The attitude to sexual attraction to animals at different times was not the same. Over the centuries, it has changed significantly depending on religious views, customs and moral principles. There were times when an intimate relationship with animals was considered something common, not even worth discussing.
In addition, many peoples believed in their origin from animals. For example, the Guineans considered a large spider to be their ancestor, the Tibetans an ape, the Dahomeans a leopard and a shark, and the Malgashs a zebra. The Arcadians, Hindus and Tatars believed that they came from horses.
The people of Thailand still believe that they have occurred as a result of the union of a woman and a dog, just like the Ainu, the people living on the Japanese island of Hokaido. According to an old legend, a sad young woman lived on one of the most beautiful islands in the Japanese archipelago. Once, returning from a hunt, she met a dog, who offered her to become her guardian and lover. The woman agreed, and from her and her four-legged lover they allegedly sent the Ainu.
In India, you can still see weddings where an animal (mainly a dog) acts as the bride or groom.
Bear brides
The most amazing thing is that the peoples who have never lived in the neighborhood, were separated by a distance of thousands of kilometers, consider the same pairs as their ancestors: man - beast, and with surprisingly coinciding details. The Indians of southwestern Canada tell a legend about a young woman named Rfizund, who was abducted by bears, and she became the wife of a bear leader.
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During the marriage with him, Rfizund gave birth to two sons, bear cubs. At home, the woman was considered dead, and only her two brothers continued to search. In the end, they managed to kill the bear-leader, who, before his death, managed to sing a magic song, and both his sons took on a human form. After the death of their mother, already adults, they left the forest and began to live among people.
This Indian legend is similar to another, Danish one. In it, too, a young woman was taken away by a bear. After several years of living with the beast, she gave birth to a son - a half-bear, half-human. As in the Indian legend, her bear husband was once killed, and the woman, together with her son, returned to the people. The son got married, and his son Ulso, as legend has it, became the father of the first king of Denmark, Svein.
Apparently, this happened among the Slavic peoples:
“In 1925, in the Olonets province, there was such a case. A bear got into the habit of walking into one of the villages and gnawed at cattle. On the advice of the old people, “in order to please the bear,” the residents decided to make a “bear wedding”, “to get off with a girl” - to give the bear the girl “conscientiously … HOW OLD GRANDFATHES DO … the most beautiful girl”. A girl was chosen by lot, dressed in the attire of a bride and, despite her resistance, was taken to the forest to a bear den, where she was tied to a tree: “Don't judge, Nastya. Please the bears. Stand up for us, nurse, do not let die a cruel death. Yu. V. Krivosheev Religion of the Eastern Slavs on the eve of the baptism of Rus. L.: Knowledge, 1988.
“The bear, he says, the bear took the woman away and apparently lived with her for two years. I just took it to the forest, and that's it. She was all worn out, worn out. I got used to it, but I still didn't forget people. I felt that people were somewhere. The fishermen saw her. In the woods, along the river that they fished … And for a year he (the bear) did not leave her. And in the second year he freely let him go to the forest. And that's all, he says, he carried her berries. Somewhere I fed, and then began to carry this meat. She does not eat the rotten meat that he brings. And then she got used to it, or whatever, she also understands, although not a person. She will bring fresh meat that does not smell, and she will cook it. And then (it’s already brutalized, really), but still began to live something. I still lived with meat. And when she, he said, was leaving, he, they say, apparently returned. Yes, it howled so terribly on the shore. He got used to her himself … Yes, and she had a child, she took it with her,he was normal, a child! „
Recorded by K. Shumov in the village of Ust-Urolka, Cherdyn district in 1986 from P. D. Zarubin, born in 1904, and N. I. Shalamov, born in 1911 Zhur. "Living antiquity", 2001, No. 3, p. 17.
The same can be found in the stories of the Evens (the indigenous population of Kamchatka):
The youngest daughter of one of the two brothers ends up in a bear's den. The bear feeds her. In the spring, the girl returns to her parents, gives birth to two children - a bear cub and a child. The bear grows up with its brother, then leaves. His brother Tororgani searches for the bear, but finds only tracks of it. Having made a mark on the tree above the bear's scratch, calls him to a duel. A bear scratches a man, a man kills a bear with a sharp stone. The bear, dying, tells how to arrange a bear holiday - urkachak.
The girl - the hunter's younger sister goes after the prey left by her brother, is lost. Two years later, a man meets her: she married a bear, she has three children. She refuses to return: “I have many children,” and gives her brother to raise her youngest son.
And among the Yukaghirs:
The woman got lost, came to a bear den, spent the winter there: the bear let the woman lick her paw - he fed her. Returning to the people, the woman gave birth to a child, when he grew up, became a bear and ran away. The man who killed 99 bears wants to kill the hundredth, the bear greets him: the man remembers that the woman had a bear son, the man was delighted that he had met a relative.
Yukagir goes hunting, spends the winter with a bear in a den, a son is born to a bear. The father-hunter takes him to people, the son - the bear-man leaves them, meets the heroes, then finds a wife for himself and a wife for his half-brother-Yukagir (the son of a hunter); goes to live in the taiga.
