Brief
History of Religious Sex
Dr
Raven Dolick MsD Nov 20, 2014
All
rights reserved
The religion of the Goddess, wherever it
was practiced throughout history, has always been sex positive. The
most famous of the ancient rituals is the Hieros Gamos, or Sacred
marriage ritual. Records of this ceremony have been dated as far back
as early Sumerian, about 5500 years ago. In this ritual the high
priestess acting as avatar of The Goddess had sex with the ruler of
the country to show the Goddess's acceptance him as ruler and
caretaker of her people. Here is part of the ceremony as translated
from an ancient Sumerian poem.
The High Priestess, acting for
Inanna, is speaking to Dumuzi the new king.
My vulva, the horn,
The boat of Heaven, Is full of eagerness like the young moon. My
untilled land lies fallow. As for me, Inanna, Who will plow my vulva?
Who will plow my high field? Who will plow my wet ground? As for me,
the young woman, Who will plow my vulva? Who will station the ox
there? Who will plow my vulva?
The symbolism is, I hope, obvious
to you. If you've ever looked at an anatomical picture of the female
reproductive system, you may have noticed that the vagina is shaped
like a horn, it curves upward and narrows towards the back.
On
the male side, an old time plow (not the modern day tractor type) had
a long, hard projection that pushed into the ground. Dumuzi, the king
replies: Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva, I, Dumuzi the
King, will plow your vulva Inanna accepts him saying: Then plow my
vulva, man of my heart Plow my vulva.
Then follows more details
of the happenings
My eager impetuous caresser of the navel, My
caresser of the soft thighs; He is the one my womb loves best, My
high priest is ready for the holy loins. My lord Dumuzi is ready for
the holy loins. The plants and herbs in his field are ripe. O Dumuzi,
Your fullness is my delight.
The high priestess then directs
things to be readied Inanna called for the bed. Let the bed that
rejoices the heart be prepared Let the bed that sweetens the loins be
prepared Let the bed of kingship be prepared! Let the bed of
queenship be prepared! Let the royal bed be prepared!
This bed
was set up in front of the entire congregation. The people watched
the entire ritual including the sexual part.
He shaped my loins
with his fair hands, The shepherd Dumuzi filled my lap with cream and
milk. He stroked my pubic hair. He watered my womb. He laid his hands
on my holy vulva, He smoothed my black boat with cream, He quickened
my narrow boat with milk. He caressed me on the bed. The King went
with lifted head to the holy loins. He went with lifted head to the
loins of Inanna He went to the queen with lifted head. He opened wide
his arms to the holy priestess of heaven. We rejoiced together. He
took his pleasure of me. He laid me down on the fragrant honey-bed My
sweet love, lying by my heart, Tongue-playing, one by one, My fair
Dumuzi did so fifty times. Now, my sweet love is sated.
At the
climax of the ceremony (or should I say, climaxes, fifty times, wow!)
the populous would cheer and shout their approval and appreciation.
This ritual brought prosperity to the people and to the land, so they
were very happy to witness its successful completion.
A lot
has been written since women's liberation about the performance
anxiety men feel in our modern times. Performing sex in front of
other people was not the stressful thing in ancient days as it is
now. Sex was often done in religious ceremonies in groups--Orgies.
Nowadays the word orgy connotes something depraved and
degenerate. That was not the original meaning for the word. The word
"orgy" comes from the Greek word "orgia" meaning
"secret worship". Since most secret worship involved sexual
rituals, and Christians were opposed to anything sexual the word orgy
came to have the debased meaning it has today, rather than the noble,
spiritual meaning of the original word.
Many words that are used
to describe extreme religious fervor are also used to describe great
sex, such as passion, bliss, and ecstasy. There were many orgies
throughout the year as celebrations in the religion of the Goddess.
Many of these celebrations have been taken over by the Christians who
removed their sexual nature. The best known is undoubtedly Christmas
taken from the pagan festival of Saturnalia.
Saturn, from
whom we get the word for the day of the week, Saturday, was the Roman
name for the Greek God, Cronus and the Babylonian God, Ninip.
