Precisely what ceremonial observances the ritual of Bel-Phegor demanded of the suppliant at his shrine is not likely ever to be known. It would be worse than useless to attempt in a treatise of this kind to affirm or deny the existence of the obscene usages alleged to have formed part of his worship; sufficient, at this moment, to lay before reflecting minds testimony on both sides of the question, with reasons for the belief that flatulence could be presented as an oblation, with examples of quaint customs which may partake of the nature of “survivals” from religious ceremonies of a nature not far removed from those supposed to have been associated with the rites of Bel-Phegor.
Well has an old author remarked: “Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of one seems madness to another, to afford an account or rational of old rites requires no rigid reader.”—(Sir Thomas Browne, “Religio Medici,” edition of Boston, 1868, p. 329, article “Urn-Burial.”)
“Le Pet était une divinité des anciens Égyptiens; elle était la personnification d’une fonction naturelle. On la figurait par un enfant accroupi qui semble faire effort, et on peut en voir la représentation dans les ouvrages d’antiquité. Le poême Calotin, intitulé le Conseil de Momus (voyez aux Polygraphes) donne, contre la page 19, deux figures de ce dieu. L’une était en cornaline de trois couleurs; l’autre en terre cuite, se trouvait dans le cabinet du Marquis de Cospy, et la figure en a été donnée dans le Museum Cospianum. L’auteur de la Dissertation sur un ancien Usage (voyez le numéro 18) conteste que ces figurines se rapportent au Crepitus, et croit qu’elles ont été inventées dans un but plus solide.
“C’est de Minutius Felix que nous vient la reconnaissance du Crepitus, qui, lors même qu’il aurait été célébré réellement en Égypte, n’était peut-être qu’une caricature imaginée par les plaisants du jour. Ménage cependant affirme que les Pélusiens adoraient le Pet; il dit que Baudelot en a donné la preuve dans les éditions de son premier vol., et qu’il en possédait une figure. (Voy. Menagiana, 1693, no. 397. St. Jerome dit la même chose sur Isaie, xiii. 46. Voy. encore Klotz, act. littér. t. v., première partie, 1, Elmenhorst sur l’Octavius de Minutius Felix; Mythol. de Banier, t. 1; Montfaucon, ‘l’Antiquité expliquée,’ t. iii. part 2, p. 336.)
“Quelques antiquaires ont cru pouvoir identifier le dieu Crepitus des Romains avec Bel-Phegor, Baal-Phegor ou Baal-Peor, dieu Syrien,—Phegor, assure-t-on, ayant ce sens en Hebreu. (Origen contra Celsus; Minutius Felix.) Mais, sur cette dernière divinité les savants sont fort peu d’accord.
“Origène, St. Jerome, Salomon Ben Jarchi, lui donnent une signification qui la rendrait tout à fait indigne de figurer dans notre catalogue; mais Maimonide (Moge Nevoch, cap. 46) et Salom. Ben Jarchi (Comment. 3, sur Nomb. ch. 25) prétendent que son culte était plus sale que obscène, et les traducteurs de ces rabbins pour exprimer le principal détail des cérémonies célébrées en l’honneur du dieu de Syrie, disent: ‘Distendere coram eo foramen podicis et stercus offere.’
“Ajoutez que les pets étaient de bon augure chez les Grecs, de mauvais augure chez les Romains.”—(Voy. Scaliger, Auson.)
“No one now supposes that the Rabbins had anything but their imaginations to go on in what they say about Baal-Peor; they invented the story as a fanciful etymology of the name.”[54]—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith to Captain Bourke.)
Citations have already been made from the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, a curious collection of learning, no name and no place of publication of which can be found, but which seems to have been printed by Giraudet et Jouaust, 315 Rue Saint Honoré, Paris, granting that this title be not fictitious. In that work are to be seen the titles of no less than one hundred and thirty-three treatises upon Flatulence, some grotesque, some coarse, one or two of quaint erudition.
No. 88, entitled “Éloge du Pet, dissertation historique, anatomique et philosophique sur son origine, son antiquité, ses vertus, sa figure, les honneurs qu’on lui a rendus chez les peuples anciens, etc.; avec une figure représentant le dieu Pet, et cette inscription: Crepitui ventris conservatori deo propitio (p. 38),” the stupendous work of Sclopetarius, No. 111, of the Bibliotheca (Frankfort, 1628) seems to have been a monumental labor upon a subject not generally dissected. The same remark may be applied to “Physiologia crepitus ventris” of Rod. Goclenius, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1607, No. 123 of the Bibliotheca.
