Religion and Lust

CHAPTER II.

PHALLIC WORSHIP

Phallic worship, in some form or other, has been practiced by almost every race under the sun. Indeed, among primitive peoples, those who do not practice this cult are so few in number that they have, practically, no weight whatever in a discussion of this subject. Moreover, those primitive peoples who do not worship the generative principle, either directly or indirectly, are without any religion whatsoever, and are the very lowest of all mankind in point of intelligence. I have only to cite the Tierra del Fuegians, the Bushmen, the Australians, and the Akka or Ticki-Ticki, the Pygmies of Central Africa, to prove the truthfulness of this assertion. There are other peoples who would serve as examples, but it would be a work of supererogation to enumerate them to even the casual reader.

D’Hancarville, in his magnificent work, has traced the progress of the worship of the generative principle over the entire world, while Knight, in his scholarly essay,44 has brought out its psychological truths in a manner which cannot be surpassed. It is not my purpose to enter into a detailed account of this cult; I propose rather to discuss its probable origin in the beginning, and to give a brief outline of its history, as it is to be observed among living peoples. I wish to show, also, its connection with certain religious ceremonies and festivals of Christian peoples, which had their origin, ab initio, in the worship of Priapus. And, before beginning the discussion of this subject, I beg to remind the reader that a priest of Priapus regarded his sistrum as being just as sacred as a Catholic priest now considers any vessel or robe used in the service of mass, and that the priests of Brahma look on the Lingam with as much reverence and awe as did the Levites on the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies. Phallic worship is a religion, the oldest abstract religion in existence. Fundamentally the Creator—the Life Giver—is the phallic worshiper’s god. Is he very far wrong in all that is absolutely essential? “Men think they know because they are sure they feel, and are firmly convinced because strongly agitated. Hence proceed that haste and violence with which devout persons of all religions condemn the rites and doctrines of others, and the furious zeal and bigotry with which they maintain their own, while, perhaps, if both were equally understood, both would be found to have the same meaning, and only to differ in the modes of conveying it.”45

The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are worshipers of the generative principle, and, like most religious sects, have evolved some very curious rites and ceremonies. The ancient temples of Venus or Aphrodite were filled with hetarae, who were necessary adjuncts for the proper performance of the mysteries of Priapus. These Indians, however, will not allow women to enter into their sacred ceremonies, but, on the contrary, emasculate men (by occasioning organic and functional degeneration of the sexual organs), who serve as hetaræ to the chiefs and shamans or priests.46 These androgynes are called mujerados, a term which aptly describes their sexual condition.

“In order to cultivate a mujerado, a very powerful man is chosen, and he is made to masturbate excessively and ride constantly. Gradually such irritable weakness of the genital organs is engendered that, in riding, great loss of semen is induced. This condition of irritability passes into paralytic impotence. Then the testicles and penis atrophy, the hair of the beard falls out, the voice loses its depth and compass, and physical strength and energy decrease. Inclinations and disposition become feminine. The mujerado loses his position in society as a man. He takes on feminine manners and customs, and associates with women; yet, for religious reasons, he is held in high honor.”47 The phallic ceremonies of the Pueblos take place in the spring, when the life principle is exceedingly active throughout all nature.

In all probability the “botes” of the Montana Indians and the “burdachs” of the Washington tribes serve as masculine hetaræ to the chiefs and medicine men, though this has not been definitely determined. Dr. Holder described a typical “bote” of the Absaroke tribe in the New York Medical Journal, 1889. This androgyne, in many respects, resembled the mujerados of the Pueblo Indians, and probably served a like purpose in his tribe.

According to Ross, a Konyaga woman, when she has a good-looking boy, dresses him in girl’s clothes and brings him up as a female. When he arrives at a suitable age he is sent to wait on the priests of the tribe and is introduced by them into the sacred mysteries of their cult; in fact, he becomes a masculine hetara.

