What was the role of Temple "Temple prostitutes"?

[Kaylara]

Brought about by another thread. What do you think was the role of the temple "prostitutes"?

[Infinite Grey]

should be more of em :T

[debnmike]

I'm curious, too. Were they women who "subbed" when a Great Rite (or whatever you may want to call it) was being performed?

I'm also confused about the prostitute part....they accepted money for this? Would that then consitute that (for the ladies) they were employees as opposed to actually doing any ritual for their own spiritual benefit, or is it both?

I don't know if I worded that 2nd paragraph very well. If I need to clarify to anybody then I will.

[Kaylara]

If you have a copy of "The Golden Bough" By Sir James Frazer (and if not, I strongly suggest picking up a copy!) you can flip to pages 330-332 to see the passages on the subject. Cited here for ease of discussion:


In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not. Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever it's motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied while her type remained constant, from place to place. Thus at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years. At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria, famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, the custom of the country that every maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner. The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in it's stead. In Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service of religion, believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won her favour. "It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate." At Byblus the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess. A Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia proves that the practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century of our era. It records of a certain woman, Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only that she herself served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express command, but that her mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her; and the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a life and such a parentage. In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple at Acilisena, where the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period of service was over. Again, the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus, and crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary from the neighboring cities and country to attend the biennial festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess.

If we survey the whole of the evidence on this subject, some of which has still to be laid before the reader, we may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast.

At Paphos the custom of religious prostitution is said to have been instituted by King Cinyras, and to have been practiced by his daughters, the sisters of Adonis, who, having incurred the wrath of Aphrodite, mated with strangers and ended their days in Egypt. In this for the tradition the wrath of Aphrodite is probably a feature added by a later authority, who could only regard conduct which shocked his own moral sense as a punishment inflicted by the goddess instead of as a sacrifice regularly enjoined by her on all her devotees. At all events the story indicates that the princesses of Paphos had to conform to the custom as well as women of humble birth.

[Kaylara]

And Wikipedia (though not a great reference) has this to say on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierodule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_prostitutes

[asheir]

I might be wrong , but they weren't prostituts in the meaning of - taking money for their duty. I don't think that they personally recieved money for it. It was probably more like a sacrifice to the goddess. So, in my view, they were not really prostitutes...

[debnmike]

I haven't gotten to the Wikepedia stuff yet, but that earlier post of yours..holy cow!

Because I'm unfamiliar with all this, I guess I'm surprised that the prostitution bit was mandated before marriage. I assumed that (especially during the time period) that men would only marry a virgin. I'm surprised to know that's not the case, although the last part made me think otherwise.

Also interesting that these women gave all their "earnings" to the goddess as an offering. Out of curiosity (hope I didn't miss it in the article), who supported these women? I mean, where/how did they live if all their money was given as a tithe of sorts?

[debnmike]

I might be wrong , but they weren't prostituts in the meaning of - taking money for their duty. I don't think that they personally recieved money for it. It was probably more like a sacrifice to the goddess. So, in my view, they were not really prostitutes...

It says in that clip above that they did, they just hadda give it all to the goddess as an offering.

[asheir]

*still not awake*
*feels dumb*

I have a problem looking at a goddess as a pimp...

[asheir]

Poor girls... I wonder how they felt about it.... Or were they just used to it because there mothers, grandmothers ect did it...

It is really hard to imagine.... Poor girls

[Kaylara]

The term prostitute is a derogatory term that attaches a certain stigma to us now. There is a lot of material that suggests that such a stigma was not attached to them at the time. And also, at the time, Virgin did not mean someone who hadn't had sex before, it meant someone who was unmarried. I think that being a virgin in our current context would have been of little importance to a culture or cultures who's value was on fertility.

[Kaylara]

There's also quite a bit of material showing that men were just as likely to be required to do this as women. ;)

The goddess was not a pimp. Again, someone not having sex would have been of little importance to a culture who valued fertility.

[debnmike]

Poor girls... I wonder how they felt about it.... Or were they just used to it because there mothers, grandmothers ect did it...

It is really hard to imagine.... Poor girls

Again, from the clip above these girls wanted to do this. Apparently it even had a waiting list. It wasn't considered slavery or degrading or anything like that..because they saw it as a gift to their goddess there was no stigma.

