Chapter I · ANTIQUITY (continued 2)

How the Priests of the Goddesse Siria Were Taken and Put in Prison.

After that we had tarried there a few dayes at the cost and charges of the whole Village, and had gotten much mony by our divination and prognostication of things to come: The priests of the goddesse Siria invented a new meanes to picke mens purses, for they had certaine lofts, whereon were written: Coniuncti terram proscindunt boves ut in futurum laeta germinent sata: that is to say. The Oxen tied and yoked together, doe till the ground to the intent it may bring forth his increase: and by these kind of lottes they deceive many of the simple sort, for if one had demanded whether he should have a good wife or no, they would say that his lot did testifie the same, that he should be tyed and yoked to a good woman and have increase of children. If one demanded whether he should buy lands and possession, they said that he should have much ground that should yeeld his increase. If one demanded whether he should have a good and prosperous voyage, they said he should have good successe, and it should be for the increase of his profit. If one demanded whether hee should vanquish his enemies, and prevaile in pursuite of theeves, they said that this enemy should be tyed and yoked to him: and his pursuite after theeves should be 59prosperous. Thus by the telling of fortunes, they gathered a great quantity of money, but when they were weary with giving of answers, they drave me away before them next night, through a lane which was more dangerous and stony then the way which we went the night before, for on the one side were quagmires and foggy marshes, on the other side were falling trenches and ditches, whereby my legges failed me, in such sort that I could scarce come to the plaine field pathes. And behold by and by a great company of inhabitants of the towne armed with weapons and on horseback overtooke us, and incontinently arresting Philebus and his Priests, tied them by the necks and beate them cruelly, calling them theeves and robbers, and after they had manacled their hands: Shew us (quoth they) the cup of gold, which (under the colour of your solemne religion) ye have taken away, and now ye thinke to escape in the night without punishment for your fact. By and by one came towards me, and thrusting his hand into the bosome of the goddesse Siria, brought out the cup which they had stole. Howbeit for all they appeared evident and plaine they would not be confounded nor abashed, but jesting and laughing out the matter, gan say: Is it reason masters that you should thus rigorously intreat us, and threaten for a small trifling cup, which the mother of the Goddesse determined to give to her sister for a present? Howbeit for all their lyes and cavellations, they were carryed back unto the towne, and put in prison by the Inhabitants, who taking the cup of gold, and the goddesse which I bare, did put and consecrate them amongst the treasure of the temple.

Aphrodite exacted from her devotees certain prescribed ceremonies, testimonies to their communion with the goddess, palpable evidences of their total mystic and spiritual absorption in the sacraments she demanded of her votaries.

The ritual followed an established design. At sunset the catechumen is conducted to the temple. Then, facing the 60East, the priest raises his left hand skyward and with his right he seizes a bronze knife, plunges it into boiling water, and then performs the ritual sexual rite with respect to the catechumen.

Then followed solemn and hieratic instruction in the amatory procedures, including the methods of arousing erotic sensibilities, provocative postures and gestures, words and formulas, osculation and its pervasive corporeal significance. There were, furthermore, illustrative consummations, considered without lewdness, but accepted as formal elements in the grave cosmic scheme. There was a musical accompaniment that softly intertwined in the sequence of the various rituals and presentations, a kind of amatory, seductive litany, enfolding the entire ceremonial in a sacred aura of mysticism. In the concluding phase of these rites, there appeared the phallic procession, the symbolic glorification of the creative urge, and the actual illustration of this potency culminated in an abandoned sexual orgy, indiscriminate and incestuous, exultant and fleshly, carnal and spiritual in one fervid syncretism. A concomitant of this vast sensual exhibition, this release of the physical carapace, was prostitution itself, which for long retained a ritualistic character.

The next step in this genesiac process was sacred prostitution, whereby the woman symbolized the solemnity and the compulsiveness of the Aphroditic cult, while the man was the visitant, a suppliant for the favor of the divinity. And the hierodule thus was a kind of prototype, associated with wise skills, a vestal of the goddess, initiating men into secret amatory and sacred rituals: an adept too in concocting love philtres to further genesiac exultation, to induce total participation in a sort of Aphroditic gnosticism.

