It is difficult to accept the fact that monotheistic religions separate sexuality, a natural manifestation of human nature, from the other human physical needs. This feeling must have been experienced by the great Montaigne who, in the midst of wars of religion, wrote his famous maxim on the subject:
“What has the act of generation, so natural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to be spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and moderate discourse?”
Although the role of instincts in human behavior is a topic of heated debate, no one dares to deny that sexuality is an integral part of life and a basic human need. I’d add that it is the best part of life: it is impossible to deny the power of sexual desire and the great pleasure that its satisfaction brings. It’s absurd to compare humans and animals as essayists like to do. The average person has a lot more sex than animals, primarily for pleasure. The desire to reproduce is only a small part of the desire to have sex.
Love in Ancient (and Pre-Monotheistic) Civilizations
Love came to Man long before the gods did, not to mention the One God. All ancient societies were characterised by absolute sexual freedom. Sex organs were seen as mysterious mean of human species reproduction and a symbol of the fertility cult. They represented the sacred object. For example, a phallus was represented almost everywhere: on private houses, everyday life objects, and in public places. One can also find the representation of female sex organs in the most ancient artefacts of human culture. Indeed, the polytheistic religious cults did not forbid, but actually encouraged sexual intercourse.
The polytheistic gods craved pleasures and were subject to dreadful passions. They were depicted on the bas-reliefs of ancient houses and temples proudly displaying their hypertrophied phalluses and vaginas. The latter were considered sacred at the dawn of civilisation. And from the point of view of nature these organs are no different from legs or arms.
Some historians believe that ‘in the beginning God was a woman’. In the Sumerian, Phoenician, and Armenian civilisations there was the cult of Astarte, or Ishtar, associated with female sexuality, reproduction, and cosmic wisdom. The Sumerian hymns compare the vagina of the goddess to the ‘Boat of Heaven’ and describe with enthusiasm the ‘precious gifts’ of her womb. The priestesses of the cult were said to have intercourse with men during specific days. They encouraged orgies, because they believed that this would allow men to ‘attain the divine’.
In Ancient Babylon, a father could feel proud if he offered his only daughter to the temple where she’d become a ‘god’s spouse’, or to put it simply, a ‘temple harlot’. There was nothing disgraceful about it, and those women even preserved the right to their father’s heritage.
This form of worshipping gods may seem quite exotic, but I think the majority of the male population would gladly join such a cult. It is nobler to go to the temple than to prostitutes or a lover while hiding it from your spouse. By the way, the word ‘orgy’ acquired a negative connotation due to the efforts of monotheistic religions. In the ancient societies, this activity was highly respected. A well-known specialist in ancient civilisations Mircea Eliade writes in Treatise on the History of Religions: ‘It’s the orgy that pushes the sacred energy of life… An orgy in a certain sense turns a person into a kind of seed, because abandoning norms, limitations, and individuality, giving yourself up to spontaneous cosmic powers, a person transforms into seed.’
The same attitude can be found in Ancient Greece, where society did not dictate to its citizens the correct sexual conduct for their private lives. Every adult could decide what to do with his body. The notion of ‘morality’ didn’t apply to sexual life but only to injustice and crime. Sex was considered a biological norm and the most powerful source of pleasure. Romantic love without sex was not for the Greeks. This crazy idea appeared much later. The Greeks thought a sexually satisfied man to be more moral than an ascetic since the former is not envious or irritable.
Starting with Homer, the Hellenic culture is favourable to all aspects of sexuality: to gods’ eroticism and their sexual relationship with men and women, to onanism of both genders, group sex, sadomasochistic rituals, female and male homosexuality, zoophilia in all its forms, and the mysterious rites of Dionysus.
The cult of the naked, especially male, body also appeared in Greece. Our flesh is an exterior form of spiritual harmony and the sensual beauty makes our spiritual beauty visible. To cover the genitals in artistic reproductions was something unnatural and would suggest that genitals were shameful. The body, the flesh, needs constant care: for instance, by shaving armpit and pubic hair as many do nowadays (let’s not forget that after the defeat of paganism no one shaved anything for many centuries). You do not need to be ashamed of nudity, but rather of a dirty or decrepit body.
In some respect the Ancient Greeks and Romans were even too progressive. For instance, men did not really respect the idea of monogamous loyalty: they needed wives only for reproduction. Conjugal love was usually associated with friendship. However, maybe that’s not so bad, since the Greeks greatly appreciated friendship. In their view, love of a man towards a woman was secondary because it was dictated by the nature of Man and for this reason was banal, animalistic, and even unspiritual. Sensual and sublime love cannot be limited by reproduction and it meant relationships outside the family are profound in a different way – with another man’s wife, a concubine, or with a male lover. However, it doesn’t mean that homosexuality was the dominant form of sexuality or presented a threat to the family. In Ancient Greece no one ever questioned the obligations of a father and a husband.
