VI. The Male Goêtic Revolt

'goês, (...) a complex figure through which the deeply archaic seems to be reaching into the Greek world.' (Graf, p.27)

But our exploration doesn't stop here. In fact this is where it begins. In the previous Chapters IV. and V. we explored the great mother in antiquity, what it meant to work with her through a primal goêtic lens as well as how her perspective on the human realm starkly contrasted with our very own.

In this chapter we will shift our perspective further. Rather than taking the viewpoint of the divine mother or our human ancestors, we will rest our lens now in the space in-between - and assume the perspective of the first goêtes themselves, the Idaian Dactyls.

In doing this it is critical that we recall the nature of a daimon according to the Ancient Greek. As we explored above, it is one of the most fluid terms their sophisticated language knows, and sits at the heart of understanding their mythical view of reality. As established in Chapter I., in the 5th century BCE we are encountering a Greek world that was on the cusp of changing its pivoting lens from numen to logos, from myth to rationalism and from chthonic sorcery to Greek philosophy. Thus the Ancient Greek had no problem at all to see cohesion in the term daimon where we might see contradiction today: It both represents a class of mythical spirits as well as ancient human beings that once were believed to have walked the earth. If applied to a certain category of daimones, such as the Idaian Dactyls it thus at the same time describes an ancient historic tribe as well as a current class of spirit.

The following two quotes might help to illustrate this foundational aspect of Ancient Greek thinking further. Both quotes - according to our modern understanding - walk a mesmerising path on the verge of mythical and historic reality:

'Yet the dealings of the Dactyls is curiously portrayed in more detail: they were goêtes, we hear from Ephoros, they professed in the sorcerous incantations, the consecration into the mysteries and their celebrations; they also came to Samothrace and did not scare the locals little, during this time also Orpheus became their disciple and he became the first to bring the mysteries, their consecrations and celebrations to the Greek.' (Burkert, p.39)

'"Wild of mood and difficult of access" these reputed sorcerers and magicians lived on the wooded slopes of Mount Ida, and, working through the night before their glowing furnaces, whose lurid glare lit up the dark ravines around, seemed like evil spirits.' (Perkins, p.160)

While being daimones the Idaian Dactyls also are introduced to us as of male gender. It should come with little surprise that for men working in constant service of an uber-mother bore an essential difficulty: there was simply no space they could call their own. While they literally were the iron (Kelmis), the anvil (Akmon) and the hammer (Damnameneus) it was still the forces of the great mother which directed all aspects of their work. It was Mother who made them dance to keep the land fertile (Blakely, p.82), mother who directed them to tear down certain structures of creation, and mother who instructed them to forge new forms of emergence.

The truth is as simple as harsh: When faced with the great mother all men turn into boys, and all heroes into sons. Unfortunately there is little male adolescents hate more than being treated like boys. Which is why we hear of the revolt of the Idaian Dactyls against the great mother; in particular the one of Kelmis. As with all great disputes, however, what triggered the revolt is easily forgotten. Its consequences though are not.

So we find Kelmis offending the great mother and rebelling against her with an unknown act. Mother in her inescapable wrath in return speaks her cruel judgement over him: In a shorter version of this fragmentary myth the brothers are ordered to kill Kelmis by their own hands.

'For Kelmis, one of the Idaian Dactyls, having been insolent to Mother Rhea, and not having received her kindly, was slain by his brothers on Mount Ida.' (Zenobis IV,80 after Perkins, p.161)

In a slightly longer version the judgement of the great mother is even crueler: As punishment his brothers are ordered to lock him back into the chthonic realm he emerged from, a remote cave below the mountain. An earthquake follows - the materialised wrath of the great mother - and Kelmis is metamorphosed into the material that most reflected his difficult, unbending personality: the first iron (Blakely, p.1).

This fragment of a Phrygian myth - the rest of which was entirely forgotten by classical authors - is of critical importance to our present study. We rediscover it much later in its hellenised form in the famous myth of Cybele and her male companion Attis who - after having betrayed the great mother who is also his lover - is emasculated to regain her trust.

Yet in its earlier Phrygian form the message is even more obvious: The great mother of the mountain is the inescapable one. In her raw and unshaped form she is the essence of destruction as well as the force behind all forms of creation. The original goêtes worked their craft and sorcery through her empowerment, leveraging their position as dwellers on the threshold between humans and the divine. But the original goêtes also failed to stay true to their divine purpose. They were led astray by hubris and vanity - trying to break free from the bond that is called working in service. The punishment of the great mother was imminent: either death by the hand of one's own brothers or being turned to cold iron instead.

'In sum, the masculine gender of the noun goēs and the consistent association of the word with men is probably more than accidental: the heart of goêteia - invocation of the dead - seems to have been a male vocation.' (Johnston, p.113)

This male goêtic revolt for boundless freedom coupled with full empowerment by the fertile forces of nature continued to poison the heart of Western Magic ever since. The wrath of the great mother stayed with our craft - or possibly with mankind? - just like a spell we failed to break loose from: Men in pursuit of their personal agenda and freedom breaking all bonds of service to the chthonic sources they emerged from - turning themselves into rigid iron instead.

Let's step back and look at the marginal role the female has played in the goêtic tradition ever since (if we even can speak of such a tradition)? A quick review of the Greek Magical Papyri provides the inescapably answer: Only a fraction of the surviving material bothers to work with female divinities at all. And where we find them directly addressed the goês stays true to their infantile role as a male adolescent: in the five surviving hymns the only reason to call upon Hekate-Selene-Artemis is for instant gratification of erotic male urges. The goês ultimately turned their craft not into art, but into porn.

'Come, giant Hekate, Dione's guard, o Persia, Baubo Phroune, dart shooter, unconquered, Lydian, the one untamed, sired nobly, torch bearing, guide, who bends down proud necks, Kore, hear, you who've parted gates of steel unbreakable. (...) Go stand above her (NN) head and take away from her sweet sleep. And never let Eyelid come glued to eyelid, but let her be sore distressed with wakeful cares for me. And if she lies with someone else in her embrace, let her thirst him away and take me in her heart. Let her abandon him at once and stand before my door subdued in soul air longing for my bed of love.' (PGM IV 2714-2744, quoted after Betz, p.89)

In the 2nd century AD Alexandrians still called an arrogant man 'Kelmis in iron'. Behind this proverb obviously lies knowledge of our three brothers and the myth of Kelmis' cruel metamorphosis in punishment for rebellion against the great mother (Blakely, p.1).

Without judging whether in the end this revolt turned out successful or not, the rebellion of the Idaian Dactyls has turned generations of goês into shadows of Kelmis. Their vanity, coupled with the unbroken wrath of the great mother, cast and held themselves captives in the gestalt of the hot-blooded adolescent hero. And so goêteia as a craft turned from a divine empowerment over death and life, into a pitiable device to satisfy human desires. The men who turned themselves into iron, however, managed to not only rob Western Magic but whole societies of centuries to come from the foundation that used to create balance between the living and the dead: the acceptance to work without ego and in service to the chthonic forces that uphold us.

The great mother might have turned us into iron; but we come down upon her like a sword.