I might have missed it, but at what point did a lady "quit" doing it? I mean, was it a certain age, a certain number of guys or what?

[Kaylara]

Poor girls... I wonder how they felt about it.... Or were they just used to it because there mothers, grandmothers ect did it...

It is really hard to imagine.... Poor girls

There was no negative stigma attached to the act, as we have now. No need to feel sorry for them. I'm sure that you're much more upset about it than they would have been.

[Kaylara]

Again, from the clip above these girls wanted to do this. Apparently it even had a waiting list. It wasn't considered slavery or degrading or anything like that..because they saw it as a gift to their goddess there was no stigma.

I might have missed it, but at what point did a lady "quit" doing it? I mean, was it a certain age, a certain number of guys or what?

It looks like it depended on which culture you were looking at.

[debnmike]

The term prostitute is a derogatory term that attaches a certain stigma to us now. There is a lot of material that suggests that such a stigma was not attached to them at the time. And also, at the time, Virgin did not mean someone who hadn't had sex before, it meant someone who was unmarried. I think that being a virgin in our current context would have been of little importance to a culture or cultures who's value was on fertility.

I know soooo many people who'd be thrilled to know that!


Deb
Has apparently been a virgin many many times in her life

[asheir]

Again, from the clip above these girls wanted to do this. Apparently it even had a waiting list. It wasn't considered slavery or degrading or anything like that..because they saw it as a gift to their goddess there was no stigma.

I might have missed it, but at what point did a lady "quit" doing it? I mean, was it a certain age, a certain number of guys or what?
Sorry for not reading sdo carefully, I suck at that!

Maybe they quit when they got married....

[asheir]

I know soooo many people who'd be thrilled to know that!


Deb
Has apparently been a virgin many many times in her life
No kidding... I think that a lot of people wouldn't be looked at as players or sluts if it would still be like that. I think the whole society would chege there outlook on that subject... Nice to imagine...

[debnmike]

Sorry for not reading sdo carefully, I suck at that!

Maybe they quit when they got married....

Hmmm. Ya know, it brings up some interesting questions. For instance, if they felt this was a *terrific* way of celebrating/honoring the goddess, what did they do after they were married? I'm not saying that to sound funny, I'm just wondering if they felt they had to sub the prostitution with another way of honoring their deity.

[asheir]

Hmmm. Ya know, it brings up some interesting questions. For instance, if they felt this was a *terrific* way of celebrating/honoring the goddess, what did they do after they were married? I'm not saying that to sound funny, I'm just wondering if they felt they had to sub the prostitution with another way of honoring their deity.
Well, in a way they did their duty to the goddess for u don't know how many years. Maybe there were "released" by the goddess... Does it say somewhere at what age they started to serve?

[Kaylara]

In most of these cases, it seems that they were required to do this only once in their lives, after which they could show their devotion in another way.

[Infinite Grey]

In most of these cases, it seems that they were required to do this only once in their lives, after which they could show their devotion in another way.


makes sense... you can only lose your virginity once :T

[Kaylara]

Well, in a way they did their duty to the goddess for u don't know how many years. Maybe there were "released" by the goddess... Does it say somewhere at what age they started to serve?

It doesn't say that it was for years in most cases. It seems to have been for a short period, (in most cases, unless a person was a devotee of the goddess and a priestess.) and I'm sure that a girl would have to have her menarche before being allowed to perform in this way.

[asheir]

It doesn't say that it was for years in most cases. It seems to have been for a short period, (in most cases, unless a person was a devotee of the goddess and a priestess.) and I'm sure that a girl would have to have her menarche before being allowed to perform in this way.
What if they got pregnant? There was not much available for birth control. So the checes were pretty high I assume....

[debnmike]

makes sense... you can only lose your virginity once :T

Depends on how you define "virginity". Apparently it can mean either someone who's never had sex or someone who's never been married.

[debnmike]

What if they got pregnant? There was not much available for birth control. So the checes were pretty high I assume....

Dang, I didn't even think about that.

[asheir]

I'm starting to wake up it seems....

