# Marriage and Morals/Chapter IV

Chapter IV
Phallic Worship, Asceticism and Sin
From the time that the fact of paternity was first discovered, sex has always been a matter of great interest to religion. This is only what one would expect, since religion concerns itself with everything that is mysterious and important. Fruitfulness, whether of crops, or of flocks and herds, or of women, was of prime importance to men in the beginnings of the agricultural and pastoral stages. Crops did not always flourish and intercourse did not always produce pregnancy. Religion and magic were invoked to make sure of the desired result. In accordance with the usual ideas of sympathetic magic, it was thought that by promoting human fertility the fertility of the soil could be encouraged; and human fertility itself, which was desired in many primitive communities, was promoted by various religious and magical ceremonies. In ancient Egypt, where agriculture appears to have risen before ​the end of the matrilineal epoch, the sexual element in religion was at first not phallic but concerned with the female genitalia, the shape of which was supposed to be suggested by the cowry shell, which accordingly was held to have magic powers and came to be used as currency. This stage, however, passed away, and in later Egypt, as in most ancient civilizations, the sexual element in religion took the form of phallic worship. A very good short account of the most salient facts in this connection will be found in a chapter by Robert Briffault in “Sex in Civilization.”
“Agricultural festivals,” he says, “and more especially those connected with the planting of seed and the gathering of harvest, present in every region of the world and in every age the most conspicuous examples of general sexual license. … The agricuitural populations of Algeria resent any restrictions being placed upon the licentiousness of their women upon the ground that any attempt to enforce sexual morality would be prejudicial to the success of their agricultural operations. The Athenian thesmophoria, or sowing-feasts, preserved in an attenuated form the original character of the magic of fertility. The women carried phallic emblems and uttered obscenities. The saturnalia were the Roman feasts of sowing, and have ​been succeeded by the carnival of southern Europe, in which phallic symbols, differing little from those in vogue among the Sioux and in Dahomey, were down to recent years a conspicuous feature.”
In many parts of the world it has been thought that the moon (regarded as mascuiine) is the true father of all children. This view is, of course, bound up with moon worship. There has been a curious conflict, not directly relevant to our present subject, between lunar and solar priesthoods and lunar and solar calendars. The calendar has at all times played an important part in religion. In England down to the eighteenth century and in Russia down to the Revolution of 1917, an inaccurate calendar was perpetuated owing to the feeling that the Gregorian calendar was papistical. Similarly, the very inaccurate lunar calendars were everywhere advocated by priests devoted to the worship of the moon, and the victory of the solar calendar was slow and partial. In Egypt this ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/48 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/49 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/50 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/51 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/52 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/53 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/54 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/55
* ↑ Edited by V. F. Calverton and S. D. Schmalhausen, with an introduction by Havelock Ellis.
* ↑ Briffault, loc. cit., p. 34.
* ↑ In the Maori State “The moon is the permanent husband or true husband of all women. According to the knowledge of our ancestors and elders, the marriage of man and wife is a matter of no moment: the moon is the true husband.” Similar views have existed in most parts of the world and obviously represent a transition from the stage where the paternity was unknown to the complete recognition of its importance. Briffault, loc. cit., p. 37.