This idea has a right to exist because it doesn’t contradict the formal logic. Moreover, from the point of view of our society, this idea is more than welcome! We should probably even introduce a new term – a ‘Greek marriage’. Why not? In the Ancient Roman orgies, homosexuality and zoophilia were tolerated. In the Roman Republic and during the early Empire, the Romans favoured the household, the family and its traditions. As the imperial power increased and the wealth of the nation grew, the austerity of military culture and sexual asceticism gave way to Oriental and Greek influences. Uninhibited sexuality, often quite aggressive due to the violence of gladiator games, became fashionable. However, the term ‘sin’, let alone a ‘sexual sin’, was never a part of Roman life. The term ‘lust’ had only positive meaning. A lot has been written already – read Foucault – about the sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. But what about the East?
In China, the cult of the phallus and the elements of sexual orgies can be traced back to the Neolithic age. Both the dominant philosophical systems, Taoism and Confucianism, do not consider sex to be something bad or sinful; they see it as everyone’s personal affair. There is only one difference in their approach. Taoism is favourable to sexuality, while Confucianism imposes some restrictions on showing nudity, despises romance, and demands women to be loyal and never jealous. The Confucians believed that the passion in the sexual act was an exchange of energy between a man and a woman. Many manuals on the art of love advise not only to copulate regularly without ejaculating, but to constantly change partners, preferably during the same night. Indeed, copulating with one woman doesn’t have any rejuvenating effect. A minimal effect can be attained with ten partners; a positive effect with 12, and 93 partners will grant you immortality. This method was called ‘healing one person by another’ and was considered the path towards health. Two thousand years later we continue to deny the evidence and to believe in the fairy tale of monogamous loyalty.
In Hinduism, all gods of the pantheon, including the ascetic Shiva, experienced powerful sexual desire before they created the world and men.
Buddhism, ever battling desires, believed that combat with unsatisfied desire means more evil and suffering than if it is satisfied. Some Buddhists said that orgasms were a great help in penetrating the subtle levels of consciousness. It is interesting to mention that homosexuality or adultery were rated only three on a scale of one to ten of the negative attitude towards sexuality. Telling friends about the adultery was rated five. They probably believed that there was nothing to do about adultery. Everyone cheats but telling about it in vain humiliates the Buddhist and therefore must be condemned. Nine and ten were reserved for seducing nuns and monks, and copulation with Buddhist saints.
Japanese culture has never mixed sex and sin, and has always put sexual satisfaction on a pedestal, believing that it can dramatically improve one’s life on earth.
All this does not mean that the pre-monotheistic communities I described did not have certain restrictions on sexual behaviour – they have always existed and will exist everywhere. However, they knew that sexual desire could manifest itself so powerfully that it would distract a person from other goals and objectives. In this regard every culture produced its own methods to curb excess sexuality by redirecting it: working together, hunting, or war. But no one tried to deny people their sexual gratification.
In almost all primitive and developed societies, there is a universal ban on incest. The reason for this ban doesn’t lie in some moral norms. The incest simply makes any civilisation impossible. It undermines the social stability of the lineage, tribe, and family.
Monotheism As the Repressor of Sexuality
What conclusion can we make? Simply, that morally healthy societies did not separate sexuality from other physiological needs and make it taboo. Sexuality is a basic biological human need and so can’t be considered under moral categories; can’t be described as being good or evil; is not to be judged by people or gods. For this reason, battling sexuality with moral preaching is as useless as fighting the urge to eat, drink, urinate, and defecate. Such prohibitions can only create perverts and mentally challenged people.
To be sure and confident in my conclusions, I studied the main sources on ancient religions and the most important law codes of the last millennia: the Code of Ur-Nammu, 240 the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar, the Laws of Eschnunna, and the Code of Hammurabi. I also studied the Laws of Manu.
I found many things in those laws: protection of royal properties, real estate transactions, detailed trade rules, family law and heritage. Everything was as regulated as it is nowadays: monogamy in marriage and rules of divorce, punishment for adultery (death penalty for both criminals) or for raping another person’s wife (death penalty for the criminal), incestuous relationship between a father and a daughter (nothing too severe, a father was excluded from the community and a daughter was not persecuted). Ancient Indians (Manu) seem to be the most violent: a wife who committed adultery shall be devoured by dogs; second marriages were strongly prohibited; and even small offences like seducing a guru’s wife were to be punished by death or castration. On the other hand, polygamy was tolerated. I didn’t find any restrictions in the domain of licit sex. Once again, the Laws of Manu happen to be the most severe: they punish a man who copulates with a female animal or has anal sex with another person with a short fast.
At the end of my studies of sexuality in the Ancient world, I started to doubt. Indeed, I presented to my readers the version that has been corroborated with historical account of facts, archeological excavations and other profane ‘nonsense’.
Where is the faith in all this? Is it possible that the One God does exist and that the passage to the monotheism has been a natural and inevitable step for humanity? Is it possible that His laws, including those concerning sexuality, are the only path to the bright future in paradise? In this case, I accuse Him of oppressing the sexuality of his believers in spite and I simply must present a more positive theory for the believers and for Him. God created Man. There were no millions of years of evolution. The bones of dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, and mammoths we are constantly unearthing were deliberately buried into the earth by the One God to test our faith in Him.
If this is true then things look bad for sexuality, because it is closely connected with the most terrible tragedy of the created mankind – the Fall. –Dangerous Illusions
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