587. Sacral harlotry and child sacrifice. These observations may serve to introduce a study of the phenomena, so incomprehensible to us, of sacral prostitution and child sacrifice. That study is calculated to show us that the mores define right and wrong. It would be a great mistake to regard the above cases as mere aberrations of sex appetite. The usages had their origin in interests. Sacral harlotry was a substitute for the child sacrifice of females. The other incidental interests found advantage in it. It was an attempt to solve problems of life. It was regarded as conducive to welfare, and was connected with religion. It was kept up by the conservatism and pertinacity of religious usage until a later time and another set of conditions, when it became vicious.

588. Reproduction and food supply. The operations of nature by which plants and animals reproduce are of great interest and importance to man, because on them depends the abundance of his food supply. It is impossible to tell when this interest would "begin," but it would become intense whenever the number of men was great in proportion to the food supply. Hence the rainfall, the course of the seasons, the prevalence of winds, the conjunction of astronomical phenomena with spawning or fruit seasons, and the habits of plants and animals caught the feeble attention of savage man and taught him facts of nature, through his eagerness to get signs of coming plenty or suggestions as to his own plans and efforts. Attention has been called to a very interesting fact about the fructification of the domesticated date palm wherever oasis cultivation prevailed in western Asia.[1887] The fructification must be artificial. Men carry the pollen to the female plant and adopt devices to distribute it on the wind or by artificial contact. At the present time this is done by attaching a bunch of the male seed on a branch to windward.[1888] Tylor first suggested that certain ancient pictorial representations are meant to depict the work of artificial fructification as carried on by mythological persons,—cherubim, who represent the winds.[1889] The function of the wind distributing the seed is divine work. The tree is of such supreme value[1890] that the well living of men depends on this operation. The sex conjunction therefore was the most important and beneficent operation in nature, and correct knowledge of it was the prime condition of getting an abundant food supply. Man followed the operation with all the interest of the food supply and all the awe of religion. It is certain that his interest in it was "innocent." He began to mythologize about it on account of the grand elements of welfare, risk, and skill which were in it. A parallel case is furnished by the treatment accorded to rice by the Javanese. It is to them the great article of food supply. They endow it with a soul and ascribe to it sex passion. They have ceremonies by which to awaken this passion in the rice as a means of increasing their own food supply. The ceremonies consist in sympathetic magic by men and women at night.[1891]

589. The Gilgamesh epic. The Gilgamesh epic which originated in the Euphrates valley more than 2000 years B.C.[1892] consists of a number of episodes which were later collected and coördinated into a single work like other great epics. Jastrow[1893] construes it as a variation of the story of Adam and Eve. Gilgamesh is a hero admired by all women. The elders of Uruk beg his mother, the mother-goddess Aruru (a form of Ishtar), to restrain him. In order to comply she makes of clay Eabani, a satyr-like, hairy wild man, with a tail and horns, who lives with the beasts. Jastrow thinks that this means that he consorted with female beasts, having as yet no female of his own species. No one could capture him, so the god Shamash assailed him by lust, sending to him a priestess of Ishtar who won him to herself (woman) away from beasts. She said to him: "Thou shalt be like a god. Why dost thou lie with beasts?" "She revealed his soul to Eabani." She was, therefore, a culture heroine, and the myth means that, with the knowledge of sex, awoke consciousness, intelligence, and civilization. Eabani followed the priestess to Uruk, where he and Gilgamesh became comrades,—heroes of war and slayers of monsters. Ishtar fell in love with Gilgamesh, but he refused her because all men and beasts whom she loved she reduced to misery. Her vengeance for this rejection brings woe and death on the two friends. The Mexicans had a similar myth that the sun god and the maize goddess produced life in vegetation by their sex activity. The sun god contracted venereal disease so that they probably connected syphilis with sexual excess.[1894] In the worship of Ishtar at Uruk there were three grades of harlot priestesses, and there the temple consecration of women was practiced in recognition of the connection between the service of Ishtar and civilization. At first the goddesses of life and of love were the same. The Venus of reproduction and the Venus of carnal lust were later distinguished. At some periods the distinction was sharply maintained. At other times the former Venus was only an intermediary to lead to the latter. The Mexicans had two goddesses,—one of chaste, the other of impure, love. The festivals of the former were celebrated with obscene rites; those of the latter with the self-immolation of harlots, with excessive language and acts. The goddess was thought to be rejuvenated by the death of the harlots. The obscene rites were at war with the current mores of the people at the time. The demons of license became the guardians of good morals. They concealed the phallus. Sins of license were confessed to the gods of license.[1895] Teteoinnan, the maize-mother, also became a harlot through the work of furthering growth, but in the service of the state she punished transgressions of the sex taboo.[1896] This is as if the need of the taboo having been learned by the consequences of license and excess, the goddess of the latter became the guardian of the former. In the Semitic religions the beginning and end of life were attributed to supernatural agencies dangerous to man.[1897] The usages to be mentioned below show that this was not an abstract dogma, but was accepted as the direct teaching of experience.

