In China erotic perversions were as numerous as in ancient Rome. The cinaedus, the Gito who is prominent in Petronius’ Satyricon, is termed in China amasi. Dr. Jacobus X, the French anthropologist, has a great deal to say on this subject.
The Islamic concept of erotic practice is associated with devoutness. It implies the transmission to man of the divine creative force. Thus the erotic never becomes lewd or lascivious or prurient for the mere purpose of lubricity. The Koran counsels physiological intimacy as a sacred function, an ordained and enjoined rite. Omar Haleby ibn Othman, the Arab erotologist, likewise chants the erotic act as an expression, a manifestation derived from sacred sources. The erotic consummation has lost its fleshly, earthy connotation. It has assumed a venerable and venerated sanctity.
In the ancient Orient and even in much later ages, the phallus was an object of veneration not in a prurient or lustful sense, but as the source of procreation, the emblem of maternity. For sterility was the major, the primary curse. Hence any means might be exercised to counteract this catastrophic condition, this mark of divine disfavor, this racial blight. Hence too among certain ethnic communities as well as in Biblical literature the stranger, or the occasional traveler, or the concubine, was offered conjugal status, for the sole purpose of effecting generation.
Horror of sterility drove women to ceaseless supplications, to priapic invocations, to priapic contacts, to secret devices, and to magic aid. In the East, there was the belief that to walk over certain stones was a remedy for such sterility. In Madagascar a stone was held in reverence as promoting both agricultural and human fertility. In obscure regions of the Pyrenees Mountains, as well as in France, similar stones were believed conducive to amatory excitation and also to fertility. And these stones were merely worn and weather-beaten vestiges of the original phallic shapes or other analogous forms.
In India, too, the lingam and the yoni were pervasively revered throughout the continent. There were temples lined with hundreds of lingams, garlanded with flowers, anointed with ghee in continuous adoration.
A mixture of rose water, powdered almonds, and sugar is an old Arab drink that was commonly considered to correct incapacity. So too with a mixture, cooked together, of cloves, ginger, nuts, wild lavender, and nutmeg.