Sex and Mythology

Sex and mythology are nearly inseparable as subjects; in fact, mythology is steeped in sex, and sex cannot ever shake the mythological symbolism that has grown up around it. We have entire rituals around sanctioned sex (what else would marriage be?) and modern mythologies like the genre of teen horror film have specific treatments of sex.

We know that sex in mythology goes back to the very beginning of written records, and is found in every single culture on earth in one form or another. The earliest recorded deity, Nammu the sea, created the heavens and earth of Mesopotamia by giving birth to them. She was later murdered by Marduk, who in his own creation myth cut her in half to use her as the earth and the sky; the tense relationship between sex and violence goes back this far as well!

In these ancient gods, their actions sexually was identified with what was correct in the human world; this meant that ritual involving sex reflected the mythology that underlay it. Sacred prostitutes were a particular method for worshipping Inanna or Ishtar, goddess of love and beauty. Her counterpart in Egypt, Isis, was considered a virgin mother, and sexual mores changed to reflect this in the cultures that worshipped her.

Another common tradition found in ancient cultures was the sacred marriage, in which the king was ritually joined with the goddess in the form of her avatar, the high priestess. This can be found, though disguised, in several stages of Egypt, wherein the pharaoh is joined with his wife, often the daughter of a high priest family. It is also found throughout the world, sometimes ending in the death of the king or priestess, sometimes with the copulation taking place in the field. And today one of the highest rituals in pagan groups may be the sacred marriage, with copulation between the high priest and priestess taking place on the altar.

Unfortunately, as time went on the equality of the male and female in the sex rite became lopsided; males in society became more authoritarian, while females were given a second-class position. In the famous legal Code of Hammurabi, the most frequent crimes recorded were witchcraft and female adultery, in both of which cases a woman was thrown into the river to drown or survive. Later, in the legend of Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar is rejected by the hero in favor of his friend Enkidu, who was probably a lover. The female aspect is insulted and rejected. This pattern of sublimation of the female or even her rejection continued throughout civilizations.

The act of sex in mythology, as well, became more a symbol than a celebration of sex itself. For instance, throughout Roman and Greek mythology, the joining of Jupiter/Zeus with young woman after young woman was a way of assimilating a wide variety of local deities into the pantheon. The Greek gods were seen as powerful and helpful, while the goddesses were feared because of their jealousy and destructiveness. Even in the Levant, Eve, a woman, destroys the relationship between God and man, creating Original Sin.

Indian ideas about the connection between sex and mythology is quite different from Western ones. To start with, the Kama Sutra came from India, and it joined sex and the worship of the divine at a deep level. Tantric sex, too, comes from the same roots.

In Polynesia, sex and mythology are treated much more naturally. The focus is not on sex; sex is incidental, in many ways, to who and what the gods are. This is much closer to the earliest ideas of sex in mythology, when it was treated as a natural and good human drive, than to more sophisticated religions where it is often seen as an adversary to spirituality.

For this reason, the study of sex in mythology needs to be wide and deep, looking back into the earliest traditions as well as more recent ones. By understanding what humans believe about sex in their respective mythologies, you may be able to gain greater understanding of your own feelings about it. Try, especially, to turn up some of the books and websites that deal with sexual images in mythological art. What you’ll find may shock you, but it will certainly enlighten you.