Notes about Sexuality and Religion

P25

the archaism of initiation rites is beyond doubt….

But the circular dance is extremely widespread (throughout Eurasia, in eastern Europe, in Melanesia, among the Indians of California, etc.).

the mystical solidarity between the group of hunters and the game supports the presumption of various trade secrets known only to men; now, such “secrets” are imparted to adolescents by means of initiations.

P27

A decisive part is played by the magico-religious valorizations of language….the gestures of the anthropomorphic figures of prehistoric art were laden not only with meaning but also with power… phonetic inventiveness must have constituted an inexhaustible source of magico-religious powers. Even before articulate language, the human voice was able not only to transmit information, orders, or desires but also to bring into being a whole imaginary universe by its sonorous explosions, its phonic innovations.

P31

These ritual objects, most often of stone and decorated with various geometrical designs, are known to represent the mystical body of the ancestors. The tjurungas are hidden in caves or buried in certain sacred places and are communicated to the young men only at the end of their initiation.

P32

the idea of the mythical ancestor and the cult of ancestors dominate the European Mesolithic…the importance of this religious complex is explained by the memory of the Ice Age, when the distant ancestors lived in a sort of hunters’ paradise. And in fact the Australians consider that their mythical ancestors lived during a golden age, in an earthly paradise in which game abounded and the notions of good and evil were practically unknown.8 It is this paradisal world that the Australians attempt to reactualize during certain festivals, when laws and prohibitions are suspended.

P35

The various kinds of progress effected during the Mesolithic put an end to the cultural unity of the Paleolithic populations and launch the variety and divergences that will thereafter become the chief characteristic of civilizations….blood sacrifices, which were practiced by both cultivators and pastoralists, in the last analysis repeat the killing of game by the hunter.  A type of behavior that, for one or two million years, had been inseparable from the human (or at least the masculine) mode is not easily abolished.

P36

Several millennia after the triumph of the agricultural economy, the Weltanschauung of the primitive hunter will again have repercussions on history. For the invasions and conquests of the IndoEuropeans and the Turko-Mongols will be undertaken under the sign of the supreme hunter, the carnivore. … the techniques of hunting and war are so much alike as to be hardly separable.

The hundreds of thousands of years spent in a sort of mystical symbiosis with the animal world have left indelible traces. What is more, orgiastic ecstasy is able to reactualize the religious behavior of the earliest Paleohominians, when the game was eaten raw;

P38

edible tubers and fruit trees (coconut, banana, etc.) were born from an immolated divinity. The most famous example comes from Ceram, one of the islands off New Guinea: from the dismembered and buried body of a semidivine maiden, Hainuwele, spring plants until then unknown, especially tubers. This primordial murder radically changed the human condition, for it introduced sexuality and death and first established the religious and social institutions that are still in force.

P40

The first, and perhaps the most important, consequence of the discovery of agriculture precipitates a crisis in the values of the Paleolithic hunters: religious relations with the animal world are supplanted by what may be called the mystical solidarity between man and vegetation. If the bone and the blood until then represented the essence and the sacrality of life, from then on it is the sperm and the blood that incarnate them. In addition, woman and feminine sacrality are raised to the first rank. Since women played a decisive part in the domestication of plants, they become the owners of the cultivated fields, which raises their social position and creates characteristic institutions, such as, for example, matrilocation, the husband being obliged to live in his wife’s house. The fertility of the earth is bound up with feminine fecundity; hence women become responsible for the abundance of harvests, for they know the “mystery” of creation. It is a religious mystery, for it governs the origin of life, the food supply, and death. The soil is assimilated to woman. Later, after the discovery of the plow, agricultural work is assimilated to the sexual act.23

P41

feminine sexuality, becomes inseparable from the miraculous enigma of creation. Parthenogenesis, the hieros gamos, and the ritual orgy express, on different planes, the religious character of sexuality….

The mythical theme of gods who die and return to life is among the most important….

