Premium Article Preview: In the modern world, the mere mention of “Sacred Prostitution” may receive raised eyebrows or disgusted grimaces, but academics are now questioning these erotic stories. Some researchers even dispute holy prostitution altogether, believing that it all began when a few ancient Greek writers concocted defamatory customs about foreigners as evidence of moral failures. Guest Author Martini Fisher uncovers the lives and truths behind the history of Sacred Prostitution.
I love this and the explanation of the ancient definition of the word virgin which was what originally referred to when speaking of virgin Goddesses.
The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by Stephanie Lynn Budin covers this topic really well.
You have to take reports by ancient writers with a grain of salt because A) they were old men and sensationalising female sexuality was almost a hobby. And B) Greeks were highly xenophobic and the best way to discredit another society was to make up stories about sexual and religious perversion.
Did rituals like the hieros gamos exist in a religious sphere? Probably. Did temples own prostitutes as slaves, and use their income to maintain temples and sanctuaries? Also likely.
Did certain cults require women to prostitute themselves in the name of a goddess? Did sexual activity happen in temples? I doubt it.
Getting back to the linked article, the premise itself is not wrong. Sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia is now doubted by many scholars. However, the article (or what I can read of it, since I surprisingly don’t have a premium subscription to Ancient Origins) makes some glaring mistakes:
Ishtar was not called the Goddess Har. A couple of Google searches enabled me to trace the origin of this idea to The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine by Nancy Qualls-Corbett (1988, and you can feel it). Qualls-Corbett believes in the existence of sacred prostitutes, and her theories rest exactly on what modern academics are trying to disprove – the translation of Akkadian terms ḫarimtu, nadītu and qadištu as “prostitute”. She also perpetuates the idea that matriarchal societies (which Mesopotamia was NOT) were peaceful and in tune with nature. Lastly, she claims the Gilgamesh Epic was “completed about 7000 B.C.E., though possibly it comes from a much older oral tradition” (p. 33). What on Earth, Nancy? What on Earth?
Nancy’s source for Ishtar as the Goddess Har is Barbara Walker’s The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), which I’m not going to delve into because it’s even worse and I don’t feel like debunking the theory that Greek hora, Arabic harem and English harlot have the same origin.
While we’re at it, the idea that “Ishtar was sometimes called the Goddess Har since she was the mother of the harlots” (quote from Ancient Origins) is preposterous, since it makes the assumption that the Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamians knew the English word “harlot”. In fact, the word “harlot” definitely has no links to Mesopotamia, and the simplest of Wiktionary searches will tell you that.
Next up: Spanish puta comes from the Latin word for “well”. Surprisingly, it doesn’t. There is a Latin word puteus meaning “pit” or “well”, but there is no etymological link. Go figure.
Puticuli, the Latin word for “grave-pits”, actuallymeans “the womb of rebirth”? Wow, I would’ve thought it came from puteus + the diminutive culus.
Don’t mind me, I’m just burying myself in the puticuli.
At this point, you can probably tell I’m pretty done with this article. In summary, the article was published on a non-academic website dedicated to fringe theories, uses outdated sources written by people from a different field, and presents some very shoddy etymologies as fact. Its core may reflect current research, but please, guys, there are far better sources out there. Try @bayoread‘s book recommendation of The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. Try this academic article about sacred prostitutes in Greek and Roman times. Even this Tumblr post does a better job of explaining it than Ancient Origins.
I’ll conclude by linking my guide to online research and reminding you all to please check the content of what you’re sharing. Sharing without reading spreads misinformation – and this kind of misinformation is particularly harmful to Mesopotamian studies. I genuinely don’t care if people believe Ishtar was called the Goddess Har (though I will roll my eyes at it), but when people start believing aliens were responsible for Mesopotamian civilisation – thus discrediting the actual, Middle Eastern people behind it – and buying cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals on the black market so they can own something made by aliens, it becomes a serious problem. It’s much easier to check what you share and avoid supporting this kind of misinformation altogether.
I am not an expert on this topic, so I will say nothing about this specific subject matter. It does sound, however, like much of the crap that has been going around Western academia for hundreds of years now. It is a trend rooted in racism and a belief in the superiority of modern Western culture, that we refuse to simply take ancient writers at their word. They couldn’t possibly be describing actual events at the time, because we find that culture to be so immoral/alien to out modern sensibilities. They couldn’t possibly be telling the truth about the achievements of ancient people, because they were backward savages. This happens in modern anthropology as well. Yet, time and again, somebody looks at ancient texts that have been discounted as fairy tales, decides to go looking for the the archaeological evidence, and behold! it’s suddenly there. Western scholars at one time believed that the entire city of Troy was just a myth until they actually found it. In modern times, numerous anthropologists and botanists have asked the tribes of Peru how they learned to make ayahuasca, as it requires the combination of multiple unrelated plants. The shamans always answer, the spirits of the plants told them. But ‘nah, that can’t be it. There must be an explanation that fits in our worldview. Well ya know, maybe the spirits of the plants told them. And maybe we should put aside our perspective on these things and start taking ancient writers at their word.
I’ve been reading Modern Wicca by Michael Howard, and, naturally, it is mentioned in Gerald Gardner’s early years of witchcraft that he was allegedly part of a working to send Hitler’s forces away from the United Kingdom. According to Howard’s research, this was not the first time that witches had done such a thing, as apparently they had done the same during the Napoleonic wars by stopping the French forces from invading in August 1805, and previously against the Spanish Armada in 1588. The supposedly used the statement “You can not land. Go on, go on.” and summoned up a wind to stop the forces from landing.
