Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 The Evolution...

Robertson Smith points out that since snakes are the last noxious animals which man is able to exterminate, they are the last to be associated with demons. They were ultimately the only animals directly and constantly associated with the Arabian jinn, or demon, and the serpent of Eden was a demon, and not a temporary disguise of Satan (Religion of Semites, pp. 129 and 442). Perhaps it was, in part, because the snake was thus the last embodiment of demonic power that women were associated with it, women being always connected with the most ancient religious beliefs.

In the northern territory of the same colony menstruation is said to be due to a bandicoot scratching the vagina and causing blood to flow (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 177, November, 1894). At Glenelg, and near Portland, in Victoria, the head of a snake was inserted into a virgin's vagina, when not considered large enough for intercourse (Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 319).

It is noteworthy that one of the names for the penis used by the Swahili women of German East Africa, in a kind of private language of their own, is "the snake" (Zache, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, p. 73, 1899). It may be added that Maeder ("Interprétation de Quelques Rêves," Archives de Psychologie, April, 1907) brings forward various items of folk-lore showing the phallic significance of the serpent, as well as evidence indicating that, in the dreams of women of to-day, the snake sometimes has a sexual significance.

W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 1885, p. 307. The point is elaborated in the same author's Religion of Semites, second edition, Appendix on "Holiness, Uncleanness, and Taboo," pp. 446-54. See also Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentums, second edition, pp. 167-77. Even to the early Arabians, Wellhausen remarks (p. 168), "clean" meant "profane and allowed," while "unclean" meant "sacred and forbidden." It was the same, as Jastrow remarks (Religion of Babylonia, p. 662), among the Babylonian Semites.

E. Durkheim, "La Prohibition de l'Inceste et ses Origines," L'Année Sociologique, Première Année, 1898, esp. pp. 44, 46-47, 48, 50-57. Crawley (Mystic Rose, p. 212) opposes Durkheim's view as to the significance of blood in relation to the attitude towards women.

Pliny, who, in Book VII, Chapter XIII, and Book XXVIII, Chapter XXIII, of his Natural History, gives long lists of the various good and evil influences attributed to menstruation, writes in the latter place: "Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be stilled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn."

See Bourke, Scatologic Rites of all Nations, 1891, pp. 217-219, 250 and 254; Ploss and Max Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i; H. L. Strack, Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit, fourth edition, 1892, pp. 14-18. The last mentioned refers to the efficacy frequently attributed to menstrual blood in the Middle Ages in curing leprosy, and gives instances, occurring even in Germany to-day, of girls who have administered drops of menstrual blood in coffee to their sweethearts, to make sure of retaining their affections.