It’s not just a history of transpeople.  It’s a history for the world, and people we might describe as “trans” have found themselves as catalysts for change then as now: appearing when needed, before disappearing again like a river that bubbles up in a fountain, refreshing before disappearing in an ocean of myth, yet continuing forever.  The fountain of the spring of the River Adonis is like that, and yes, we were there too.

One writer included in a book about transpeople that one of the “myths” concerning us, contextually equated as “untrue” is that we have been here from antiquity:

“It is evident that, throughout history, gender non-conforming people have been part of many societies, and that their gender identities and the ways they understood gender in general reflected their culture and times.  Placing a modern lens on their lives is not always helpful or even appropriate.”¹

She’s right, if indeed trans must be treated restrictively and synonymously in our current context.  People in ancient times approached their dysphoria in variously throughout history, finding their versions of transition an easy “sacrifice”.  However, the intentions of variance from the gender dichotomy were sometimes much the same with the eunuchs of antiquity, shamans from epochs long past in glacial ice, and others who sought to express sex differently from their societies, even at a price of great suffering.

They’re also reflected in myth including mythical stories of non-biological birth, as descriptive narratives that have worked into the collective consciousness.  Many of us who are transpeople desire procreation, if not through children of our bodies, then children of our own minds.  In 1994, Dr. Jamison Green offered an important observation concerning the stories that still make us tick through our collective archetypes, with emphasis upon Ovid’s description of the myth of Tiresias, who magickally transitioned from male to female and then back to male:

“These archetypes, these tales of non-biological birth, reflect the desire to re-create one’s self in the opposite gender. … If there were no societal need for the transgendered (sic) psyche, these myths would not exist.  And all archetypes are rooted in actual human experience.”²

In that spirit, and if we speak of transfolk in a broad context, we can find some surprising connections in our stories.

 

THE UNIVERSE BEGINS— WEST AND EAST

The Pelasgians were indigenous peoples who occupied the Aegean before the Hellenic Invasion with earliest evidence of building around 3000 BCE.  After being absorbed into Mycenaean and Hellenic society, a few remained scattered in Italy, eventually being absorbed into Etruscan society.³

A creation story survives from the Pelasgian cycle as a remarkable analogy to current conceptions about what might have happened before the “Big Bang” in which the universe explodes into existence from a singularity.  It’s a myth that continued in one form or another in other places as well, including Syria and India as part of brahmanda: ⁴

“A primordial woman, Eurynome, arose out of Chaos found no place upon which to rest her feet.  But she began to dance.  She separated sea from sky, dancing and gathering heat.  She caught the cold North Wind, rubbed him between her hands, and formed the great serpent Ophion.  She danced ever more wildly till Ophion became enamored of her and coupled with her.  She took the form of a dove and laid a great egg.  Ophion coiled around the egg 7 times till the egg split.  The universe burst forth as her children:  the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, and all nature.”⁵

It’s a story that plays upon our speculations concerning how universes may generate.  Primordial matter spirals like a dance as a hot fluid within a context of space-time separate from ours.  Incorporated with this is a component of cooling, and an egg which might be likened to a supermassive black hole.  From this singularity comes our universe, and a different configuration of space-time.⁶

It’s the kind of myth that demonstrates such cunning that makes us wonder what the ancients really knew.  But something else very unsettling appears in the Rig Veda, a creation hymn titled, Nasidiyah:

 

There was neither non-existence nor existence then:

There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.

What stirred?  Where?  In whose presence?

Was there water [or fluid like a hot plasma], bottomlessly deep?

 

There was neither death nor immortality then.

There was no distinguishing sign [anything to differentiate] of night nor of day.

That one breathed, wordless, by its own impulse.

Other than that…

 

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning.

With no distinguishing sign, all this was water [fluid].

The life force that was covered with emptiness.

That one arose through the power of heat. [tapas, heat as a result of ritual activity]

 

Desire came upon that one in the beginning;

That was the first seed of Mind.

Poets [saints] seeking in their heart with wisdom,

Found the bond of existence in non-existence.

 

That cord [bond or poetic measuring device] was extended across.

Was there below?  Was there above?

There were the seed-placers; there were powers [male and female in a chiasma].

There was impulse beneath; there was giving forth above.

