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In days of yore there must have been a hybrid of man and animal. The literature and art of antiquity leaves no doubt about that. Pictures of winged beasts with human heads, mermaids, scorpion men, birdmen, centaurs and many-headed monsters are all vividly in our memory. Old books say that even in historical times these hybrid beings lived together in hordes, tribes and even in large units like peoples. They tell of specially bred hybrids, who spent their existence as 'temple animals' and seem to have been the spoilt darlings of the populace. The Sumerian kings and later the Assyrians hunted half men, half animals—possibly just for diversion. Mysterious texts refer to half-humans and hybrids, whose remarkable existence constantly evaporates into the uncheckable realms of the mythical. The Egyptian ram still haunts the stories of the Order of Knights Templar founded in the twelfth century. He is depicted walking upright, with human hair on his head, goat's feet, goat's hind parts and a large phallus. In his Egyptian History, Herodotus (490-425 B.C.) speaks of strange black doves, which were supposed to have been women (II, 57). The Indian Vedas tell of mothers who 'walk on their hands'. The Epic of Gilgamesh says that Enkidu must be ‘estranged from the animals’. At the wedding of Pirithous, the Centaurs, who had human torsoes and horses' bodies, violated the wives of the Lapithae. Six youths and six maidens had to be ‘sacrificed’ to the bull-headed Minotaur. Lastly it is obvious that Hephaestus's lively maidens had a sexual connotation. I also have very little doubt that the dance around the golden calf was the climax of a sexual orgy. Plato writes in his Symposium: ‘Originally there was a third sex in addition to die male and female sexes. This human had four hands and four feet ... great was the strength of these humans, their minds were presumptuous, they planned to storm heaven and to lay violent hands on the gods ...' The Cabeiri, mostly called the ‘great gods' in inscriptions, carried on a mysterious cult with fertility demonds, which continued from ancient Egyptian times through the Hellenistic period and down to the flowering of the Roman culture. As the Cabeiri's rites were secret, it has not yet been possible to find out what sort of hearty sex games die ladies and gentlemen played with one another. Nevertheless, it is certain that two male and two female Cabeiri, as well as an animal, always took part in these diversions. The man and woman were not the only ones to copulate, the animal played an Perhaps I also ought to mention in this connection the Egyptian bulls of Apis, the 'sacred bulls of Memphis’. Because of their fertility they were mummified in sarcophagi over nine feet long and twelve feet high. Three years ago I stood in some of these musty burial chambers deep below the sands of the desert and asked myself what these fertile animals had done in their lifetime. Tacitus (Annals, XV, 37) describes a nocturnal orgy in the house of Tigellinus at which illicit intercourse took place with the cooperation of half men, half animals. It cannot be ascertained how long these perversions were carried on in secret societies. Sometimes the business seems to have been rather embarrassing to Herodotus and he tries to gloss it over (II, 46): 'In this province not long ago, a goat tupped a woman in full view of everybody—a most surprising incident.’ 11 - The Perversions Of Our Ancestors active role, too!