590. The Adonis myth. There was in the worship of Ishtar wailing for Tammuz (Adonis). He was either the son or the husband of Ishtar. She went to Hades to rescue him. His death was a myth for the decay of vegetation, and his resurrection was a myth for its revival. The former was celebrated with lamentations; the latter with extravagant rejoicings and sex license.[1898] This legend, which under local modifications and much syncretism existed until long after Christianity was introduced in the Greco-Roman world, coincides with the laws of Hammurabi as to harlot priestesses.

591. Sacral harlotry. Three things which later reached strong independent development are here united,—religious ritual, religious drama (with symbols, pantomime, and mysteries which later came to be considered indecent), and harlotry. Sacral harlotry was the only harlotry. It was normal and was not a subject of ethical misgiving. It was a part of the religious and social system. When, later, prostitution became an independent social fact and was adjudged bad, sacral harlotry long continued under the conventionalization and persistence of religious usage (sec. 74), but then the disapproval of prostitution in the mores produced an ethical war which resulted in the abolition of harlotry. Sacral harlotry, while it lasted, was practiced for one of two purposes,—to collect a dowry for the women or to collect money for the temple.

592. The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion. Herodotus[1899] states that the women of the Lydians and of some peoples on the island of Cyprus collected a dowry by freedom before marriage; that a woman chosen by the god from the whole nation remained in the little cell on top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which religion and sex license are so strongly antagonized that religion seems to us an independent force, of "divine origin," which is sent into the world with an inherent character of antisensuality, or as a revelation of the harm and wickedness of certain sex acts. That notion, however, is a part of our Jewish inheritance. The fact stated by Herodotus is no longer doubted. It is only one in a series of parallel cases, all of which must have originated in similar ideas and have been regarded as contributing in the same way to human welfare. Preuss[1900] attempts to explain it. "It is only to be understood if men earlier, in order to make natural objects prosper, had practiced sex usages of a kind which later, according to the mores of daily life, seemed to them to be prostitution. From this development came the fact that the Germans called the Corn-mother the 'Great Harlot.'" We know that men have sacrificed their children and other human beings, the selected being the bravest or most beautiful; that they have mutilated themselves in all ways from the slightest to the most serious; that they have celebrated the most extravagant orgies; and that they have acted against their own most important interests,—all in the name of religion. There is nothing in religion itself which antagonizes sensuality, cruelty, and other base elements in human nature. Religion has its independent origin in supposed interests, and makes its own demands on men. The demands of religion are sacrifices and ritual observances. The whole religious system is evolved within the circle of interests, ideas, and mores which the society possesses at the time. Religion also finds adjustment and consistency with all other interests and tastes of the group at the time. A father of many daughters would use the temple service as a way to provide for one of them.[1901] Religion is also extremely persistent. Therefore it holds and carries over to later ages customs which once were beneficial, but which at the later time are authoritative but harmful. If parents threw their children into the furnace to Molech, why should they not devote their daughters to Ishtar? If they once practiced sympathetic magic to make rice grow, religion might carry the customs over to a time when they would be shocking and abominable. Although the survival of these customs became sensual and corrupting, it is certain that it was not their original purpose to serve sensuality. They were not devices to cultivate or gratify licentiousness. We know of no case of a primitive custom with such a purpose. The provisions in the laws of Hammurabi are as simple and matter-of-fact as possible. They are provisions for actual interests which, it seemed, ought to be provided for. Another proof of the innocence of the customs is that in independent cases the same customs were established. The customs were responses of men to the great agents who (as they thought they perceived) wrought things in nature. The methods and means used by the agents were revered. They could not be despised or disapproved by men. Therefore reproduction was religious and sex was consecrated. The whole realm was one of mystery and wonder. Men became as gods by knowledge of it. From that knowledge they acquired power to make things grow and so got food and escaped want. The interest in sex, and the customs connected with it, was revivified in connection with agriculture. The mode of fructifying the date palm was a very great discovery in natural science. Primitive men would turn it into a religious fact and rule. The inference that women should be consecrated to the goddess of life and that in her service reproduction should be their sacred duty was in the logic of primitive people. Ishtar was polyandrous, but she turned into Astarte, the wife of the chief Baal, or else she became androgyne and then masculine. There is a virgin mother and a mother of the gods. The idea of the latter continued with invincible persistency. She may be unmarried, choosing her partners at will, or "queen, head, and first born of all gods."[1902] In these changes we see the religious notions and the mores adjusting themselves to each other. As long as the underlying notions were true and sincere and the logic was honest, the usages were harmless. When the original notions were lost, or the logic became an artificial cover for a real ethical inconsistency, and the customs were kept up, perhaps to give gain to priests, the usages served licentiousness.

593. Religion and the mores. Religion never has been an independent force acting from outside creatively to mold the mores or the ideas of men. Evidently such an idea is the extreme form of the world philosophy in which another (spiritual) world is conceived of as impinging upon this one from "above," to give it laws and guidance. The mores grow out of the life as a whole. They change with the life conditions, density of population, and life experience. Then they become strange or hostile to traditional religion. In our own experience our mores have reached views about ritual practices, polygamy, slavery, celibacy, etc., which are strange or hostile to those in the Bible. Since the sixteenth century we have reconstructed our religion to fit our modern ideas and mores. Every religious reform in history has come about in this way. All religious doctrines and ritual acts are held immutable by strong interests and notions of religious duty. Therefore they fall out of consistency with the mores, which are in constant change, being acted on by all the observation or experience of life. Sacral harlotry is a case, the ethical horror of which is very great and very obvious to us, of old religious ideas and customs preserved by the religion into times of greatly changed moral (i.e. of the mores) and social codes.

