Saint Augustine comments on the above statement in "The City of God" (Book iv, Ch ii):

Saint Augustine tells us that in some Roman Pagan Sects the godforms listed were invoked or activated by means of licentious devotions concentrating on Liber and/or Libera to provide a channel of gnosis. Augustine is most disparaging about these practices, which are written up like a moralising 'News of the World' sermon in 5th Century style. He is particularly critical of some features of the ritual - such as "Priapus, stretched up in vile nakedness"; the Goddess Juventas, who removes the robes of boyhood; and Stimula for the stimulants and stimulations by which men and women are "spurred on to much action". He seems most preoccupied, though, with the feminine godform Volupia whose ample attributes are applied to what might nowadays be termed the Art of the Bombay Rub.

Being interested in the authenticity of source material attested by the Fathers of the Church, a research effort is to be launched - under the inspiration of Saint Augustine's writings - to investigate whether the effects of these operations of erotognosis are as spurious as he suggests. Augustine was a North African Pagan and a Manichaean Gnostic before he turned 'Emperor's Evidence' and assisted in the effort to suppress those doctrines. He writes about erotic ritual in the sort of detail which suggests first hand experience, although this does not appear to be directly admitted.

This Log is a record of ritual experiments in which modern erotognostic techniques are employed to reproduce an interpretation of the experiences and observances enacted in the Pagan Temples of Augustine.