Pierre-a-Croquettes in Brabant until 1837, when the archaeologist
Schayes called attention to it, and thereupon the ecclesiastical
authorities removed the cause of scandal. Women have, however, still
continued to make votive offerings of pins down almost, if not quite, to
the present day. At Antwerp stood at the gateway to the Church of Saint
Walburga in the Rue des Pecheurs a statue, the sexual organ of which
had been entirely scraped away by women for the same purpose."[89]

From what has been said, it will not be difficult to understand the
existence of the custom of religious prostitution. Considering the
sexual impulse as specially connected with a supernatural force, man
pays it religious honour, and comes to identify its manifestations as an
expression of the supernatural and also as an act of worship towards it.
In India the practice existed, when most temples had their 'bayaderes.'
In ancient Chaldea every woman was compelled to prostitute herself once
in her life in the temple of the goddess Mylitta--the Chaldean Venus.
This custom existed elsewhere, and by it the woman was compelled to
remain within the temple enclosures until some man chose her, from whom
she received a piece of money. The money, of course, belonged to the
temple.[90] In Greece, Carthage, Syria, etc., we find the same custom.
Among the Jews, so orthodox a commentary as Smith's _Bible Dictionary_
admits that the 'Kadechim' attached to the temple were prostitutes. The
frequent references to the service of the 'groves' surrounding the
temple irresistibly suggest their likeness to the groves around the
temples of Mylitta, and their use for the same purpose.

There is no necessity to prolong the subject,[91] nor is it necessary to
my purpose to discuss the origin of phallic worship. It is enough to
have shown the manner in which, from the very earliest times, religious
belief and sexual phenomena have been connected in the closest possible
manner. In this respect it is only on all fours with the relation of
religion to phenomena in general, but here the attitude of mind is
accentuated and prolonged by the startling facts of sexual development.
The connection becomes consequently so close it is not surprising to
find that the association has persisted down to the present time, and
moods that have their origin in the sexual life are frequently
attributed to religious influences. The primitive intelligence, frankly
seeing in the phenomena of sex a m