There is abundant evidence to show that there was a time in the centuries
before Christ when prostitution was held as a most sacred vocation. We
learn of this practice from many sources. It appears that temples in a
number of ancient cities of the East, in Babylonia, Nineveh, Corinth and
throughout India, were erected for the worship of certain deities. This
worship consisted of the prostitution of women. The women were consecrated
to the support of the temple. They were chosen in much the same way as the
modern woman enters a sacred church order. The returns from their vocation
went to the support of the deity and the temple. The children born of such a
union were in no way held in disgrace, but on the contrary, they appeared to
have formed a separate and rather superior class. We are told that this
practice did not interfere with a woman's opportunities for subsequent
marriage. In India the practice was very general at one time. The women
were called the "Women of the Idol." Richard Payne Knight speaks of a
thousand sacred prostitutes living in each of the temples at Eryx and
Corinth.
A custom which shows even more clearly that prostitution was held as a
sacred duty to women was that in Babylonia every woman, of high rank or low,
must at one time in her life prostitute herself to any stranger who offered
money. In "Ancient Sex Worship" we read: "There was a temple in Babylonia
where every female had to perform once in her life a (to us) strange act of
religion, namely, prostitution with a stranger. The name of it was
Bit-Shagatha, or 'The Temple,' the 'Place of Union.' " Moreover we learn
that once a woman entered the temple for such a sacred act she could not
leave until it was performed.
The above accounts deal exclusively in the sacrifice made by women to the
deity of sex. Men did not escape this sacrifice and it appears that some
inflicted upon themselves an even worse one. Fraser[5] tells us of this
worship which was introduced from Assyria into Rome about two hundred years
before Christ. It was the worship of Cybele and Attis. These deities were
attended by emasculated priests and the priests in oriental costume paraded
Rome in religious ceremony.
[5] Adonis, Attis and Osiris.
On one occasion, namely, "the day of blood" in the Spring, the chief
ceremony was held. This, among other things, consisted in fastening an
effigy of the god to a pine tree, which was brought to the temple of the
Goddess Cybele. A most spectacular dance about the effigy then occurred in
which the priests slashed themselves with knives, the blood being offered as
sacrifice. As the excitement increased the sexual nature of the ceremony
became evident. To quote from Fraser; "For man after man, his veins
throbbing with the music, his eyes fascinated by the sight of streaming
blood, flung his garments from him, leaped forth with a shout, and seizing
one of the swords which stood ready for the service, castrated himself on
the spot. Then he ran through the city holding the bloody parts in his hands
and threw them into one of the houses which he passed in his mad career."
We see that this act directly corresponds with the part played by the
female. The female prostituted herself, and the male presented his
generative powers to the deity. Both the sacred prostitutes and emasculated
priests were held in religious veneration.
The above references are sufficient to show that a simple form of sex
worship has been quite generally found. It becomes apparent as we proceed
that the worship of sex not only plays a part, but a very prominent part, in
the developing mind of man. In the frank and open form of this worship it is
quite clear that we are dealing with a very simple type of mind. These
primitive people exhibit many of the qualities of the child. They are quite
without sex consciousness. Their motives are at once both simple and
direct, and they are doubtless sincere. Much misunderstanding has arisen by
judging such primitive people by the standards of our present day
civilization. Sex worship, while it held sway was probably quite as
seriously entertained as many other beliefs; it only became degraded during
a decadent age, when civilization had advanced beyond such simple
conceptions of a deity, but had not evolved a satisfactory substitute.
We shall now pass to a less frank and open deification of sex, namely,
sexual symbolism.