Cybele was supposed to have been born on Mount Ida in Asia Minor; this is the source of her epithet Idaea.
Cybele's most ecstatic followers were males who ritually castrated themselves, after which they were given women's clothing and assumed female identities, who were referred to by contemporary commentator Callimachus in the feminine Gallai, and who other contemporary commetators in ancient Greece and Rome reffered to as Gallos or Galli. Her priestesses led the people in orgiastic ceremonies with wild music, drumming, dancing and drink. She was associated with the mystery religion concerning her son, Attis, who was castrated and resurrected. The dactyls were part of her retinue. Other followers of Cybele, Phrygian kurbantes or Corybantes, expressed her ecstatic and orgiastic cult in music, especially drumming, clashing of shields and spears, dancing, singing and shouts, all at night.
Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lions by Cybele after having sex in one of her temples.
Her cult had already been adopted in 5th century BC Greece, where she is often referred to euphemistically as Meter Theon Idaia ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida") rather than by name. Mentions of Cybele's worship are found in Pindar and Euripides, among others. Classical Greek writers, however, either did not know of or did not mention the transgendered Galli; although they did know of the castration of Attis.
Cybele's cult in Greece was closely associated with, and apparently resembled, the cult of Dionysus, whom Cybele is said to have initiated. They also identified Cybele with the Mother of the Gods Rhea.
A figurine found at Çatalhöyük, (Archaeological Museum, Ankara), dating about 6000, depicts the corpulent and fertile Mother goddess, in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two handrests in the form of lion's heads. At her shrine at Çatalhöyük she was depicted with the Mural crown that promised she could be a protector of cities.
In the 2nd millennium BC Cybele was known to the Hittites and Hurrians as Kubaba.
In Phrygia Rhea/Cybele was venerated as Agdistis, with a temple at the great trading city Pessinos, mentioned by the geographer Strabo. It was at Pessinos that her son and lover Attis was about to wed the daughter of the king, when Agdistis/Cybele appeared in her awesome glory, and he castrated himself.
In Archaic Phrygian images of Cybele, her typical representation is in the figuration of a building’s façade, standing in the doorway. The façade itself can be related to the rock-cut monuments of the highlands of Phrygia. She is wearing a belted long dress, a head polos (high cylindrical hat), and a veil covering the whole body. In Phrygia, her usual attributes are the bird of prey and a small vase. Lions are sometimes related to her, in a aggressive but tamed manner.
Later, the sculptor Agoracritos, a pupil of Pheidias produced a version of Cybele that became the standard one. It showed her still seated on a throne but now more decorous and matronly, her hand resting on the neck of a perfectly still lion and the other holding the circular frame drum, like a tambourine, (tymbalon or tympanon), which evokes the full moon and is covered with the hide of the sacred lunar bull.
In Mysia Mount Dindymus was sacred to Cybele.
Some ecstatic followers of Cybele, known in Rome as Galli, willingly castrated themselves in imitation of Attis. For Roman devotees of Cybele Mater Magna who were not prepared to go so far, the testicles of a bull, one of the Great Mother's sacred animals, were an acceptable substitute, as many inscriptions show. An inscription of AD 160 records that a certain Carpus had transported bull's testes from Rome to Cybele's shrine at Lyon, France.
In Alexandria, Cybele was worshipped by the Greek population as "The Mother of the Gods, the Savior who Hears our Prayers" and as "The Mother of the Gods, the Accessible One." Ephesus, one of the major trading centers of the area, was devoted to Cybele as early the 10th century BC, and the city's ecstatic celebration, the Ephesia, honored her.
The goddess was not welcome among the patriarchal Scythians north of Thrace. From Herodotus (4.76-7) we learn that the Scythian Anacharsis (6th century BC), after traveling among the Greeks and acquiring vast knowledge, was put to death by his fellow Scythians for attempting to introduce the foreign cult of Magna Mater.
In Rome, her Phrygian origins were recalled by Catullus, whose famous poem on the theme of Attis includes a vivid description of Cybele's worship: "Together come and follow to the Phrygian home of Cybele, to the Phrygian forests of the goddess, where the clash of cymbals ring, where tambourines resound, where the Phrygian flute-player blows deeply on his curved reed, where ivy-crowned maenads toss their heads wildly."
Roman devotion to Cybele ran deep. Not coincidentally, when a Christian basilica was built over the site of a temple to Cybele to occupy the site, it was dedicated as the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
The worship of Cybele penetrated as far as Mauretania, where, just outside Setif, the ceremonial "tree-bearers" and the faithful (religiosi) restored the temple of Cybele and Attis after a disastrous fire in AD 288. Lavish new fittings paid for by the private group included the silver statue of Cybele and the chariot that carried her in procession received a new canopy, with tassels in the form of fir cones. (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p 581.)