Of love and lettuces

As we hand over Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, it’s timely to consider the worship of fertility throughout the ages

- IAN MORTON

Since ancient days, nothing was more sacred than fertility. Continuity of the human race sustained by good husbandry and a bountiful natural world were the absolutes. Every culture worshipped divine and mystical forces, unseen but given names and form, which were believed to promote and govern survival. The Old World abounded with gods and goddesses. Northern and eastern Mediterranean areas worshipped a good two dozen deities understood to affect fertility. Greece and Rome shared some 30. Egypt had 13. Nordic and northern Europe listed 17, and the Celtic areas at least nine. Ancient peoples believed in multiple chances. In total, cultures worldwide venerated some 170 recorded fertility deities.

Men may have felt the need to boost their libido but it was the function of women to enhance the chances of pregnancy, and empathy between the female sex and the earth was widely perceived. Notions of Mother Nature, mother country and motherland confirmed the solid maternal processes of fertility, birth, nurturing and overall survival. In the ancient hagiarchies of procreation, especially human, goddesses outnumbered gods by two to one. The instinct to revere the female no doubt accounts for the way we refer to productive domestic animals as cows, sheep, hens, ducks and geese, not bulls, rams, cocks, drakes or ganders.