The agrarian cultures develop what may be called a cosmic religion, since religious activity is concentrated around the central mystery: the periodical renewal of the world.

P46

The fertility cult and the cult of the dead seem, then, to be bound together

The principal divinity is the goddess, presented under three aspects: young woman, mother giving birth to a child (or to a bull), and old crone (sometimes accompanied by a bird of prey). The masculine divinity appears in the form of a boy or youth-the goddess’s child or lover-and of a bearded adult, occasionally mounted on his sacred animal, the bull.

P47

d the double ax certainly had a cult role, related to the storm god, so important in all the religions of the ancient Near East. However, no masculine figurines have been found, whereas images of the goddess are abundant; often in a crouching position, accompanied by doves and with exaggerated breasts, it is difficult not to recognize in them the paradigmatic image of the Mother Goddess.

the most significant novelty of the Obeid period [~ 4325 B.C.] is precisely the appearance of monumental temples.

P58

Sumerian goddess Nammu is presented as “the mother who gave birth to the Sky and the Earth” and the “ancestress who brought forth all the gods.”

by parthenogenesis, gave birth to the first couple, the Sky (An) and the Earth (Ki), incarnating the male and female principles. This first couple was united, to the point of merging, in the hieros gamos. From their union was born En-lil, the god of the atmosphere. Another fragment informs us that the latter separated his parents: the god An carried the sky upward, and En-lil took his mother, the Earth, with him.

P60

Raymond Jestin emphasizes the fact that the notion of sin, the expiatory element, and the idea of the scapegoat are not documented in the texts.

P61

the Babylonian festival akitu…This [enacted] hieros gamos actualized the communion between the gods and men – a momentary communion, to be sure, but with considerable consequences. For the divine energy flowed directly upon the city (that is, upon the Earth), sanctified it, and insured its prosperity and happiness for the beginning year.

P64

At her apogee, Inanna-Ishtar was the goddess at once of love and of war, that is, she governed life and death; to indicate the fullness of her powers, she was called hermaphroditic

P67

The myth relates the defeat of the goddess of love and fertility in her attempt to conquer the kingdom of Ereshkigal, that is, to abolish death.

The majority of the Sumerian city-temples were united by Lugalzaggisi, the sovereign of Umma, about 2375 B.C. This is the first manifestation of the imperial ideaof which we have any knowledge.

P69

Shamash. In the course of time the latter will become the unrivaled universal divinity. A hymn proclaims that the sun god is revered everywhere, even among foreigners; Shamash defends justice, he punishes the wrongdoer and rewards the just.

P77

Epic of Gilgamesh…s saga, which begins with the erotic excesses of a hero who is at the same time a tyrant…who violates women and girls and wears men out in forced labor. The inhabitants pray to the gods…On his way back to Uruk, Ishtar sees Gilgamesh. The goddess invites him to marry her, but he returns an insolent refusal. Humiliated, Ishtar begs her father, Anu, to create the Bull of Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh and his city.

P81

This despair arises, not from a meditation on the vanity of human existence, but from the experience of general injustice: the wicked triumph, prayers are not answered; the gods seem indifferent to human affairs. From the second millennium, similar spiritual crises will make themselves felt elsewhere (Egypt, Israel, Iran, India, Greece…

P85

Egypt borrows [from Sumeria] the cylinder seal, the art of construction in brick, the technique of boat-building, a number of artistic motifs, and, above all, writing, which appears suddenly, with no antecedents, at the beginning of the First Dynasty (ca. 3000 B.C.)

P116

the megalith builders, from Ireland to Malta and the Aegean islands, ritual communion with the ancestors constituted the keystone of their religious activity, in the proto historical cultures of central Europe, as in the ancient Near East, separation between the dead and the living was strictly prescribed.

P117

The sexual meaning of menhirs must also be taken into consideration, for it is universally documented, and on various levels of culture.

