If a man wants lots of sex (and who doesn't?), one way to get it is through sheer force of personality, so as to get the gals lined up. This is one outcome of being a successful evangelist. Just think of all the charismatic evangelists who end up in some sex scandal or another.
Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism is an extreme example. Not only did he have his female followers lined up, but he passed an edict to permit himself to have lots of wives. (He also passed an edict requiring his followers to pay him money. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too. Pity about the lynching.)
So, yeah. Religion is also about sex.
*************
M*W: Without giving this topic much thought up to now, the last line of your post jumped out and slapped me awake this morning! I tend to agree. If we go back to the ancient religions, say to the Egyptian, Canaanite and Roman cultic periods, sex was indeed an important part of religion.
Lynn Picknett states in Chapter I, Satan: An Unnatural History, begins:
"All cultures have their creation myths -- the ancient Egyptians believed that the god Atum, diety of the solar disk and the sun itself, masturbated himself, exploding a life-giving burst of energy that seeded the dark unformed void with countless galaxies. In the land of the pyramids, there was no impropriety in the concept that 'self abuse' created the universe, although millennia later Victorian archeologists were predictably shocked to the core by the ancient Egyptians' melding of sex and divinity."
"In the first act of creation," Picknett states, "Atum was perceived as an androgynous figure, the hand that made the world being the female aspect, while his phallus represented the equal and opposite male principle."
This literally describes the 'Big Bang Theory', in which all matter explodes from a point of singularity and then becomes the expanding universe.
Professor Karl Luckert writes:
"The entire system can be visualized as a flow of creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows further from its source."
Lucifer, also known as "Aster" or star is identified as "bright Morning Star" in the ancient world. Plato, and others in the ancient world, referred to the Morning Star that moves around in the heavens as the "Evening Star."
In his classic,
The Golden Bough, (1922), J.G. Frazier states:
"Sirius was the star of Isis, just as the Babylonians deemed the planet Venus the star of Astarte. To both peoples apparently the brilliant luminary in the morning sky seemed the goddess of life and love come to mourn her departed lover or spouse and wake him from the dead."
Pinknett writes of the lesser known goddess "Astraea" or the "Starry One," who "dispensed the fates of man, the beauty and truth of the deity Venus was believed to be visible in the Evening Star, the opposite and equal to the Morning Star, Lucifer. However, this distinction was too subtle for the pagans' new Christian enemies, and a great blurring between the Feminine Principle and the tendency of the Romans to refer to Venus as 'Lucifera', the enlightener. Venus, the archetypal goddess of the arts of love and women's secrets,
an unashamedly sexual diety, gave her name not only to 'veneral disease' and 'venery', but perhaps, some claim, also more courteously to Venice, the city of her element as 'Stella Maris' ('Star of the Sea', a title she shared wtih Isis, and much later, the Virgin Mary). In early meanings, like that of Diana, Venus was a huntress or the 'Lady of Animals', whose horned consort Adonis -- both the hunter and sacrificial stag -- became '
venison', which meant "Venus's son." Once again the line becomes blurred between horned gods and their consorts. And once again the goddess is associated with animality,
sexual secrets,
lust -- and Lucifer.
Walker explains that the "early Christian fathers denounced th etemples dedicated to the foul devil who goes by the name of Venus -- a school of wickedness for all the votaries of unchasteness." This describes what were known as schools of instruction in sexual techniques and were under the tutelage of "the
venerii or harlot-priestesses" who taught an approach to spiritual grace, called
venia through sexual exercises like those of Trantrism, the eastern cult of sacred sex.
Venis-worship was not uncommon among the goddess cults. God's wife, Asherath, represented both male and female temple prostitutes, but Victorian scholars disapproved of the teaching of these
sacred sexual rituals, so these dieties became known simply as
temple servants, a role that even today is honored with reverence among priestly males, female saints, and altar boys.
In these male dominated religions, sex became synonymous with evil, because women "enticed men to lust after them." From Genesis onward, women were inherently believed to be evil because of Eve, the woman who let Satan into the world and got mankind expelled from Paradise. Goddesses were forever associated with serpents -- "indeed, teh Egyptial
uraeus snake, worn in pharaonic headdresses, was a hieroglyph for 'goddess.'
Picknett states, "It must not be forgotten that women, whether accused of witchcraft or not, were widely believed -- and certainly by the Church patriarchy -- to be naturally polluted and unclean."
Jewish Rabbinical tradition also claimed Eve first menustrated only after she fornicated with the snake." Her firstborn son, Cain, has been widely believed to be the child of the serpent, not Adam. Even today orthodox Jews refuse to shake hands with a woman in the event she is menstruating. Rural communities across Europe still believe that a woman who is menstruating will turn milk and wine sour and blunt their knives!
That great Church teache, St. Jerome, taught that 'nothing is so unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to become unclean.'
Picknett quotes a rhyme from the twentieth century Scottish medical textbook:
"'Oh! Menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend
From which all nature should be closely screened.'"
Barbara Walker stresses that historically women have been ordered to detest their own bodies. She cites: "The Rule for Anchoresses:
"'Art thous not formed of foul slime?
Art thou not always full of uncleanness?'"
That old-time religious 'uncleanliness' is also found in the history of male circumcision as a symbol of sex worship. Jordan Maxwell, in
That Old-Time Religion: The Story of Religious Foundations, Chapter: The Solar Cult, states that: "In Genesis 17:10 we are told that God demanded circumcision of all males as a symbol of His covenant with His people. However, circumcision was practiced by almost all ancient cultures
thousands of years before Genesis was written. The actual historical purpose for the ancient ritual of circumcision was to promote sex worship. There was never anything holy about circumcising the male penis. It was purely sex worship!"
It is not surprising to learn that sex worship goes back thousands of years before the foundations of modern Judaism and Christianity. Needless to say, modern Christianity as shown in the symbols of the Roman Catholic Church reflect sex worship at its peak. These symbols include: The Fish and the Virgin, Hathor: The Divine Mother, Horus: The Divine Son, The Sun: The Light of the World, The Alpha and the Omega: The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.
References:
Briffault, Robert Stephen:
Sin and Sex, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1931, p.228. (With an introduction by Bertrand Russell)
Budge, Sir E.A. Wallis:
Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1969, vol.1, pg.24.
Frazier, Sir James G.:
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Macmillan, London, 1922.
Luckert, Karl W.
Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire, State University of New York Press, New York, 1991.
Maxwell, Jordan, Tice, Paul, and Snow, Alan:
That Old-Time Religion: The Story of Religious Foundations, The Book Tree, Escondido, CA, 2000.
Picknett, Lynn:
The Secret History of Lucifer, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2005.
Waite, Arthur Edward,
The Book of Ceremonial Magic, New York, 1977, pp. 186-7.
Walker, Babara G.:
The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, New York, 1983, p.9.
