The making of cakes as part of magical or religious ceremonies

Note: this text is extracted from Book I, chapter 2:

“... then in the course of time the rainy season came on, and at this time the women are in the habit of making a cake of flour mixed with molasses, of an unbecoming and disgusting shape, and giving it to any Brāhman who is thought to be a blockhead, and if they act thus, this cake is said to remove their discomfort caused by bathing in the cold season, and their exhaustion caused by bathing in the hot weather; but when it is given, Brāhmans refuse to receive it, on the ground that the custom is a disgusting one”.

Like the Roman fascinum; guhya = liṅga =phallus. Professor E. B. Cowell has referred me to an article by Dr Liebrecht in the Zeitschrift der Morgenländis-chen Gesellschaft. It was reprinted in his Zur Volkskunde, Heilbronn, 1879, p. 436 et seq., under the title of “Der Aufgegessene Gott.” He connects the custom with that of the Jewish women mentioned in Jeremiah vii. 18: “The women knead their dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven,” and he quotes a curious custom practised on Palm Sunday in the town of Saintes.—

Dulaure went deeply into the subject in his Des Divinités Génératrices, Paris, 1805 (1st edition); 2 vols., 1825 (2nd edition); vol. 2 was enlarged and reprinted in 1885—the last edition was issued in Paris, 1905. He says that in his time the festival was called there “ La fête des Pinnes”; the women and children carried in the procession a phallus made of bread, which they called a pinne, at the end of their palm branches; these pinnes were subsequently blessed by the priest, and carefully preserved by the women during the year. Liebrecht gives numerous examples of the making and eating of gods for various reasons. They are usually a form of sympathetic or homoeopathic magic. For instance in the time of famine the Hanīfa tribe of Arabia make an idol of ḥais (dates, butter and milk kneaded together), which they eat, thus hoping to obtain food supplies and a speedy termination of the famine. See Burton’s Nights, vol. vii, p. 14, where, in the story of Gharib and his brother Ajib, Jamrkan worships a god of’ Agwah — i.e. compressed dates, butter and honey. In other cases we see customs connected with the corn goddess which involve the eating of a cake made in some particular shape.

To give a few examples:

At Ulten, in the Trentino district of the Tyrol, the women make a god with the last of the dough which they have been kneading, and when they begin baking the god is thrown into the oven.

In Germany there are distinct festivals connected with such cake ceremonies. In Upper Germany they are called Manoggel, Nikolause, Klaus-männer; in Lower Germany, Sengterklas, Klaskerchen, etc. They are all connected with St Nicolaus.

In France, in La Pallisse, it is customary to hang several bottles of wine and a “ man of dough” on a fig-tree. The tree and its offerings are carried to the Mairie and kept till the end of the grape-picking season, when a harvest festival is held, at which the Mayor breaks the dough figure and distributes it among the people.

In Sweden the figure of a girl is made from the grain of the last sheaf, and is divided up among the household, each member of which eats his allotted portion.

In England, at Nottingham, it was, according to Liebrecht (op. cit.), the custom for the bakers to send at Christmas to all their customers buns in the shape of a lozenge, upon which was stamped the Cross, or more often the Virgin and Child. The distant connection with the “Queen of Heaven,” mentioned at the beginning of this note, will be recognised.

In the above examples of “cake customs” the phallic element is to a large extent either hidden or forgotten, or else plays but a minor part in the ceremonies described. In many cases, however, the opposite is the case. In his Remains of the Worship of Priapus, R. P. Payne Knight states that in Saintonge, in the neighbourhood of La Rochelle, small cakes baked in the shape of a phallus form part of the Easter offering; they are subsequently distributed at all the houses. A similar custom existed at St Jean d’Angély. According to Dulaure (op. cit.), in 1825 such cakes were still commonly made at certain times, the male being symbolised at Brives and other localities of Lower Limousin, while the female emblem was adopted at Clermont, in Auvergne, as well as other places.

Turning to the ancient world we find that cakes of phallic form were among the sacred objects carried about in Greece during the Thesmophoria, and in the [?] or baskets of first-fruits, at the orphic rite of the

Liknophoria, and also at marriages. They were included in the mystic food eaten by the women at the Hola, and in all probability formed part of the sacra presented to the [?] in the Eleusinian Mysteries (J. E. Harrison,

Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1908, pp. 122, 518, 522, 530 et seq.; cf. Clem. Alex., Protrept, ii). At Syracuse, on the day of the Thesmophoria, cakes of sesame and honey, representing the female sex, and known by the name of [?] were carried about and offered to the goddesses—probably Demeter and Kore (Athenæus, xiv, 56; Farnell, Cults oj the Greek States, iii, 99 _} and the authorities there cited). The Romans, according to Martial, made cakes in the form of either sex.

For further details on customs connected with the making of cakes as part of magical or religious ceremony reference should be made to Hastings’ Encycl. Rel. and Eth., vol. iii, p. 57 et seq. (Art. “ Cakes and Loaves,” by J. A. Macculloch); vol. ix, p. 818 et seq. (Art. “ Phallism,” by E. S. Hartland, from which the Greek references in the above note have been taken). —n.m.p.