 

Who really knew? Who will here proclaim it?

Whence was it produced? Where is this creation?

The gods came afterwards with the creation of this universe?

Who then knows where it has arisen?

 

Where this creation has arisen, perhaps it formed itself;

Or perhaps it did not—

The One who looks down on it in the highest heaven,

Only He knows—or perhaps He does not know.⁷

 

Notice the remarkable similarity in the account of Nasidiyah with the Pelasgian creation myth?  These regions are separated by thousands of miles, virtually worlds apart: separated by Hittites, Assyrians, Medes and Persians.  How do we account for this?

 

THE HUNDRED-HANDED ONES

This isn’t the only concurrence between the Aegean and India.  When we look further, we begin to see hints of a trans presence.  Consider the mythical cycle to which Hesiod in the Theogeny belonged in which titanic beings bear remarkable similarity to depictions of divine entities in the Indian pantheon:

 

“Still other children were born to Uranus (Ouranos = heaven] bedded with Gaea [Earth]:

3 huge, powerful beings, whose names could scarcely be spoken,

Cottus [Kotys], Briareus, Gyes, offspring of terrible power.

A hundred terrible arms hung down from their muscular shoulders,

And 50 heads surmounted their mighty necks and their limbs.”⁸

 

It’s with the Hectonchires and the Cyclopes that Zeus overcomes Cronos, Uranus, and other Titans, imprisoning them in Tartarus where Poseidon closes them with bronze doors, setting the Hectonchires to dwell there as jailors.⁹

These beings, called “Hecatonchires” (hundred-handed ones) remind us of Hindu traditions of multiple-armed deities, forms also applied to Krishna, who in the Bhagavad-Gita reveals to Arjuna both a “universal form” and a “4-armed form.”¹⁰  One of the Heconchires cited in the Theogeny, Cottus, is otherwise spelled Kotys, a Thracian deity to whom the Baptai, a eunuch priesthood, would be dedicated much in the same way as the Gallae were dedicated to Kybélē, Magna Mater, Meter Theou (Cybele, Great Mother, Mother of Gods).

 

THE ROOSTER PEOPLE

The Great Mother has components east and west.  Among Hijra, a “3^rd sex” community of various male-to-female trans expressions, Bahuchatra Mata (also meaning Great Mother) is honored.  A classical depiction shows her riding upon a rooster, symbolic of innocence and impending wisdom.¹¹

“Innocence and impending wisdom” are concepts connected with spiritual awakening.  Innocence is our capacity to dream and to wonder, so long as our approach to truth is one of objectivity, which otherwise would corrupt innocence into ambition.  This version of natural innocence lends itself to the magickal as a matter of principle, and those things that counted as “wisdom” in ages past.

Such was also true in the West.  In Phrygia, the Gallae (spoken of at that time as “Gallī”, the masculine plural of the Latin “Gallus” which also means, “rooster”) also became a name Romans applied to Gauls generally, wherever they might be found.  They might be those in Galatia, in places now called “Galicia” in Spain, “Galati” in Romania, the Cisalpine Gauls of the Po Valley in northern Italy, the Transalpine Gauls in modern day France, and even “Galli Bolu” the (hill of Gallī) commonly known as Gallipoli.  The Gauls, also called “Celtae” by Romans, set the stage for rustic magickal practices in Northern Europe, eventually filtering down to what would become modern day Wicca.

But, of course, none of this magick happens without dreaming and meditation practices.  This writer has long asserted that transpeople are a people of dreams, even though many transpeople have shut out their dreams.  Dreams aren’t enough to make a practitioner of magick.  But no such practitioner can awaken to those practices without dreaming and such run an extreme risk of turning innocence into ambition.