The Aphroditic injunction embraced, in a sense, the entire cosmos. It involved primarily self-love, love of being, awareness of the significant entity, the ego itself, marked by 61dignity, by esteem. Then followed the love of the social milieu of which one formed part, and of the impulse to maintain its equilibrium by contributing one’s own efforts, one’s personal function, to the totality of the social frame. Lastly, there was a kind of all-embracing, comprehensive cosmic love, directed to a synthesis of corporeal love that mystically rose to a sublimated spiritual-amatory zone.

In the mystic cults, it was postulated that the amatory embrace partakes of both a human and a cosmic form of attraction, and becomes, in a sublimated degree, an act of prayer, an erotic supplication.

The priapic cult was the male counterpart of the Aphroditic cult. Just as the hierodule was the official priestess of the goddess, mentor in the feminine erotic and reverential mysteries, so the priapic cult had for its primary objective the exaltation of the male generative principle. In remote antiquity, and particularly in Egyptian mysticism, the phallus was the representative symbol of Osiris, the ultimate creative potency. Gradually, in the course of the centuries, the phallic symbol acquired a pejorative and degrading and exclusively and narrowly functional nature associated with the mere physical act. And Priapus, equated at one time with Osiris, degenerated into a secondary and minor figure, a mere rustic threat. Yet Priapus retained some semblance of his former repute. He still had his temple and his priestly ministrants. He still received favors and offerings. He still made promises to his devotees and listened to their urgent amatory pleas. He still maintained his sexual rituals, however much they had lost their spiritual and cosmic values. He still presided, in the actuality of performance, over marriage initiations, over nuptial consummations. But with time he disappeared as a member of the mystery cults. And only in vestiges of legend, in old rites transmitted into the Middle Ages, in sculptural presentations, in phallic symbolisms, 62did his former magnificence and his primary rank retain any fragmentary reminiscence of his vanished glories.

In the smaller towns of Italy festive occasions in honor of Priapus were perpetuated until far into the Middle Ages; and Priapus, in some instances, particularly in Brittany, in Belgium, and in France, merged with Christian saints, who appropriated, in their turn, the genesiac properties of their prototype.

In rural districts, shrines dedicated to Priapus defied the spread of Christianity, while phallic forms, in marble and stone, adorned public buildings, baths, columns, churches. Priapus, to some extent, thus went underground. He became a furtive and then an obsolescent and forgotten figure: but in Switzerland and in Sweden, in Provence and in Germany, Priapus clung tenaciously, if only in an etymological sense. For Friday, Friga’s day, is merely a Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon form of the Day of Priapus.

Strange how the antique charms and periapts, the old Roman fascina, were still suspended from the necks of children and women: often without any awareness of the actual significance of the talisman, but just as frequently, until late into the fourteenth century at least, ecclesiastical ordinances and prohibitions made it evident that there was official knowledge of the priapic survival.

Among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the erotic cult was dedicated to the fertility deities Ishtar and Bel and Sin. Ishtar was the Mesopotamian Aphrodite: a goddess of love and at the same time a warrior deity. Bel is Baal-Peor, the phallic deity, while Sin is the moon divinity.

Aphrodite, as a universal goddess, with universal erotic functions that embrace all humanity, all elements of the cosmos, appears in different regions and centuries under a variety of names. She is Aphrodite Callipygos and she is 63Aphrodite Anosia: Aphrodite Peribaso and Aphrodite Anadyomene and Aphrodite Hetaira. Sometimes she is designated with reference to her beauty, or to her amatory functions, or to her epichorial association with temple worship dedicated to her person, or to the suppliants whom she intimately protects. She is thus Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Porne. She is Aphrodite Trymalitis and Aphrodite Stratonikis. She is Aphrodite Pontia and Aphrodite Urania.

Then she becomes, retaining her essential character but merely transferring her rituals, Venus Fisica and Venus Caelesiis and Venus Erycian. She is the Cytherean and the Paphian, she is the Cyprian divinity.

She is known, again, as Anaïtis and as Astoreth. She is Allat and Argimpasa and Atargatis. In later ages she is Milda in Eastern Europe and Merta and Freya in the North.

