The intimate association between wine and love, as if by a chain of causality, has been established since proto-historical times. All ancient records, chronicles, supplications, ceremonials abundantly exemplify this thematic synthesis. Especially so in poetry, of all nations, and at all times. Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge with mine is merely a transposed symbolic formula for the same theme. * * * * * All kinds of foods have in the course of history been subjected to scrutiny and experiment for the purpose of extracting therefrom any indications of amatory incitements. Thus, out of the welter of magic undercurrents and legendary beliefs, superstitious rites and alchemical offerings, there arose a body of miscellaneous knowledge, largely orally transmitted but in time consolidated into a permanently durable form, dealing with periapts and panaceas that would bring back or conserve manly vigor and genesiac capacities. Among such potential means were anchovies, credited with provoking lust, onion soup and herring roe, milk pudding. Angel water also was so considered. It was shaken together with rose water, myrtle water, orange flower water, distilled spirit of musk, and spirit of ambergris. To the genitalia of the stag were attributed amatory qualities. Rockets, cakes and pastries of phallic and genital design, chocolate and ices, pills compounded of vegetable extracts, burgundy and richly garnished game came under the same energizing category. * * * * * In South East Asia, particularly in what was formerly Cambodia, annual spring festivals were held during which a gigantic lingam was carried processionally through the streets. At the ghats in the holy cities of India, notably at Benares, the sacred lingam was displayed publicly by the Brahmin priests. Around these symbols clustered Hindu women on pilgrimage, wreathing the phallic shape in flowers, smearing it with ghee. And among the throngs strode the priests, bearing phallic forms for the adoration and prostration of the people. Temple girls, bedecked with tinkling anklets, and with beringed fingers, advanced, swaying and writhing voluptuously. In similar ceremonies there was food to be consumed, and drink flowed; followed, on the part of the initiates, by a general indiscriminate promiscuity that was intended to represent spiritual identification with the Hindu deities. The erotic urgencies never rested, never rest: and the act becomes a sublimation. * * * * *