The earliest known work upon this curious topic is “Le plaisant deuis du Pet,” Paris, 1540.
“Origen saith the name Baal-Peor signifieth filthiness, but what filthiness he knew not; Salomon Ben Jarchi writeth they offered to him ordure, placing before his mouth the likeness of that place which Nature hath made for egestion.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 85.)
A reference to the work of Bel-Phegor is to be found in the following couplet from a book entitled “Conseil de Momus:”—
“La deuxième moitié du premier chant est consacrée
“The antient Pelusiéns, a people of lower Egypt, did (amongst other whimsical, chimerical objects of veneration and worship) venerate a Fart, which they worshipped under the symbol of a swelled paunch.”—(“A View of the Levant,” Charles Perry, M. D., sm. fol., London, 1743, p. 419.)
“Time has preserved to us a figure of this ridiculous Divinity, which represents a very young child in the posture of that indecent action whence this god has his name.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, 1740, vol. ii. pp. 52 et seq.)[55]
“Their Beetle-gods out of their privies; yea, their Privies and Farts had their unsavorie canonization and went for Egyptian deities.... So, Hierome derideth their dreadfull deitie, the Onion, and a stinking Fart, Crepitus ventris inflati que Pelusiaco religio est, which they worshipped at Pelusium.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 641.)
It may be well to bear in mind that the heathen idea of the power of a god was entirely different from our own. The deities of the heathen were restricted in their powers and functions; they were assigned to the care of certain countries, districts, valleys, rivers, fountains, etc. Not only that, they were capable of aiding only certain trades, professions, etc. They were not able to cure all diseases, only particular kinds, each god being a specialist; consequently, each was supposed to take charge of a section of the human body. This was the case with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others. In mediæval times the same rule obtained, only in place of gods, we find saints assigned to these functions. Brand, Pop. Antiq. vol. i. p. 356, et seq., gives a list of the saints, and the functions ascribed to each. On page 366 of the work just cited, it will be seen that Saint Erasmus was in charge of “the belly, with the entrayles.” Keeping this in view, we can better understand the peculiar ceremonies connected with the worship of Bel-Phegor; he was, no doubt, the deity to whom the devotee resorted for the alleviation of ailments connected with the rectum and belly, much as he would, at a later date in the history of religion, have invoked Saint Phiacre to relieve him “of the phy or emeroids, of those especially which grow in the fundament.” (See in Brand, loc. cit. p. 362.) On the same principle that the worshipper was wont to hang up in the temples of Esculapius wax and earthen representations of the sore arms, legs, and other members which gave him pain, the worshipper of Bel-Phegor would offer him the sacrifice of the flatulence and excrement, testimonies of the good health for which gratitude was due to the older deity.
“The Egyptians divided the human body into thirty-six parts, each of which they believed to be under the particular government of one of the decans or aerial demons who presided over the triple divisions of the twelve signs; and we have the authority of Origen for saying that when any part of the body was diseased, a cure was effected by invoking the demon to whose province it belonged.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 47.)
The ascription of particular signs of the Zodiac to the care of different members of the human anatomy is in line with the same religious idea; because the signs of the Zodiac, especially the Animal signs, were once Animal Gods.
Hone, in his “Every-Day Book,” has a therapeutical hagiology, too long to be here repeated.
“Melton says, ‘The saints of the Romanists have usurped the place of the Zodiacal constellations in their governance of the parts of man’s body,’ and that ‘for every limb they have a saint.’” Thus Saint “Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles in the place of Libra and Scorpius.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 54.) Next follows a long list of saints, with the particular functions assigned to each, beginning first with the list to be found in Hone, which Pettigrew extends.—(“Saint Giles and Saint Hyacinth against Sterility,” idem, pp. 55, 56.)
“In later times, according to Herodotus, a particular and minute division of labor characterized the Egyptians; the science of medicine was distributed into different parts; every physician was for one disease, not more; so that every place was full of physicians, for some were doctors for the eyes, others for the head; some for the teeth, others for the belly; and some for occult disorders. There were also physicians for female disorders. The sons followed the professions of their fathers, so that their numbers must necessarily have been very great.”—(Idem, p. 44.)
As the Egyptian priests were the doctors of that country, it is perfectly in accord with the eternal fitness of things that we should find them, even after they had been differentiated into different professions, restricted to the treatment of special diseases, much as the gods whom the priests once represented had been restricted.[56]
“The art of medicine is thus divided among them (Egyptians). Each physician applies himself to one disease only and not more. All places abound in physicians; some physicians are for the eyes, others for the teeth, others for the parts about the belly, and others for internal disorders.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 82.)
