Fertility Magic

Several millennia ago, a fertility cult was ubiquitous across Mythic Europe. Cult practitioners were, through rituals and spells, able to influence conception to promote desirable traits in children. Remains of the cult, in the form of small fetish statuettes carved to resemble a wide-hipped pregnant woman, can be found in remote caves, but are seldom identified as artifacts of a coherent cultic practice, and are often confused with the relics of Figurine Magic (see Houses of Hermes: True Lineages, page 33).

Other than the fertility fetishes and a few cave paintings, there are no relics or records of the culture that produced the fertility rituals, so it is unclear exactly who the fertility cult members were: certainly they had been wiped out, or assimilated, long before Rome's legionnaires marched through Europe. The fertility cult may have been part of an antediluvian culture that was destroyed in the flood, and credibility is lent to this theory by the fact that some of the isolated mountain caves the fetish statuettes are found in contain shells and the preserved bones of sea creatures. It is also possible that there were several similar cults — rather than a single, monolithic cult — and given the wide distribution of the fertility fetishes and their apparent independence of any ancient empire, this is even likely.