[1883] See Cambridge Hist. of Mod. Europe, I, especially Lea's chapter; Janssen, Deutsches Volk, VIII; Schultz, Höf. Leben, I, 452; same author, Deutsch. Leben, 254, 257, 277, 283; Du Laure, Paris, 268; Scherr, Kulturgesch., 222, on the fifteenth century.
[1884] Schultz, D. L., 283.
CHAPTER XVI
SACRAL HARLOTRY. CHILD SACRIFICE
Men's clubhouses.—Consecrated women.—Relation of sacral harlotry and child sacrifice.—Reproduction and food supply.—The Gilgamesh epic.—The Adonis myth.—Religious ritual, religious drama, and harlotry.—The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion.—Religion and the mores.—Cases of sacral harlotry.—The same customs in the Old Testament.—The antagonism of abundance and excess.—Survivals of sacral harlotry; analogous customs in Hindostan.—Lingam and yoni.—Conventionalization.—Criticism of the mores of Hindostan.—Mexican mores; drunkenness.—Japanese mores.—Chinese religion and mores.—Philosophy of the interest in reproduction; incest.—The archaic is sacred.—Child sacrifice.—Beast sacrifice substituted for child sacrifice.—Mexican doctrine of greater power through death.—Motives of child sacrifice.—Dedication by vows.—Degeneration of the custom of consecrating women.—Our traditions come from Israel.—How the Jewish view of sensuality prevailed.
The topics treated in this chapter are further illustrations of the power of the mores to make anything right, and to protect anything from condemnation. See also Chapter [XVII.]
585. Men's clubhouses. It is a very common custom in barbaric society that the men have a clubhouse in which they spend much of their time together and in which the unmarried men sleep. Such houses are centers of intrigue, enterprise, amusement, and vice. The men work there, carry on shamanistic rites, hold dances, entertain guests, and listen to narratives by the elders. Women are excluded altogether or at times. In the Caroline Islands such houses are institutions of social and religious importance. While the women of the place may not enter them, those from a neighboring place live in them for a time in license, but return home with payment which is used partly for religious purposes and partly for themselves.[1885]
586. Consecrated women. It may even be said to be the current view of uncivilized peoples, up to the full development of the father family, that women have free control of their own persons until they are married, when they pass under a taboo which they are bound to observe. Therefore before marriage they may accumulate a dowry. Very many cases also occur of men-women and women-men, persons of either sex who assume the functions and mode of life of the other. Cases also occur in barbarism of women consecrated to the gods. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of West Africa[1886] girls of ten or twelve are received and educated for three years in the chants and dances of worship, serving the priests. At the end of the time they become public women, but are under no reproach, because they are regarded as married to the god and acting under his direction. Properly they should be restricted to the worshipers at the temple, but they are not. Probably such was the original taboo which is now relaxed and decayed. Children whom such women bear belong to the god. The institution "is essentially religious in its origin and is intimately connected with phallic worship."