Sex and Prostitution in the Ancient World: Egypt, Rome, Pompeii (full documentary). It's an adventure of sex and erotica in Egypt with Bettany Hughes and a larger look at the ancient world we are taught so little about by museum drones and uptight ancient archeologists (WQ).
What about Buddhist Tantric Sex?
Tibetan Buddhism, Kama Sutra, and Tantric Sex
ChinaExpat.com updated and edited by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Tantra, by that name, derives from Vedic/Brahminical (Hindu) religions of the Indus Valley Civilization and India.
It was most common in what is today called Northern India, although it became mixed together with Southern Indian local religions such as the worship of the Goddess Kali.
A strange offshoot of it is found in the Tibetan mixed-religion sometimes called Tibetan Buddhism, but also referred to as Tibetan Lamaism. (It is a mix of indigenous Himalayan shamanic Bön and Hindu-influenced Mahayana Buddhism).
What about Buddhist Tantric Sex?
Tibetan Buddhism, Kama Sutra, and Tantric Sex
ChinaExpat.com updated and edited by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
It was most common in what is today called Northern India, although it became mixed together with Southern Indian local religions such as the worship of the Goddess Kali.
A strange offshoot of it is found in the Tibetan mixed-religion sometimes called Tibetan Buddhism, but also referred to as Tibetan Lamaism. (It is a mix of indigenous Himalayan shamanic Bön and Hindu-influenced Mahayana Buddhism).
In ancient times, Tibet had a native local god/goddess religion, parallel to the Indian local/regional god/goddess systems.
Around the time of the alleged "Aryan invasions" of India (emanating from Iranian/Persian peoples to the west or Anglos/Europeans to the north, a theory that has largely been rejected in India), the threefold-concept of god (as a trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) was consolidated by absorbing the various Dravidian local goddesses as “shaktis” for the triad. (Originally this word meant “power,” but it came to imply “female consort”).
Sexual rites
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| Jambhala (Lord of Wealth) in ritual sexual union with consort (Sino-Tibetan, 18th-19th cent.) |
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Although equated with Tantra in the West, sexual rites were historically practiced by a minority of sects. For practicing groups, maithuna progressed into psychological symbolism [David Gordon White (ed.), 2000, Tantra in Practice, Princeton Univ. Press). According to White, the sexual rites of Vamamarga may have emerged from early Hindu Tantra as a means of catalyzing biochemical transformations in the body to facilitate heightened states of awareness (White, 2000). These constitute an offering to Tantric deities. Later developments in the rite emphasize the primacy of bliss and divine union, which replace the bodily connotations of earlier forms (White, 2000). This is clearly seen in Japanese tantra in Shingonshu of Tachikawa-ryu. MoreLamaism
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| Shiva, Shakti, Mahavidyas (Tantra) |
Buddhism then swept in, and the Tibetans really took to it in a big way. But rather like the parallel example of the Mayans in Mesoamerica (which later became Mexico) adopting the Catholic religion but adapting it to fit their own local religions (viz. the Virgin of Guadalupe) -- the Tibetans never abandoned their ancient god/goddess pairings.
Suddenly there are big Buddhist thankas (intricate wall hangings, religious paintings) with 108 Bodhisattvas. (This 108 is a sacred number in many cultures, for mathematical reasons, most notably in Asia, India in particular.
Bodhisattvas are nearly enlightened Buddhist monastics who could enter nirvana (“liberation from all suffering and rebirth”) but choose instead to be reborn to express compassion to help others find the Path and evolve to the point of enlightenment and nirvana).
Each of these 108 Bodhisattvas is shown with a naked woman, a shakti, in his lap -- merging male and female principles, in union, or “yoga” -- having sex with him…
The 108 Tibetan shaktis are the remnants of local goddesses, who still bear the mnemonic attributes (color, sacred objects they hold, mudras (hand gestures) they are making, accompanying animals, mounts, or flowers, etc.) of their former status.
Catholicism
Now, the corporate Catholic Church, with its CEO sitting in the Vatican like an Italian king, took “The Song of Solomon” from the Bible and said, “This is not about having sex with a woman, folks. This is about the Church’s longing for Jesus” [Ieshua].
So also did Tibetan Buddhists, who ran a Himalayan empire from Potala Palace in Lhasa that paralleled and possibly preceded the Vatican, explain away the sexual congress between these 108 Bodhisattvas and their shaktis as a kind of ephemeral spiritual union.
Judaism
Judaism does this in a similar way: the Shekinah (which sounds like Shakti and probably shares the same proto-Indo-European root) is a female principle representing light or god’s holy spirit.
It is known to Judaic scholars, even those who reinterpret the Talmud and biblical texts to read as exclusively monotheistic even though “God” is always plural, to represent an indigenous goddess-worship system that was absorbed into the worship of the punitive, male tribal god Jehovah or YHWH.
The major difference between the Judaic and Tibetan Buddhist systems is that the Tibetans never stopped drawing representations of the shakti. More
