The Origins and History of Prostitution | doc
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| Yeah, I think sacred would be better. |
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.
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Would it be the worst thing to bring back sacred prostitution?
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| 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.
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| The banana hammock is a popular undergarment |
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?
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...
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
