Pliny says that goat-dung could be applied with benefit to ulcers upon the generative organs. Was not the goat sacred to Pan (i. e., was not Pan himself, in primitive days, the deified goat)? And was not Pan the god to whose care the generative organs were, under certain circumstances, confided?
When the feet of travellers became blistered, they were bathed with the urine of asses. Was the ass, the burden-bearer, at any time, or in any place under the domination of the Romans, regarded as the god of travellers? Fosbroke says, “An ass carried the utensils and statues in the sacrifices of Cybele and at the birth of Bacchus, the god newly born, but he was only sacrificed to Mars or Priapus.”—(“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 1009.)
Pliny also prescribed asses’ dung for uterine troubles,—a clear recognition of the animal’s priapic association.
Hippopotamus-dung was given as a remedy for fever and ague. This monster pachyderm lives in swamps, which are the hotbeds of malaria. By a mistaken analogy, the animal would have been credited with the origin of the disease always to be dreaded by intruders upon its lair.
Without desiring to enter into unnecessary controversy upon the meaning of terms, it would seem to be perfectly reasonable to assert that the majority of the deities of paganism had been zoömorphic before man’s increasing intellectuality anthropomorphized them, and relegated the animal first to the subordinate position of being the head or limbs of the god, and then to the still more ancillary one of being simply the companion or symbol.
To consider an animal a god, the messenger, attendant, companion, or representative of that god; to offer it up as the most delectable sacrifice to that deity, and afterwards restrict the oblation to a part only of the animal, such as its horns, hoofs, excreta,—are all links in the same psycho-religious chain of reasoning.
Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen shrewdly observes, “There seems to be the best of reason for believing that, to seek the origin of the popular delusion concerning the curative properties of certain animal excreta, we must study the mythology of our long-ago Aryan ancestors.” And again: “It has often happened that substances, as well as ceremonies, which originally had a religious signification, in later ages degenerated into fancied cures for diseases; so it is more than probable that the employment of animal excreta as remedies among the less intelligent classes of Europe, in both earlier and later times, as well as in our own newest offshoot from the Indo-European stem, is a survival of early Aryan religious observance.”—(“Animal and Plant Lore,” in Popular Science Monthly, New York, September, 1888.)
“Car, dans la conception vraiment orthodoxe du sacrifice, l’hostie, qu’elle soit homme, femme ou vierge, agneau ou génisse, coq ou colombe, représente la divinité elle-même.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 366.)
“Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of the ancients has already been confessed.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 363.)
“Frazer’s remarks make very interesting reading in support of the theory of Zoötheistic pharmacy. He not only shows that the animals enumerated in this chapter were the deities in charge of the corn, rye, and other cereals, but that to them recourse was had for the cure of wounds, hurts, and aches happening to the reapers during harvest. In one example the cat which is introduced into the field is made to lick the laborer’s wounds; in another, the goat—which is decked with ribbons, and afterwards killed with much ceremony, and eaten at the end of the harvest—has its skin converted into a cloak, which the farmer is required to put over his shoulders during the coming harvest ... but if a reaper gets pains in his back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 16.)