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 What
is the relationship of sex and spirituality? A strange
combination it seems but one that evokes huge
responses. Is there something called Sacred sex! Or is
celibacy the only path for the true seeker.
It
is ultimately a personal choice that people must make,
not forgetting that the spiritual practice of celibacy
was and is considered to be a profound even crucial
aspect of spiritual life by the Christians, Buddhist
and Hindus alike.
For it is foolish to underestimate the overwhelming
power that the sexual instinct possesses to create
complex delusions and illusions! Understand and be
aware of this power fully before accepting or
rejecting it
Historically, sex
and spirituality have been uneasy bedfellows -- while
some ancient religions did include sexuality in their
rites, others sought to control sexuality, either by
suppressing it or by severely limiting its expression.
Most of the dominant religions in the world today are
sex-negative, preaching the suppression of the sexual
urge or the channeling of that urge into
socially-acceptable forms (marriage as reproductive
arrangements).
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Which ancient traditions chose to include sexuality as
a spiritual act?
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The Sumerians performed the Sacred
Marriage, a union between a priestess of their
goddess, Inanna, with a priest-king, as a means of
obtaining the favor of this goddess for their
cities. In Greece, this type of ritual sex was
referred to as the Hieros Gamos; and evidence
indicates that it was also practiced by the
Egyptians in the cult of Isis up until the Roman
era. Hints from various ancient sources indicate
that a Hieros Gamos may have been part of the
Eleusinian mysteries.
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Sacred prostitution, a means by which
men could visit temples and have sex with temple
prostitutes in order to commune with a particular
goddess, was practiced in numerous ancient Middle
Eastern cultures, and in India up until the
1950s.
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In India, the Tantric tradition,
overseen by the god Shiva and his consort Kali/Parvati,
continue for hundreds (possibly thousands) of
years before being incorporated into Buddhism.
Practitioners of Tantra seek enlightenment and
union with the Divine through sexual rites and
other forms of meditation and ritual.
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After Tantra was brought to China by
traveling monks, it was combined with Taoist
philosophy and Chinese medical theory, and was
used by those who sought to increase health and
(in some cases) achieve physical immortality
(through sexual techniques thought to prolong the
vitality of the practitioner).
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Some sects of early Christianity
incorporated sexual rites into their religious
practices; all of these sects were persecuted into
extinction by the Roman Catholic Church once it
was able to successfully consolidate its political
standing as the sole religious institution of
Europe.
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