Fertility Cults

Although agriculture is a relatively recent human practice that became common only within the last ten thousand years or so, it has given rise to spiritual and religious practices that have contributed key features to most major world religions. 

The idea of a "risen god," for example, which is central to Christianity, originated in earlier gods of the grain who died each fall to feed the farmers and who were resurrected again each spring as the fields were planted anew.  Long before Christianity came along, agricultural peoples worshipped gods who died and were reborn.  Among the more recent and better-known are Osirus in Egypt, Dionysus in Crete and Greece, and Attis in Phrygia and later Rome.  Originally, the date on which Jesus' death and resurrection were commemorated coincided with the popular Roman festivals at which Attis' death and resurrection were similarly celebrated. 

Sowing seeds

Many agrarian peoples all over the world have long recognized that planting seeds in the earth is analogous to the mystery of sowing sperm in a womb.  In rites from many different times all over the world, people identified their own fertility with the fertility of their fields and farm animals, and with greater or lesser formality practiced ritual sex in the spring time as sympathetic magick to make their crops germinate so they wouldn't starve when the next winter came (for more information about such fertility rituals, see our article on sacred marriage). 

On May Day, for example, the traditional Maypole dance we're all familiar with generally took place around an explicitly phallic pole, and was followed by an equally traditional night of wild sexual revelry, not only so as to conceive children (who were valuable economic assets in the farm), but also as magick to make the seeds "conceive" under the earth and the female farm animals conceive and bear lots of healthy progeny. 

In our own prudish modern culture, such "orgies" sound to many people both extremely disgusting and at the same time very exciting.  As is the case with so many preconceptions of sexual events, if you could go back and attend one, you'd probably get a very different impression than you imagine.  I suspect it would seem no more or less lewd and riotous than many a typical college party today.  Remember what those college parties were like?  Fun in a way, but not generally something to fantasize about. 

One difference worth noting, though, was that when people in the old days were having sex on such a night, whether it was a one-night-stand or they were fucking a long-term partner, many of them were undoubtedly aware as they approached orgasm of participating in a deep, universal mystery, intimately connected with the whole natural world around them.  It's too bad there's not more of that in college parties today, or in our later sex lives, for that matter. 

The Golden Bough

The book that brought the importance of fertility cults and their contributions to later religion into the public consciousness was Sir George Frazer's The Golden Bough, first published in 1890 in two volumes.  Although even the condensed edition of 1922 is quite dated by now, Frazer's synthesis of folk customs world-wide still makes very interesting reading, and it has had an enormous influence on the study of folklore ever since. 

More recently, the late Joseph Campbell continued to piece together for us the myths of the world, their inter-relationships and their roles in the cultures where they arose.  Whereas Frazer's attitudes had been informed by the colonialism and social darwinism of his age, Campbell's were much influenced by Jung's psycho-spiritual ideas. 

The goddess and the year-king

One of the most interesting aspects of the fertility cults from a sexual point of view is that they reflect the central role of early woman as the ruler of sex and fertility. 

In many of the traditions that come down to us, it was the queen who represented the goddess of fertility year in and year out, while her consort ruled as king only for a year, after which he was replaced — perhaps in some cases by being literally sacrificed at harvest time as representative of the god of the crops. 

This commonplace subjugation of the male ruler, involving death or in some cases possibly ritual castration, has fascinated (and excited) quite a number of scholars, but its real importance lies not in the politics that it implies for early agrarian society nor the cult significance of the vegetative god that it implies, but rather in its explicit recognition of women's central role in organizing and running the human sexual drama.  That central role, I suspect, is much older than agriculture and its fertility cults.