Sometimes called the Lord of Death, he was represented by the sun at
its lowest aspect at the winter solstice. That's when the earth is
cold, and most plants are dead, and it was believed that the sun was
approaching death. Today that's around December 21, but because of
calendar changes, it was originally December 25th. Saturnalia
celebrated the sun overcoming the power of winter, with hope of
spring when life would be renewed. In Roman times, Bacchus, the god
of wine, became the lord of these festivals. During the Bacchanalian
festivals the everyday rules were turned topsy turvy. The masters
waited on the servants. All sexual prohibitions were lifted. It was a
time of true good will towards all men. Even dresses were exchanged
with men dressing as women. Erotic dances were performed with a large
erect phallus being carried around in the dancing processionals.
The
custom of exchanging clothes during Saturnalia and Bacchanalia was an
activity frowned upon by the Jews and Christians as it is prohibited
by the Bible, Deuteronomy 22;5 "The woman shall not wear that
which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's
garment; for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy god"
So much for Biblical transvestites.
However, the god Hermes in
order to become a god of magic went into the temple of his consort
Aphrodite where he wore a woman's robes and artificial breasts. In
the temple he learned all the secrets of the Goddess Aphrodite which
were exclusively taught to her female priestesses. The priests of the
very masculine Greek hunk, Hercules, always wore female dress,
probably in memory of Hercules service in female dress to the Queen
Omphale. Zeus had sent Hercules to be a slave to the Queen for having
killed a young man, Eurytus, after his father had insulted Hercules.
One of the most famous prophets and seers of ancient time,
Teiresias, was a man who was changed into a woman and served in the
temples as a priestess for seven years to gain the feminine powers of
insight and divination. During this time as a woman he gave birth to
a daughter before being turned back into a man. It was Teiresias who
gave us the "scale of one to ten." Myth has it that Zeus
and Hera once argued who had the most pleasure in sex. Zeus said it
was the woman, while Hera asserted it was the man. They agreed that
Teiresias should judge who was right. He did not hesitate to tell the
God and Goddess, "Measured on the scale of pleasure, in the act
of sex man has one measure to woman's nine." Hera became
incensed by this, stating that judges, like referees in sporting
events are all blind, and made Teiresias blind.
Anciently men's
transvestism had its roots in the desire to attain female magic and
powers and was common among the Pagan priests up to the time of St.
Augustine who denounced the custom, saying that men who wore women's
garments could never attain salvation, even if they were otherwise
good Christians. So the good Catholics simply made the women's gowns
into Priests robes. They looked the same, had the same function, but
a "robe by any other name, does not a transvestite make."
Another favorite converted Pagan holiday is Valentines Day
taken from the Lupricalia. The festivals of Lupricalia were noted for
their wild, sensual dances in which sausages played a very important
part. So important in fact that both dancing and sausages were
outlawed by the Christian Emperors of the 4th and 5th century.
And,
of course, May Day used to have great sexual frolics around that
giant phallic symbol, the May pole. The May pole represented the Gods
phallus in Mother Earth. People decorated it and danced around it.
Kids still do today, even though they have no idea of its original
meaning. The Christian church opposed May festivals because of its
association with pagan gods. A 16th century English Puritan writer
Philip Stubes, railed against May pole dancing. He said,
"What
clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smooching and
slobbering one of another, what filthy groping and unclean handling
is not practiced in the dances." Stubes estimated, though how he
got his statistics is unknown, probably from peeping through bushes,
that not one girl in three retained her virginity after taking part
in May pole rituals. After dancing around the Maypole celebrants
would retire to the open fields where they would have sex with anyone
and everyone in the plowed fields in order to insure the fertility of
the land and prosperous yield of crops. May was a month of sexual
freedom throughout rural Europe up to the 16th century. Marriage
bonds were suspended for the month of May, commenced again in June -
hence, June weddings.
All of these ancient rituals, these
orgia, involved group sex and nudity. The hang ups and inhibitions
that most people have about having sex in groups or in front of other
people are largely the result of Biblical attitudes. Sex, was
something to be done only in private behind locked doors, and only
for procreation. Those restrictive ideas come to us from the Bible,
in which nudity is condemned as soon as Adam and Eve ate the apple
(or technically, the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil).
Also
in Genesis we read the story of Noah getting drunk and lying around
naked in his tent. His son Ham, the father of Canaan, came in and saw
him and went out and told his two brothers about it. They came in
and, walking backwards, covered him. When Noah woke up he knew what
Ham had done and he said,
"Cursed be Canaan; a servant
of servants shall he be unto his brethren" So the father curses
his son and his descendants--who are according to some biblical
interpretations, especially those of Whitehead and many Mormon, and
some nineteenth century christian writers, the blacks--to be servants
to his white brothers just because Ham saw him naked. A little
extreme, I'd say. And it doesn't matter that some interpret this
differently, as one of the justifications for American slavery of
blacks was this interpretation of the Bible.
