In this mystic cult of the goddess, the hierodule, the courtesan, is the intermediary between the suppliant and the divinity. She is the sexual passport, so to speak, that leads to the more secretive ritual of the Aphroditic temple.
There is, in the course of this rite, the necessity for a purgation, a purification by water. There is a reference to such an initiation in the Roman poet Juvenal’s second satire. He speaks of a mystic sect called the Baptae. This expression derives from the Greek baptizo, dipping in water. The Baptae drank, as an element in their ritual, powerful liquids from phallus-shaped vessels. These Baptae were devotees of Cotytto, an obscene and salacious goddess.
Women were not admitted to the Aphroditic rites: but, strangely, the men came robed as women, painted and powdered and reeking in exotic perfumes. Subsequently, they dedicated themselves to every form of sexual subtlety.
In another more advanced stage of initiation, where physical love became sublimated, Aphrodite was in this phase the Syrian goddess Derceto or Atargatis: the half woman, half fish deity. Basically she was a fertility goddess, sometimes called Dea Syria, the Syrian goddess, the universal divinity. Her cult is described by the Greek writer Lucian: and Apuleius, the Roman philosopher and novelist, speaks about her priests, the wandering Galli:
How the Priests of the Goddesse Siria Were Taken and Put in Prison.
After that we had tarried there a few dayes at the cost and charges of the whole Village, and had gotten much mony by our divination and prognostication of things to come: The priests of the goddesse Siria invented a new meanes to picke mens purses, for they had certaine lofts, whereon were written: Coniuncti terram proscindunt boves ut in futurum laeta germinent sata: that is to say. The Oxen tied and yoked together, doe till the ground to the intent it may bring forth his increase: and by these kind of lottes they deceive many of the simple sort, for if one had demanded whether he should have a good wife or no, they would say that his lot did testifie the same, that he should be tyed and yoked to a good woman and have increase of children. If one demanded whether he should buy lands and possession, they said that he should have much ground that should yeeld his increase. If one demanded whether he should have a good and prosperous voyage, they said he should have good successe, and it should be for the increase of his profit. If one demanded whether hee should vanquish his enemies, and prevaile in pursuite of theeves, they said that this enemy should be tyed and yoked to him: and his pursuite after theeves should be prosperous. Thus by the telling of fortunes, they gathered a great quantity of money, but when they were weary with giving of answers, they drave me away before them next night, through a lane which was more dangerous and stony then the way which we went the night before, for on the one side were quagmires and foggy marshes, on the other side were falling trenches and ditches, whereby my legges failed me, in such sort that I could scarce come to the plaine field pathes. And behold by and by a great company of inhabitants of the towne armed with weapons and on horseback overtooke us, and incontinently arresting Philebus and his Priests, tied them by the necks and beate them cruelly, calling them theeves and robbers, and after they had manacled their hands: Shew us (quoth they) the cup of gold, which (under the colour of your solemne religion) ye have taken away, and now ye thinke to escape in the night without punishment for your fact. By and by one came towards me, and thrusting his hand into the bosome of the goddesse Siria, brought out the cup which they had stole. Howbeit for all they appeared evident and plaine they would not be confounded nor abashed, but jesting and laughing out the matter, gan say: Is it reason masters that you should thus rigorously intreat us, and threaten for a small trifling cup, which the mother of the Goddesse determined to give to her sister for a present? Howbeit for all their lyes and cavellations, they were carryed back unto the towne, and put in prison by the Inhabitants, who taking the cup of gold, and the goddesse which I bare, did put and consecrate them amongst the treasure of the temple.
Aphrodite exacted from her devotees certain prescribed ceremonies, testimonies to their communion with the goddess, palpable evidences of their total mystic and spiritual absorption in the sacraments she demanded of her votaries.
The ritual followed an established design. At sunset the catechumen is conducted to the temple. Then, facing the East, the priest raises his left hand skyward and with his right he seizes a bronze knife, plunges it into boiling water, and then performs the ritual sexual rite with respect to the catechumen.
Then followed solemn and hieratic instruction in the amatory procedures, including the methods of arousing erotic sensibilities, provocative postures and gestures, words and formulas, osculation and its pervasive corporeal significance. There were, furthermore, illustrative consummations, considered without lewdness, but accepted as formal elements in the grave cosmic scheme. There was a musical accompaniment that softly intertwined in the sequence of the various rituals and presentations, a kind of amatory, seductive litany, enfolding the entire ceremonial in a sacred aura of mysticism. In the concluding phase of these rites, there appeared the phallic procession, the symbolic glorification of the creative urge, and the actual illustration of this potency culminated in an abandoned sexual orgy, indiscriminate and incestuous, exultant and fleshly, carnal and spiritual in one fervid syncretism. A concomitant of this vast sensual exhibition, this release of the physical carapace, was prostitution itself, which for long retained a ritualistic character.