Sanctuary of the Cabeiri

The Cabeiri was not one god, but a deistic pair of 'daimones', or lesser gods. Their history and mythology is varied and multiple, as their worship was for a very long time confined only to mystery cults on the islands of Samothrace and Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea. The Cabeiri are commonly linked to Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and metallurgy, with some suggestion that he was their father, and that they assisted him at his Lemnian forge. Before the Cabeiri were connected to the Greek pantheon, however, they may have originally been purely Thracian deities who protected sailors. Seamen amongst the Greeks were also known to call for help from the Cabeiri in times of danger. The two were also considered proponents of hedonism, with patronage over the dances and orgies that the Samothracians made to their higher gods, such as Persephone. In the Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, the 'Cabiri' even play host to the Argonauts, entertaining them in typical fashion with a drunken orgy.