Our knowledge of the myth associated with the Gallae comes from a 4^th century CE Christian polemicist, Arnobius who wrote in Latin.  According to him, Cybele (also pronounced ‘ku-BAY-lay by Romans before the Church era) was born on a rock in Phrygia.  Zeus was enamored at the sight of her.  She resisted him and he spilled his seed upon the rock which became impregnated and gave birth to the unruly and ravenously lustful pansexual Agdestis.  Dionysius gave him a strong dose of wine to sedate him, then bound him with vines, making it to also take hold of his genitalia.  When he awoke and staggered up, the vine ripped away his member, castrating him.  The blood that dripped grew into a pomegranate tree.  Nana, the daughter of Sangarius (after whom the river of Pessinus is named), ate of the tree and became pregnant with Attis whom Cybele deeply loved and with whom Agdestis spent time as tutor and confidante.  Midas, King at Pessinus (still noted as an ancient center for the worship of Cybele) arranged for Attis to marry his daughter.  Midas ordered the town walled off to keep away opponents of the marriage.  Agdestis flew into a rage and bewitched the town.  A man Arnobius called, “Gallus” rose up and in a frenzy castrated himself.  Attis grabbed Agdestis’ flute and flung himself at the base of a pine and castrated himself as well.  His blood poured out and so ended his life.  Cybele washed the remains of Attis and buried him with his bride who in grief killed herself.  Agdestis mourned with Cybele, pleading with Zeus to bring him back to life.¹²

 From this alleged story, the sacrificial aspects of Cybelline eunuchism develop.  The themes involved also have their components of devotion, death, and renewal in India through the festival of Aravan.¹³

 

NATURAL DISASTER TRIGGERS A MIGRATION

The mythical connections between India and the Aegean aren’t really as farfetched as we might be led to think.  The monotheism of Zoroastrianism changed the course of the Iranian empires.  The timeline for Zarathustra has been variously recorded as early as 1400 BCE by Zoroastrians¹⁴ and as late as a lifespan dated 628 – 551 BCE.¹⁵  A range of 549-330 BCE is also acknowledged for the First Zoroastrian Achemenid Empire.¹⁶ Prior to that time, Iranian religious configuration held some similarities with the Hindu.  They recognized nature deities including Apas (water), and Vayu (air).  Both names appear in the Hindu Tattwas to this day.  Indra had a role in pre-Zoroastrian Iran as did the hallucinogenic beverage soma and mention of a Sarasvati River, later referred to as Haraxvaitī in Avestan parlance.  The Sarasvati has often been taken to be a mythical river that contains all the waters of the world.¹⁷

Subhash Kak offers a Hindu perspective concerning this poetic treatment of the Sarasvati as hyperbole.  He accepts it as a historical river that at one time flowed to the sea, but has since been reduced to a set of tributaries to the Sindh and Ganges systems:

“There are two schools of thought related to the drying up of the Sarasvati river. According to the first one, the Sarasvati ceased to be a seagoing river about 3000 BC, explaining why the 3rd millennium settlements on the banks of the Sarasvati river end in the Bahawalpur region of the Punjab and do not reach the sea; there was a further shrinking of the river in about 1900 BC due to an earthquake that made its two principal tributaries to be captured by the Sindhu and the Ganga river systems. According to the second view, the Sarasvati flowed to the sea until 1900 BC when it dried up. The first view explains the geographical situation related to the Harappan sites more convincingly.”¹⁸

Kak’s belief holds that in a time range from 3000 to 1900 BCE, the division of the Sarasvati into several tributary channels triggered a westward migration of various groups from the Indus Valley who worshiped the devas.  A major Western Indic kingdom arising from them, the Mittani, occupied northern Mesopotamia and held diplomatic ties to the Hittite Empire by treaty:¹⁹

“The Mitanni, who worshiped Vedic gods, were an Indic kingdom that had bonds of marriage across several generations with the Egyptian 18th dynasty to which Akhenaten belonged. The Mitanni were known to the Egyptians as the Naharin, connected to the river (nahar), very probably referring to the Euphrates. At its peak, the Mitanni empire stretched from Kirkuk (ancient Arrapkha) and the Zagros mountains in western Iran in the east, through Assyria to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Its center was in the region of the Khabur River, where its capital, Wassukkani (Vasukhani, “a mine of wealth”) was probably located.”²⁰

This idea is consistent with our expectations of geological changes due to the still active Himalayan collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian coupled with the progress of desertification since the Younger Dryas of the Ice Age.

 

INDIC THIRD SEX TRADITIONS

With such migrations came various religious and social traditions, conceivably also those related to “3^rd sex” peoples.  The antiquity of the Hijra is not often questioned.  Hijra present and often identify as female, though more often than not, retain male names.  They continue today as community bands in houses deeded to them from the time when the Moguls expanded their sphere from Kabul and ruled much of the Subcontinent.²¹  But how far back do 3^rd sex people go, whether Hijra specifically or otherwise?