When we read of such things we feel pretty much as Herodotus felt when he saw the naked women of Mendes submitting themselves openly ες επιδειξιν ανθρωπων to the embraces of the sacred goat.48 To the Greek historian this act was simply horrible (τερας); and yet these Egyptians experienced no repugnance whatever. To them it represented the incarnation of the deity, and was, therefore, a sacred and holy action, just as masculine hetarism is regarded as a holy profession among the Konyagas. Phallic hetarism is one of the sacraments of the Konyaga church, and, as such, it is held in all that reverence and awe with which the savage devotee endows the mysteries of his faith.49

The ancient Hebrews, ancestors of one of the most ancient of the civilized races of the earth, held it in high honor. Even wise King Solomon, in the days of his old age, turned from the abstractedly pure religion of his father “to Astoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and to Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.”50 He was guilty of constructing a “high place” for Chemosh, “the abomination of Moab.”51 Any good modern biblical encyclopedia will tell the reader about Astoreth and her worship, and what the “high places” and the “groves” were.

Even the “good kings,” such as Asa, Amaziah, et al., did not remove the high places and the groves, for we read that, notwithstanding the fact that these kings did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, they did not remove the high places. In the case of Amaziah, it is written:

“And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David, his father; he did according to all things as Joash, his father, did.

“Howbeit, the high places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.”52 All of the so-called “wicked kings” were phallic worshipers, and both male and female hetarism flourished during their reigns. We read of Josiah, a “good king,” “And he broke down the houses of the sodomites (kedescheim) that were by the house of the Lord.”53 Here, in unmistakable terms (kedescheim), the phallic act of the hetara is specified.

Herodotus wrote: “Almost all mankind consort with women in their sacred temples, except in Greece and Egypt.”54 This is a queer mistake for a Greek to make, yet this historian is noted for his unreliability, and we should not feel surprised at this gross error. Concerning the Aphrodite of Abydos, what she was and what took place in her temples, is a matter of history. Indeed, this goddess was surnamed Porne! In Corinth, delubral hetarism was openly practiced; also at Bubastis and Naucratis in Egypt. Royal princesses were pallacides in the temple of Ammon; in fact, they took pride in the title of pallakis!55 “It is known what excessive debauchery took place in the ‘groves’ and ‘high places’ of the ‘Great Goddess.’ The custom was so deeply rooted that in the grotto of Bethlehem what was done formerly in the name of Adonis is to-day in the name of the Virgin Mary by Christian pilgrims; and the Mussulman hadjis do likewise in the sanctuaries of Mecca!”56 57

But let us return to primitive peoples, from whose customs and beliefs we can learn what our own ancestors must have believed before the besom of civilization swept aside the crudities of savagery.

The Khonds of India are phallic worshipers, and, in the practice of their religion, Priapus saves many a girl who would be, otherwise, offered up on the bloody altars of their divinities. The pregnant woman is sacred, hence, religious prostitution is exceedingly prevalent. But it frequently happens that some unfortunate creature, who is not pleasing to the shamans, is seized, tied to the stake and butchered.58 As the blood flows down and deluges the ground, “the divine spirit enters into the priest and inspires him.”59 This sacrifice is of itself a phallic rite; the blood-offering is supposed to be exceedingly acceptable to Earth, the mother of all things. Blood is the essence of the life-giving principle; hence, the essence is returned to the great Giver, as a propitiatory offering.60

In point of fact, the worship of the generative principle is everywhere prevalent in India.61 In the Lingam, or holy altar of the Brahmins, we see a conjunction of the male and female sexual organs, while religious prostitution, in the shape of hetarism, crowds the inner courts and corridors of almost every temple in the land with hierodules and bayaderes. The Vedas abound in references, either direct or indirect, to phallic worship. Indeed, according to some authorities, the Hindu Brahma is the same as the Greek Pan,62 “who is the creative spirit of the deity transfused through matter.”63

