Taboo and Genetics Part 9

50. Man, E.H. The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. Jour.

Anthr. Inst., xii, 1882.

51. Crantz, David. History of Greenland. Trans, fr. the German, 2 vols.

Longmans, Green. London, 1820.

52. Holub, E. Central South African Tribes. Jour. Anthr. Inst., x, 1881.

53. Morgan, Lewis H. Ancient Society. 560 pp. Henry Holt & Co. N.Y., 1907. (First edition, 1877).

54. Fison, Rev. Lorimer. Figian Burial Customs, jour. Anthr. Inst., x.

1881.

55. Rohde, Erwin. Psyche. 711 pp. Freiburg und Leipzig, 1894.

56. Benecke, E.F.M. Women in Greek Poetry. 256 pp. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. London, 1896.

CHAPTER II

FROM THE DAWN OF HISTORY: WOMAN AS SAINT AND WITCH

Taboos of first chapter indicate that in the early ages the fear of contamination by woman predominated; Later, emphasis fell on her mystic and uncanny power; Ancient fertility cults; Temple prost.i.tution, dedication of virgins, etc.; Ancient priestesses and prophetesses; Medicine early developed by woman added to belief in her power; Woman's psychic quality of intuition: its origin--theories--conclusion that this quality is probably physiological in origin, but aggravated by taboo repressions; Transformation in att.i.tude toward woman in the early Christian period; Psychological reasons for the persistence in religion of a Mother G.o.ddess; Development of the Christian concept; Preservation of ancient women cults as demonology; Early Christian att.i.tude toward woman as unclean and in league with demons; Culmination of belief in demonic power of woman in witchcraft persecutions; All women affected by the belief in witches and in the uncleanness of woman; Gradual development on the basis of the beliefs outlined of an ideally pure and immaculate Model Woman.

From the data of the preceding chapter, it is clear that the early ages of human life there was a dualistic att.i.tude toward woman. On the one hand she was regarded as the possessor of the mystic _mana_ force, while on the other she was the source of "bad magic" and likely to contaminate man with her weaknesses. Altogether, the study of primitive taboos would indicate that the latter conception predominated in savage life, and that until the dawn of history woman was more often regarded as a thing unclean than as the seat of a divine power.

At the earliest beginnings of civilization man's emotions seem to have swung to the opposite extreme, for emphasis fell on the mystic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. Thus it was that in ancient nations there was a deification of woman which found expression in the belief in feminine deities and the establishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn of the Christian era was the emphasis once more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon communication, and stripped of her divinity, she became the witch to be excommunicated and put to death.

All the ancient world saw something supernatural, something demoniacal, in generation. Sometimes the act was deified, as in the phallic ceremonials connected with nature wors.h.i.+p, where the procreative principle in man became identified with the creative energy pervading all nature, and was used as a magic charm at the time of springtime planting to insure the fertility of the fields and abundant harvest,[1]

It was also an important part of the ritual in the Phrygian cults, the cult of the Phoenician Astarte, and the Aphrodite cults. These mystery religions were widely current in the Graeco-Roman world in pre-Christian times. The cult of Demeter and Dionysius in Greece and Thrace; Cybele and Attis in Phrygia; Atagartes in Cilicia; Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria; Ashtart and Eshmun (Adon) in Phoenicia; Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylonia; Isis, Osiris and Serapis in Egypt, and Mithra in Persia--all were developed along the same lines.[2] The custom of the sacrifice of virginity to the G.o.ds, and the inst.i.tution of temple prost.i.tution, also bear witness to the sacred atmosphere with which the s.e.x act was surrounded among the early historic peoples.[3] It was this idea of the mysterious sanct.i.ty of s.e.x which did much to raise woman to her position as divinity and fertility G.o.ddess.

The dedication of virgins to various deities, of which the cla.s.sic example is the inst.i.tution of the Vestal Virgins at Rome, and the fact that at Thebes and elsewhere even the male deities had their priestesses as well as priests, are other indications that at this time woman was regarded as divine or as capable of ministering to divinity. The prophetic powers of woman were universally recognized. The oracles at Delphi, Argos, Epirus, Thrace and Arcadia were feminine. Indeed the Sibylline prophetesses were known throughout the Mediterranean basin.[A]

[Footnote A: Farnell[4] found such decided traces of feminine divinity as to incline him to agree with Bachofen that there was at one time an age of Mutterrecht which had left its impress on religion as well as on other aspects of social life. As we have said before, it is now fairly well established that in the transition from metronymic to patronymic forms, authority did not pa.s.s from women to men but from the brothers and maternal uncles of the women of the group to husbands and sons. This fact does not, however, invalidate the significance of Farnell's data for the support of the view herein advanced, i.e., that woman was at one time universally considered to partake of the divine.]

