HUMAN SEXUALITY AND THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION*

                                                                                               by

                                                                                      Louis W. Cable

     The whole succession of humanity, during the long series of ages, should be considered as one person who continues to live and who continually learns.

                                                                                                                 Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

        Religion appears to be as old as humanity itself. Artifacts recovered from late Paleolithic burial sites show indisputable evidence of religious practice. Neanderthal man, who died out around 32,000 years ago, buried his dead with some kind of relatively sophisticated ceremony, indicating that by that early date religion had already been practiced for thousands of years. The one thing that all primitive people seem to have possessed regardless of their ethnic, lingual, cultural, or geographic separation is some kind of religion.
        In spite of its obvious relevance to human identity, just when, where and how religion began are questions yet to be answered fully. One thing we are sure of, however, and which offers a tantalizing clue, is that there is a direct connection between religion and human sexuality. This connection is much more evident in the religious practices of primitive people. It is also present in religious practices of more sophisticated and advanced societies such as ours, although great effort has been made to ignore or disguise it. So maybe we've been looking in the wrong places for the answer to the riddle of the origin of religion. Maybe that answer lies in our unique sexuality, because it also sets us apart from all other living forms. Although the mechanisms of human reproduction are essentially the same as those of all other species of the class mammalia, and there are about 15,000 of them, the way in which the sex drive manifests itself in humans is unique, and I might add, extremely more complex than in other animals
        Today our physical and psychological universes have become so vast and so sophisticated that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to imagine the sort of life the earliest humans lived. But on the basis of what knowledge we do have regarding human life as it was lived in the distant past, it becomes obvious that it was anything but the earthly paradise described so naively in the Bible. In all probability it was, by our standards, a short, meager life of relatively low expectations lived out in comparative isolation. The world of our earliest ancestors probably encompassed no more than a few square miles at most. They appear to have mostly lived in fenced in, or walled in, compounds probably not much larger than an average city block. Outside of this compound lay an unknown and hostile world full of danger and full of death.
        Although hunting and food gathering parties would routinely venture out and return safely, it is not too difficult to imagine that on occasion some individual, a child fetching water perhaps, or maybe a hunter, would stray too far beyond the perimeter of the compound never to be seen nor heard from again. Just what had become of them was, I’m sure, the subject of much creative speculation.
Humans were rare in those days, and our early ancestors knew only a few other individuals. Their life experiences were limited in range and narrow and scope. For the most part they were born and lived out their short, meager lives in the isolated confines of their tribal compound with its limited associations. Contact with other tribe either planned or accidental, usually meant a fight to the death.
        Although they did not fully understand the human reproductive process, they knew full well that it was a crucial factor if the tribe was to survive and prosper. Therefore the issuance of new life was of the utmost importance. They knew very well that there is not only safety but also power in numbers. For example, in Genesis 9:1 following the alleged “great flood” God exhorts Noah and his sons to, "be fruitful and multiply...fill the earth." Therefore, it is not at all difficult to see how the act of giving birth took on a mystical or even reverential quality for the early humans. It surely must have been the cause for great joy and celebration. In this we see the first glimmering of religion.
        Now the fact that religion was present in almost all earl human societies has been interpreted by some people as proof of God's existence. But I believe this to be nothing more than wistful thinking because it could just as logically be argued that religion is proof of man's ignorance. One of the most important functions of all religions, especially primitive religions, is to supply answers to questions that people have not been able to answer satisfactorily from experience and/or observation. In that regard, the irony of the evolution of the human brain is that as intelligence increased so did ignorance. In order to have ignorance it is first necessary to have enough intelligence to understand just what it is that we are ignorant of.
        In their primitive state of ignorance it was not immediately obvious to the early humans that the male had anything to do with procreation. In due time, however, they came to realize that for some unknown reason females who had not had sexual intercourse with a male did not become pregnant. This realization led eventually to the understanding and appreciation of the necessary male contribution to the process. How long it took to discover this fact we cannot say. But for many thousands of years of social development and intellectual growth among humans, procreation was viewed as exclusively a female function, thereby assuring them a special position in early human societies. It was also obvious that after achieving the age at which they could bear children females bled at regular intervals from the same part of the body from which they gave birth. To compound these mysterious occurrences the periodic bleeding stopped whenever pregnancy took place and just as mysteriously resumed following birth.
        So it is not too farfetched to see how a connection was made in the minds of early humans between bleeding and giving birth. But bleeding they knew well enough could also result in death. If one imagines a primitive people with no knowledge of medicine facing tremendous odds against survival, bleeding becomes a risky business indeed. Blood, therefore, became precious as a carrier of life as well as a harbinger of death. It appeared to have mystical powers, thus assuring its importance in the evolution of religion.
        Also, the fact that a woman's menstrual cycle seemed to parallel the lunar cycle made it easy to assume that some relationship existed between the moon and giving birth, thereby enhancing the apparent mystical or supernatural quality already associated with this important event. In the biblical injunction against contact with menstrual blood the blood is referred to as the woman's "flower" which of course precedes the fruit of her womb as a flower precedes the fruit of a tree. Uterine blood was believed to be the “moon flower” that contained the soul of future generations thus acquiring heavy spiritual and religious overtones.
