The temple of the goddess was devoted to women and to glorifying women, and so it would seem that there should be no part for men in its ceremonies, that men should have their separate rites and their separate gods. This was largely so, but with three very important exceptions.

The first exception was for men who became women. One became a woman not merely by affecting feminine dress and posture, but by castration or the complete severing of the genitals. This self-mutilation, sometimes coyly called the rites of Attis, was most often performed during the wild revels of the annual Lupercalia (as the Roman version was called), and the severed parts offered to the goddess Cybele. When the revels ended, some may have regretted the act, (as is mentioned by the Latin poet, Catullus), but for most it meant admission to the company of the temple; to a career as musicians and dancers, or to goddess-sanctioned prostitution.

The second type of male within the temple was a kind of ideal man, a man lionised by the women in the same way as recent generations of women have idolised say Rudolf Valentino, Elvis Presley or Jim Morrison. This ideal man enjoyed every favour the temple could bestow, but only for one year, for at the end of the year he became a human sacrifice, and his spirit ascended to the goddess' starry realm, where, as a new god, he enjoyed the favour of the goddess directly, as he had previously of the temple priestesses. In heaven, the Adonais could repay the services given to him by the temple when they petioned him in song; ceremony and prayer. Frazer's Golden Bough catalogues the variations of the form of sacrifice as it was practised in different parts of the world. The custom still exists in symbolic form in parts of Europe, where a yule log is substituted for the sacrificial victim. The log is offered wine and food before being burnt, and the rising flames and smoke carry a family's prayers for a happy new year to the heavens.

The third exception is the one which has figured most in the imaginations of the gnostic; occult and scholarly enquirers in the thousands of years since the fall of the temple, the high poet. If, as we have done in an earlier chapter, we call the High Priestess by the name Sappho, then by similar logic the high poet can be called the Homer of the temple, though some may rather the Pythagorus of the temple, or the Euclid of the temple or the name of any of the other great men of antiquity who avowed themselves servants of the goddess. (see also The Apotheosis of Homer).

It may have been the case that this man was the link between the religion of women and the religion of men. He was advisor to the high priestess, and (if we take as examples Archimedes in the archaic period, or Merlin in the Arthurian legends) was also the highest advisor in the court of the king. If so, we must add to the high priestess' demand that this man be supremely learned in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and the arts, the king's requirement that he be fearless in battle, that is, that he could prove himself a son of Mars.