THE MYTH OF THE ITHYPHALLIC HERMES.
That no doubt was the meaning of those ancient sages who in mysteries and initiations symbolically represented the "ancient Hermes"[95] with the generative organ in erection, to teach that it is intelligible reason that begets sense-objects. On the other hand, these same sages signify the sterility of matter, condemned to perpetual self-identity, by the eunuchs who surround Rhea,[96] making of it the mother of all things, to use the expression they employ in designating the principle that plays the part of substrate.
THE STERILITY OF NATURE INDICATED BY CASTRATION.
That name indicates the difference between matter and a mother. To those who, refusing to be satisfied with superficialities, insist on thoroughness, they thus signified in as precise a manner as possible (without lifting the veil of) obscurity, that matter was sterile, although feminine also to extent at least that matter receives, without contributing to, the act of generation. They indicated it by this, that the (Galli) who surround Cybele are not women, but neither are they men, possessing no power of generation; for by castration they have lost a faculty that is characteristic only of a man whose virility is intact.