Origins of Sacred Temple Prostitution

The Origins and History of Prostitution | doc

Yeah, I think sacred would be better.

(History But Fast) Originating from ancient cultures and societies, prostitution [trading sex for consideration, usually monetary] has been documented as a defined thing as far back as 2400 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia, where sacred edicts legitimatized this practice.

Deeply rooted in tradition, culture, and socio-economic dynamics, it grew with civilization, oftentimes blurring lines between religious acceptance and societal norms.

Commerce, slavery, segregation -- various factors intertwined, shaping its complex history. With changing times, the perception and status of prostitution has also metamorphosed, sparking a spectrum of laws, debates, and attitudes around the world.

Let's journey back in time, unraveling the enigmatic roots of sacred prostitution in Sumer as reported in the oldest written work we have, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Archeologist finds tomb of Gilgamesh in Euphrates

Get Real: Pimps 'n Hoes

On the Block with Pimps and Prostitutes

(Tommy G) Feb. 20, 2024: Patreon Extended Cuts: tommygmcgee. Merch: tommygmcgee.com. Music: Izzy93. My Shorts Channel:  @TommyGMcGeeShorts Shot and Edited by @ihatemiguelsierra

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Would it be the worst thing to bring back sacred prostitution?

Girls Gone Bible (not Wild)

There is a fascinating little book out there in the world somewhere (and lost in the stacks of the Wisdom Quarterly Library), a pamphlet really, called something like An Experience of Enlightenment. Fascinating title but misleading. First of all, no one gets enlightened.

What happens is that the author recounts the true story of an incident that happened to affluent Westerners, friends dabbling in the occult by having a seance to "communicate with the other side." Sounds ominous, but who wouldn't want to connect to the Other Side, the Twilight Zone, the Shadow World? Sounds scary, but it ended well, not with actual enlightenment but with an experience that was eye opening.

The banana hammock is a popular undergarment

A spirit came through telling them an unbelievable story. They're all Judeo-Christian by tradition so, of course, they don't really care about or believe in religion or spirituality. But then this being, entity, ghost comes through a medium with such a stunning story that it makes them all doubt their secularism. The spirit says that thousands of years ago (~3,000) he used to be a priest in charge of a temple in what is now India, at the sacred confluence of some rivers up north (in the IVC, Gandhara, Scythia region under the Himalayas).

One day a prince is traveling through, and as priest he shows him hospitality. He claps for a temple dancing girl to come out and entertain this guest, this youth, as he is given food and drink. The priest has a crush on this dancing girl, possibly a temple prostitute of some kind or just a veiled sacred Kathak dancer, She immediately falls in love with the youth and he with her. The priest notices and sends her away. But it's too late. They elope. And when the priest, the spirit through the medium, notices, he loses control and kills her. He might have killed the youth, too.

In either case, it's in contradiction to his religion and priestly duties, so when he dies and expects to get into Brahma's heaven for his life of religious devotion to protecting the temple to some god or another, he is unable. Kind Brahma tells him he needs to get their forgiveness. That is, it's not enough that he apologize. That would be easy. It's that they must forgive him. Everyone at the seance table is moved by his testimony and glad he contacted them with this story of past lives, heaven, sin, lust, possessiveness, God, and karma, BUT what's it got to do with them?

(Radio WHP) Prostitution in Victorian Los Angeles, California

What's a Hell's Half Acre? The U.S. has had various.

Westerners horsing around at an American seance table. That's when he lays down the boom, showing how strange the working-out-of-karma is: Those two people he needs to get the forgiveness from at sitting at the table right now. You're one of them, temple dancing girl being ogled by the priest, and that guy's the former youth.

Would sacred temple prostitution have mitigated this situation? Or is emotional love going to always win out, prompting our craving, longing, and attachment? This poor priest, possessive murderer. This poor frustrated couple, gets reborn to find each other anew, in the holy precincts of a temple to the God, but then this jerk's attachment leads him to a jealous rage that gets people killed and him in 3,000 or more years' worth of trouble, trying to track these two down to get them to understand what happened, accept his apology, and grant their forgiveness so he finally move on and up. Do they grant it?

Readers come a way with a dizzying set of questions about what the Buddha was talking about when he warned about craving, lust, attachment, karma (deeds), thoughts, views, words...and forgiveness (khanti). This is a Western author talking to Westerners. There is no Indian, except what we were before rearising here. Even us, why do we care about spiritual India so much?