Hundreds of pages have been written on snake-worship, in which a wonderful amount of metaphysical lore has been expended. Mr. Herbert Spencer devotes several pages to the snake, and the reason for its appearance in the religion of primitive peoples. He ascribes to savages a psychical acuteness that I am by no means willing to allow them, inasmuch as he makes them give a psychical causation for their adoption of the serpent as a deity, such as no ignorant and uncultivated savage could have possibly evolved. I am inclined to believe that, like all great students and thinkers, Mr. Spencer has a hobby, and that this hobby is animism or ancestor-worship. When he gives out, as a reason for the snake’s almost universal appearance in the religions of primitive peoples, that the latter consider it an animal which has assumed the returning ghost, double, or soul of an ancestor,64 I think that he is very much in error. There are very few primitive folk, comparatively speaking, who believe in metempsychosis. In all probability, when a race, like the ancient Egyptians, for instance, had reached a high degree of civilization, they idealized many of their religious beliefs and customs; hence, the serpent probably lost its initial and simple symbolical meaning, and stood for something higher and more ethical during the reign of the great Pharaohs, and the Golden Age of the Greeks and Latins. I am positive, however, that the snake’s original significance was wholly phallic in character, and that its adoption as a symbol was simple and material, as I explain elsewhere in this essay.65

I am forced to this conclusion by its presence among phallic symbols in almost every race that practiced or practices a worship of the generative principles. The Pueblo Indians, whom I have mentioned elsewhere in this treatise, regard the snake symbol with reverence; the Moqui Indians have their sacred snake dance, in which they worship the reptiles, handling the most vicious and poisonous rattlesnakes with seeming impunity; the Apaches hold that every rattlesnake is an emissary of the devil;66 “the Piutes of Nevada have a demon deity in the form of a serpent still supposed to exist in the waters of Pyramid Lake;”67 on the wall of an ancient Aztec ruin at Palenque there is a tablet, on which there is a cross standing on the head of a serpent, and surmounted by a bird. “The cross is the symbol of the four winds; the bird and serpent the rebus of the rain-god, their ruler.”68 The Quiche god, Hurakan, was called the “Strong Serpent,” and the sign of Tlaloc, the Aztec rain-god, was a golden snake.69 All of these tribes are or were worshipers of the generative principles, though, in most of them, phallic worship has or had lost much of its original significance.70 In Yucatan and elsewhere in South and Central America, notably among the ruins of Chichen Itza, the serpent symbol is frequently in evidence.71 The Indians of the Tocantins in Brazil, as well as the Muras, Mundurucus and Cucamas, are mixed nature and devil worshipers;72 as a sequence, certain phallic rites are to be observed in their religious ceremonies.

Many of the native tribes of North America perform phallic rites at puberty. James Owen Dorsey, who has made a study of the Siouan cults, writes as follows:

“Every male Dakota sixteen years old and upward is a soldier, and is formally and mysteriously enlisted into the service of the war prophet. From him he receives the implements of war, carefully constructed after models furnished from the armory of the gods, painted after a divine prescription, and charged with a missive virtue—the tonwan—of the divinities. To obtain these necessary articles the proud applicant is required for a time to abuse himself and serve him, while he goes through a series of painful and exhausting performances, which are necessary on his part to enlist favorable notice of the gods. These performances consist chiefly of vapor baths, fastings, chants, prayers, and nightly vigils. The spear and the tomahawk being prepared and consecrated, the person who is to receive them approaches the wakan man (priest), and presents a pipe to him. He asks a favor, in substance as follows: ‘Pity thou me, poor and helpless, a woman, and confer on me the ability to perform manly deeds.’”73 According to Miss Fletcher, when an Oglala girl arrives at puberty, a great feast is prepared, and favored guests invited thereto. “A prominent feature in the feast is the feeding of these privileged persons and the girl in whose honor the feast is given, with choke cherries, as the choicest rarity to be had in the winter… In the ceremony, a few of the cherries are taken in a spoon and held over the sacred smoke and then fed to the girl.”74 This is considered one of the most sacred of their feasts.

