The Catskills Phygianum of the Maetreum of Cybele

Historic Central House, Palenville New York

Picture of Central House in the 1930's
Central House in the 1930's

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Since it's purchase in early 2002 by four women Central House has been through a lot of changes. At first the vision was a housing cooperative welcoming of transsexual women and non transsexual women. During that phase many came and went and much was learned. In June of 2002 Gallae Central House Inc. was formally incorporated as a New York non profit corporation to manage the house for the original partnership that purchased it. Because one of the original four women was not a Cybeline, this was done on a secular basis.

In late 2003 with the transfer of ownership interest from the sole non member of the Cybeline faith to a woman who was an active Cybeline priestess the focus was shifted towards a religious convent under the direction of the Maetreum of Cybele with some emergency housing help for those women in need. Many took advantage of that phase and gradually the focus was shifted more and more as the house became the Phrygianum or convent home of the priestesses of Cybele. In October of 2003 we formally published the first part of our organizational model that was based on our historical research and which we had already put into practice. In June of 2004 we took another quantum leap forward (or backward in the reclaiming sense) with our publication of the Rule of the Women of Cybele. With the cooperation of the head of a Benedictine order of nuns, our research lead us to the discovery that the Rule of the Benedictine Women was a survival of the earlier Montanist Rule that was a direct gnostic Christian adaptation of the original Rule of the Women of Cybele. This remarkable document was a spiritual guide to living together as a feminine religious convent community and predated the Rule of St. Benedict for men by approximately 600 years! Our Cybeline Rule used the results of years of research with the base model that had survived as Rule of the Benedictine nuns to restore a historically appropriate "Rule" for our own religious faith and became structure of living at the Catskill Phygianum, a Cybeline Convent as had existed for thousands of years until the Catholics murdered in their sleep the last remaining Cybeline priestesses in Rome at the beginning of fifth century CE. That it was with the cooperation of Bendectine Catholic nuns we restored our own Rule seemed strangely appropriate given the history.

In 2005 the decision was made to formally incorporate the Cybeline faith, the four then current owners signed over their interest in the property to the newly incorporated Maetreum of Cybele as the official home of the religion and the centre of the world wide Cybeline revival. Emergency housing help was still part of the mission but only one of the original owners still lived on the property.

We have been busy restoring Central House as the only known, true to form, Silver Age Catskill Inn (mid 1850's thru early 1900's) in style and appearance. Central House boasts the only known fully functional 1890's telegraph office, part of the Women in 19'th Century Technology Project. We have open house Cafe hours at the Bell Book and Candle cafe' on Saturdays and are proud to be an open Women's Spirituality Centre dedicated to further women's rights and freedoms. Being historians, it is important to us to restore and preserve the historic nature and spirit of our home. Antique crank phones and telegraph bells adorn the front hallway along with reproductions of Suffragette posters. Our living room boast authentic Victorian furniture, Edison cylinder player and an extremely rare Victorian grand piano. A cozy wood cookstove is at the far end of the living room area as our "country kitchen" area that on winter afternoons beckons women to come, sit and chat. Even our guest rooms have authentic antique beds. The fabled Witch of the Catskills is alive and well at Central House! Central House itself dates back to sometime in the mid 1850's and is one of the very few surviving Inns from that era. Palenville is famed as the site of the Rip Van Winkle story and America's first artist colony.

Victorian living room

witchery

cafe

telegraph office

We look towards a future of being a centre not only of the Cybeline faith, but one available for women of all faiths as well as a place of safety and healing from the ravages of the patriarchy on the collective souls of the women of the world. It has been a long struggle but the vision of a worldwide home of the revived Cybeline faith has remained and now is reborn.

Blessings,
Rev. Mother Battakes, Cathryn Platine

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