Why did Paramahamsa Yogananda claim he found his former students now living in the West, reborn white and prosperous? And they recognized him, were attracted to him, found his Kriya Yoga teaching perfectly in line with the Jesusism and Christianity they were now born into, when even today few people realize the "lost years" of Jesus (Issa) were spent in northern India, at that time culturally Tibet, at Hemis Gompa, where he

• studied with Buddhist monks,
• met Brahmins,
• learned Vedic teachings...

He took all of this back to the West with his Zen-like parables for answers and other oddities, totally unJewish but very much in line with what the Essenes suddenly started to practice in Palestine/Israel out of nowhere, with no predecessor in Jewish texts or customs. The Gnostic texts that talk about the way of the Essenes is very Dharmic and much more Buddhistic, Eastern, and mellow as opposed to anything Abrahamic.

And if we go much further back to the Sumerian roots of Judaism (who took those ancient stories and made them about themselves), to a time before the Jewish priests desecrated "God's House" and turned the temple into a usury-bank for moneychangers, a den of iniquity and hypocrisy, so odious that Saint Issa/Jesus Christ flipped those tables over and chased them out, securing the place for godly things again.

Imagine a temple economy based not on the disgusting ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals and black magic rites of scapegoats and blood atonements to some insane tribal war god demanding the scent of burnt offerings (roasted flesh) wafting up to Him but instead the disgusting ritual prostitution of holy orgasm and sex with respect and not possessiveness and clinging. We could be as bonobos rather than chimps and vicious apes!

• This temple economy based on killing animals is exposed in Christspiracy and is just like the ancient Greeks' obsession with dead offerings to their pantheon in Homer's The Odyssey and which even the good Vedas talk about having Brahmin priests do for Brahma or other more sinister spirits, godlings, demigods/titans, ogres, reptilians/Draconians, and interlopers (superiors, devas, asuras, yakkhas, nagas, brahmas)

Who knows how the great Sumerians set up a system of sex at church, sex at temple, sex in the holy precincts of houses of worship, devotion, and morality-learning, but it would be great to bring it back.

Whether prostitution is ultimately good or bad, no one can question how bad it is in current practice -- full of condemnation, shame, drug abuse, exploitation, pimps, madams, abusive boyfriends, lack of agency and advancement. Sex work could be a positive thing. It's going to be a thing anyway.

Look at the bonobos, chimps, gorillas, monkey, macaques, orangutans, and other primates, they use sex the way humans do. And to say we don't is willful ignorance, foolishly dismissing what anyone can see.

• History But Fast, March 9, 2024; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly, orig. 3/27/24

Day 3: Burning Man's 'O*gy Dome' down

The Orgy Dome is down?

Nobody goes to the desert to get all voyeuristic, except these people in a long line to get in.

.

What kind of world do we want?

First of all, what is an "Orgy Dome"? That's kind of hard to explain. It's sort of like this dome, a tent, with an orgy inside, and by orgy we mean a consensual communal experience with probably more sand and grit than anyone would ideally want to be present at a time like this. Bring wipes. Maybe Diddly brand coconut oil, too. No, no, no oil, but water-based lube. And be very MINDFUL. There are Ten Principles to follow in general and special safe practices, consenting obligations, and lots of checking in to make sure everyone is all right and enjoying it.

• "The Orgy Dome"!? (Burning Man)

The Orgy Dome is down for 2025 due to winds.

What happed to the Orgy Dome? The wind at the beginning blew it over, scattered, and destroyed it. The site has an Instagram. Orgy Dome 🌈💜✨ (@orgydome) • Instagram. But Billboard's Instagram states: Burning Man’s infamous Orgy Dome won’t be opening this year [2025] after hurricane-force winds tore the structure apart over the opening weekend. 🌪️ Organizers say they’re safe but unable to repair the dome in time, though they still plan to host smaller workshops on the playa. The storm also destroyed major installations like Ukraine’s 50-foot Black Cloud, marking yet another year of extreme weather challenges at the Nevada summer desert festival.⁠ ⁠ More details on the Dome and other installations that were damaged by heavy winds are at the link in bio. More TMZ confirms it.

