Among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the erotic cult was dedicated to the fertility deities Ishtar and Bel and Sin. Ishtar was the Mesopotamian Aphrodite: a goddess of love and at the same time a warrior deity. Bel is Baal-Peor, the phallic deity, while Sin is the moon divinity.
Aphrodite, as a universal goddess, with universal erotic functions that embrace all humanity, all elements of the cosmos, appears in different regions and centuries under a variety of names. She is Aphrodite Callipygos and she is Aphrodite Anosia: Aphrodite Peribaso and Aphrodite Anadyomene and Aphrodite Hetaira. Sometimes she is designated with reference to her beauty, or to her amatory functions, or to her epichorial association with temple worship dedicated to her person, or to the suppliants whom she intimately protects. She is thus Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Porne. She is Aphrodite Trymalitis and Aphrodite Stratonikis. She is Aphrodite Pontia and Aphrodite Urania.
Then she becomes, retaining her essential character but merely transferring her rituals, Venus Fisica and Venus Caelesiis and Venus Erycian. She is the Cytherean and the Paphian, she is the Cyprian divinity.
She is known, again, as Anaïtis and as Astoreth. She is Allat and Argimpasa and Atargatis. In later ages she is Milda in Eastern Europe and Merta and Freya in the North.
But under whatever designation she appears, in Arabia or Scythia, in the Greek Islands or in Carthage, she is fertility incarnate and love. She is the alma Venus genetrix that the Roman poet Lucretius reverently invokes.
Through the ages the concept of generation has undergone progressively definitive changes. In proto-historical times, when legend and myth, mingling with supernatural fantasies, conceived imaginative unrealities in relation to the medical and physiological facts, the ancient Hindu epics assumed man as sprung from the forests, from aspen and ash trees, sylvan creatures, in some sense, corresponding to the half-human form of the ancient Hellenic satyrs. In some regions of India there was a belief that the produce of certain trees was human beings, male and female, and that the mortals fell upon the earth like ripe fruit. Among the Persians and contiguous races of antiquity, pregnant women were given soma juice to drink, to ensure handsome children. Soma is an intoxicating brew that is often mentioned in Vedic religious rituals. According to Pliny the Elder’s testimony, water in which mistletoe has been steeped encourages procreation in women and animals.
The oak tree and the chestnut also have been reputed to aid in procreation. So with plants too, that have at all times been treated as potential and actual amatory aids. An African legend makes a girl, after drinking the juice of a certain plant, give birth to a mighty warrior.