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

90 страница из 92

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 been 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.