British author John Grigsby claims that the presence of ergot in the stomachs of some of the so-called'bog-bodies'( Iron Age human remains from peat bogs N E Europe such as Tollund Man ), reveals that ergot was once a ritual drink in a prehistoric fertility cult akin to the Eleusinian Mysteries cult of ancient Greece.
42.
Ginzburg argues that the benandanti fertility cult was connected to " a larger complex of traditions " that were spread " from Alsace to Hesse and from Bavaria to Switzerland ", all of which revolved around " the myth of nocturnal gatherings " presided over by a goddess figure, varyingly known as Perchta, Holda, Abundia, Satia, Herodias, Diana.
43.
In Ginzburg's interpretation of the evidence, the " benandanti " was a " fertility cult " whose members were " defenders of harvests and the fertility of fields . " He furthermore argued that it was only one surviving part of a much wider European tradition of visionary experiences that had its origins in the pre-Christian period, identifying similarities with Livonian werewolf beliefs.
44.
Some historians have viewed Ginzburg's ideas as being related to Murray's; Hungarian historian G�bor Klaniczay stated that " Ginzburg reformulated Murray's often fantastic and very inadequately documented thesis about the reality of the witches'Sabbath " and thus the publication of " I Benandanti " in 1966 " reopened the debate about the possible interconnections between witchcraft beliefs and the survival of pagan fertility cults ".
45.
At around the same period Karl Heinrich Graf argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source the latest, and Wilhelm Vatke linked the four to an evolutionary framework, the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law.
46.
This model of unity, tragically lost in the cradle of Christianity, is patterned on the fundamental blueprint for life on our planet, and manifested in the leadership role played by certain women in the community of Jesus'first followers . " Starbird claims this sacred partnership was the same as that which existed in other regions of the Near East that predated Christianity, comparable to the cults of Inanna and Dummuzi, Ishtar and fertility cult that brought well being to its people.
47.
Their indigenous technology of iron smelting gives them a distinct identity; as they claim to have descended from the ancient asuras who were associated with the art of metal craft . When smelting, the Asur women sing a song relating the furnace to an expectant mother encouraging the furnace to give a healthy baby, i . e ., good quality and quantity of iron from the ore; and were thence, according to Bera, associated with the fertility cult ( Bera 1997 : 32 ).
48.
While some people, like Jesse L . Weston in the famous " From Ritual to Romance " have suggested that the grail myth bears striking resemblances to fertility cults going back to Osiris and that there is a vegetative structure inherent, all such mythography is after the fact, and I don't think she argues that Cretien was actually working " from " a source like that as much as that he re-encoded a tale that had existed in folk form in various syncretized forms.
49.
Allegro believed he could prove, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults, and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants ( or " psychedelics " ) to perceive the mind of God, persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 13th century with reoccurrences in the 18th century and mid-20th century, as he interprets the Plaincourault chapel's fresco to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of " Amanita muscaria " as the Eucharist.
