xiv Introduction. 



as a girdle) he emphasises precisely the same features in 

 the development of this belief as the history of the cultural 

 use of the cowry also reveals. In both cases a fancied 

 likeness to the organs of reproduction was supposed to 

 confer upon the object — whether it was the cowry or the 

 mandrake — the magical power of conferring fertility. In 

 both cases this influence was supposed to be exerted upon 

 women, if they wore the amulets upon their girdle. The 

 link of both practices with Cyprus suggests the influence 

 of one belief in originating the other. 



But though Dr. Rendel Harris has demonstrated that 

 Aphrodite was a personification of the mandrake, this is 

 by no means the whole of the stor\'. It afibrds no 

 explanation why Aphrodite was female, and only the 

 slightest and somewhat fanciful reasons for the personifi- 

 cation or the magical potency of the goddess. Nor has 

 Dr. Rendel Harris given any reasons for the remarkable 

 belief that it is necessary to tie a dog to the plant " to 

 pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging 

 up : otherwise if a man should do it, he should surel)- die 

 in short space after." ■' 



If it be assumed that Aphrodite was born of the sea 

 foam ; and reached Cyprus as a cowry, which, for the 

 reasons that this book aims at expounding, was already 

 the symbol of womanhood, the source of fertilit}', the 

 giver of life and resurrection, the whole of the wonder- 

 ful story told by Dr. Rendel Harris assumes a new 

 meaning. The cowry-beliefs were planted in Cyprus ; 

 and there, under the influence of those horticultural ideas 

 which, according to him, were current in the Eastern 

 Mediterranean, the plant that also presents grotesque 

 likenesses to the reproductive organs was regarded as the 

 impersonation of those powers which, for similar reasons, 

 had been assigned to the cowr)-. 

 ■' Op. ci't., p. 6. 