Among the Chukchi:
A man meets a bear, the bear kills him, revives him, shows the way to the bears, a man marries a bear, brings her to people, the bear turns into a woman. The old woman does not like that the bear eats fat in chunks, the bear leaves. A man goes to look for her, comes to the bears, they arrange competitions for him: to catch a seal and get stones from the bottom of the sea. A person wins competitions, returns to people, kills an old woman, lives with people with a bear wife.
An old woman lives with her grandson, a polar bear asks him for clothes, he marries her. The bear can take the form of a girl, give birth to a bear cub, then a boy, the bear with her sons goes to the bears, the man follows her, the bears test him - he wins the competition (the same two as in the previous text) in the last competition he kills the bear from the bow.
among the Koryaks:
The bear carries away the girl - the daughter of Kutkynyaka and Mitya, she marries her brother-bear, the girl's sister Rara wants to have the same husband, but is afraid of the bear, is lazy - her brothers kill the bear: a young man jumps out of the bearskin and runs into the forest, Rara loses husband.
Romans and Greeks
Sodomy was also known among the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Greek scientist Thales, according to legend, advised his lord Periander not to trust sheep to unmarried shepherds if he wants to avoid the birth of monsters.
In ancient Rome, the use of donkeys for erotic purposes was widespread. The Roman poet-satirist Juvenal wrote that "Roman women often bared their buttocks in front of donkeys, enticing them." In Egypt, such ties were part of fertility festivals.
According to the ancient myth, the Greek supreme god Zeus, the lord of all gods and people, in the form of a swan was carried away by the daughter of King Aetolia Leda, and she bore him two sons and two daughters, including Helen, the most beautiful of women.
In the guise of a snake, Zeus took possession of Olympia, the daughter of the King of Macedonia and conceived with her the future great conqueror Alexander the Great. To take away Europe, the daughter of the Phoenician king, Zeus turned into a bull.
And when Perun, the god of storms, fell in love with Ganymede, the queen of Troy, he turned into an eagle in order to steal his coveted one. Neptune, the god of the seas, in the guise of a monitor lizard, a dolphin, or a bird, seduced countless young women, like the famous Apollo, who for the same purposes took the form of a lion.
The goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite, as it is told in ancient myths, although she did not shy away from men, she willingly used lions and horses as lovers. The powerful Hercules fell in love with a hybrid creature that was a woman above the waist and a snake below.
From the passion of the wife of the king of Crete Pazifa for the bull, the Minotaur was born - a half-bull, half-man, a terrible monster that ate human flesh. It was also said that the Roman emperor Augustus was born from the union of his mother with a serpent.
Many ancient thinkers, poets, including such as Aristotle, Lucretius, Virgil, Herodotus, believed that new animals can be obtained by crossing different species among themselves, just as new plants are grafted. From the stories of ancient scholars it is known that in Italy one Jewess allegedly gave birth to a child with the body of a man and the head of an elephant as a result of a relationship with an elephant.
And the famous historian and writer Plutarch described such an amazing meeting with one shepherd: “A young shepherd opened a ripe bundle and showed me a baby whom he took with his mare. The upper part of the newborn's body was human, and the lower one was horse, but the baby cried like an ordinary newborn."
Sinful occupation
Many centuries passed before the Judeo-Christian doctrine changed the attitude towards sodomy. Religion has emphasized the higher position of man over the animal world. For this reason, sodomy began to be interpreted as degradation, an abomination and a sin more serious than sodomy, a sin that can be expiated only through burning at the stake.
Moreover, it was believed that any animal that is capable of leading a man or woman to such a terrible act is associated with Satan. The mother of a somewhat abnormal child risked being accused of sodomy, and hence in connection with the devil himself through animals. In the Middle Ages, by sentence, thousands of innocent women were burned alive, accused of sodomy.
For centuries, naturalists still believed in the possibility of crossing different types of animals. In 1675 the German naturalist Kircher argued quite seriously that the giraffe is the result of crossing a camel and a panther. He called such fantastic creatures "hippelafus" - a hybrid of a horse and a deer, "yumart" - the fruit of crossing a horse and a cow.
Ten years later, Thomas Bartholin, a wonderful Danish anatomist, wrote that he himself saw a woman who, after intercourse with a cat, gave birth to a child who had a cat's head!
The list of such observations and testimonies could be continued indefinitely, however, the examples given are enough to conclude that in the Middle Ages and even later, sodomy was recognized as the cause of human deformities.
What the Middle Ages! Remnants of old beliefs can be found in some philosophical and medical works of the 19th and even 20th centuries. For example, we can mention the theologian Setler, a famous and influential thinker, who argued that freaks can be the result of the sexual union of man and beast.
At the end of the century before last, some British researchers described cases of marriage of black women with gorillas. Their children were able not only to do their homework, but also to speak. But the scientists did not manage to see these people-half-gorillas, because they, feeling attention to themselves, as if they had gone into the jungle forever.
Alexander SEDOV