But under whatever designation she appears, in Arabia or Scythia, in the Greek Islands or in Carthage, she is fertility incarnate and love. She is the alma Venus genetrix that the Roman poet Lucretius reverently invokes.

Through the ages the concept of generation has undergone progressively definitive changes. In proto-historical times, when legend and myth, mingling with supernatural fantasies, conceived imaginative unrealities in relation to the medical and physiological facts, the ancient Hindu epics assumed man as sprung from the forests, from aspen and ash trees, sylvan creatures, in some sense, corresponding to the half-human form of the ancient Hellenic satyrs. In some regions of India there was a belief that the produce of certain trees was human beings, male and female, and that the mortals fell upon the earth like ripe fruit. Among the Persians and contiguous races of antiquity, pregnant women were given soma juice to drink, to ensure handsome children. Soma is an intoxicating brew that is often mentioned in Vedic religious rituals. According to Pliny the 64Elder’s testimony, water in which mistletoe has been steeped encourages procreation in women and animals.

The oak tree and the chestnut also have been reputed to aid in procreation. So with plants too, that have at all times been treated as potential and actual amatory aids. An African legend makes a girl, after drinking the juice of a certain plant, give birth to a mighty warrior.

The chewing of lilies was considered conducive to fertility, in medieval folklore. So, in still earlier times, with the pomegranate and the almond. In many cases, the belief arose from the similarity of the plant or flower or herb, in certain respects, to the genitalia or the pudenda. This was so in the case of the bean. So with mandrake, and cress, and certain species of berries.

Another legendary mode of conception, prevalent in ancient classical and Oriental mythology, was theriomorphic theogamy: that is, generation by a divinity who assumes animal form.

Instances are multiple. Zeus, in the shape of a bull, pursues Europa in cow form. In Egypt, Apis the bull has a similar function. The seductive serpent, again, is Zeus once more, exercising his protean capacity. On occasion, he becomes a swan, and associates with Leda. Or he becomes a variety of creatures: an ant, or a dove, or a goat, or an ass. Once, Neptune, for a similar purpose, turned into a ram.

Sometimes, also, the divine serpent, sinuous and wily and knowledgeable, is actually devoured by the woman, as in Arab regions.

Not only animals and plants were associated with generative capacities, but natural phenomena as well: the winds and storms, hail and the sun and the rain. Some primitive tribes attributed their origin to snow: some to lightning, or to thunder, to the rainbow, to clouds, to the morning star. A warm breeze, or a cyclone might equally well have 65been their source. Greek, Roman, and Chinese myths contain numberless illustrations of astral or phenomenal association with mortal generation.

There is a wry anecdote on this phase in Flavius Josephus, the historian. An ingenious suitor performs the function of the deity Anubis with complete faithful acceptance.

This type of mortal substitution in place of the divinity was common in the priestly rituals of Egypt, and was not unknown in Asia Minor, in India, and in China.

Periapts or talismans as an erotic provocation were anciently devised in phallic form. They were carried on the person, by both men and women, or were used to decorate temples and shrines and public buildings.

In later ages, amatory talismans assumed a great variety of forms, in the shape of rings, necklaces, plaques engraved with formulas or astrological figures and signs of the Zodiac or possibly a bull, a dove, a number or a series of mystic numbers. A piece of parchment might be inscribed with names, or the alphabetical sign of Venus. Precious stones were talismans, each possessing an esoteric virtue or property according to color or substance. A periapt might be set in some strategic spot: buried underground, placed under a pillow: or even ground into a powder.

The all-powerful goddess herself, Venus, had her own minerals. Copper, associated with the love goddess, was known to the Greeks as aphrodon. Tin also was of Aphroditic significance: while sulphur springs were also, in a legendary sense, related to Venus.

It has even been credited that floral nomenclature contains amatory significance, and that certain plants have their erotic symbolisms.

Flowers in antiquity as well as in modern times had their erotic implications. To the Greeks and Romans, the essence of areté, of beauty and perfection, was the rose, 66while the Egyptians too revered the rose as the prototype of perfection.

To Aphrodite were consecrated the mistletoe and myrtle, the lily, satyrion, the iris, celandine, sengreen, mallow, and verbena.

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