The widespread character of the woman-cult of priestesses and prophetesses among the peoples from whom our culture is derived is evidenced in literature and religion. That there had been cults of ancient mothers who exerted moral influence and punished crime is shown by the Eumenides and Erinyes of the Greeks. The power of old women as law-givers survived in Rome in the legend of the c.u.maean Sibyl.[5] An index of the universality of the sibylline cult appears in the list of races to which Varro and Lactantius say they belonged: Persian, Libyan, Delphian, Cimmerian, Erythrian, Trojan, and Phrygian.[6] These sibyls were believed to be inspired, and generations of Greek and Roman philosophers never doubted their power. Their carmina were a court of last resort, and their books were guarded by a sacred taboo.

Among the Greeks and neighbouring nations the women of Thessaly had a great reputation for their charms and incantations.[7] Among the writers who speak of a belief in their power are: Plato, Aristophanes, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Tibullus, Seneca, Lucan, Menander, and Euripides.

All of the northern European tribes believed in the foresight of future events by women. Strabo says of the Cimbri that when they took the field they were accompanied by venerable, h.o.a.ry-headed prophetesses, clothed in long, white robes. Scandinavians, Gauls, Germans, Danes and Britons obeyed, esteemed and venerated females who dealt in charms and incantations. These sacred women claimed to foretell the future and to interpret dreams, and among Germans, Celts and Gauls they were the only physicians and surgeons. The druidesses cured disease and were believed to have power superior to that of the priests.[8] The Germans never undertook any adventure without consulting their prophetesses.[9] The Scandinavian name for women endowed with the gift of prophecy was _fanae_, _fanes_. The English form is _fay_. The ceremonies of fays or fairies, like those of the druidesses, were performed in secluded woods.[A]

[Footnote A: Joan of Arc was asked during her trial if she were a fay.]

Magic and medicine went hand in hand in ancient times, and remained together down to the middle ages. Old herbals largely compiled from the lore of ancient women form a link in the chain of tradition, the first ring of which may have been formed in Egypt or in Greece. There is no doubt that women from an early date tried to cure disease. Homer makes mention of Hecamede and her healing potions. There seems little doubt that there were Greek women who applied themselves to a complete study of medicine and contributed to the advance of medical science. This traditional belief in the power of women to cure disease survives in the folk to-day.[10]

In view of the widespread veneration of a peculiar psychic quality of woman, a power of prophecy and a property of divinity which has made her an object of fear and wors.h.i.+p, it may be well to review the modern explanations of the origin of this unique feminine power. Herbert Spencer was of the opinion that feminine penetration was an ability to distinguish quickly the pa.s.sing feelings of those around and was the result of long ages of barbarism during which woman as the weaker s.e.x was obliged to resort to the arts of divination and to cunning to make up for her lack of physical force and to protect herself and her offspring.[11] In like vein Kathe Schirmacher, a German feminist, says: "The celebrated intuition of woman is nothing but an astonis.h.i.+ng refinement of the senses through fear.... Waiting in fear was made the life task of the s.e.x."[12]

Lester F. Ward had a somewhat different view.[13] He thought that woman's psychic power came from the sympathy based on the maternal instinct, which "though in itself an entirely different faculty, early blended with or helped to create, the derivative reason-born faculty of altruism." With Ward's view Olive Schreiner agrees, saying: "We have no certain proof that it is so at present, but woman's long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as childbearer and protector of infancy, may be found in the future to have endowed her ...

with an exceptional width of human sympathy and instinctive comprehension."[14]

In all probability Lombroso came nearer to the truth in his explanation of feminine penetration. "That woman is more subject to hysteria is a known fact," he says, "but few know how liable she is to hypnotic phenomena, which easily opens up the unfoldment of spiritual faculties.... The history of observation proves that hysteria and hypnotism take the form of magic, sorcery, and divination or prophecy, among savage peoples. 'Women,' say the Pishawar peoples, 'are all witches; for several reasons they may not exert their inborn powers.'