[Infinite Grey]

Depends on how you define "virginity". Apparently it can mean either someone who's never had sex or someone who's never been married.


vir•gin•i•ty (vər-jĭn'ĭ-tē)
n., pl. -ties.
The quality or condition of being a virgin.
The state of being pure, unsullied, or untouched.


vir•gin (vûr'jĭn)
n.
A person who has not experienced sexual intercourse.
A chaste or unmarried woman; a maiden.
An unmarried woman who has taken religious vows of chastity

actually, by any definition you can only be a virgin once. :cutie:

[asheir]

actually, by any definition you can only be a virgin once. :cutie:
According to the second quote you regain your virginity after a divorce... Right?

[debnmike]

actually, by any definition you can only be a virgin once. :cutie:


Ok.

[Silverfire Darkmoon]

Where exactly does this whole 'virgin = unmarried / childless woman' concept originate, anyway? It's one of those things I'm suspicious about for no reason I can determine.
Oh, Frazer, always good for a laugh.

[Infinite Grey]

According to the second quote you regain your virginity after a divorce... Right?

not if you take in account the other definitions

[Arion]

I think it was the goddess Ishtar of Mesopotamia who required every woman to have sex with a man in her honour before they could get married. Young girls who were nearing the age of marriage would sit in Ishtar's temple and wait to be chosen by a man, who would drop a coin into their lap in exchange for the girl to sleep with him. Sleeping with the girl who was consecrated to Ishtar was how men communed with their goddess.

I think Aphrodite had sacred harlots too, and plenty of goddesses who ruled over sex, desire, love, procreation, and things like that. The act of sex united the male worshipers with the goddess they were honouring.

[David19]

I think it was the goddess Ishtar of Mesopotamia who required every woman to have sex with a man in her honour before they could get married. Young girls who were nearing the age of marriage would sit in Ishtar's temple and wait to be chosen by a man, who would drop a coin into their lap in exchange for the girl to sleep with him. Sleeping with the girl who was consecrated to Ishtar was how men communed with their goddess.

Also, in Sumeria, the king would sleep with Inanna's high priestess, the king would represent Dumuzi and the priestess would represent Inanna (Dumuzi was a deified mortal, in fact).

There was also the Sumerian belief that people could become vessels for the gods, and Inanna would literally possess the priestess and Dumuzi would possess the priest.

Also, i think there was male prostitution in some Middle Eastern countries, i think it was part of the Assyrian religion, as well early Judaism.

[MariThorn]

Temple prostitutes, and yes that was a term coined by Early Christians for the most part as a derogatory term, were merely temple priestesses or priests. Some of the god/desses used to require sexual acts as part of their worship. Whether this was sleeping with a priestess as part of the Great Rite, sleeping with a priestess to ensure fertility for your property (this included wives), sleeping with a priestess to merely worship the deity in question. They were supported by the temple they belonged to. Any money given to them was given to the temple to help pay for upkeep and their own needs. To early Christians, and Judaic priests, they were nothing more than whores. This is not true technically. They did not sleep with everyone and anyone, but only those who came to pay tribute to the god/dess and to perform a sacred act. (A whore is someone who sleeps with anyone and not necessarily for money.)

I would assume that they didn't retire as they were priestesses. They may have eventually quit performing sexual acts however. What they did was out of love and fialty to their patron/ness and I seriously doubt there was anything cheap and sleazy about it.

Marithorn

[Kaylara]

What if they got pregnant? There was not much available for birth control. So the checes were pretty high I assume....

Actually, just because it was ancient times that doesn't mean that they weren't aware of different birthcontrol methods. There was, for instance, an herb in Greece that was so effective in preventing pregnancy that it went extinct. Sure, there was a chance of getting pregnant. But there still is. My brother's best friend was conceived while she was on the pill and his father was wearing a condom. *shrugs*

[Philosophia]

There was a previous thread on this subject here (http://www.mysticwicks.com/showthread.php?t=131361&highlight=prostitution).

