Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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Hence it might be more advisable to adapt the postulate of Isocrates and to introduce the proviso that whatever has been done or said or written by men should normally and regularly be transmitted to later generations or to wider circles, provided that this transmission is intended as a contribution to a knowledge of the past, or of contiguous races, or of disparate mores, and as a revealing exposition of what man performed in earlier ages, and not as a prurient and lewd inducement to wallow in scatological or libidinous depths for mere light or indifferent or transitory entertainment.

The anthropologist, the archaeologist, the professional scholar, the historian are, by virtue of their interests and training and their occupations, constantly dealing with subjects that have either been taboo in a general sense, or that involve the most secretive physiological and emotional human situations.

The ancient cult of the stars merged with religious ceremonials and religious beliefs, emerging in the zodiacal bull. This bull was anciently equated with the sun in its most auspicious phase, in spring time. The sun bull later became the actual bull itself, as in the Minoan and the Mithraic cults, and also among the Egyptians. For the bull was now definitely the symbol of creative potency, of cosmic fecundity and perpetuation.