... In the Slave Coast hysterical women are believed to be possessed with spirits. The Fuegians believed that there had been a time when women wielded the empire through her possession of the secrets of sorcery."[8, pp.85f.]

The history of modern spiritualism has so well confirmed this view of Lombroso's that we are safe in accepting it as the partial explanation of the attribute of a mysterious and uncanny power which man has always given to the feminine nature. The power of prophecy and divination which was possessed by women at the dawn of history and for some time thereafter was probably not different in its essentials from the manifestations of hysterical girls who have puzzled the wisest physicians or the strange phenomena of those spiritualistic mediums who have been the subject of research well into our own times.[15]

If we wish to push our inquiry still further and ask why woman should be so much more subject than man to hysterical seizures and to hypnotic suggestion, we shall probably find that it is an essential part of her femininity. Modern psychology and physiology have pointed out that the menstrual cycle of woman has a vast influence not only on her emotional nature but on her whole psychic life, so that there are times when she is more nervously tense, more apt to become hysterical or to yield to the influence of suggestion. Moreover, because of the emphasis on chast.i.ty and the taboos with which she was surrounded, any neurotic tendencies which might be inherent in her nature were sure to be developed to the utmost.

As Lombroso suggests, hysteria and other neurotic phenomena are cla.s.sed as evidence of spirit possession by the untutored mind. Thus it happened that observing the strange psychic manifestations to which woman was periodically subject, the ancient peoples endowed her with spiritualistic forces which were sometimes held to be beneficent and at other times malefic in character. Whatever the att.i.tude at any time whether her _mana_ were regarded as evil or benignant, the savage and primitive felt that it was well to be on his guard in the presence of power; so that the taboos previously outlined would hold through the swing of man's mind from one extreme to the other.

As G.o.ddess, priestess and prophetess, woman continued to play her role in human affairs until the Christian period, when a remarkable transformation took place. The philosophy of dualism that emanated from Persia had affected all the religions of the Mediterranean Basin and had worked its way into Christian beliefs by way of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Neo-Platonism. Much of the writing of the church fathers is concerned with the effort to harmonize conflicting beliefs or to avoid the current heresies. To one who reads the fathers it becomes evident to what extent the relation of man to woman figures in these controversies.[16]

The Manicheanism which held in essence Persian Mithraism and which had so profound an influence on the writings of St. Augustine gave body and soul to two distinct worlds and finally identified woman with the body.

But probably as a result of the teachings of Gnosticism with its Neo-Platonic philosophy which never entirely rejected feminine influence, some of this influence survived in the restatement of religion for the folk. When the restatement was completed and was spreading throughout Europe in the form which held for the next millennium, it was found that the early G.o.ddesses had been accepted among the saints, the priestesses and prophetesses were rejected as witches, while the needs of men later raised the Blessed Virgin to a place beside her son.

Modern psychology has given us an explanation of the difficulty of eradicating the wors.h.i.+p of such a G.o.ddess as the Great Mother of Asia Minor from the religion of even martial peoples who fear the contamination of woman's weakness; or from a religion obsessed with hatred of woman as unclean by men who made the suppression of bodily pa.s.sions the central notion of sanct.i.ty. The most persistent human relations.h.i.+p, the one charged with a constant emotional value, is not that of s.e.x, which takes manifold forms, but that of the mother and child. It is to the mother that the child looks for food, love, and protection. It is to the child that the mother often turns from the mate, either because of the predominance of mother love over s.e.x or in consolation for the loss of the love of the male. We have only recently learned to evaluate the infantile patterns engraved in the neural tissue during the years of childhood when the mother is the central figure of the child's life. Whatever disillusionments may come about other women later in life, the mother ideal thus established remains a constant part of man's unconscious motivations. It is perhaps possible that this infantile picture of a being all-wise, all-tender, all-sacrificing, has within it enough emotional force to create the demand for a mother-G.o.ddess in any religion.