While discussing the phallic observances of the North American races, I will introduce the subject of tattooing, though it properly belongs elsewhere in this treatise.

At puberty, the Hudson Bay Eskimos invariably tattoo their boys and girls. Lucien M. Turner writing of the latter, says:

“When a girl arrives at puberty she is taken to a secluded locality by some old woman versed in the art of tattooing, and stripped of her clothing. A small quantity of half-charred lamp wick of moss is mixed with oil from the lamp. A needle is used to prick the skin, and the pasty substance is smeared over the wound. The blood mixes with it, and in a few days a dark-bluish spot is left. The operation continues four days. When the girl returns to the tent it is known that she has begun to menstruate.”75 Both Eastern and Western Inoits celebrate puberty with certain rites. It is rather difficult, however, to get them to say much about this matter, so I will not present the evidence, meager as it is, which has been gleaned from the works of various explorers. One can readily see that much of it is conjecture, therefore of little scientific value.

Not far from the Place of Gold, the magnificent temple in which the ancient Peruvians worshiped the Life Giver, was another great edifice, styled the “House of the Virgins of the Sun.” This was the domicile of the pallacides or hetaræ of the Chief Priest, the Inca. “No one but the Inca and the Coya, or queen, might enter the consecrated precincts… Woe to the unhappy maiden who was detected in an intrigue! By the stern laws of the Incas she was buried alive, her lover strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was razed to the ground and sowed with stones as if to efface every memorial of his existence. One is astonished to find so close a resemblance between the institutions of the American Indian, the ancient Roman, and the modern Catholic. Chastity and purity of life are virtues in woman that would seem to be of equal estimation with the barbarian and with the civilized—yet the ultimate destination of the inmates of these religious houses (there were hundreds of them), was materially different… Though Virgins of the Sun, they were the brides of the Inca.”76 The monarch had thousands of these hetaræ in his various palaces. When he wished to lessen the number in his seraglios, he sent some of them to their own homes, where they lived ever after respected and revered as holy beings.77 The religion of the Peruvians had reached a high degree of development, and many of the crudities of simple phallic worship had either been entirely abandoned or so idealized that they had been lost in the mists of ritual and ceremony. For “the ritual of the Incas involved a routine of observances as complex and elaborate as ever distinguished that of any nation, whether pagan or Christian.”78

Notwithstanding the fact that the descendants of the Incas have been under the guardianship of the priests of the Catholic church for hundreds of years, a close, careful, painstaking, and accurate observer informs me that he has repeatedly noticed unmistakable phallic rites interwoven with their Christian ceremonials and beliefs. The same can be said of a kindred race and a kindred religion. Biart, writing of the descendants of the Aztecs, says: “In grottoes unexpectedly discovered, I have frequently found myself in the presence of Mictlanteuctli, at the foot of which a recent offering of food had been placed.”79 How exceedingly basic and fundamental the worship of the generative principle must be in Psychos itself, is indicated by these facts!

In the very beginnings of history we find that many races of people held the worship of the generative principle in high honor. Not only has the knowledge of this fact come to us through the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians and the tablets, cylinders, etc., of the Chaldeans, but it has also been set before us by ancient historians. Speaking of the Chaldeans Herodotus (1,199)80 says, “Every woman born in the country must enter once during her lifetime the inclosure of the temple of Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Many who are wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thither in closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves. The greater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, with a cord twisted about their heads—and there is always a crowd there, coming and going; the women being divided by ropes into long lanes, down which strangers pass to make their choice. A woman who has once taken her place here cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into her lap a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits of the sacred inclosure. As he throws the money he pronounces these words: ‘May the goddess Mylitta make thee happy!’ Now among the Assyrians, Aphrodite” (the goddess of love, desire) “is called Mylitta. The woman follows the first man who throws her the money, and repels no one. When once she has accompanied him, and has thereby satisfied the goddess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, however large the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one.” Maspero declares that “this custom still existed in the fifth century before our era, and the Greeks who visited Babylon about that time found it still in force.”81