Mavi Boncuk |According to one tradition, opium[1] poppies sprung from the tears of Aphrodite[2] when she mourned for her beloved Adonis. The ancient Greeks believed that the wood anemone was a gift from the god of the east wind, Eurus. The gods in charge of the four winds were collectively known as the Anemoi, and this is where the name ‘anemone’ comes from. In another legend, where her tears fell, windflowers sprang up.
[1] In ancient Greece, opium (the plant's milky latex) was called 'tears of Aphrodite' (the name 'opium' comes from the Greek 'Opos', which means plant sap).
[2] Regarded as the nourishment of divining dragons and as a sleeping and dreaming agent, the Minoan culture used opium to induce ecstatic states for religious ceremonies. The shaman would give oracles and divine the future while under the influence of opium. According to Theocritus, the poppy grew from the tears that Aphrodite shed as she mourned her youthful lover Adonis, hence another of its earliest names “tears of Aphrodite.”
Papaver somniferum was considered sacred to the Germanic god Lollus. The name Lollus suggests the German word lallen (“slur”). It is surmised that Lollus, who was an oracular god known to “speak in tongues,” could have actually been slurring from being inebriated on opium. Speaking in tongues, also known as glossalalia, is a type of unconscious flow of speech that has been known since ancient times and appears both in shamanic rituals and religious cults.
The Great Mother goddess Cybele was depicted holding poppy capsules in her hand, as was Hypnos, the god of sleep and the “resolver of cares.” Hermes (or Mercury) carried the plant in his left hand. Thanatos, or Death, was decorated with garlands of poppies, while Nyx, the goddess of the night, was portrayed with poppies wrapped around her temples. Poppy seeds were an important ritual smoke offering to Hypnos, the god of sleep, at the Orphic mysteries, a cult of Dionysus. Cybele.
Cybele's cult was introduced to Rome in 204 B.C. from its home in the Near East. Worship in the cult included ritual flagellation and castration; it was initially discouraged for Roman citizens. By the time this portrait was created, however, many of the cult's wilder aspects had been tamed or eliminated.