Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores — John Shaqi
Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and MoresWedeck, Harry E.
History
Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores
Wedeck, Harry E.
Aphrodisiacs -- History; Erotic literature
In Greece, the phallus, originally symbolic of the goat or bull, was
attached, disproportionately and _a posteriori_, to a human figure: so
that the phallus, in the course of time, became erroneously associated
with human capacity.
* * * * *
The Athenian orator Isocrates postulated a maxim: What is improper to do
is improper to say. Yet a rigid adherence to this view would mean a
cessation of investigations of all kinds, of many historical records and
archives, mores, and often matter that would give enlightenment on human
traditions and the more intimate details of communal, tribal, or
national life, of ethnic distinctions, of cultural progression.
Hence it might be more advisable to adapt the postulate of Isocrates and
to introduce the proviso that whatever has been done or said or written
by men should normally and regularly be transmitted to later generations
or to wider circles, provided that this transmission is intended as a
contribution to a knowledge of the past, or of contiguous races, or of
disparate mores, and as a revealing exposition of what man performed in
earlier ages, and not as a prurient and lewd inducement to wallow in
scatological or libidinous depths for mere light or indifferent or
transitory entertainment.
The anthropologist, the archaeologist, the professional scholar, the
historian are, by virtue of their interests and training and their
occupations, constantly dealing with subjects that have either been
taboo in a general sense, or that involve the most secretive
physiological and emotional human situations.
* * * * *
The ancient cult of the stars merged with religious ceremonials and
religious beliefs, emerging in the zodiacal bull. This bull was
anciently equated with the sun in its most auspicious phase, in spring
time. The sun bull later became the actual bull itself, as in the Minoan
and the Mithraic cults, and also among the Egyptians. For the bull was
now definitely the symbol of creative potency, of cosmic fecundity and
perpetuation.
* * * * *
The energized, salient phallus was the supreme symbol of being and
fertility. In antiquity it had divine significance. It was carried in
religious processions in ancient Egypt, in Greece, in the Greek islands,
in Phoenicia, Assyria, and in Chaldea and Ethiopia. In Egypt, phalli,
made of porcelain, were worn on the person as periapts.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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