The priests of Cybele were by some supposed to have received the name of Galli from the River Gallus, “near which these priests inflicted upon themselves the punishment we are speaking of.... The effect of the water of that river was to throw them into fits of enthusiasm,—‘qui bibit, inde furit,’ as Ovid has it.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, London, 1740, vol. ii. p. 563.)
“Here they set down their litters at night and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations.”—(Juvenal, Sixth Satire, describing the rites of Bona Dea, translated by Rev. Lewis Evans, M.A., Wadhams College, Oxford, New York, 1860.)
Father Baudin speaks of the secret society called the “Ogbuni:” “From what I have been able to learn, this society is simply an institution similar to the secret societies of the pagan people of ancient times, where the members were initiated into the infamous mysteries of the great goddess.” (Negroes of Guinea.)—(“Fetichism and Fetich-worshippers,” Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 64.)
The Eskimo living near Point Barrow have a yearly ceremony for driving out an evil spirit which they call Tuna. Among the ceremonies incident to the occasion is this: One of the performers “brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the fire.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 164, quoting “Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow,” Washington, 1885, p. 42.)
It is strange to encounter in races so diverse apparently as the Greeks and the Hottentots the same rites of emasculation and urine sprinkling.
The sect of the “Skoptsi” or the “Eunuchs,” in Russia, “base their peculiar tenets on Christ’s saying, ‘There are some eunuchs which were born so from their mother’s womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men, and there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it let him receive it’ (Matt. xix. 12).”—(Heard, “Russian Creed and Russian Dissent,” p. 265.)
“This heresy, which is the most modern of all, probably owes its origin to influences from the East slowly filtering through the lower ranks of the population.”—(Idem, p. 267.)
Reginald Scot tells the story of a quack who preyed upon the fears of patients suffering from tympanitis, telling them they had vipers in their bellies, which vipers he would try to smuggle into the patient’s “ordure or excrement, after his purgations.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 198.)
Schurig relates that the countrywomen in Germany, if after milking their cows for a long time they were unable to bring the proper quantity of butter, suspected that they were under the spell of a witch; to undo this spell it was only necessary to mix some fresh milk with human ordure and throw the mixture down the privy; or human ordure was applied to the teats of the cows, much as Sir Samuel Baker has shown the Africans will do in our day. “Quippe quæ, siquando in conficiendo butyro, per tempus frustra laborarunt, suspicione veneficii cujusdam seductæ lac vaccinum recens emulsum stercori humano commixtum cloacæ simul infundunt, atque sic illico a Veneficio liberantur.... Si ferrum ignitum una stercore humano lacte vaccino consperso inseras, veneficæ pustulas inducet.... Contra magicam lactis vaccarum ablationem, ipsarum ubera stercore humano aliquamdiu inungi solent.” And he ends his paragraph by quoting the dictum of Johannis Michaelis, “Sine omni fascinatione et superstitione proprio stercore efficere possit.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 788, 789, par. 62.)
Compare with the information derived from Paullini.