To arrive at the concept of the Madonna, a far-reaching process of synthesis and reinterpretation must have been carried out before the Bible could be brought into harmony with the demands made by a cult of a mother G.o.ddess. Just as the views brought into the church by celibate ideals spread among heathen people, so the church must have been in its turn influenced by the heathen way of looking at things.[17] One of the great difficulties was the reconciliation of the biological process of procreation with divinity. But there had for ages been among primitive peoples the belief that impregnation was caused by spirit possession or by sorcery. This explanation had survived in a but slightly altered form in the ancient mythologies, all of which contained traditions of heroes and demi-G.o.ds who were born supernaturally of a divine father and a human mother. In the myths of Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato, it was intimated that the father had been a G.o.d or spirit, and that the mother had been, and moreover remained after the birth, an earthly virgin. These old and precious notions of the supernatural origin of great men were not willingly renounced by those who accepted the new religion; nor was it necessary to make such a sacrifice, because men thought that they could recognize in the Jewish traditions something corresponding to the heathen legends.[18]

The proper conditions for the development of a mother cult within Christianity existed within the church by the end of the second century.

At the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it was settled that the Son was of the same nature as the Father. The question of the nature of Mary then came to the fore. The eastern fathers, Athanasius, Ephraim Syrus, Eusebius and Chrysostom, made frequent use in their writings of the term Theotokos, Mother of G.o.d. When Nestorius attacked those who wors.h.i.+pped the infant Christ as a G.o.d and Mary as the mother of G.o.d rather than as the mother of Christ, a duel began between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius "which in fierceness and importance can only be compared with that between Arius and Athanasius."[19]

In 431 A.D. the Universal Church Council at Ephesus a.s.sented to the doctrine that Mary was the Mother of G.o.d. Thus Ephesus, home of the great Diana, from primitive times the centre of the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.ddess who united in herself the virtues of virginity and motherhood, could boast of being the birthplace of the Madonna cult. And thus Mary, our Lady of Sorrows, pure and undefiled, "the church's paradox," became the ideal of man. She was "a woman, virgin and mother, sufficiently high to be wors.h.i.+pped, yet sufficiently near to be reached by affection. ... If we judge myths as artistic creations we must recognize that no G.o.d or G.o.ddess has given its wors.h.i.+ppers such an ideal as the Mary of Christian art and poetry."[19: p.183] [20: v. ii., pp.220f.]

Although Christianity thus took over and embodied in its doctrines the cult of the mother-G.o.ddess, at the same time it condemned all the rites which had accompanied the wors.h.i.+p of the fertility G.o.ddesses in all the pagan religions. The power of these rites was still believed in, but they were supposed to be the work of demons, and we find them strictly forbidden in the early ecclesiastical laws. The phallic ceremonials which formed so large a part of heathen ritual became marks of the devil, and the deities in whose honour they were performed, although losing none of their power, were regarded as demonic rather than divine in nature. Diana, G.o.ddess of the moon, for example, became identified with Hecate of evil repute, chief of the witches. "In such a fas.h.i.+on the religion of Greece, that of Egypt, of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, of a.s.syria and of Persia, became mingled and confused in a simple demonology."[21]

In addition to the condemnation of Pagan deities and their ritualistic wors.h.i.+p, there was a force inherent in the very nature of Christianity which worked toward the degradation of the s.e.x life. After the death of Christ, his followers had divorced their thoughts from all things earthly and set about fitting themselves for their places in the other world. The thought of the early Christian sects was obsessed by the idea of the second coming of the Messiah. The end of the world was incipient, therefore it behooved each and every one to purge himself from sin. This emphasis on the spiritual as opposed to the fleshly became fixated especially on the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p, which came to be the symbol of the l.u.s.ts of the body which must be conquered by the high desires of the soul. Consequently the feelings concerning this relation became surcharged with all the emotion which modern psychology has taught us always attaches to the conscious symbol of deeply underlying unconscious complexes. In such a situation man, who had come to look with horror on the being who reminded him that he was flesh as well as spirit saw in her "the Devil's gateway," or "a fires.h.i.+p continually striving to get along side the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces."[22][A]

[Footnote A: Dr Donaldson, translator of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, says: "I used to believe ... that woman owes her present position to Christianity ... but in the first three centuries I have not been able to see that Christianity had any favourable effect on the position of woman."]

