Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/41

 that it often happens that a goddess chooses a man not a woman, for her minister and inspired mouthpiece. When this occurred, the favored man thenceforth was regarded and treated as a woman. He remarked that this pretended change of sex under the inspiration of a female spirit perhaps explains a custom widely spread among savages, in accordance with which some men dress as women and act as women throughout life.

The association of supernatural, or at least super-normal, powers with these inverts is quite extensive, as we have already noticed. Still speaking of the Pelew Islanders, Frazer states: "These unsexed creatures often, perhaps generally, profess the arts of sorcery and healing; they communicate with spirits and are regarded sometimes with awe and sometimes with contempt, as beings of a higher or lower order than common folk. Often they are dedicated or trained to their vocation from childhood. Effeminate sorcerers or priests of this sort are found among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, the Burgis of South Celebes, the Patagonians of South America In Madagascar we hear of effeminate men who wore female attire and acted as women, thinking thereby to do God service. In the Kingdom of Congo, there was a sacrificial priest who commonly dressed as a woman and gloried in the title of Grandmother."

The list of individuals, famous in art and letters, of homosexual disposition, either active