Of the competing cults in the East the least developed in a theological sense were those of Attis and Adonis, originally deities of the Vegetation principle, whose annual death and resurrection stood primarily for the yearly decay and rebirth of the general life of Nature, and secondarily for the waning and waxing of the power of the sun. While all cults in the ancient world tended to assimilate, however, the older were marked by certain special usages; and in the case of Attis and Adonis these were the festivals which began with mourning and ended in rejoicing. Attis, son of the virgin Myrrha, was symbolized by the cut pine-tree, which meant the life principle in man and Nature; and at the spring equinoctial festival this was carried in procession to the temple of Cybelê with the effigy of a young man bound on it, to represent the dead and mutilated God. Anciently, it would seem, there had been so bound an actual youth who was slain as a victim, and whose death was supposed to ensure at once physical fertility and moral well-being to his land and people; but in virtue of the general law of mitigation a mystic ceremony at length took the place of the primitive deed of blood. The bearing of the God's name by his priests in the mysteries was a memorial of the older time.
These mysteries were twofold. In the spring time Attis figured as a self-slain youth, beloved by Cybelê, the Mother of the Gods, and devoted to her cultus. Later in the year he figured as Papas, "Father," and Lord of All; and in this aspect he was more important than Cybelê, who was throned beside him in the mystic drama, with a crowd of women around. The initiate became mystes Atteos, the initiate of Attis; and at this stage the God was adored as the bringer of peace to a disorderly world. But "many were the thyrsus-bearers; few were the mystæ": it was the spring festival that dwelt in the common knowledge and memory; and then it was that, after a day of procession and mourning, a day of solemn rites, and a "day of blood" on which the high-priest cut his arms and presented his blood as an offering, the slain Demigod rose from the dead, and all was rejoicing for his resurrection. It was the great Phrygian festival; and though the Romans, in introducing the worship of the Great Mother while Hannibal maintained himself in Italy, nominally accepted her alone, it was impossible that the allied worship of Attis should be excluded from the later mysteries. The galli or mutilated priests, who figured in her Hilaria festival, were in fact the God's representatives. Thus his was one of the popular cults of the later Roman world.