Religion and Lust. James Weir

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

      He also calls attention to the fact that “we meet with a direct allusion to this same custom in the Bible, in the Book of Baruch: The women, also, with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was not worthy of herself, nor her cord broken. Ch. VI, verse 43.”

67

Ibid.

68

Bancroft (Brinton): Native Races, etc., p. 135.

69

In the celebrated calendar stone of the Aztecs, there have been found certain hieroglyphics pointing to sun worship, coincidently, to phallicism.

70

Ibid., p. 134.

71

Stephens: Yucatan.

72

Consult Frantz Keller: The Amazon and Madeira Rivers.

73

Dorsey: Siouan Cults, An. Rep. Bur. Eth., 1889-90, p. 444.

74

Fletcher: Peabody Museum Report, vol. iii, p. 260.

75

Turner: An. Rep. Bur. Eth., 1889-90, p. 208.

76

Prescott: Conquest of Peru, vol. i, p. 110 et seq.

77

Ibid., p. 112.

78

Ibid., p. 103.

79

Biart: The Aztecs, p. 139.

80

Herodotus: Clio; See also Cary’s translation of Herodotus, page 86 et seq.

81

Maspero (Sayce): The Dawn of Civilization, p. 640.