A version of the Ramayana speaks of them waiting for the return of Lord Ram (accounted the 7^th avatar of Vishnu) to Ayodhya after his 14 year exile.  When Ram departed from his capital, the people desired to follow him.  He directed them to return inside Ayodhya.  But when he returned he found 3^rd sex people waiting for him outside the gate.  He asked, “Why aren’t you inside?”

They answered, “Remember how the people of Ayodhya wanted to follow you into the forest?  You told the men to go back.  You told the women to go back.  We are neither men nor women.  You forgot to tell us what to do, O Ram.  We waited.”  Deeply moved, Lord Ram embraced them and brought them with him into the city, his return marked to this day with the festival of Diwali.²²

Based upon astronomical retrocalculation and descriptions in the Ramayana, the date of the birth of Ram has been assigned to 5114 BCE.²³  In comparison to this, Krishna, the 8^th avatar of Vishnu and regarded as contemporary to the Mahabharata War, is believed to have passed in 3102 BCE after living 125 years on the basis of astronomical retrocalculation.²⁴

The placement of the Mahabharata War is not only significant in terms of what may have existed in India at or before the westward migration, but also the development of Aravani tradition.

We find Aravanis today in the village of Kugham (Koovagam) in Tamil Nadu.  Like the Gallae in Phrygia and in modern times, they hold an annual festival commemorating the sacrificial death of Aravan who offered himself to Kali to grant him power to ensure victory for the Pandavas in the Mahabharata War.  He did ask a boon in doing so.  He desired to marry before he died.  The women, unwilling to marry a man only to become widows shortly afterward, refused him.  Krishna assumes female form as Mohini, and marries Aravan. Transfolk identified as Aravanis hold an 18-day festival from April to May where they ritually marry Aravan and mourn his death after the manner of Krishna/Mohini.²⁵

The festival parallels the Sanguinaria festival of the Gallae, also held in the spring to ritually commemorate the death of Attis.  If, indeed, these devotional themes travelled westward on the Indic migration to become Hellenized, we should consider what might have existed between the Mittani and the Phrygians.  For this we look toward the Hittites.

 

THE HITTITE CONNECTION

Hittites were a highly militarized, highly patriarchal people.  But a Great Mother tradition also existed among them, an image surviving at Çatul Huyuk.  The city of Troy (Troy VI around 1700-1250 BCE) which dominated the Dardanelles and the area around Mount Ida, probably spoke a language that was a cousin of Hittite called “Luvian”.  By 1272 BCE the Hittite ruler Muwatalli II and Alaksandru of Wilusa (or Wilios, slurred to “Ilios” in The Iliad) were linked by treaty.²⁶

But the Hittites began a decline around 1200 BCE when Assyrians burned their capital of Hattussa.  They continued to diminish amid an onslaught of the Sea Peoples: raiders who also ravaged other parts of the Mediterranean, and whose identities have not been clearly determined,²⁷ though some suppose that these bands had descended from displaced people from Philistia after the rise of the Israelite Kingdom of David.  Philistines had also been called “Sea People.”

The fall of the Hittites formed a political vacuum within Anatolia which would have allowed a period of flowering for Troy and Pessinus, both centers for the worship of Cybele.  We can easily see how, in the times of treaty between Hittite and both Trojans and Mittani, that there’s ample time for religious practices and myths to be exchanged and to evolve into the traditions we encounter among Phrygian and Indian in the centuries following the westward migration.  But those practices don’t stop with Phrygia.

When Romans fought bitterly against Carthaginians in 4 Punic Wars, Hannibal rose with a force that crossed the Alps to the north and threatened Rome’s existence.  An oracle urged the Romans to look back at their alleged Trojan roots, memorialized in Virgil’s epic The Aeneid, and bring Cybele to Rome from Pessinus.  The stone associated with and revered by the Gallae at that time was a meteorite, and the eunuch priestesses of Cybele crossed the seas to bring her to the Palatine where they continued to serve till the 4^th Century CE.  Hannibal’s forces fell at the hands of Fabius who waged what was virtually a guerilla campaign ending near Cumae.  But it was Cybele who received the divine credit.²⁸

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PELASGIANS

The Pelasgians knew another influence that derived from Lebanon.  The Phoenicians were a seafaring people with colonies extending throughout the Mediterranean and past the Pillars of Hercules to the north of Spain and the British Isles.  Phoenicians brought with them their alphabet.  Hellenic peoples adapted the Phoenician script and inserted vowels that didn’t exist in the fully consonantal Phoenician.  Phoenicians enriched the Mediterranean with trade.  They also brought with them their gods.