Nudity is
frowned on by the Judaeo-Christian god, but Greek Gods are usually
depicted as nude in magnificently detailed statues. The god of the
Bible is always portrayed with plenty of flowing robes on. What does
he have to be ashamed of? Did they cut too much off when he was
circumcised?
In pagan religion rituals, men and women had sex
with their friends and neighbors. The Bible forbids such activities
in no uncertain terms, Leviticus 20:10,
"And the man
that committeth adultery with another man's wife even he that
committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the
adulteress shall surely be put to death." Even today some states
still cling to archaic Judaeo- Christian religious laws making
adultery a crime.
In ancient times a priestess could be
married or unmarried. She performed sexual purification rituals with
all worthy men regardless of her marital status. In some cultures all
women were required to serve in the temple. Herodotus, the father of
history, writing about the Babylonians states,
"Babylonian
custom compels every woman of the land once in her life to sit in the
temple of love and have intercourse with some stranger. The men pass
and make their choice. It matters not what be the sum of money; the
woman will never refuse, for that were a sin, the money being by this
act made sacred. After their intercourse she has made herself holy in
the sight of the Goddess and goes away to her home." That is
unless she decided to continue as a full time priestess. The man was
not paying for sex, but rather making an offering to the Goddess for
allowing him to participate in the sacred ritual.
One hundred
and fifty years later, Quintus Curtius, the historian who accompanied
Alexander the Great on his conquests, reported:
"There
is none other more corrupt than this people, or none other more
learned in the art of pleasure and voluptuaries. Fathers and mothers
suffered their daughters to prostitute themselves to their guests for
silver and husbands were not less indulgent with respect to their
wives. The Babylonians plunged into drunkenness and all the disorders
which follow it. The women appeared at the banquets with modesty at
first, but they ended by abandoning their robes, then the rest of
their garments one after another, disrobing themselves little by
little of modesty until they were entirely naked. And these were not
public women who abandoned themselves so; they were the most
respectable matrons and their daughters."
In some
cultures, as in Egypt, the upper class women were priestesses. Almost
all of the Egyptian queens were High Priestesses of the Goddess, up
until Cleopatra. She was the 369th in a line of which I am 537th High
Priestess. Egyptologists who know how sexual the high priestesses
were, just cannot believe that a queen would have sex with anyone
other than her husband-- like the good Jewish Queens of the Bible.
They seem to think that Cleopatra, who had sex with 100 Roman
noblemen in one night was unusual. The fact is, all priestesses,
queens or otherwise had sex with thousands of men.
In ancient
cultures with matriarch religions, sex was considered something
ennobling and uplifting. Sex could take you closer to the Gods rather
than alienate you from god.
An example of this come from one of
the oldest stories in existence, the Gilgamesh Epic. Some place the
Epic by tradition around 5,000 years before the current era. The
story tells of many heroic adventures of Gilgamesh who is part human
and part god. One particular story tells that the gods placed a wild
man, Enkidu, in the wilderness area and required Gilgamesh to capture
and tame him. Gilgamesh is told of this wild man by a shepherd who
has seen him. Rather than run out with spears, arrows and nets,
Gilgamesh sends a priestess of the Goddess to the watering place of
the wild man. She takes off her clothes, exposing her charms. The
wild man, finding her much more appealing than his animal friends,
has sex with her for 6 days and 7 nights and is won from his wild
life. He is calmly led by the priestess back to the city, to
civilization.
This story dramatizes the ennobling, civilizing
benefits of sex. Sex is portrayed as a force for good. Contrast that
with the Biblical version of the first sex activities. Adam and Eve
were living in Paradise without sex. They disobeyed their god's order
not to eat fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is
only after they eat of the fruit of knowledge that they become aware
of their genitals and sex. As a result they are caste out of
paradise, out of the presence of their god, into a cold, cruel,
uncultivated world--where sex is evil.
In the Goddess
religion sex brings one to civilization and the goddess, in the
Judaeo-Christian religion sex drives one into the wilderness away
from their god.