Belief in the fertilizing virtues of menhirs was still common among European peasants at the beginning ofthis century. In France, in order to have children, young women performed the glissade (letting themselves slide along a stone) and the friction (sitting on monoliths or rubbing their abdomens against certain rocks).8 This generative function must not be explained by the phallic symbolism of the menhir, though such a symbolism is documented in certain cultures. The original, and fundamental, idea was the “transmutation” of the ancestors into stone,

P118

In certain parts of France, in the Iberian Peninsula, and elsewhere, traces have been found of a cult of the Goddess, the guardian divinity of the dead. Yet nowhere else did megalithic architecture, the cult of the dead, and worship of a Great Goddess find such spectacular expression as on Malta.

P119

Since the temples were covered by a roof and the rooms were without windows and rather dark, entering a sanctuary was equivalent to entering the” bowels of the earth,” i.e., the womb of the chthonian Goddess

P121

The “missionaries” of the megalithic faith, a religion above all of the Mother Goddess, attracted a large number of agriculturalists to their communities.

megalithic sepulchers (” chamber tombs”) of Brittany were built before 4000 B.C. and that in England and Denmark stone tombs were being built before 3000 B.C

P122

So the conclusion is inescapable that the European megalithic complex precedes the Aegean contribution.

P131

Feminine figurines increase in number during the Neolithic; they are characterized by their bell-shaped skirt, which leaves the breasts bare, and their arms, raised in a gesture of worship. Whether they represent ex votos or “idols,” these figurines indicate the religious preeminence of woman and, above all, the primacy of the Goddess.

P155

Parallels to it have been found in Egypt and especially in the mythology and iconography of the Indian goddess Durga.35 Carnage and cannibalism are characteristic features of archaic fertility goddesses. From this point of view, the myth of Anath can be classed among the elements common to the ancienf agricultural civilization that extended from the eastern Mediterranean to the plain of the Ganges.

P160

Aside from the blood sacrifices, the cult included dances and many orgiastic acts and gestures, which later aroused the wrath of the prophets.

the Israelites, when they entered Canaan, were confronted with this type of cosmic sacrality, which inspired a complex cult activity and which, despite its orgiastic excesses, was not without a certain grandeur.

P185

It is at this time that the Israelites begin to practice the burnt offering (Colah), which they interpret as an oblation offered to Yahweh. In addition, they take over a number of Canaanite practices, related to agriculture, and even certain orgiastic rituals.35 The process of assimilation is intensified later, under the monarchy, when there is mention of sacred prostitution of both sexes.

P186

Indeed, the [Yahwist] ritual system, the sacred sites and sanctuaries are taken over from the Canaanites; the priestly class is organized after Canaanite models; finally, even the prophets, who will soon react against the supremacy of the priests and against syncretism with the fertility cults, are also the product of a Canaanite influence

P188

it is certain that the origins of the IndoEuropean culture are rooted in the Neolithic, perhaps even in the Mesolithic. On the other hand, it is equally certain that during its formative period this culture was influenced by the more developed civilizations of the Near East. The use of the chariot and of metal 2 was transmitted by an Anatolian culture (the so-called Kuro-Araxas Culture). In the fourth millennium there appear, borrowed from the peoples of the Balkano-Mediterranean zone, clay,_ marble, or alabaster statues representing a seated goddess. The common vocabulary shows that the Indo-Europeans practiced agriculture, raised cattle (but also the pig and probably the sheep), and knew the horse, either as wild or domesticated. Though they were never able to renounce agricultural products, the Indo-European peoples preferred to develop a pastoral economy. Pastoral nomadism, the patriarchal structure of the family, a proclivity for raids, and a military organization designed for conquest are characteristic features of the Indo-European societies.

P217

ritual systems that were associated with the soma services, for example the mahiivrata (” great observance “), which includes music, dances, dramatic gestures, dialogues, and obscene scenes (one of the priests swings in a swing, a sexual union takes place, etc.)

