Adonis

Adonis is an archetypal life-death-rebirth deity in Greek mythology, and a central cult figure in various mystery religions. He is closely related to the Egyptian Osiris, the Semitic Tammuz & Baal Hadad, the Etruscan Atunis and the Phrygian Attis, all of whom are deities of rebirth and vegetation (Some mythologists believe he was later exported to Germania, and that Balder is to be read as his counterpart in Germanic mythology). Adonis is one of the most complex cult figures in classical times. He has had multiple roles and there has been much scholarship over the centuries concerning his meaning and purpose in the Greek religious beliefs. He is an annually-renewed, ever-youthful vegetation god, a life-death-rebirth deity whose nature is tied to the calendar. His cult belonged to women: the cult of dying Adonis was fully-developed in the circle of young girls around Sappho on Lesbos, about 600 BCE, as a fragment of Sappho reveals.