This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
Donald A. Mackenzie
Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe (1917 AD), p. 165, chap. VIII, “Pre-Hellenic Earth and Corn Mothers”:
Another mystic conception was that the Great Mother was bi-sexual. The Libyan Neith was occasionally depicted as androgyne. Isis was the Egyptian “bearded Aphrodite”, “the woman who was made a male”, as one of the religious chants states, “by her father, Osiris”.[James Teackle Dennis, The Burden of Isis, p. 49]
The Babylonian Ishtar and the Germanic Freya were likewise double-sexed. This idea that deities were abnormal and superhuman applied not only to goddesses…Adonis similarly was “both maiden and youth“. The Babylonian Nannar (Sin), the moon-god, was “father” and “mother” of gods and men.
So was the Syrian Baal. In India Shiva is sometimes depicted with the right side female and the left male. The Persian Mithra was a god and goddess combined. Herodotus, in fact, appears not to have known that he was other than a female deity. He says the Persians worshipped Urania, “which they borrowed from the Arabians and Assyrians. Mylitta is the name by which the Assyrians know this goddess, whom the Arabians call Alitta, and the Persians Mithra.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.