Day 3: Trapped in the mud at Burning Man 2025 – Daily Vlog

(Escaping Normal Life) Aug. 27, 2025: Day 3 at Burning Man 2025 turned into pure muddy survival. A massive rainstorm hit the playa, flooding everything and turning Black Rock City into deep, sticky clay mud. I was trapped inside my tent for hours, unable to move my bike or even walk through the sludge.

In this daily vlog, I share what it was really like being stuck in the rain and mud, how I managed to stay (somewhat) dry, and the chaos happening all around camp.

This is what Burning Man 2025 looks like when the weather shuts everything down. If you’re preparing for Burning Man or curious about the real, unfiltered experience of surviving the playa during a storm, this vlog shows the raw reality of what happens when the desert turns to mud.

Venmo: venmo.com/u/escaping_normal_life. Found this video helpful? Consider donating. I currently do not have a Patreon or a YouTube Member page because they take a percentage. Also, Super Thanks takes a percentage on YouTube. So I do have a Venmo that is 100% donated to me. These donations go straight to my channel to purchase better camera gear to make better content.

• LyfeUntethered; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

What is "gifting" (dana)? It is one of the Ten Principles of Burning Man's ethos for better world

Religion: Why Americans are leaving church

Leo Moriachelli, "Losing My Religion" (R.E.M. cover); Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point, npr.org, 1/24/24; CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

'The great dechurching': Why so many Americans are leaving churches

About 40 million Americans have stopped attending a place of worship in the past 25 years.

What's driving it, and what does it tell us about the importance of faith in America?

Michael "Mike" Graham and Pastor Jim Davis join On Point Host Meghna Chakrabarti.

• AUDIO: The Great Dechurching of America (pscrb.fm)

Dechurching?

The Great Dechurching

We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history.

It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction.

Yet precious little rigorous study has been done on the broad phenomenon of dechurching in America.

Jim Davis and Michael Graham have commissioned the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by renowned sociologists Dr. Ryan Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe.

The Great Dechurching takes the insights gleaned from this study to drill down on how exactly Americans are dechurching with respect to beliefs, behavior, and belonging.

This book gives the church in America its first ever deep dive into the dechurched phenomenon.

Learn about the dechurched through a detailed sketch of demographics, size, core concerns, church off-ramps, historical roots, and the gravity of what is at stake.

Then explore what can be done to slow the bleed, engage the pertinent issues winsomely and wisely, and hopefully re-church some of the dechurched. [Or decide it's better this way.] More

ABOUT: Hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point is WBUR's award-winning, daily public radio show and podcast. Its unique combination of original reporting, first-person stories, and in-depth analysis creates an experience that makes the world more intelligible and humane. Deep dives, original stories, fresh takes, On Point tries harder.

• On Point would appreciate help to better understand On Point's podcast listeners and get feedback. It'll take 10 minutes or less time than that. Take the survey: surveymonkey.com/r/onpointpodcast

Buddhist Economics: money & interest

How money and charging interest debased Buddhism

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quang Ðu'c burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection on June 11, 1963. David Halberstam, a New York Times reporter, witnessed his self-immolation: " I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being...human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."

Early Indian to Medieval Chinese Economies

Economic ethics in Mahayana Buddhism show both continuities and differences with those in Theravada Buddhism. Many of the changes are related to transformations in Mahayana understandings of nirvana/Samsara, enlightenment, and the bodhisattva ideal (delaying one's salvation to save others).

For example, within Mahayana the absolute difference or separation between nirvana and Samsara disappears. As a result, charitable activities within Samsara grow to have more value in themselves and the bodhisattva idea becomes the ideal.

• Hong Kong investors protest financial losses (1:25)

At the same time, a more positive view of Samsara tends to lead to an acceptance of status quo conditions "in the world," while the primary focus of efforts toward enlightenment are put upon change in one's perception of things. This focus on enlightenment as primarily a change in one's way of perceiving things implied that the main effort towards enlightenment must be made towards effecting such perceptual change (through meditation and the like), rather than Theravada Buddhism's focus on change in individual ethical/moral behavior leading to a gradual betterment of karma.29

Economics

Another implication of these shifts in Mahayana versus Theravada [metaphysics] was a greater acceptance of economic activity by the Sangha. The most obvious instances of this were the increased economic activities of the Buddhist monasteries in China and Japan and the acceptance of monk labor in the Ch'an/Zen school. At the same time, in terms of lay economic ethics, values toward wealth continued to remain focused upon religious giving (dana). Accumulation and possession of wealth was "good" as long as one remained unattached to it. In terms of the Buddhist Sangha's relationship with the state, the previous pattern of cooperation and a comforting approach to social change, along with support for the status quo distribution of wealth, remained the governing outlooks.

