Animal Body painting
We may safely trace the proliferation of the religious cult of animals, magical ritual zoosexuality and religious zoophilia, with its expression of animal form portraiture of deity to the Paleolithic animal fertility cult. In the Paleolithic period of prehistory, prior to the rise of Neolithic agricultural societies, the survival of man, in his hunting and gathering cultures, depended heavily on the life of animals he hunted for food. This explains man's early exaggerated concern with the ecological issues of sustainability of animal life, which he expressed in the elaboration of magical-religious culture by which he sought supernatural means of mastery of animal life and fertility. The flourishing of the animal fertility cult in Paleolithic prehistory gives evidence of the incidence of significantly prolonged periods of drought and relative scarcity of game in the Mediterranean plains.
The famous Paleolithic paintings of the half-human, half-animal self-portraiture of the shaman-artist in Paleolithic murals point to early religious-mystical identification of the shaman with the life-essence of animals he sought to master by magical art. The spirit-Ego of the shaman which contemplated the "platonic" essence of animals was thought of as spiritual presence in the material forms of the animal the hunter encountered in the fields, and which the shaman-artist contemplated magically in his cave temple. Thus, the shaman "Master of Animals" was also the "Protector of Animals," in hunting cultures. Traditional hunters, therefore, do not kill animals indiscriminately or with impunity out of respect for the indwelling spirit-Ego of the shaman-protector of the species. The Bushman who killed an animal for food would offer a prayer making an apology to the "spirit" of the animal, assuring the "spirit" that he killed the animal only because he needed the meat for food.
The magical-ritual practice of zoosexuality and bestiality is closely connected in its origin with the practice of mother-son incestuous ritual in the animal fertility cult. The universal religious-mystical dualism(i.e. body-spirit dualism) found sexual metaphoric representation not only in mother-son sexuality but also in shaman-animal sexuality.
The psychoanalytic basis of the symbolic association of the animal with The Mother in mystical dualistic thought is well recognized. Infantile fear, especially of large animals(like the cow) is identified by Otto Rank as symbolic disposition of repressed birth trauma anxiety(the large animal becomes a symbol of the gravid mother). The psychoanalytic hypothesis is confirmed in the universal association of The Mother, in traditional religious zoophilia, with large animals. Thus, among the Ancient Egyptians, the Great Mother deity Apet was identified with the hippopotamus as Taweret, the "mighty one(a symbol of the maternal Cosmic-All). She was the goddess of maternity and the mother of the gods. In Paleolithic art, the Great Mother was always represented as a grotesquely steatopygous woman. The dying and resurrecting fertility deity Osiris, at Thebes, as well as the moon deity Ah, were regarded as the sons of the hippopotamus. Osiris also was a moon spirit. The moon symbolized the male principle born out of the engulfing cosmic darkness of the All-Mother(represented by the hippopotamus). The womb associations here are obvious: In the beginning, the cosmos was a vast expanse of dark water and the Great Mother was the deep itself. Her first born was the moon-child.
The indication of close association of mother-son sexuality with zoosexuality (by substitution of The Mother with the large animal) is shown in Hesoid's Theogony in which the half-woman, half-animal sphinx is said to have originated from the sexual union of Echidna, dwelling in the subterranean cave of Arimi, with her son(a plain association of incestuous ritual with zoosexuality in the animal fertility cult). In the famous story of Daedalus and his son Icarus, the queen Persiphae of Crete wishing to experience sexual intercourse with a bull forced Daedalus to design a wooden cow for her to hide in and offer herself to the bull. She gave birth to a half-man, half-beast Minotaur(another reference to zoosexual ritual practices in the subterranean animal fertility cult).
The widespread traditions of religious zoophilia provide evidence of the conceptual metamorphosis in the animal fertility cult which, in dualistic terms, came to identify The Mother with the grosser material aspects of life in the body-spirit dualism, and thus extended magical incestuous sexual ritual, in identification of animal with mother, to the frank perversion of zoosexuality in the animal fertility cult. The identification of Mother with Animal is shown further in the half-animal, half-human figure of the mythical sphinx in Greek tradition. In the famous Terra cotta relief of Tenos, the sphinx is represented as female and goddess of death alighting in a dominant sexual posture on a young male. The vagina dentata ("dangerous vagina with teeth") signification of the female animal figure is shown in its use as vase for aphrodisiac ointments in Greek culture.
In spirit possession cults the female is identified in animal terms as "horse" (Portuguese: "Cavalo"; Yoruba: "Esin"). Fuhrman refers to Peruvian representations of parturition in which a human(male)body grows out of a maternal-animal body with the animal showing strongly curved belly indicating the rest of the human body within.