        The word "adam" for example, derives from the ancient Hebrew word "adoma" which literally translated means "bloody clay", not red earth as some modern theologians would have us believe. In fact, in most ancient languages words for menstruation also meant such things as incomprehensible, supernatural, sacred spirit, and even deity. Like the Latin "sacer", old Arabian words for pure and impure both applied to menstrual blood. In many primitive societies it was believed that human souls were made of menstrual blood which assumed human form when the female became pregnant. The Great philosopher Aristotle subscribed to this view as did Pliny, the renown roman historian. Chinese Taoists believed that a man could achieve immortality by absorbing a woman's menstrual blood through sexual intercourse. They went on to say that the yellow emperor became a god by absorbing the yen juice or menstrual fluid of twelve hundred young maidens. I was amazed to learn that such primitive beliefs regarding the supernatural power of the menses were taught as fact in European medical schools as recently as 200 years ago. Even today, religious cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses hold that human blood carries spiritual significance. They go so far as to forbid blood transfusions even in cases where a life might be saved.
        So it is not surprising that blood red became a sacred color with many people. The Maori of New Zealand, for example, made things sacred by applying the color red to them. The Andaman islanders used red paint to cover the sick in order to heal them. This custom can be traced all the way back to prehistoric times. In ancient tombs the furnishings show definite traces of having been reddened with ochre, as have the remains of their human occupants. This practice was intended to create a closer resemblance to earth mother's womb from which the dead could be born again. We hear the phrase "born again" bantered about by many Christian fundamentalist. I'm sure most of them are naively unaware of its full implications.
        The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs acquired divinity by imbibing the blood of Isis, the great goddess of Egypt. The hieroglyphic sign for this ambrosia was the same as the sign for the female sex organ -- the loop which forms the top of the Egyptian cross or “ankh,” as it is called. We are familiar with that sign today for we see it on many automobile bumpers as the sign of the fish, practically the same as the Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for the same organ. You may want to tell your Christian friends what they are really displaying on their cars.
        Even the gods were dependent on the menstrual blood for sustenance. In ancient Greece it was the supernatural red wine given them by mother Hera. In India the great mother Kali-Maya invited the gods to partake of communion by drinking her menses. In the north the god Thor reached the land of eternal life by bathing in a river of the menstrual blood of the primal matriarchs. Celtic kings became gods by drinking the red mead offered by Queen Mab.
        The influence of sex in the origin of religion seems to be clearly delineated in the oldest artifacts we have of prehistoric fertility figures depicting the female form in a posture that emphasizes her sexuality and usually her pregnancy. When we add to these earliest figures the importance of menstrual blood both for living and dying, both for humans and gods, we have a strong case not only for the sexual origin for religion but also for the female origin of deities. We find remnants of this concept even in religions that reject the notion completely. Mary is not only the virgin mother of Jesus; she is also commonly referred to as the Mother of God. Interestingly enough, the earliest trinities seem to have been three women--one young, one matronly, and one old. In time they were changed to two men and a woman and later, as religion changed along with culture, they became three men, the father, the son and the holy ghost.
        It is indeed intriguing that there should be so much evidence of this ancient past still existing in our culture today in spite of the efforts of some religions to hide their sexual origins or propensities. For example, we use the word "venerable" to describe a worshipful or reverential attitude without pausing to realize it comes from the same root as "venereal." their common root is Venus, the Roman love goddess. The words "testament" and "testicles" derive from a common origin. The steeple, that "venerated" structure universally recognized as a symbol of Christian churches , is said to also be a phallic symbol as is the minaret, that tall usually cylindrical tower atop the Islamic mosque from which the faithful are regularly summoned to prayer. And little wonder because the phallus, or penis, gives "testimony" to the embodiment of generative power.
        To some people sex is repulsive, which no doubt accounts for the great effort they make to suppress things sexual. But much of that effort might also be compensation for their own frustration or fear of their own sexual drive, and a powerful drive it is. In the memorable words of Havelock Ellis, one of the pioneers in the study and understanding of human sexuality, "sex is not merely the means of procreation, it is also the solvent of isolation, the experience through which a solitary human being, caged in the prison of himself or herself, comes closest to escaping from this lonely cell through physical and spiritual union with another”. Among the oldest common terms for sexual intercourse are "knowing" and "having". This suggests that the basic goal of sexual activity is not only procreation or even erotic pleasure, but something else. It is the union with another person and the sharing with oneself - the creating of a bond as in marriage.
        It is not at all difficult to imagine people moving from this sort of sexual relationship to a similar relationship with God, thereby uniting with him to achieve some sort of cosmic unity. One example can be found in the widely acclaimed song of Solomon, an erotic love song describing sexual union between God and human beings. Many gospel songs are in reality contemporary expressions of the same type of relationship sought with Jesus. Actually, they are love songs from humans to Jesus and vice versa.
        Although many people have tried hard to deny the sexual origin of religion, a little research and study, supplemented by a generous dose of common sense, will reveal that religion hasn't progressed very far from its beginnings.

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*Note - This essay was originally written to be presented as a talk, therefore there are no footnotes or references. However, it was derived from several recognized scholarly sources in the fields of history, anthropology and theology.