A number of travellers in Africa, even in comparatively modern times, have observed evidences of sex worship among the primitive races of that continent. Captain Burton[4] speaks of this custom with the Dahome tribe. Small gods of clay are made in priapic attitudes before which the natives worship. The god is often made as if contemplating its sexual organs. Another traveler, a clergyman,[5] has described the same worship in this tribe. He has observed idols in priapic attitudes, rudely carved in wood, and others made of clay. On the lower Congo the same worship is described, where both male and female figures with disproportionate genital organs are used for purposes of worship. Phallic symbols and other offerings are made to these simple deities.
Definite examples of the sexual act having religious significance may be cited. Richard Payne Knight[6] quotes a passage from Captain Cook’s voyages to one of the Southern Pacific Islands. The Missionaries of the expedition on this occasion assembled the members of the party for religious ceremonies in which the natives joined. The primitive natives observed the ceremony with great respect and then with due solemnity enacted their form of sacred worship. Quite to the astonishment of the white people, this ceremony consisted of the open performance of the sexual act by a young Indian man and woman. This was entirely a religious ceremony, and was fittingly respected by all the natives present.
Hargrave Jennings[7] describes the same custom in India. An Indian woman of designated caste and vocation is selected. Many incantations and strange rites are gone through. A circle, or “Vacant Enchanted Place” is rendered pure by certain rites and sprinkled with wine. Then secret charms are whispered three times in the woman’s ear. The sexual act is then consummated, and the whole procedure before the altar is distinctly a form of sacrifice and worship.
Hodder M. Westropp in Primitive Symbolism has indicated the countries in which sex worship has existed. He gives numerous instances in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. In India, as well as in China and Japan, it forms the basis of early religions. This worship is described among the early races of Greece, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, and among the Mexicans and Peruvians of America as well. In Borneo, Tasmania, and Australia phallic emblems have been found. Many other localities have been mentioned by this writer and one seems fairly justified in concluding that sex worship is regularly found at one time in the development of primitive races. We shall now pass to another form of this same worship, namely, sacred prostitution.
There is abundant evidence to show that there was a time in the centuries before Christ when prostitution was held as a most sacred vocation. We learn of this practice from many sources. It appears that temples in a number of ancient cities of the East, in Babylonia, Nineveh, Corinth and throughout India, were erected for the worship of certain deities. This worship consisted of the prostitution of women. The women were consecrated to the support of the temple. They were chosen in much the same way as the modern woman enters a sacred church order. The returns from their vocation went to the support of the deity and the temple. The children born of such a union were in no way held in disgrace, but on the contrary, they appeared to have formed a separate and rather superior class. We are told that this practice did not interfere with a woman’s opportunities for subsequent marriage. In India the practice was very general at one time. The women were called the “Women of the Idol.” Richard Payne Knight speaks of a thousand sacred prostitutes living in each of the temples at Eryx and Corinth.
A custom which shows even more clearly that prostitution was held as a sacred duty to women was that in Babylonia every woman, of high rank or low, must at one time in her life prostitute herself to any stranger who offered money. In Ancient Sex Worship we read: “There was a temple in Babylonia where every female had to perform once in her life a (to us) strange act of religion, namely, prostitution with a stranger. The name of it was Bit-Shagatha, or ‘The Temple,’ the ‘Place of Union.’” Moreover we learn that once a woman entered the temple for such a sacred act she could not leave until it was performed.
The above accounts deal exclusively in the sacrifice made by women to the deity of sex. Men did not escape this sacrifice and it appears that some inflicted upon themselves an even worse one. Frazer[8] tells us of this worship which was introduced from Assyria into Rome about two hundred years before Christ. It was the worship of Cybele and Attis. These deities were attended by emasculated priests and the priests in oriental costume paraded Rome in religious ceremony.
On one occasion, namely, “the day of blood” in the Spring, the chief ceremony was held. This, among other things, consisted in fastening an effigy of the god to a pine tree, which was brought to the temple of the Goddess Cybele. A most spectacular dance about the effigy then occurred in which the priests slashed themselves with knives, the blood being offered as sacrifice. As the excitement increased the sexual nature of the ceremony became evident. To quote from Frazer: “For man after man, his veins throbbing with the music, his eyes fascinated by the sight of streaming blood, flung his garments from him, leaped forth with a shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready for the service, castrated himself on the spot. Then he ran through the city holding the bloody parts in his hands and threw them into one of the houses which he passed in his mad career.”
We see that this act directly corresponds with the part played by the female. The female prostituted herself, and the male presented his generative powers to the deity. Both the sacred prostitutes and emasculated priests were held in religious veneration.
The above references are sufficient to show that a simple form of sex worship has been quite generally found. It becomes apparent as we proceed that the worship of sex not only plays a part, but a very prominent part, in the developing mind of man. In the frank and open form of this worship it is quite clear that we are dealing with a very simple type of mind. These primitive people exhibit many of the qualities of the child. They are quite without sex consciousness. Their motives are at once both simple and direct, and they are doubtless sincere. Much misunderstanding has arisen by judging such primitive people by the standards of our present day civilization. Sex worship, while it held sway was probably quite as seriously entertained as many other beliefs; it only became degraded during a decadent age, when civilization had advanced beyond such simple conceptions of a deity, but had not evolved a satisfactory substitute.