SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 243 



some have held to be perversions of Christianity, but 

 which are, in truth, the old Aryan worship of the god- 

 dess of fertility and tilth, only slightly disguised by the 

 use of Christian terms and symbols. 



Thus the Eussian sects of the CJirists and of the 

 Skoptsy hold periodical meetings at which prayer is 

 followed by the dancing and singing of men and women ; 

 the choral dance is itself succeeded by unrestrained 

 license of the ' brothers ' and ' sisters.' These meet- 

 ings are often accompanied by the worship of the Holy 

 Virgin, who is represented by a young woman. It is, 

 in fact, the old heathen priestess representing the god- 

 dess of fertility. 1 She is sung to and danced round as 

 Mother Earth, adored as the emblem of generative force, 

 and the children she may bear to the men of the com- 

 munity are, as ' little Christs ' and ' little Maries,' 

 especially sacred. Among the sect of Christs the 

 common meal is represented by the priestess distri- 

 buting raisins, among the Skoptsy by an actual com- 

 munion of her blood. 2 It is clear that only in name is 

 there anything Christian in these gatherings ; they are 

 a survival of the old Aryan vergaderung, and cor- 

 respond to the Semite festival of the Sakaes both in 

 license and in cruelty. The same sex -festivals, here 

 seen from their religious side, may still be traced in 

 the fairs and periodic festivals of the Slavonic peas- 

 antry. In the Government of Nijnii - Novgorod we 

 find the youths and maidens meet at periodical in- 

 tervals upon a hill. After choral dances, the youths 



1 See footnote, p. 240. 



2 See N. Tsakni, La Russie Sectaire, Paris, 1888, for these and other details 

 of sex-festivals in Russia. 



