Fertility Rite

Basic Information

A Fertility Rite is a religious ritual which reenacts sexual acts and/or reproductive processes in order to ensure fertility (such as bountiful harvests).

These may include orgies, ritual intercourse between people representing mythical figures and/or deities, animal sacrifice (or even human sacrifice) and processions carrying sacred or symbolic objects (such as phallus totems).

In shamanistic religions (including such religions as Vodou) worshippers may be possessed by spirits with influence over fertility.

See Also

• Kokopelli
• Sympathetic magic

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia entry

Game and Story Use

• In a fantasy world, the range of possibilities for fertility rites expands drastically. In some cases, "communing with nature" might mean actual congress with a dryad or other nature spirit.
  • Or a Deep One…
    • Or Shub-Niggurath.
      • Or anything else which involves lots of squick.
  • Or perhaps it is possible to transfer fertility from one being to another magically.
• A fantasy religion could give special status to children conceived during such a rite - or, indeed a society could have some or all castes who only reproduce during such rites, so that it is never entirely clear who is a the father of any specific child (and, indeed, you might well have examples of human multifecundity, which is normally extremely rare).
  • Note that this would be normal for many kinds of beastmen and many species with a oestrus cycle and no strong bonding mechanism.