fertility

83:4.4Child­less­ness was greatly dreaded, and since bar­ren­ness was at­tributed to spirit machi­na­tions, ef­forts to in­sure fe­cun­dity also led to the as­so­ci­a­tion of mar­riage with cer­tain mag­i­cal or re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als. And in this ef­fort to in­sure a happy and fer­tile mar­riage, many charms were em­ployed; even the as­trologers were con­sulted to as­cer­tain the birth stars of the con­tract­ing par­ties. At one time the hu­man sac­ri­fice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of all wed­dings among well-to-do peo­ple.

83:4.5Lucky days were sought out, Thurs­day be­ing most fa­vor­ably re­garded, and wed­dings cel­e­brated at the full of the moon were thought to be ex­cep­tion­ally for­tu­nate. It was the cus­tom of many Near East­ern peo­ples to throw grain upon the new­ly­weds; this was a mag­i­cal rite which was sup­posed to in­sure fe­cun­dity. Cer­tain Ori­en­tal peo­ples used rice for this pur­pose.

83:4.6Fire and wa­ter were al­ways con­sid­ered the best means of re­sist­ing ghosts and evil spir­its; hence al­tar fires and lighted can­dles, as well as the bap­tismal sprin­kling of holy wa­ter, were usu­ally in ev­i­dence at wed­dings. For a long time it was cus­tom­ary to set a false wed­ding day and then sud­denly post­pone the event so as to put the ghosts and spir­its off the track.

83:4.7The teas­ing of new­ly­weds and the pranks played upon hon­ey­moon­ers are all relics of those far-dis­tant days when it was thought best to ap­pear mis­er­able and ill at ease in the sight of the spir­its so as to avoid arous­ing their envy. The wear­ing of the bridal veil is a relic of the times when it was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to dis­guise the bride so that ghosts might not rec­og­nize her and also to hide her beauty from the gaze of the oth­er­wise jeal­ous and en­vi­ous spir­its. The bride’s feet must never touch the ground just prior to the cer­e­mony. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury it is still the cus­tom un­der the Chris­tian mores to stretch car­pets from the car­riage land­ing to the church al­tar.

83:4.8One of the most an­cient forms of the wed­ding cer­e­mony was to have a priest bless the wed­ding bed to in­sure the fer­til­ity of the union; this was done long be­fore any for­mal wed­ding rit­ual was es­tab­lished. Dur­ing this pe­riod in the evo­lu­tion of the mar­riage mores the wed­ding guests were ex­pected to file through the bed­cham­ber at night, thus con­sti­tut­ing le­gal wit­ness to the con­sum­ma­tion of mar­riage.

83:4.9The luck el­e­ment, that in spite of all pre­mar­i­tal tests cer­tain mar­riages turned out bad, led prim­i­tive man to seek in­sur­ance pro­tec­tion against mar­riage fail­ure; led him to go in quest of priests and magic. And this move­ment cul­mi­nated di­rectly in mod­ern church wed­dings. But for a long time mar­riage was gen­er­ally rec­og­nized as con­sist­ing in the de­ci­sions of the con­tract­ing par­ents—later of the pair—while for the last five hun­dred years church and state have as­sumed ju­ris­dic­tion and now pre­sume to make pro­nounce­ments of mar­riage.

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.