In Judaism, the sins of the individual are put on
some animal which is ritualistically killed by the a priest, or sent
as a scapegoat into the wilderness. In Christianity, the sins are put
on the dead god Jesus, whom they believe died for all men's sins,
past, present and future. (So since your sins are already all taken
care of, why not enjoy yourself?) In the religion of the Goddess, the
priestess takes upon herself the sins and transgressions of the man
in the ritual of negation. In the Egyptian language the word,
Negation, pronounced negation but obviously spelled differently in
hieroglyphics, meant Semen or the essence of man. The word modernly
means to cancel or wipe out, to make negative. You may wonder how it
got from one language to the next with such a drastic change in
meaning. That is because in the ritual of negation, a man ejaculates,
or leaves his negation, his semen inside the twat of the priestess,
as a symbol that he is willing to give up his all in order to have
his sins wiped out. The term negation came to be applied to the whole
ritual or wiping out ceremony. Gradually through the centuries, the
semen, and religious connection got lost and only the wiping out part
remained. The priestess literally takes upon herself the
transgressions of the man, she intercedes on man's behalf with the
Goddess, so that he can be purified. She is his guide in this life to
bring him to the hereafter.
There have been some Christian sects
through the centuries that have selectively interpreted passages of
the Bible to allow them to indulge in sexual activity typically
forbidden by their god. The Aegopy had open, free love when
christianity first began. Other "heretical" sects in early
Christianity, such as the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit,
were killed off by good christians about 600 years ago. A heresy is
anything which the Catholic Church does not agree with. America has
had several religious groups which practiced open sex. The Oneida
Company of New York, which makes beautiful silver work was originally
run by one such religious group. John Humphrey Noyes preached what
became known as his "perfectionist" doctrine which required
its members to lover one another--and make love to one another.
Another sect which was established about the same time was
the Brotherhood of the New Life. It was started by Tom Harris who
taught that people had a duty to love each other, not just spiritual
brotherly love, but also physical love with many partners.
Most
people know the Mormons practiced polygamy in the 1800's. But the
Mormons also had secret sexual practices in which women were shared
among the inner circle of male leaders in the early days of the
church. John Law, one of the ruling three men of the Mormon Church,
second only to Joseph Smith, had his printing press destroyed by
angry church leaders when he threatened to publish accounts of the
men who had had sex with his wife. This is emphatically denied today
by Mormon leaders, but Mormons leaders also denied that they were
practicing polygamy until polygamy became the "New and
Everlasting Covenant of Celestial Marriage". Sex with several
women became the "order" as long as you were married to
them; and there appears to have be no limit put on the number of
wives. The Mormons correctly pointed out that this practice was
common among patriarchs of the Bible--Abraham, Israel, King David and
Solomon, to name a few. Unfortunately Mormon women were never given
the same freedom of having sex with other men as were the priestess
wives of David and Solomon, and other patriarch.
This right
of the priestess, to have sex with any man she desired, appears to
have been originally taught by the founder of Mormonism, Joseph
Smith, but was rejected by his wife, Emma, who also rejected
polygamy. Why bother to twist and select passages from the Bible to
allow sex in religion when there already exists the religion of the
Goddess with its emphasis on spiritual sex?
Each of these modern
religions gave up their attempt at spiritual sexuality, due to
pressure from Judaeo-Christian religions. Sex is no longer just a
religious issue, it is a political issue. From the mayors and
councilmen of cities, legislators and governor, to the President, the
politics of sex demands an outward profession of the Judaeo-Christian
ethics. A politician is required to parade his wife, children, church
attendance and sexual fidelity before the public as a sign of his
character. In this land of the free where there is supposedly freedom
of religion, we are slaves to Judaeo/Christian traditions which
promote a male patriarchal order as "family values".
The
sexuality of the Goddess has been feared by men from their beginning
and Her sexuality is feared today. Christian fundamentalists are in
dread of a sex-positive religion which will have a greater appeal
then their sex-negative, ascetic doctrines. Christians fear the
haunting shadows of their forgotten ancestors--those ancients who
worshipped the pagan goddess and the Goddess in Her temples and
groves--who still bring up images of hidden memories of her
priestesses in their subconscious who speak a truth which Christians
openly deny. Christians fear the obvious, that after 2000 years their
dead god has not returned and the twilight of christianity has
arrived--that long awaited time when the "Lady of the New Dawn"
would arrive.
