Free Sexuality, Magic and Perversion by Francis King

ripened in the autumn, died in the winter, and then, in the spring, the whole cycle began again with fresh life springing from the “dead” husks of the old. Even in non-temperate climates, where the progression of the seasons was by no means so easily observed, man became aware of similar cyclical patterns—the alternation of “dry” and “monsoon period”, the return of the “heliacal rising” of some star, or the complexities of the lunar cycle. This last, which requires extremely sophisticated observation, 3 was of particular interest because of the supposed correlation between the twenty-eight day “full moon to full moon” cycle and the menstrual cycle of the human female.
    For technological urban man it is easy to see the fertility cycle as a mere series of easily explained natural phenomena but primitive man conceived of it as a product of the personalised and hierarchic structure of nature itself; for nature was regarded as having some features in common with humanity, as being approachable by and communicable with mankind, and as being hierarchic, in that it was made up of a hierarchy of spiritual entities extending downwards from the “sky father” and the “earth mother” to the minor godlets of springs, trees and rivers.
    The fourth characteristic of all fertility cults—a belief in the law of cause and effect—was a necessary corollary of and depended upon, the second and third characteristics I have previously described. The fertility cycle was not seen as an event that “just happened”, but as being caused by (and its continuance depending upon) the benevolent intervention of the many non-human entities who made up the hierarchy of nature. Thus either crop-failure or the sterility of man and/or beastwere never considered to be the result of “natural disasters”, instead they were seen as the results of supernatural powers deliberately with-holding the gift of life.
    From the belief in supernatural forces as the causative factors in the fertility cycle sprang much of primitive magic and religion, 4 for the function of both these was largely the affecting of nature by either placating or manipulating the beings that controlled it.
    The overall symbolism of primitive fertility cults was often directly derived from the act of human copulation; the “sky father” 5 and other gods were represented as ithyphallic (i.e. with erect penis) and the “earth-mother” was often shown as being grossly pregnant, enormously full breasted, and with exaggerated vaginal labia. The sacred copulation of the god and goddess was frequently considered as being the original act of creation that had given birth to the universe, and this “heavenly marriage” was re-enacted each year, not only by the gods, but by human beings, thus ensuring the renewal of fertility. Homer referred to the time when “… Demeter, yielding to her desire, lay with Iasion in the thrice ploughed fallow land” and magically orientated acts of sexual intercourse performed on the freshly ploughed land were the culminating point of many fertility festivals; thus in Sparta, the “Corn King” copulated with the “Spring Queen” and in Orissa a similar annual event survived well into the seventeenth century.
    The primitive fertility religions survived in the civilisations of the ancient and classical world. Thus the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Bacchus of the Romans and the Hermes 6 of the Greeks were all phallic gods; similarly there were sexual elements in the Mysteries of Isis and there is some reason to suppose that the Mysteries of Eleusis
may
have involved (a) a veneration of the male and female sexual organs, and (b) a ritual copulation between priest and priestess.

     
    3. The Guibourg Mass—from a nineteenth-century history of sorcery.
     

     
    4. J. K. Huysman—his cat was subjected to magical attacks—see Appendix, “Copulating with Cleopatra”.
     
    There was another, and darker, side to fertility religions,