Act 3.2

There are similar references in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Twelfth Night_, and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.

In _Pericles_ Priapus is mentioned as a symbol of virility:

Pericles: Fie, fie upon her! She’s able to freeze the god Priapus.

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François Villon, the fifteenth century French lyric poet, was not too happy in his loves. In his _Double Ballade_ he makes his personal confession on amatory exercises, and gives due admonitions as to the possible effects of erotic practices:

Then love until you have your fill, Follow the ball and midnight feast, The end will bring you naught until You break your head, to say the least; For foolish loves make man a beast: Idolatrous was Solomon, And thereby Samson’s vision ceased. Happier those who all this shun!

And Orpheus, sweet troubadour, Who piped his flute among the dead, Risked mortal peril on its spoor From Cerberus of the triple head; And beautiful Narcissus fled, Because of love too lightly won, To seek his peace in a watery bed. Happier those who all this shun!

Sardana, once a valiant knight, Who conquered all the realm of Crete, Aped woman’s form and took delight In girlish chores and things effete; And David, quitting wisdom’s seat, Forgot his fear of God for one Whose perfumed thighs aroused his heat. Happier those who all this shun!

And Amnon, drunk with carnal power, Feigning to gorge himself the while, Plucked lovely Tamar’s virgin flower, A deed incestuous and vile; Herod—and here I use no guile— Had John the Baptist’s head undone For a dance, a song, a dancer’s smile. Happier those who all this shun!

Of my poor self I wish to speak: Beaten like washing in a stream, Entirely nude—no tongue in cheek— Who made me chew such sour cream But Kate Vausselles? Noël I deem Made up the three to share the fun. Such wedding mittens costly seem. Happier those who all this shun!

But is this hot, young blood to spurn Their tender love and flee their sight? May God forbid! Such ought to burn As witches do who ride the night. Sweeter than civets their delight, But not to put your trust upon: For be they brown or be they white, Happier those who all this shun!

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As late as the eighteenth century, in Central Europe, there were secret cults that drew their basic tenets from ancient priapic rites. Some of these orders practiced nudism but rejected marriage. Some encouraged promiscuities in their ritualistic assemblies. The Ebionites, for instance, were of this type. Also the Basilidians, a Gnostic sect that followed the principles of the founder Basilides, a Gnostic who flourished in Alexandria in the second century A.D.; also the Nicolaitans, an early Christian sect.

In Italy, in the eleventh century and the twelfth, there was a similar sect known as the Patarini. They made obscene obeisance to a black cat, evidently a variant Satanic form, then abandoned themselves to scenes of frantic lubricity.

So too in many regions of France that still recalled ancient pagan Gaul similar orgiastic performances occurred under cover of darkness.

Even the Knights Templars, the military-religious members of the Order that was founded early in the twelfth century and was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, were reputed to have aligned themselves with foul obscenities that involved anal osculation, as in the case of the witch members of the Satanic Sabbat, and desecration of Christian ritual accompanied by erotic perversions.

* * * * *

Sympathetic magic and the use of wax images were common means of securing amatory ardor compulsively. The ancients were intimately familiar with the procedures. And the grimoires current in medieval times were similarly repositories of dark and occult amatory techniques, and likewise recommended a variety of rituals. Involved in the ceremonials were of course darkness, the burning of incense, the construction of special pentagrams and magic circles, the shaping of the figurine, and the Latin invocation which gave final assurance to the erotic effects.

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Amatory intimacies, especially but not exclusively in the Middle Ages, were believed possible between human beings and disembodied creatures, incubi and succubi, sylphs and undines or water spirits, salamanders, various types of Satanic emissaries and subordinates in the infernal hierarchy, such as Isheth Zemunin, who presided over prostitution.

Some of these mystic, occult unions, on the other hand, were associated with beneficent spirits, with angelic embodiments, saints, and similar personalities.

In the malefic traditions of the Black Arts and demoniac relationships, there was widespread credence in intercourse between witches and the members of the Satanic legions, between sorceresses and Satan himself, and between the practitioners of magic and all kinds of bestial and obscene creatures. The medieval demonographers are soberly voluble in recounting many such instances. They chronicle, with precise supporting confirmatory testimony, tales that brought the participants, the old and the young women so accused of diabolic intimacies, to trial, to torture, and finally to the gallows.

Ready and voluminous evidence comes from Guazzo and Johannes Anania and Jean Bodin, from Henri Boguet and Delrio, from Tartarotti, Stridtbeckh, Sinistrari and Ricardus, Molitor, de L’Ancre, Elich, and Daugis.

At the Sabbats, the assemblies of witches and Satanic forces, there were, according to the medieval chroniclers and the old European folk traditions, frantic performances of the most obscene nature, monstrous rituals, weird banquets, culminating in lewd orgies characterized, according to the grave testimonies of the demonographers, by copulation of witches and materialized demoniac spirits.

The Aphroditic force and influence are all-pervasive. Hence, in the field of astrological lore, Venus represents love, in its most extended sense, normal, illicit, and aberrational. Certain symbols, creatures, forms are regularly associated with her functions. The lubricities of the goat and the bull are under her sway, while, botanically, many plants, among them vervain and myrtle, are endowed with aphrodisiac qualities.