594. Cases of sacral harlotry. Survivals of sacral harlotry are found in historic Egypt. Even under the Cæsars the most beautiful girl of the noble families of Thebes was chosen to be consecrated in the temple of Ammon. She gained honor and profit by the life of a courtesan, and always found a grand marriage when she retired on account of age. In all the temples there were women attached to the service of the gods. They were of different grades and ranks and were supposed to entertain the god as harem women entertained princes. In the temples of goddesses women were the functionaries and obtained great honor and power.[1903] Constantine demolished the temples of impure cult in Phœnicia and Egypt and caused the priests to be scattered by soldiers. Farnell[1904] thinks that the Babylonian custom (especially because it was required that the man should be a stranger) was due to fear of harm from the nuptial blood. The attendants in the temples are known as "hierodules." Otto[1905] says that the hierodules were not temple slaves, or harlots, but he finds evidence that the temples had income from temple harlots. The Phœnicians who settled Carthage took the religion of western Asia with them. Perhaps there was an element of sensuality in the antecedent religion of north Africa which united with that of the imported religion. This would account for the cultus at Sicca, in Numidia. There was there a temple of Astarte or Tanith in which women lived who never went forth except to collect a dowry by harlotry.[1906] At Byblos (Gebal), in Phœnicia, there was a great temple of the same goddess at which there were elaborate celebrations of the Adonis myth. There was sacral harlotry for strangers only, the money going as a sacrifice to the goddess. Every woman must have her head shaved in mourning for Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal numen." "The identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems also to be identical with Dido."[1909] "The Arabian Lat was worshiped by the Nabatæans as mother-of-the-gods and must be identified with the virgin-mother whose worship at Petra is described by Epiphanius."[1910] In the worship of Anaitis in Armenia male and female slaves were dedicated to the goddess, but men of rank also consecrated their daughters. After long service they married, no one considering them degraded. They were not mercenary, being well provided for by their families. Therefore they received only their social equals.[1911] Baal Peor seems also to have been a case of sacral harlotry.[1912] The strongest reason for thinking so is Hosea ix. 10. Rosenbaum[1913] interprets the pestilence as venereal. The kedeshim (male prostitutes) were expelled from Judah by Asa.[1914] They had been there since Rehoboam.[1915] They are heard of again.[1916] They were under vows and brought their earnings to Jahveh.[1917] Farnell[1918] interprets a fragment of Pindar as proof of sacral harlotry at Corinth. At a temple of the Epizephyrian Locri it was practiced in fulfillment of a vow made by the people, under some ancient insult, to consecrate their daughters if the goddess would help them.[1919] Farnell also[1920] directs attention to a case in Sicily where the connection is with the Carthaginian Eryx. In the Cistellaria of Plautus the usage is referred to as Tuscan.[1921] Augustus rebuilt Carthage and it appears that the old usages had survived the interval of one hundred and fifty years. The temple of Tanith was rebuilt and called that of the celestial virgin. The Romans forbade sacral harlotry, which was in strong antagonism to their sex mores. Hahn has called attention[1922] to a passage which proves the existence of sacral harlotry in Scandinavia just before the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century. The hero remains through the winter with the woman who was the consecrated attendant of the god Frey and who traveled about with his wooden image. The people take the hero to be the god, and rejoice when the priestess becomes a mother by him.[1923] The Mexicans, with the same interests, under like conditions evolved the same customs and similar ideas. Mayas of the lowest classes sent out their daughters to earn their own marriage portions.[1924]

595. The same customs in the Old Testament. In 1 Sam. i Hannah vowed that if God would give her a son she would devote him to the Lord, in sign of which no razor should touch him. She gave him to be an ædituus, who lived in the temple awaiting divine instructions and commissions. In Josh. ix. 23, 27 we have a case of war captives condemned to menial service in the temple. In Ezek. xliv. 8, 9, the people are blamed for putting heathen in the temple service instead of doing it themselves. The kedeshim, temple prostitutes of both sexes, are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, especially at every reformation of the religion. They seem to become objects of condemnation within the period of the history.

596. Antagonism of abundance and excess. The Germans had a Corn-mother, a goddess of agricultural growth and fertility. The Mexicans also had a mother-of-the-gods, Teteoinnan. The former became a harlot. The latter, by her sex activity, brought about growth and abundant reproduction, and became a goddess of lewdness.[1925] Thus wherever the agricultural interest controls this set of ideas we see the struggle between the idea that unrestrained sex indulgence produces abundance and the idea that it produces excess, lewdness, and harm. We can still trace to the metaphorical use of "mother," "father," and "son," and also to the use of the same words to express the possession of a quality in a high degree, or a tie of destiny, some of the most important concepts of our own religion.