In India, the sect of Caitanya, founded in the sixteenth century, celebrated the maddest religio-sexual orgies. Their ritual consisted principally of long litanies and hymns, stuffed full with unbridled eroticism, and followed by wild dances, all leading up to the sexual culmination, in which “the love of God” (_bhakti_) was to be made as clearly perceptible as possible.[52] Even worse were the Sakta sects (the name is derived from _sakti_, force--that is, the sensuous manifestation of the god Siva). They gave themselves up with ardent sensuality to the service of the female emanations of Siva, all distinctions of caste being ignored, and wild sensual promiscuity prevailing. Divine service always preceded the act of sexual intercourse. Among the Kauchiluas, one of these Sakta sects, each of the women who took part in these divine services threw a small ornament into a box kept by the priests. After the termination of the religious festival, each male member of the congregation took one of these articles out of the box, whereupon the possessor of the article must give herself to him in the subsequent unbridled sexual excesses, even if the two should happen to be brother and sister.[53] Ancient Central and South America were also familiar with wild outbreaks of a sexual-religious character. In Guatemala, on the days of the great sacrifices, there occurred sexual orgies of the worst kind, men having intercourse promiscuously with mothers, sisters, daughters, children, and concubines; and at the “Akhataymita festivals” of the ancient Peruvians, the religious observances terminated in a race between completely nude men and women, in which each man overtaking a woman immediately had sexual intercourse with her.[54] Sexual mysticism found its way also into Christianity. When the renowned theologian Usener, in his work “Mythology,” writes in relation to these matters, “the whole of paganism found its way into Christianity,” we must point out that in our view what “corrupted” Christianity was not “paganism,” but the =fundamental phenomena of primitive human nature=, the primordial connexion between religion and sexuality, which by a natural necessity manifested itself in Christianity not less than in other religions. =Thus down to the present day= we encounter the most peculiar manifestations of sexual mysticism in the most diverse Christian sects, and not merely in Roman Catholicism.