An excellent example of both these continuities as well as differences with Theravada [views] can be found in the Indian Mahayana work by Nagarjuna called the "Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels." In this work Nagarjuna presents counsel to his friend and disciple, King Udayi, about the ideal Buddhist state. In such a state the enlightened king begins with his understanding of the truth of egolessness and based upon this understanding acts benevolently and without "self" [selfishness, egotism, self-aggrandizement, greed, etc.] to carry out compassionate measures for the sick, elderly, farmers, children, mendicants, and beggars, based upon the karmic premise that such giving of wealth will produce more prosperity and wealth for the kingdom in the future. He also cooperates with the Sangha to spread the Dharma.30

In this way Nagarjuna takes up the themes of karma, egolessness, compassionate giving, and Sangha/state cooperation and puts them into an overall viewpoint of how Mahayana economic and social ethics should be carried out by the benevolent king. In the process, he also presents both the continuities and differences between Mahayana and Theravada: the similarities consisting of a common stress on Sangha/state cooperation and doctrinal ideas, the differences being a much greater stress on the importance of the initial perceptual change in an individual's thinking as the key to all later benevolent actions.

Confucian Heritage
In China, Mahayana continued along similar lines of Sangha/state cooperation. However, it must also be understood in terms of Buddhism's entry into China as a foreign religion and its efforts to accommodate itself to an already existing Confucian heritage.

This accommodation ultimately resulted in a Chinese transformation of Buddhism which left much more Confucian influence and less Indian, although it was still clearly recognizable. Specifically, what this meant was a greater emphasis on filial piety (dedication to parents and elders) -- the cornerstone of Confucian ethics -- as well as on the values of social harmony and hierarchical social relationships between ruler and subject, husband and wife, teacher and student, and so on.

This Confucian influence was seen most strongly during the beginning of the introduction of Buddhism into China, in the translations of Indian sutras during the Later Han (25-220 C.E.) and Eastern Chin (317-420 C.E.) periods. But it continued even after Buddhism was established and accepted in the more cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Sui (581-618) and T'ang (618-907) periods.31 As a result, filial piety, although not unknown in earlier Buddhism and already praised as a virtue there, came to be much more emphasized in the Chinese environment.

For the Chinese Buddhist laity, this fit in well with social expectations for behavior. For the monk, it presented a huge challenge in terms of justifying such seemingly unfilial behavior as following the traditional Buddhist ideal of leaving home and joining the Sangha, in the process cutting ties and obligations to parents.32

Buddhism's position in China and the need for accommodation also led to a greater emphasis upon those strands of earlier Buddhist ethics (for monk and laity) referring to gratitude and loyalty, especially to family and sovereign.33 The ideal of harmony, so strong in Confucianism, was adopted by Chinese Buddhists and applied to all social relationships, as well as becoming the cornerstone of some Chinese Buddhist metaphysical systems, such as the Hua­Yen school established in the seventh century.

In this way, both Chinese Buddhist ethics and metaphysics were subtly transformed in the process of assimilation and accommodation to indigenous Confucian ideas, and as a result diverged somewhat from their Indian Mahayana predecessors.

There were large areas of continuity between Chinese Mahayaana and earlier Indian Mahayaana (and Theravada) lay and monastic social ethics. For example, giving to the Sangha (dana) remained the most virtuous and merit­making activity for people. Also economic ethics for the monk in the form of Vinaya rules governing economic matters generally were the same as in Indian Mahayana. Moreover, for both monk and layperson karuna ("compassion") as an individual virtue continued to be an extremely important.

Midieval temple splendor (photo)

Temple Economics: Charging interest

Yet in practice, Chinese Buddhist economics took on new forms. These new forms could be seen in various commercial activities of Chinese temples which had not existed in India: grain milling, oil seed pressing, money lending, pawnshops, loans of grain to peasants (charging interest), mutual financing associations, hotels and hostelries, and rental of temple lands to farmers in exchange for some percentage of the crop.

