Religion & Sex: Studies in the Pathology of Religious DevelopmentCohen, Chapman
Religion
Religion & Sex: Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development
Cohen, Chapman
Sex -- Religious aspects
fashion, the top of which was worn away from being constantly washed
with wine." The temple of St. Eutropius, destroyed by the Huguenots, is
said to have contained a similar figure. From Mr. Sidney Hartland's
collection of practices for obtaining children I take the following:--
"At Bourg-Dieu, in the diocese of Bourges, a similar saint" (similar to
the priapean figure previously described) "was called Guerlichon or
Greluchon. There after nine days' devotions women stretched themselves
on the horizontal figure of the saint, and then scraped the phallus for
mixture in water as a drink. Other saints were worshipped elsewhere in
France with equivalent rites. Down to the Revolution there stood at
Brest a chapel of Saint Guignolet containing a priapean statue of the
holy man. Women who were, or feared to be, sterile used to go and scrape
a little of the prominent member, which they put into a glass of water
from the well and drank. The same practice was followed at the Chapel of
Saint Pierre-à-Croquettes in Brabant until 1837, when the archæologist
Schayes called attention to it, and thereupon the ecclesiastical
authorities removed the cause of scandal. Women have, however, still
continued to make votive offerings of pins down almost, if not quite, to
the present day. At Antwerp stood at the gateway to the Church of Saint
Walburga in the Rue des Pêcheurs a statue, the sexual organ of which
had been entirely scraped away by women for the same purpose."[89]
From what has been said, it will not be difficult to understand the
existence of the custom of religious prostitution. Considering the
sexual impulse as specially connected with a supernatural force, man
pays it religious honour, and comes to identify its manifestations as an
expression of the supernatural and also as an act of worship towards it.
In India the practice existed, when most temples had their 'bayadères.'
In ancient Chaldea every woman was compelled to prostitute herself once
in her life in the temple of the goddess Mylitta--the Chaldean Venus.
This custom existed elsewhere, and by it the woman was compelled to
remain within the temple enclosures until some man chose her, from whom
she received a piece of money. The money, of course, belonged to the
temple.[90] In Greece, Carthage, Syria, etc., we find the same custom.
Among the Jews, so orthodox a commentary as Smith's _Bible Dictionary_
admits that the 'Kadechim' attached to the temple were prostitutes. The
frequent references to the service of the 'groves' surrounding the
temple irresistibly suggest their likeness to the groves around the
temples of Mylitta, and their use for the same purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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