The Sacred Prostitute
There was a time when the term sacred prostitute was not at all an oxymoron. As is so common in the altered meanings and definitions of language and the duplicity of our great patriarchal society, the spiritual has been separated from the sexual by men, for men cannot deal with the concept that the woman is equal, if not superior, to the man in every way that was ever meant to be – except perhaps for the hunter/gatherer/defender role.
Back then, immanent sexuality and transcendent divinity were inseparable, for mankind understood intuitively the roles between the sexes; the business of life was pure and simple, mostly unfettered by the devious archons that dominate our lifestyles today. Just as night follows day, as peace follows war, life follows death, north opposes south, and love follows hate, our existence is linked together by a polar, yet magnetically attractive, consciousness that has been all but beaten out of us by the patriarchal way. It is called the union of opposites.
In those times the ritual of hierosgamos was openly practiced between gods and goddesses, gods and mortal women, goddesses and mortal men, kings and queens, royalty and the hierodule, strangers and the hierodule, and probably between humans and animals of opposing sexes, as a passionate act of physical love and a divine spiritual sexual act that united the souls of the participants. This union of hierosgamos, uniting the souls as one, allowed the lovers to find favor in the pleroma, for it was believed (or perhaps known) that a male and female soul must exist together as one in order to transcend lowly human existence and find eternal felicity and comfort in heaven.
Every young woman was obligated to spend time as a sacred prostitute, a hierodule, to initiate their lovers, in the name of the Goddess of Love (Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Aphrodite, et al), into a sacred yet secular world of the goddesses' love for mankind. The coupling of the hierodule with her male partner, usually a stranger, was erotically sensuous and filled with vibrant desire and unrestricted pleasure and freedom. She personified in fact the true original meaning of the word hierodule – a blessed vestal virgin (one-in-herself), serving her goddess in her temple of love, with integrity, sophistication, confidence, sexuality, and sensuality in the name of humanity.
Alas, today's definition of hierodule goes something like this:
"A slave serving in an ancient temple, as in Greece or Anatolia, in the service of a specific deity. [Late Latin (1825–35); hierodūlus, from Greek hierodoulos : hieron, temple (from neuter of hieros, holy; see eis- in Indo-European roots) + doulos, slave.]" - The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Note the 19th century years attributed to the altered modern definition of the term. According to the definition (the sexual context being totally removed from the divine context) a hierodule was a temple slave serving a god or a goddess.
So long as the patriarchy runs roughshod over the inherent ways of the world they will get away with their misogyny -- their appalling fear-based betrayal of the feminine – along with their man-made separation of the natural union of opposites of mind and body, spirituality and sexuality, and even man and woman, forever denying us the felicity and tranquility that our united souls, filled with divine consciousness, so desperately seek: the heavenly eternal transcendent spiritual life in the pleroma.
It is not highly competitive overly animus women competing against men in men's modern world, nor misogynistic hubristic men, who will help us find the path to the pleroma – I call it Sophy's Way – but rather women with the nurturing heart of the ancient sacred prostitute coupled with considerate, compassionate, old-fashioned anima-aware men. Together the complete male, in loving touch with his own femininity, in sexual and spiritual concert with the true female – the hierodule of the goddess – can return our lost souls to Sophy's Way by rejecting the oppressive rule of the patriarchal way, replacing our present divisive existence in disunity on this earth with the divine balance of equality by reuniting the polarity of the sexes.
Back then, immanent sexuality and transcendent divinity were inseparable, for mankind understood intuitively the roles between the sexes; the business of life was pure and simple, mostly unfettered by the devious archons that dominate our lifestyles today. Just as night follows day, as peace follows war, life follows death, north opposes south, and love follows hate, our existence is linked together by a polar, yet magnetically attractive, consciousness that has been all but beaten out of us by the patriarchal way. It is called the union of opposites.
In those times the ritual of hierosgamos was openly practiced between gods and goddesses, gods and mortal women, goddesses and mortal men, kings and queens, royalty and the hierodule, strangers and the hierodule, and probably between humans and animals of opposing sexes, as a passionate act of physical love and a divine spiritual sexual act that united the souls of the participants. This union of hierosgamos, uniting the souls as one, allowed the lovers to find favor in the pleroma, for it was believed (or perhaps known) that a male and female soul must exist together as one in order to transcend lowly human existence and find eternal felicity and comfort in heaven.
Every young woman was obligated to spend time as a sacred prostitute, a hierodule, to initiate their lovers, in the name of the Goddess of Love (Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Aphrodite, et al), into a sacred yet secular world of the goddesses' love for mankind. The coupling of the hierodule with her male partner, usually a stranger, was erotically sensuous and filled with vibrant desire and unrestricted pleasure and freedom. She personified in fact the true original meaning of the word hierodule – a blessed vestal virgin (one-in-herself), serving her goddess in her temple of love, with integrity, sophistication, confidence, sexuality, and sensuality in the name of humanity.
Alas, today's definition of hierodule goes something like this:
"A slave serving in an ancient temple, as in Greece or Anatolia, in the service of a specific deity. [Late Latin (1825–35); hierodūlus, from Greek hierodoulos : hieron, temple (from neuter of hieros, holy; see eis- in Indo-European roots) + doulos, slave.]" - The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Note the 19th century years attributed to the altered modern definition of the term. According to the definition (the sexual context being totally removed from the divine context) a hierodule was a temple slave serving a god or a goddess.
So long as the patriarchy runs roughshod over the inherent ways of the world they will get away with their misogyny -- their appalling fear-based betrayal of the feminine – along with their man-made separation of the natural union of opposites of mind and body, spirituality and sexuality, and even man and woman, forever denying us the felicity and tranquility that our united souls, filled with divine consciousness, so desperately seek: the heavenly eternal transcendent spiritual life in the pleroma.
It is not highly competitive overly animus women competing against men in men's modern world, nor misogynistic hubristic men, who will help us find the path to the pleroma – I call it Sophy's Way – but rather women with the nurturing heart of the ancient sacred prostitute coupled with considerate, compassionate, old-fashioned anima-aware men. Together the complete male, in loving touch with his own femininity, in sexual and spiritual concert with the true female – the hierodule of the goddess – can return our lost souls to Sophy's Way by rejecting the oppressive rule of the patriarchal way, replacing our present divisive existence in disunity on this earth with the divine balance of equality by reuniting the polarity of the sexes.
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Copyright (©2008) Albert Lloyd Williams
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