Some of these merged with the chthonic entities of Pelasgian rites including the Temple of the Kabeiri on the island of Samothrace.  The Kabeiric rites included 3 “great ones”: a feminine Axiokersa, and masculine Axiokersos, and an ambiguous Axieros, all 3 acting as initiators for the candidate identified as Kasmillos.  Axieros, according to some, was represented by a Galla and identified with Cybele, though some prefer the Great Mother figure of Demeter with Axiokersa corresponding to Persephone and Axiokersos to Hades.²⁹

Apart from these, the Phoenician Astarte became the Aphrodite of Paphos Cyprus and Cythera in the Cyclades.  Her love, like Cybele’s Attis, was the Adonis of the Phoenicians whose death came by a wild boar.  The legendary area of Apheca was at the time a heavily forested area with a temple downstream from a spring from which the Adonis river burst and continues to flow today.  The area has been set aside as a nature preserve by the Lebanese, referring to it as “Afiq”, an Arab variant of the Latin Apheca.³⁰ At the time of the latter rains the surrounding red clay turns the river blood red, reminiscent of the death of Adonis, after which arises a blood red flower that adorns the hillsides:  the anemone.³¹

At Apheca hierodulai plied their sacred trade including trans sex workers.  19^th century writer George Rawlinson regarded the denunciation of transgender sacred prostitutes by Eusebius as particularly applicable to Apheca:  “The men there were soft and womanish—men no longer; the dignity of their sex they rejected; with impure lust they thought to honour [sic] the deity.”³²

 

A PROLIFERATION OF EUNUCHISM

We do find ample representation of eunuchism from an early time that stretches from East to West and that often parallels that of the 3^rd sex peoples from the time of Ram forward.  The Afghan Moguls used them and rewarded them richly.  They continued in the Babylonian kingdom as well.  Scholar A.R. George, commenting on the cuneiform folios of Sydney Smith, cites such people: the Assinnu, Kugarru, and Kulu’u, all acting in the service of Babylonian deities including Marduk:

“The presence of a kulu’u in Marduk’s entourage is not without parallel.  There is a tablet that specifically collects the Akkadian chants to be recited by a^lúur.SAL (assinnu or kulu’u) during the progress of Marduk’s procession to the Akītu-temple on 8 Nisan.  It may be that this person is identical with the subject of our text.  One of the chants tells us that among those who took part in the procession were assinus and kurgarrûs of Ištar, Lady of Babylon.”³³

Eunuchs in Iran also held political power in places like Persepolis, Ecbatana, and Babylon.  Diodorus of Sicily speaks of one named Bagoas, a “chiliarch” of King Artaxerxes III Ochus, equivalent to a vizier.  He had poisoned Ochus, Artaxerxes IV Arses, and attempted to kill Darius III Codomannus.  But Darius learned of the plot and asked Bagoas to drink a toast to him, handing Bagoas his own poisoned cup.  So died Bagoas in 336 BCE, a few years before Alexander’s invasion of Persia.  The Gardens of Bagoas in Babylon very likely were associated with the estate of the elder Bagoas.³⁴

A younger Bagoas, associated with the city of Susa, became a favorite of both Darius and Alexander.  The Roman writer Curtius said concerning him, “Bagoas, a eunuch exceptional in beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, with whom Darius was intimate and with whom Alexander would later be intimate.”³⁵

It isn’t hard to see that the influence of philosophers like Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander, should have a revolutionizing impact upon the younger Bagoas.  It may be, as some have guessed, that the younger Bagoas of Susa should reflect where the advanced thinking of the philosophers should be embellished with love, and that the policy of empire should not be a remaking of conquered societies into the image of the conqueror, but that the wisdom transmitted would be the grand unifier.  Bagoas may well have influenced the course of Hellenism.³⁶

