We stated above that the early deities of primitive tribes were regarded as demons during the Christian period. In Teutonic beliefs phallic deities were developed quite comparable to those of Greece and Rome. These Teutonic deities came to be regarded as hobgoblins during the middle ages. They were supposed to be found in lonely places and in forests, and to emerge at times in order to indulge in all sorts of sexual excesses, much as the fauns and satyrs of antiquity. The English had a similar hobgoblin in Robin Goodfellow. This fictitious character is represented in priapic attitudes in a number of illustrations of old English ballads. He was doubtless Priapus of antiquity transformed into a goblin.
Why should superstitions of this kind live century after century? Frazer[25] has given us the answer: “Superstitions survive because while they shock the views of the enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony with the thoughts and feelings of others, who, though they are drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians or savages at heart ... I have been led into making these remarks by the wish to explain why it is that superstitions of all sorts, political, moral and religious, survive among people who have the opportunity of knowing better. The reason is that the better ideas, which are constantly forming in the upper stratum have not filtered through from the highest to the lowest minds. Such a filtration is generally slow, and by the time the new emotions have penetrated to the bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often obsolete and superseded by others at the top.”
CHAPTER IV
Interpretations
Having followed the worship of sex through its various phases, it is now desirable to offer such interpretations of its meaning as the facts appear to warrant. What was the significance of this elaborate ritual; why did it develop, and how is it to be interpreted from a biological standpoint in mental evolution. The history of the development of this ritual may be of considerable interest in itself but we wish now to consider the subject from the biological rather than the historical standpoint. It remains to be shown what ends these beliefs serve in the evolution of the primitive mind, or at least what they represent, and what vestiges of them remain in our thoughts and feelings of today. Only from this standpoint can the study of primitive motives be of value to the Psychologist and the Psychiatrist.
In order to answer the above questions, it is desirable to refer to a still more primitive form of religious belief, since our understanding of this earlier religion offers a key to the understanding of sex worship. We refer to the various forms of nature worship found in primitive tribes. These nature rites consist of rain making ceremonies, sun dances, and numerous other procedures which are carried out by primitive people because of their supposed service in increasing the products of the earth. Fortunately these rites are quite clearly understood. It has been shown by many investigators that they are enacted to increase the food supply. They are actuated by the desire on the part of primitive people to meet nutritive demands.
Now this knowledge enables us to understand phallic ceremonies. A very distinct parallelism is seen between the nature worship rites and phallic rites. We feel that it is not difficult to show that while the earlier rites were in accord with nutritive demands, phallic ceremonies were an expression of the desire for human reproduction. We shall now digress somewhat in order to discuss nature rites in some detail, as thereby the phallic rites are very readily explained.
Among many of the Indian tribes of North America, the tribes of Central Africa, the primitive races of Australia, the lower hill tribes of India, and others, we find religious ceremonies all of which are carried out in much the same way and with the same object in view. We are all familiar with the rain making ceremonies of the North American Indians; we find frequent reference in literature to the various Spring festivals of the Egyptians at which grain is grown, etc., and in which vegetative nature is deified. A great many of the nations of antiquity had similar rites to increase the produce of the earth.