P218

asvamedha – Finally, the stallion, which thenceforth incarnated the god Prajapati ready to sacrifice himself, was suffocated. The four queens, each accompanied by a hundred female attendants, walked around the body, and the principal wife lay down beside it; covered with a cloak, she simulated sexual union.

P228

The fundamental idea is that, in creating by “heating” and by repeated “emissions,” Prajapati consumes himself and ends by becoming exhausted. The two key terms-tapas (ascetic ardor) and visrj (dispersed emission)-can have indirect or implied sexual connotations, for asceticism and sexuality are intimately connected in Indian religious thought.

P233

Ascetic” heating” has its model, or its homologue, in the images, symbols, and myths connected with the heat that” cooks” crops and broods eggs to insure their hatching, with sexual excitement, especially the ardor of orgasm, and with fire lighted by rubbing two sticks together. Tapas is “creative” on several planes: cosmogonic, religious, metaphysical. Prajapati, as we saw, creates the world by “heating” himself through tapas, and the exhaustion that follows is assimilable to sexual fatigue

237

But, as often happens in India, his earthly “representative,” the brahmaciirin (whose first vow is chastity), had ritual intercourse with the prostitute. Sexual union played a part in certain Vedic rituals (cf. the asvamedha). It is important to distinguish between conjugal union regarded as a hierogamy31 and sexual union of the orgiastic type, whose purpose is either universal fecundity or the creation of a “magical defense.” 32 In both cases, however, it is a matter of rites, one could say of” sacraments,” performed in view of a resacralization of the human person or oflife. Later, Tantrism will elaborate a whole technique aiming at a sacramental transmutation of sexuality.

P256

As for human beings, Zeus sent them woman, that “beautiful evil” (Theog. 585), in the form of Pandora (the “present from all the gods,” Works 81 ff.). “Snare from which there is no escaping, destined for mankind,” Hesiod denounces her; “for it is from her that there came the race, the accursed tribe of woman, that terrible plague set among mortal men” (Theog. 592 ff.)

P262

This is Homer’s lesson: to live wholly, but nobly, in the present. Certainly, this “ideal” born of despair will undergo changes: we shall examine the most important of them further on (see vol. 2). But consciousness of the predestined limits and the fragility of existence was never obliterated. Far from inhibiting the creative forces of the Greek religious genius, this tragic vision led to a paradoxical revalorization of the human condition. Since the gods had forced him not to go beyond his limits, man ended by realizing the perfection and, consequently, the sacrality of the human condition. In other words, he rediscovered and brought to the full the religious sense of the “joy of life,” the sacramental value of erotic experience and of the beauty of the human body, the religious function of every organized collective occasion for rejoicing-processions, games, dances, singing, sports competitions, spectacles, banquets, etc. The religious sense of the perfection of the human body-physical beauty, harmonious movements, calm, serenity-inspired the artistic canon.

P263

But it is above all the religious valorization of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the “natural” and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing-even fugitively-in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.

P283

But Aphrodite will never become the preeminent goddess of fertility. It is physical love, fleshly union, that she inspires, praises, and defends. In this sense it may be said that, thanks to Aphrodite, the Greeks rediscovered the sacred nature of the original sexual urge. The vast spiritual resources of love will be ruled by other divine figures, first of all by Eros. Now it is precisely this irrational and irreducible sexuality that will be exploited by writers and plastic artists, and to such an extent that, in the Hellenistic period, the” Charms of Aphrodite” will become literary cliches. We are almost tempted to see, in this artistic flowering under the sign of Aphrodite, the radical desacralization of physical love. But in fact it is a camouflage, inimitable and rich in meanings, such as is found in so many other creations of the Greek genius. Under the appearance of a frivolous divinity is hidden one of the most profound sources of religious experience: the revelation of sexuality as transcendence and mystery.

P345

Hosea’s proclamation is dominated by God’s bitterness over his betrayal by his people. Israel was the spouse of Yahweh, but she was unfaithful to him; she has become “prostituted,” in other words, has abandoned herself to the Canaanite fertility gods. Israel does not know that fertility is a gift from Yahweh.

