SACRED PROSTITUTION
There is abundant evidence to show that there was a
time in the centuries before Christ when prostitution was
held as a most sacred vocation. We learn of this practice
from many sources. It appears that temples in a number
of ancient cities of the East, in Babylonia, Nineveh, Corinth
and throughout India, were erected for the worship of certain
deities. This worship consisted of the prostitution of
women. The women were consecrated to the support of
the temple. They were chosen in much the same way as
the modern woman enters a sacred church order. The
returns from their vocation went to the support of the deity
and the temple. The children born of such a union were in
no way held in disgrace, but on the contrary, they appeared
to have formed a separate and rather superior class. We
are told that this practice did not interfere with a
woman's opportunities for subsequent marriage. In India
the practice was very general at one time. The women were
called the "Women of the Idol." Richard Payne Knight
speaks of a thousand sacred prostitutes living in each of
the temples at Eryx and Corinth.
A custom which shows even more clearly that prostitution was held
as a sacred duty to women was that in Babylonia every woman, of high
rank or low, must at one time in her life prostitute herself to any
stranger who offered money. In "Ancient Sex Worship" we read: "There was
a temple in Babylonia where every female had to perform once in her life
a (to us) strange act of religion, namely, prostitution with a stranger.
The name of it was Bit-Shagatha, or `The Temple,' the `Place of Union.'
" Moreover we learn that once a woman entered the temple for such a
sacred act she could not leave until it was performed.
The above accounts deal exclusively in the sacrifice
made by women to the deity of sex. Men did not escape
this sacrifice and it appears that some inflicted upon themselves
an even worse one. Fraser[5] tells us of this worship
which was introduced from Assyria into Rome about two
hundred years before Christ. It was the worship of Cybele
and Attis. These deities were attended by emasculated
priests and the priests in oriental costume paraded Rome in
religious ceremony.
On one occasion, namely, "the day of blood" in the
Spring, the chief ceremony was held. This, among other
things, consisted in fastening an effigy of the god to a pine
tree, which was brought to the temple of the Goddess Cybele.
A most spectacular dance about the effigy then occurred
in which the priests slashed themselves with knives, the
blood being offered as sacrifice. As the excitement increased
the sexual nature of the ceremony became evident. To
quote from Fraser; "For man after man, his veins throbbing
with the music, his eyes fascinated by the sight of streaming
blood, flung his garments from him, leaped forth with a
shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready for
the service, castrated himself on the spot. Then he ran
through the city holding the bloody parts in his hands
and threw them into one of the houses which he passed in
his mad career."
We see that this act directly corresponds with the
part played by the female. The female prostituted herself,
and the male presented his generative powers to the deity.
Both the sacred prostitutes and emasculated priests were
held in religious veneration.
The above references are sufficient to show that a simple
form of sex worship has been quite generally found. It
becomes apparent as we proceed that the worship of sex
not only plays a part, but a very prominent part, in the
developing mind of man. In the frank and open form of
this worship it is quite clear that we are dealing with a very
simple type of mind. These primitive people exhibit
many of the qualities of the child. They are quite without
sex consciousness. Their motives are at once both simple
and direct, and they are doubtless sincere. Much misunderstanding
has arisen by judging such primitive people
by the standards of our present day civilization. Sex
worship, while it held sway was probably quite as seriously
entertained as many other beliefs; it only became degraded
during a decadent age, when civilization had advanced
beyond such simple conceptions of a deity, but had not
evolved a satisfactory substitute.
We shall now pass to a less frank and open deification of
sex, namely, sexual symbolism.
