phallic worship.

Some have supposed that a sexual dualism pervades all natural religions
and this too has been assumed as the solution of all their myths. It has
been said that the action of heat upon moisture, of the sun on the
waters, the mysteries of reproduction, and the satisfaction of the
sexual instincts, are the unvarying themes of primitive mythology. So
far as the red race is concerned, this is a most gratuitous assumption.
The facts that have been eagerly collated by Dulaure and others to
bolster such a detestable theory lend themselves fairly to no such
interpretation.

There existed, indeed, a worship of the passions. Apparently it was
grafted upon or rose out of that of fire by the analogy I have pointed
out. Thus the Mexican god of fire was supposed to govern the generative
proclivities,[146-1] and there is good reason to believe that the sacred
fire watched by unspotted virgins among the Mayas had decidedly such a
signification. Certainly it was so, if we can depend upon the authority
of a ballad translated from the original immediately after the conquest,
cited by the venerable traveller and artist Count de Waldeck. It
purports to be from the lover of one of these vestals, and referring to
her occupation asks with a fine allusion to its mystic meaning--

"O vierge, quand pourrai-je te posseder pour ma compagne cherie?
Combien de temps faut-il encore que tes voeux soient accomplis?
Dis-moi le jour qui doit devancer la belle nuit ou tous deux,
Alimenterons le feu qui nous fit naitre et que nous devons
perpetuer."[147-1]

There is a bright as well as a dark side even to such a worship. In
Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan, the women who watched the flames must be
undoubted virgins; they were usually of noble blood, and must vow
eternal chastity, or at least were free to none but the ruler of the
realm. As long as they were consecrated to the fire, so long any carnal
ardor was degrading to their lofty duties. The sentiment of shame, one
of the first we find developed, led to the belief that to forego fleshly
pleasures was a meritorious sacrifice in the eyes of the gods. In this
persuasion certain of the Aztec priests practised complete abscission or
entire discerption of the virile parts, and a mutilation of females was
not unknown similar to that immemorially a custom in Egypt.[147-2] Such
enforced celibacy was, however, neither common nor popular.
Circumcision, if it can be proven to h