P346

Hosea:  When that day comes … , she will call me ‘My husband’ … I will betroth you to myself for ever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love” (2:16-21). It will be a return to the beginnings of the mystical marriage of Yahweh and Israel. This conjugal love already announces belief in redemption: the grace of God does not wait for man’s conversion but precedes it.25 We add that this conjugal symbolism will be used by all the great prophets after Hosea

P354

What strikes us first about the prophets is their criticism of the cult and the ferocity with which they attack syncretism, that is, Canaanite influences, what they call “prostitution.” But this “prostitution,” against which they never cease to fulminate, represents one of the most widespread forms of cosmic religiosity. Specifically characteristic of agriculturalists, cosmic religiosity continued the most elementary dialectic of the sacred, especially the belief that the divine is incarnated, or manifests itself, in cosmic objects and rhythms. Now such a belief was denounced by the adherents of Yahweh as the worst possible idolatry, and this ever since the Israelites’ entrance into Palestine. But never was cosmic religiosity so savagely attacked. The prophets finally succeeded in emptying nature of any divine presence. Whole sectors of the natural world-the “high places,” stones, springs, trees, certain crops, certain flowers-will be denounced as unclean because they were polluted by the cult of the Canaanite divinities of fertility.3

P359

Dionysus was bound to incite resistance and persecution, for the religious experience that he inspired threatened an entire life-style and a universe of values. There was certainly a threat to the supremacy of the Olympian religion and its institutions. But the opposition was also the expression of a more intimate drama, and one that is abundantly documented in the history of religions: resistance to every absolute religious experience, because such experience can be realized only by denying everything else (by whatever term this may be designated: equilibrium, personality, consciousness, reason, etc.).

P361

A large phallus was carried in procession, a numerous crowd accompanying it with songs. Essentially an archaic ceremony, and widely disseminated throughout the world, the phallophoria certainly preceded the cult of Dionysus.

P362

Aristotle states that it is in the boucoleum (literally, “ox stable”) that the hierogamy between the god and the queen was consummated (Ath. Pol. 3. 5). The choice of the Boucoleum indicates that the taurine epiphany of Dionysus was still familiar.

P364

Pentheus opposes Dionysus because he is a “foreigner, a preacher, a sorcerer … with beautiful perfumed blond curls, rosy cheeks, and in his eyes the grace of Aphrodite. Under the pretext of teaching the sweet and charming practices of the evoe, he corrupts girls” (Bacch. 233 fr.). Women are inspired to forsake their houses and run about the mountains by night, dancing to the music of tabors and flutes. And Pentheus principally fears the power of wine, for “with women, as soon as the juice of the grape figures in the feast, everything is unwholesome in these devotions“

P365

The Dionysiac ecstasy means, above all, surpassing the human condition, the discovery of total deliverance, obtaining a freedom and spontaneity inaccessible to human beings. That among these freedoms there also figured deliverance from prohibitions, rules, and conventions of an ethical and social order appears to be certain-which explains, in part, the mass adherence of women.

P387

in Southeast Asia, there later appeared the cultivation of tubers and horticulture; it is during this period that the domestication of the pig and of poultry occurred. This civilization is characterized by an organization of the matriarchal type, by male secret societies (to terrorize the women), age groups, the economic and religious importance of woman, lunar mythologies, orgiastic fertility cults, head-hunting, and the cult of skulls. The regeneration of life was accomplished by human sacrifices. The cult of ancestors was justified by their role in fertility.

P426

As for circumcision, it was probably practiced in the time of the patriarchs. Its origin is unknown…It has been maintained that circumcision was borrowed from the Egyptians, but it was not universally practiced in Egypt. On the other hand, the custom is documented in northern Syria from the beginning of the third millennium. Hence the ancestors of the Israelites could have known it before they arrived in Canaan. “At that time it had its primitive meaning as an initiation into marriage and the common life of the clan.