In other areas, Chinese temples carried over previously existing Indian Mahayana commercial practices such as loans (with interest) against pledges, auction sales of clothing and fabrics, use of lay servants within the monastery to carry out commercial transactions on behalf of the Sangha, and allowing goods donated to the Sangha that were not used by the monks to be sold or loaned out to earn profits for the Sangha. Even in these practices, which were carryovers from India, new forms developed in China as monks came to be allowed to handle gold and silver and carry out commercial transactions including usury (charging interest) on an individual basis. In most cases such transformations were less a result of changes in the Indian Disciplinary Rules (Vinaya) than a disregarding of it in practice in China.34

Of all the commercial activities of the Chinese monasteries, usury in one form or another was clearly one of the most profitable. Part of such interest-charging was from loans to peasants in the form of grain at the beginning of the farming season, with repayment of principal along with a 50 percent interest due at the harvest. Other loans with interest went out in the form of cash to members of the upper classes, soldiers and others, except in the case of those with whom the monastery had a close relationship (based upon lay giving), who would get their loans interest­free.

Loans were also made to temple serfs attached to the monastery. They were not charged interest due to the risk­-free nature of such transactions since serfs were bound to temple lands anyway. Due to misuses of usury (not only by monasteries but by other lenders) leading to hardships for peasants, the government during the T'ang period (618-907 C.E.) put limits on interest rates at 4 to 5 percent per month. But both private moneylenders and the temples often went beyond these limits.35

As time passed such usury was not only undertaken by the monastery itself but by individual monks and became a major activity of many of them. Monasteries apparently condoned such individual usury because even though it led to the development of wealthy individual monks, these monks tended to practice religious giving to the monastery, and after their death their assets usually were inherited by the monastery.36 In this way individual monk usury was justified in terms of its ultimate benefit to the Sangha.

As a result of such usury activities, as well as generous donations from wealthy clans and the Imperial family from the fifth to the seventh centuries in particular 37, Buddhist monasteries in medieval China became extremely wealthy and the number of monasteries and monks increased considerably. Such wealth resulted in turn in monasteries coming to wield a significant amount of political power as well.

From the state's point of view, however, all of this brought about a considerable loss of tax revenue due to the tax­free status of monastic lands, and a considerable loss of unpaid government service and tax-like labor (corvée) brought about by the huge increase in monks (exempted from such labor), many of whom were former peasants. In addition, there was an increasingly lavish consumption of wealth occurring in Buddhist festivals and feasts and construction of temples, burial mounds (stupas), family mortuaries, and statues.

Urged on by Confucians and Taoists, who decried these trends as leading to the impoverishment of the empire, the state engaged in periodic persecutions of Buddhism by forcibly reverting monks to lay status (laicization), seizure of monastery wealth (especially gold, silver, and copper), and placing limits on the number of monasteries and temples. Major persecutions of this type occurred in the years 446, 574, and 845. In each case the main goal was to shore up the finances of the empire by forcibly returning monks to peasant life (some of whom had taken up monkhood to avoid taxes and tax-like labor), converting some temple lands to taxable status, and melting down some of the enormous numbers of gold, silver, and copper Buddhist statues, the making of which had led to extreme shortages of these materials available for coinage of money by the empire.38

Another reason behind some of the persecutions was the occasional political involvement of monasteries in rebellions or intrigues against the state. This occurred even though "official" Buddhism in the form of state-­sponsored temples and monasteries tended to support the state unequivocally. Smaller regional temples and those tied to local great families, however, occasionally got involved in political movements against the state and thus provided a very different example of Buddhist/state relations than the traditional cooperative Sangha/state ideal.39

The occurrence of rebellions during the Sui, T'ang, and later periods tied to worshipers of Maitreya (the future Buddha) illustrated how particular Buddhist sects or movements using Buddhist symbols for their own purposes could adopt adversarial relationships with the state and use advocacy of greater economic equality (or at least relief from heavy taxation) as part of their appeal for rebellion against state authority.40

--

WQ edited excerpt from Continuity and Change in the Economic Ethics of Buddhism: Evidence From the History of Buddhism in India, China, and Japan

By Gregory K. Ornatowski, Boston University, appropriate-economics.org