WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
as "most disgraceful." But he does not seem to have inquired into its origin and full significance. It was the fervent belief of many ancient societies that procreation is sacred, and a tribute to the gods. They believed also that the rite in the temple favoured the fertility of women.
Professor Frazer, in "Adonis, Attis, Osiris," says: "We may conclude that a great mother goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast."
The rite of Mylitta was designed as a benefit to the woman-devotee. When the man placed the coin in the woman's lap, he said: "May the goddess be auspicious to thee," referring, no doubt, to her increased potentiality as a mother after the sacred ceremony.
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