Hone shows that every joint of the fingers was dedicated to some saint.—(See his “Every-Day Book,” vol. ii. p. 48.)
“But, under the venerated name of Hermes, were issued books of astronomical forecasts of diseases, setting forth the evil influence of malignant stars upon the unborn; telling how the right eye is under the sun, the left under the moon, the hearing under Saturn, the brain under Jupiter, the tongue and throat under Mercury, smelling and tasting under Venus, the parts that have blood under Mars.... The early centuries next after the Christian era produced a rank crop of literary forgeries.”—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. pp. 11, 12.)
“The New Zealanders gave a separate deity to each part of the body.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 11.)
The interview between Moses and Jehovah, where the latter refused to allow the prophet to see the glory of his face, but made him content himself with a view of his posterior, indicates that the sacred writers of the earlier periods were living in an atmosphere of thought which accepted all such ideas as those surrounding the Bel-Phegorian ceremonials.
The Hebrews believed that Jehovah should be propitiated with sweet savors:[57] “Offer up a sweet savor unto the Lord.” Bel-Phegor and other deities of the gentiles, who were the gods of particular parts of the human body, would, in all probability, be pleased with oblations coming especially from that particular part; thus, the god of Hunting had offerings of game; the gods of the Seas had sacrifices of fish; babies were offered to the deities of Childbirth; therefore the gods of the fundament should, naturally, be regaled with excrement and flatulence.
Harington calls attention to David’s prophecy in the 77th Psalm: “Percussit inimicos suos in posteriores, opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis.” “He smote his enemies in the hinder parts and put them to a perpetual shame.”—(“Ajax,” p. 25.)
The absence of unity is the characteristic of all primitive forms of religious thought; hence, the various differentiations mentioned above occur as a matter of religious necessity.
Among the practices prohibited by the Taoist religion: “A man must not sing and dance on the last day of the moon.... Must not weep, spit, or be guilty of other indecency towards the North.”—(Legge, “Religions of China,” p. 187.)
The Parsis have a curious idea suggestive of the Hebrew antagonism to the worship of Bel-Phegor: “14. The rule is that when one retains a prayer inwardly and wind shall come from below, or wind shall come from the mouth, it is all one.” (Shayast la Shayast, Max Müller’s edition, Oxford, 1880, cp. x. verse 14, p. 221. A footnote explains: “Literally, ‘both are one,’ that is, in either case the spell of the vag or prayer is broken.”)
“The Bedawi, who eructates as a matter of civility, has a mortal hatred to a crepitus ventris; and were a by-stander to laugh at its accidental occurrence, he would be at once cut down as a ‘pundonor.’ The same is the custom among the Highlanders of Afghanistan. And its artificial nature suggests direct derivation; for the two regions are separated by a host of tribes, Persians and Beloch, who utterly ignore the pundoner and behave like Europeans. The raids of the pre-Ishmaelitish Arabs over the lands lying to the northeast of them are almost forgotten; still, there are traces, and this may be one of them.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. v. p. 137.)
According to Niebuhr, the voiding of wind is considered to be the gravest indecency among the Arabs; some tribes make a perpetual butt of the offender once guilty of such an infraction of decorum; the Belludjages, upon the frontiers of Persia, expel the culprit from the tribe. Yet Niebuhr himself relates that a sheik of the tribe “Montesids” once had a contest of this kind among his henchmen, “avoit autorisé un défi dans ce genre entre ses domestiques et couronné le vainqueur.” (Niebuhr, “Description de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 27.) Snoring and Flatulence would seem to have been considered equally offensive by the Tartars. See Marco Polo’s reference to the mode of selecting wives for the Grand Khan (in Purchas, vol. i. p. 82). He says that the Grand Khan puts those deemed to be eligible under the care of “his Barons’ wives,” “to see if they snore not in their sleepe, if in smell or behaviour they bee not offensive.”
“Yet it is holden a shame with them to let a fart, at which they wondered in the Hollanders, esteeming it a contempt.”—(“Negroes of Guinea,” Purchas, vol. v. p. 718.)
On the Gold Coast of Africa, the negroes “are very careful not to let a fart, if anybody be by them; they wonder at our Netherlanders that use it so commonly, for they cannot abide that a man should fart before them, esteeming it to be a great shame and contempt done unto them.”—(Master Richard Jobson, A.D. 1620, in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 936.) In the Russian sect of dissenters called the “Bezpopovtsi,” “during the service of Holy Thursday, certain of them, known as ‘gapers’ or ‘yawners,’ sit for hours with their mouths wide open, waiting for ministering angels to quench their spiritual thirst from invisible chalices.”—(Heard, “Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” pp. 200, 201.)
