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Herodotus – The Histories – On Sexual stimulation
Identifier
000777
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Herodotus – History Book 2 [This translation is from Aubrey de Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories]
These practices, then, and others which I will speak of later, were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt.
This is not the case, however, with the Greek custom of making images of Hermes with the phallus erect; it was the Athenians who took this from the Pelasgians, and from the Athenians the custom spread to the rest of Greece. For just at the time when the Athenians were assuming Hellenic nationality, the Pelasgians joined them, and thus first came to be regarded as Greeks.
Anyone will know what I mean if he is familiar with the mysteries of the Kabeiroi-rites which the men of Samothrace learned from the Pelasgians, who lived in that island before they moved to Attica, and communicated the mysteries to the Athenians.
This will show that the Athenians were the first Greeks to make statues of Hermes with the erect phallus, and that they learned the practice from the Pelasgians - who explained it by a certain religious doctrine, the nature of which is made clear in the Samothracian mysteries.