With the rejection of the idea of the sanct.i.ty of s.e.x as embodied in the phallic rituals of the pagan cults, the psychic power of woman became once more a thing of fear rather than of wors.h.i.+p, and her uncleanness was emphasized again more than her holiness, even as in primitive times.

The power of woman to tell the course of future events which in other days had made her revered as priestess and prophetess now made her hated as a witch who had control of what the Middle Ages knew as the Black Art.[23] The knowledge of medicine which she had acquired through the ages was now thought to be utilized in the making of "witch's brew," and the "ceremonies and charms whereby the influence of the G.o.ds might be obtained to preserve or injure"[21: v.1, p.12] became incantations to the evil one. In addition to her natural erotic attraction for the male, woman was now accused of using charms to lure him to his destruction.

The asceticism of the church made it shameful to yield to her allurements, and as a result woman came to be feared and loathed as the arch-temptress who would destroy man's attempt to conform to celibate ideals. This s.e.x antagonism culminated in the witchcraft persecutions which make so horrible a page of the world's history.

Among the pagans, witches had shared with prophetesses and priestesses a degree of reverence and veneration. Medea had taught Jason to tame the brazen-footed bulls and dragons which guarded the Golden Fleece. Hecate was skilled in spells and incantations. Horace frequently mentions with respect Canidia, who was a powerful enchantress. Gauls, Britons and Germans had obeyed and venerated women who dealt in charms and incantations. The doctrines of Christianity had changed the veneration into hatred and detestation without eradicating the belief in the power of the witch. It was with the hosts of evil that she was now believed to have her dealings, however. When this notion of the alliance between demons and women had become a commonplace, "the whole tradition was directed against woman as the Devil's instrument, basely seductive, pa.s.sionate and licentious by nature."[24] Man's fear of woman found a frantic and absurd expression in her supposed devil-wors.h.i.+p. As a result, the superst.i.tions about witchcraft became for centuries not only a craze, but a theory held by intelligent people.

Among the female demons who were especially feared were: Nahemah, the princess of the Succubi; Lilith, queen of the Stryges; and the Lamiae or Vampires, who fed on the living flesh of men. Belief in the Vampires still persists as a part of the folklore of Europe. Lilith tempted to debauchery, and was variously known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a witch who changed true offspring for fairy or phantom children.[A]

The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient apocryphal book called the Testament of Soloman, and dates probably from the first or second century of the Christian Era.[25]

[Footnote A: The name of Lilith carries us as far back as Babylon, and in her charms and conjurations we have revived in Europe the reflection of old Babylonian charms.]

Laws against the malefici (witches) were pa.s.sed by Constantine. In the Theodosian Code (_Lib. 9. t.i.t. 16. Leg. 3._) they are charged with making attempts by their wicked arts upon the lives of innocent men, and drawing others by magical potions (philtra et pharmaca) to commit misdemeanours. They are further charged with disturbing the elements, raising tempests, and practising abominable arts. The Council of Laodicea (343-381. _Can_. 36) condemned them. The Council of Ancyra forbade the use of medicine to work mischief. St. Basil's canons condemned witchcraft. The fourth Council of Carthage censured enchantment.[26] John of Salisbury tells of their feasts, to which they took unbaptized children. William of Auverne describes the charms and incantations which they used to turn a cane into a horse. William of Malmesbury gives an account of two old women who transformed the travellers who pa.s.sed their door into horses, swine or other animals which they sold. From some of the old Teuton laws we learn that it was believed that witches could take a man's heart out of his body and fill the cavity with straw or wood so that he would go on living.

One of the famous witchcraft trials was that of the Lady Alice Kyteler,[27] whose high rank could not save her from the accusation. It was claimed that she used the ceremonies of the church, but with some wicked changes. She extinguished the candles with the exclamation, "Fi!

Fi! Fi! Amen!" She was also accused of securing the love of her husbands, who left much property to her, by magic charms. These claims were typical of the accusations against witches in the trials which took place.

By the sixteenth century, the c.u.mulative notion of witches had penetrated both cultivated and uncultivated cla.s.ses, and was embodied in a great and increasing literature. "No comprehensive work on theology, philosophy, history, law, medicine, or natural science could wholly ignore it," says Burr, "and to lighter literature it afforded the most telling ill.u.s.trations for the pulpit, the most absorbing gossip for the news-letter, the most edifying tales for the fireside."[28]