This is a common theme in stories about witches and political figures. Whether or not the research Howard gathered is genuine (and by that, I mean it was secondhand information from the Mason family, who were supposedly a family of witches stretching back a few generations), it can not be denied that such stories have had a profound effect upon the public and popular mind.
One of my favorite movies as a child was Bedknobs and Broomsticks starring Angela Lansbury as a ‘prentice witch seeking the Star of Astaroth (a demonic duke in many grimoires, as well as a traditional name of the witch goddess, but in the film is the name of a great sorcerer from the past) so that she can animate objects. The climax of the film comes when she is locked within an armory of medieval weapons, which she animates to battle the invading Germans. She enlivens them, if I may stretch a metaphor, with wind (spirit). Anima.
In Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell we see depicted Mr Norrell summoning a phantom armada of ships to discourage Napoleon’s troops from sailing and invading merry old England. He does this from a distance. The parallel between weather magic and sending away armies of enemies is very interesting to me.
In 1591, a group of men and women were arrested and accused of summoning up great storms to sink the King’s ship. They allegedly used a special song to raise this storm, which is as follows:
Cummer go ye before, Cummer go ye before, Gif ye will not go before, Cummer, let me.
This has been expanded to a full song, which can easily be found. They danced backwards in front of the Auld Kirk (old church) to raise a great storm against the King in an attempt to sink his ship.
This theme of raising storms and winds and malignant weather against political enemies has a long history with witches. I suppose the ideas of the wind pushing away and dispersing, as well as the disastrous effects of lightning are typical natural phenomenon to inhibit enemy armies. However, with recent witchcraft books, I think it is also the raising of spirits or even the wild hunt against political enemies. In Gemma Gary’s The Devil’s Dozen she writes a ritual to raise the Faery Hounds, which may be sent against one’s enemies. I specifically wrote a spell to send these hounds during the Water is Life crisis to protect the protesters and to attack the military.
Such spirits need to be called up now.
Raise up your blackthorn canes and direct the faery hounds toward the rising oppressors. Take up your black walnut wands and raise a wind in the Devil’s name! It shall not lie til we please again. Bind oppressors with ivy and willow branches. Smoke hemp and savory tobacco to ask the dead for guidance, and to petition them to guide their descendants. Fly by night as owls, and wolves, and mares, and hounds to bite and snatch and claw away at tyrants. Shapeshift into incubi and succubi to suck away their morale and strength. Send sweet rains to dull the raging fires of hatred in this country, and, indeed, abroad. Hold the Black Mass, and name the Host as the the Oppressor. The Liar. The Ignorant, and the Faithful.
It is time, as it has for some time, to raise a wind against the rising, the already risen fascism and nazism in this country. It is time to call on furious phantom armies to kill our enemies, and smite down their weapons. “You can not land. Go on, go on.”
I close with a prayer from Cora Anderson, Grandmistress of the Faery Tradition, to be said over a meal:
All you gods of wickedness, tyranny and oppressors of the poor! Behold this bountiful table which our Goddess has given us from her body the earth. We defy you and throw the very soil of the earth in your face. We will never bow to you, but always praise our Mother Goddess from whom all blessings flow. Now, Mother Earth, we give you praise for these fruits of our labor. We will walk in your ways that all may know that it is the Mother Goddess and her male consort that we worship and adore! Evohe, Blessed Be!
Rise up, witches.
Isn’t there also a story about John Dee conjuring up a storm to destroy the Spanish armada as well?
I’ve heard that, too, but I couldn’t remember where I heard it. I thought maybe it was in _Elizabeth: the Golden Age_, but it was not.
I have heard this story before. At the very least, he anticipated/predicted the storm that destroyed the Spanish Armada. At the most he conjured up the storm himself…
Congress with the Devil became a popular part of sabbat mythology, but testimonies like the vivid one of Isobel Gowdie suggest that we cannot write this off as merely the exaggeration of the interrogators. There are simply too many details here that an interrogator would never think to enquire about, Isobel has provided more than a simple answer to a question: ‘yes I copulated with the Devil’, she provides us with a rich narrative of the experience.
Bulgarian Demon Chasers. Photography: Aron Klein. Source
“Kukeri is an ancient pagan ritual practiced annually across the Balkan mountain regions where local men wear carved wooden masks of beasts’ faces and hang heavy bells around their waists as they perform arcane dances,” says London-based photographer Aron Klein. The Kukeri Project is Aron’s magical and dreamlike series that consists of hypnotic images of large men in carnivalesque costumes, posing menacingly in the wintry Bulgarian mountains.
We have had some debate recently on the spirit of various plant psychedelics compared to synthesized substances like LSD. I think the answer lies in perspective and may answer some nagging questions. The hole in Terrance McKenna’s “stoned ape” hypothesis has always been a lack of known psychedelics available to early man in certain regions. But I think we are once again discounting our ancestors’ ability and ingenuity. LSD is derived from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. While direct consumption of ergot can cause hallucinations, and we have many historical examples of this, it is also poisonous. Yet, Albert Hofmann is quoted as saying, the ability to extract the psychedelic compounds from ergot were, “well within the range of possibilities open to Early Man.” So in essence, LSD is most likely a direct lineage of the shaman’s medicine as used in the West. Northern African and European prehistoric hunter-gatherers did have access to a psychedelic compound. This is another way in which EMK attempts to re-make the esoteric tradition of the West.
Been wanting a color laser printer for a long time. Finally broke down and bought one for our Gen Con printing needs. As a bonus, I now have the ability to make new devotional candles.
