tectosages, because nobody wrote much about them. I mentioned them in the video on the Enaree grave, and someone in the comments became very cross because I deliberately pronounced their name wrong, so here you go – I’m saying it right this time. May the Tectosages forgive me for my grave indiscretion – heh, get it?

Anyway, trans people today, of course, have plenty of writings, and YouTube-ings, so our future siblings will have more than just the opinions of ‘phobes to lean on. 

But to borrow the words of trans feminist Margaret Dierdre O’Hartigan once more, quote:

When I look upon the image of a Galla carved in stone for the Appian Way, I have no doubt that I gaze upon the image of a woman in whose features I recognize my own and whose life more closely resembles mine than do either of ours to the majority of our respective contemporaries. In that instant I sense that, although 1900 years may separate us, she is my sister and I am hers, and in this sense we are both priestesses of the Great Mother; we have both been male and become female.

– Margaret Dierdre O’Hartigan, TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism #4, 18, 31

The power brokers of the world may work to isolate us from each other, from ourselves, from our history. 

But they were wrong in antiquity, and they’re wrong today. 

Today, we dug a lot more in depth into the worship practices of a sect of trans feminine priestesses – the Gallae. I hope this helps connect you to those who came before us. But when it comes to their rituals, there’s a lot we don’t know. So if you were considering a ritual approach to honouring our transcestors, you might find some gaps, and feel tempted to add your own details in. 

That is, in fact, keeping with the traditions of the Gallae in the first place. We know their rituals changed over time, with new festival days and new worship practices. The emperors Claudius, Domitian, and Antoninus Pius, at least, are all known to have played a role in shaping the cult of Attis and Kybele (Vermaseren, 97-98), and the emperor Julian the Apostate wrote about the March festivals as well. 

Each of these emperors would have left their mark on the festival, and assumingly the Gallae themselves would have found different ways to pay tribute to their patron deities as well. 

So if, in your own life, you’re feeling isolated and alienated from your ancestors, perhaps these rituals can bring you some comfort. 

As you gaze into the eyes of the sculptures of our ancient sisters, may you realize the truth – the truth that can’t be buried, no matter how hard they try. 

The truth is, we have always existed. And so long as humanity continues to endure, so too shall we. 

Ancient Sources:

►Saint Augustine. “De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos”. Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods. New York, T. & T. Clark, 1871.
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►Paulus Aegineta. “The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta”. Translated by Francis Adams. London, Sydenham Society, 1844.
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►Pindar. “Odes”. Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien, 1990.
►Suetonius. “Lives of the Caesars”. Translated by Catharine Edwards. Toronto, Oxford University Press, 2000.
►Varro, Marcus Tarentius. “Menippean Satires”. Translated by Joseph McAlhany. Asymptote Journal, accessed 1 April 2025. 

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