 

PHILOSOPHY AND SACRIFICE

Bagoas would have been in good company.  Philosophy grew up in Ionia beginning with Thales, a philosopher of Phoenician descent, and expanding into such centers as Ephesus where the eunuch priestesses of Artemis, the Megabyzes, were known for wisdom and beauty.³⁷ Even Eleusis was allegedly served by a Galla at its greater rites, breaking days of sanctimonious seriousness with bawdy mirth in the form of Baubo-Iambe at the Gephrysimos, the Joking at the Bridge.³⁸

As stated at the beginning, an individual reason to express gender other than one’s birth assignment may vary.  It may represent sacrifice of that which one holds most dear.  It may represent gender dysphoria.  It may simply represent that which can bring an individual internal peace.  Their reasons conceivably varied as much as our own reasons may vary in modern times.  But the lives they lived are nevertheless important to our history as transpeople and part of our right of validation as a people.

Tracing mythical connection to historical trends is an exercise in literary richness, giving life to our dreams. The world cannot ignore the connection either.  It was at times in hidden places like the fountain of Adonis, burst upon the Earth mother in remembrance, and our dreams followed, awakening new dreams.

___________________________

REFERENCES:

Featured Image:  Polar projection by the author, from author’s archives, insert:  the fountain of the spring of the River Adonis near Apheca (Afiq) in Lebanon (Wikimedia Commons)

