If we survey the whole of the evidence on this subject, some of
which has still to be laid before the reader, 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.
At Paphos the custom of religious prostitution is said to have been
instituted by King Cinyras, and to have been practised by his
daughters, the sisters of Adonis, who, having incurred the wrath of
Aphrodite, mated with strangers and ended their days in Egypt.
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