Bastian, in “Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde” (vol. i. p. 9), quotes from Kubary, “Religion of the Pelew Islands,” to the effect that in cases of death, the vagina, urethra, rectum, nostrils, and all other orifices of the body are tightly closed with the fibres of certain roots or sponge, to prevent the escape of any of the liquids of the body, which seem to be of some use to the spirit of the deceased.—(Contributed in a Personal letter from Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.)
In Wallachia, “No mode of execution is more disgraceful than the gallows. The reason alleged is that the soul of a man with a rope round his neck, cannot escape from his mouth.”—(Maltebrun, “Universal Geography,” Boston, 1847, vol. ii. p. 458, article “Hungary.”)
“The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body, especially the mouth and nostrils.”—(Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 125.)
“Caton appliquait à l’objet d’un de nos chapitres; ‘Nullum mihi vitium facit.’ ... C’est ce que disait Caton lorsqu’un de ses esclaves pétoit en sa presence.”—(Bib. Scat., “Oratio pro Guano Humano,” p. 21.)
In Angola, West Coast of Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives, but any license of this kind, taken while strangers are in the vicinity, is regarded as a most deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola; interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
The poet Horace “a consacré plusieurs vers au sujet qui nous occupe. On peut voir particulièrement la Satire VIII. qui contient le passage suivant:—
The celebrated English orator, Charles James Fox, is credited with the authorship of “An Essay upon Wind,” published anonymously in London, and numbered 91 in the Bib. Scat. (p. 39).
Martin Luther had many struggles and disputes with his Satanic Majesty, in all of which the latter came off second best. Melanchthon is cited as describing one of these, in which there were results worthy of incorporation in this work: “Hoc dicto victus Dæmon, indignabundus secumque murmurans abiit, eliso crepitu, non exiguo, cujus fussimen tetri odoris dies aliquot redolebat hypocaustum.” Vid. Joh. Wier, de Præstig. Dæmon. cap. 7, p. m. 54, in Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 795, article “De Crepitu Diaboli.”
“Luther relates a story of a lady who ‘Sathanum crepitu ventris fugavit.’”—(“Les Propos de Table de Luther,” par G. Brunet, Paris, 1846, p. 22, quoted in Buckle’s “Commonplace Book,” p. 472, vol. ii. of his “Works.” All the English editions of Luther’s “Table Talk,” so far as known to the author, are “expurgated.”)
“Ciceron, considérant le Peditus comme une victime innocente, opprimée par la civilisation de son temps, poussait en sa faveur le cri de liberté et formulait ses droits.” As a footnote to the foregoing we read the following extract from Cicero: “Crepitus æque liberos ac ructus esse opportere.”—(Lib. 9, Epist. 22.)
“Memento quia ventus est vita mea.”—(Job. vii. 9.)
“Pedere te mallem, namque hoc nec inutile, dicit Symmachus, et risum res movet ista simul.”—(Martial, vii. 17, 9.)
“‘Le Tonnerre, ce n’est qu’un Pet;’ c’est Aristophane qui le dit.” Βροντὴ καὶ πορδή, ὁμοίω—(“Nućes.”)
All the preceding from Bib. Scat., article, “Oratio pro Guano Humano.”
Consult Aristophanes, “The Clouds,” act v. scene 2.
“Dissertation sur le dieu Pet,” par M. Claude Terrin.—This author is stated to have cited from Clemens Romanus and Saint Cæsar.—(See Bib. Scat., p. 37.)
Suetonius has the following remarks upon the Roman Emperor Claudius: “It is said too that he intended to publish an edict ... allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension occasioned by flatulence.” This was upon “hearing of a person whose modesty, under such circumstances, had nearly cost him his life.”—(“Claudius,” xxxii.)
Plutarch asks the question: “Question 95. Why was it ordained that they that were to live chaste should abstain from pulse?... Or rather was it because they should bring empty and slender bodies to their purifications and expiations? For pulse are windy and cause a great deal of excrements that require purging off. Or is it because they excite lechery by reason of their flatulent and windy nature?” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s English translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 254.)
“The fact that in honor of the arrival of friends, the house is swept and strewn with sand, and that the people bathe at such occasions, shows that cleanliness is appreciated. The current expression is that the house is so cleaned that no bad smell remains to offend the guest. For the same reason the Indian takes repeated baths before praying, ‘that he may be agreeable to the Deity.’”—(“Report on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada,” Dr. Franz Boas, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting, 1889, p. 19.)
“Saul went into a cave ‘ut purgaret ventrem.’”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 25.)