BULL-ROARERS have been used as cult objects by various peoples from ancient times to the present day, usually in the context of male initiation ceremonies. They are generally made of wood (or ceramics, as in ancient Greece) and are generally flat, most commonly measuring sixty centimeters long and eight centimeters wide. Either through the whirring sound they make when swung or through the carved or painted marks they bear, they symbolize generalized powers of fertility, in particular those of male generative powers, of wind, and of rain.

In the mythology of ancient Greece, a bull-roarer was one of the toys with which the Titans distracted the child Dionysos before they slew him. As a cult object, the bull-roarer was used in rainmaking ceremonies, symbolizing Kronos as rainmaker, and in the Eleusinian mysteries, where the connection between Dionysos and Demeter as fertility deities was emphasized (Frazer, vol. 7, 1912). In present-day...