1. Erickson-Shroth, Laura and Jacobs, Laura A. “You’re in the wrong bathroom!” and 20 other myths and misconceptions about transgender and gender non-conforming people (Beacon Press, 2017), ISBN: 9780807033890, pp. 121, 122.
2. Green, Jamison. “A Short History of the Transgender Community – a personal view” Part “B” of Investigation Into Discrimination Against Transgendered (sic) People (San Francisco Human Rights Commission, September, 1994)
3. (n.a.) “Pelasgians” History Files (accessed March 12, 2018) http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/GreecePelasgians.htm.
4. Subhash Kak. “The Mahabharata and the Sindhu-Sarasvati Tradition” (accessed March 13, 2018) http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/MahabharataII.pdf , p. 9.
5. Graves,. Robert. “The Pelasgian Creation Myth” The Greek Myths (Penguin Books, 1955, paraphrased) Vol. I, p. 27. Graves footnotes his version, identifying Ophion with the Hermetic IAO by metempsychosis and Eurynome with Yahu, the sacred dove of Sumeria.  Yahu appears to be a more ancient form of YHVH, and inspiration of the connection of the dove with the Holy Spirit.   In Hermetics, IAO has connections with the gods and with the concourse of the forces.  Could the coilings of Ophion represent the curling up of 7 dimensions within the 4 dimensions of space-time that we know?
6. Dom Galeon and Sarah Marquart. “An Alternate Universe: Our Cosmos May Have Been Spawned by a Hypermassive Black Hole” Futurism (updated January 21, 2017, accessed March 12, 2018) https://futurism.com/an-alternate-universe-our-cosmos-may-have-began-in-a-hypermassive-black-hole/.
7. Rig Veda, Book X (Mandalam) , Hymn 129. This version of Nasidiyah appears from the author’s archive from an unknown version.  The Sanskrit, transliteration, and an excellent translation confirms the basic gist of what appears here, by Rayalu Vishwanadha. “Origin Of the Universe: On Nasadiya Sukta of Rig Veda” Veda Ramindamu (October 11, 2011, accessed March 12, 2018) https://vedaravindamu.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/origin-of-the-universe-nasadiya-sukta-of-rig-veda/.
8. Theogeny 145.
9. Powell, Barry B. with translations by Howe, Herbert M. Classical Myth (5^th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007) ISBN: 0-13-196294-9, pp. 93, 94
10. Swami Prahbupāda, A.C. Bakhtivedanta. The Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (Complete Edition, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1983) No ISBN, pp. 562, 597.
11. Yogi Ananda Saraswathi. Devi:  “Bahuchara Mata”  Vedic Goddess (August 20, 2012, accessed August 3, 2016) http://vedicgoddess.weebly.com/joy-ma-blog/devi-bahuchara-mata.
12. Powell, p. 255-256, referencing Arnobius. Adversus Nationes5-7.
13. Ankita Tiwari. “Who is Aravaan and what is his role in Mahabharatam?” Quora (March 6, 2018, accessed March 13, 2018) https://www.quora.com/Who-is-Aravaan-and-what-is-his-role-in-Mahabharatam.
14. Pallan Ichaporia. “Historical Religious Dates” Avesta.org (accessed March 12, 2018) http://www.avesta.org/timeline.htm.
15. (n.a.) Timeline Index (accessed March 12, 2018) http://www.timelineindex.com/content/view/1252.
16. Op. cit.
17. Massoume Price. “Pre-Zoroastrian religions of Iran” (Iran Chamber Society, accessed March 12, 2018) http://www.iranchamber.com/religions/articles/pre_zoroastrian_religions.php with commentary by Pegah Esmaili and Aashrai Arun. “What was the Persian religion before Zoroastrianism?” Quora (accessed March 12, 2018)https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-Persian-religion-before-Zoroastrianism. The Tattwas are known personally to the author.
18. Subhash Kak, p. 5, citing Kak, S. The Wishing Tree: The Presence and Promise of India. (2001) Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi. http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/MahabharataII.pdf.
19. p. 8, Ibid.
20. Ibid, citing Kak, S. Akhenaten, Surya, and the Rgveda (2003) Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
21. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “The Subcontinent’s Early Record of Transgenderism” Transpire (August 5, 2017, accessed March 13, 2018) https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-subcontinents-sacred-record-of-transgenderism/, referencing Jaffrey, Zia. The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India.  Pantheon Books, Random House, NY.    p. 143.  ISBN: 0-679-41577-7.  Jaffrey maintained close contact with one such house that was deeded from the Moguls, and dedicates much of her book to interviews of its members and members of the local community in which they resided.
22. Chaudhary,Nandita;  Hviid, Pernille;Giuseppina Marsico,Giuseppina;  Villadsen, Jakob Waag. Resistance in Everyday Life: Constructing Cultural Experiences (Springer, 2017) ISBN: 9789811035814, p. 36.
23. Sunit Bezbaroowa & Arvind Joshi. “Lord Ram was born in 5114 BC” The Times of India (Nov 8, 2003, accessed March 13, 2018) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lord-Ram-was-born-in-5114-BC/articleshow/273107.cms.
24. (n.a.) “Lord Krishna lived for 125 years” The Times of India (September 8, 2004, accessed March 13, 2018) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lord-Krishna-lived-for-125-years/articleshow/844211.cms.
25. Narrain, Siddharth (2003). “In a twilight world”. Frontline (The Hindu Group, October 11–24). http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2021/stories/20031024002509800.htm.
26. (n.a.) “Timeline Hittites” Timelines (accessed March 14, 2018) https://timelines.ws/countries/HITTITES.HTML.
27. Ibid.
28. (n.a.) “Great Mother of the Gods” Britannica (accessed March 14, 2018) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Mother-of-the-Gods.
29. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “The Subcontinent’s Early Record of Transgenderism” https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-subcontinents-sacred-record-of-transgenderism/.
30. Ibid.
31. Metamorphoses X: 708-739.
32. Rawlinson, George; The History of Phoenicia; Longmans, Green & Co., 1889; ISBN: (none), No. 1128-1132, quoting Eusebius.
33. R. George. “Babylonian Texts from the Folios of Sidney Smith, Part 3: a Commentary on a Ritual of the Month Nissan” (Guinan 8^th proofs. October 4, 2006) http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/156/i/George_Fs_Leichty_173-185, p. 176.
34. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “Bagoas and Hellenism” Transpire (November 28, 2017, accessed March 14, 2018) https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2017/11/28/bagoas-and-hellenism/.
35. History of Alexander Book VI 5:23, Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Stuart, “The Pillars of Gender” Transpire (July 29, 2016, accessed March 14, 2018) https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/the-pillars-of-gender/.
38. Aristophanes Plutus 1014; with expounding in Brumfield, Allair Chandor. The Attic Festivals of Demeter and their Relation to the Agricultural Year (New York, Arno Press, 1985) ISBN: 978-0405140310, p. 195 note 16.