FINE. Decision made, and I promise to be grumpy for the remainder of this blog entry.
I’m paging through Wheel of the Year, and at least so far, Pauline Campanelli is being careful to attribute things she discusses to specific traditions (her mistletoe lore to the Druids, for example), and remarking on changes that took place once Druids declined and disappeared under Roman rule.
As far as this lovely ("pale-green, fairy mistletoe") plant is concerned, before that happened, and before christians followed up the Romans and made things even more boring, mistletoe was a lot more interesting.At the time of the Druids, mistletoe was believed to be the semen of the gods, because the berries (as you can see from the photo) contain a liquid that looks like and has the texture of semen. Another reason is that mistletoe is propagated by inserting the ... er ... contents of the berries into a small slash cut into, traditionally, an oak tree. And all it took was one horny Druid to connect one visual image ("Hmmmm. Slash. Insert. Semen-looking stuff!") with another.
Needless to say, the history of the mistletoe was NOT the Victorian-era chaste little peck on the cheek christians like to think it was, but a vastly more pleasant, normal and arousing activity. (And no, I didn’t mean a deity’s semen dripping on your head while you made out with your boyfriend in a doorway! Unless you like that sort of thing. And if so, I don’t wanna know about it, beyond a tastefully worded request for a gift of industrial strength shampoo for the holidays). But the point is: mistletoe = fertility and lust spells.
Keep in mind as you’re scanning for spells that mistletoe was gathered not once but twice a year: at Yule, and at midsummer. In Yule, you have the white berries; at midsummer, the red.
Mistletoe
by Walter de la Mare (1913)
Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.
So, let’s examine yet another example of the ugly judeo-christian-muslim habit of taking the sacred and turning it into something pornographic, merely because they are unable to understand the concept of sex without having an emotional breakdown.
Let’s read a quote from a distant Greek historian named Herodotus, shall we? He’s discussing a Babylonian or Mesopotamian custom:
"The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, "I invite you in the name of Mylitta" (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus."
The problems with Herodotus are numerous – even among Greek scholars he is regarded skeptically as he was known for repeating rumor and gossip without verifying any of it, AND for deliberately inventing things to make other cities but Grecian ones look corrupt.
But even so, what is interesting, I believe, from Herodotus’ point of view, is that the act is required of women from all class levels – hence his description of women who are "rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest." He also seems disturbed by the "uncomely" needing to remain at the temple for three to four years. Prostitution did exist in Greece, and was neither reviled or condemned.
From our point of view, the judeo-christian-islamic (JCI for short) translations tell you everything you need to know. One translation uses the word "foul". Another translation uses the word "wholly shameful". NOWHERE in either translation is the word "prostitution" used, because Herodotus never used the word. Whoever wrote the description for Wikipedia used the word. Anyone wanna lay bets on which country that fool was from? "Land of the free and home of the desiccated and wrinkled nether regions" ring a bell? Same people.
Here’s the introduction in Wikipedia to the above paragraph: "The ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to state that the ancient Mesopotamians practiced temple prostitution." Again – Herodotus never used the word, only the Wikipedia author.
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