[Philosophia]

Let's take a brief tour of the ancient world. In Babylonia massive temples housed living statues of various deities, male and female. Priests and priestesses attended the deities, feeding, bathing, clothing them. One class of priestesses, kadistum or qadistum, served as temple prostitutes and wet-nurses. Once a year there was a ceremony enacting the marriage of the king to the goddess Inanna, with a priestess of Inanna taking the part of the Goddess.
In Greece, any woman having intercourse with a man not her husband might be called a a high-class prostitute, "companion to men". They owned and managed property which their children inherited, in sharp contrast to women in families, whose property was owned and managed by their husbands and male relatives. Other less fortunate prostitutes were slaves. Some were able to keep a portion of their earnings and buy back their freedom. In Hellenistic times women, especially young women, could be kidnapped into slavery. These women were sometimes sold to temples of Aphrodite, such as the one at the port of Corinth servicing incoming sailors, or one of the temples to Astarte in Syria. Then the temple owned the slave and gathered the profits she made.
In Judah and Israel women worshipped the goddesses Asherah and Astarte under trees and by baking cakes in their image. These priestesses could be called qedeshim or zonah or almah. Any holy person might be called a qedeshoth, and Qedesh, holy, is one of Asherah's titles. A goddess Qadesh turns up in Egypt, an apparent import from the Near East. The Old Testament patriarchs condemned the qedeshim and zonah as prostitutes. Zonah could mean, again, any woman who had intercourse with someone other than her husband. The patriarchs were fond of the phrase that Israel went whoring after false gods--that is, goddesses. Scholars for decades took this to mean literally that Israel's men visited whores under the trees. Newer scholarship leans toward the idea that the patriarchs were condemning any alternate religious and spiritual practices.
Returning to Metzgar for a moment, she says: "in the days of the Quedishtu every woman served the divine as Holy Prostitute, often for as long as a year." This is a report the Greek historian Herodotus made about the Babylonians, and he believed any fabulous story he was told.
Metzgar asserts that temple prostitutes provided a doorway to the divine and softened the natural aggression of men. There's a lot of male aggression around today. She concludes, "And so women must all become Holy Prostitutes again."
My reading of the history does not reveal that prostitutes, temple or freelance, in the ancient world were all that terribly altruistic. The point wasn't to soften men or save them from their warlike natures or reveal to them an aspect of the Divine Feminine. The point was to make money.
However, the Path of the Holy Prostitute has become quite a popular one. Pat Califia (arguably the funniest and strongest writer of and about erotica of our time) notes, "There are a goodly number of pagan women (and a handful of gay men and Third Gender souls) who identify themselves as Qadesh or sacred harlots..."
With some relish she takes a pin to the balloon of romanticism of the Servant Of the Goddess Just As In Ancient Times: "...sometimes it seems to me that a woman who embraces the status of Qadesh opens herself to at least as much abuse as she does divine energy....When a woman (priestess or no) sexually services a man, his libido and genitalia become devotional objects. There is very little hope of shifting the balance of power between the sexes or manifesting yonic divinity in that scenario."

From here (http://www.speakeasy.org/~bwilliam/sacredsex.htm).


An "improbable percentage of the population [of Mesopotamia and Syria-Canaan] must have been either secular or religious prostitutes of some sort," wrote Beatrice Brooks in 1941 (231). She was drawing conclusions from the writings of predominantly male scholars who accepted without question the concept of "sacred, cult, or temple prostitutes." Female temple functionaries, they maintained, regularly engaged in sexual intercourse in return for a payment to their temples. Female devotees of Inanna/Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of sexuality and love, were "immediately" suspect of such behavior (Assante 1998:6). Until recently, most scholars took this view for granted, and some still do.
In the nineteenth century, scholars thought Mesopotamia to be a hotbed of "naïve and primitive sexual freedom" (Assante 1998:5-6). Members of the then-new discipline of anthropology, such as Sir James Frazer of The Golden Bough fame, made matters worse by presenting for readers' delectation the orgiastic rites of fertility cults (Assante 2003:22-24; Oden 2000:136-138). The result was a fertility-cult myth which took hold among scholars (Stuckey 2005:32-44; Assante 2003:24-25; Lambert 1992:136). A number of ancient sources were ultimately responsible for the concept of "sacred prostitute": the Hebrew Bible; later Greek writers like Herodotus (ca.480-ca.425 BCE), Strabo (ca.64 BCE-19CE), and Lucian (ca.115-ca.200 CE); and early Christian churchmen. They greatly influenced later writers (Oden 2000:140-147; Assante 1998:8; Henshaw 1994:225-228; Yamauchi 1973:216).
Herodotus reported a "wholly shameful" custom by which every woman "once in her life" had intercourse near the temple of Aphrodite (Ishtar) with the first stranger who threw "a silver coin" into her lap (Herodotus 1983:121-122,I:199).[1] Similarly, Lucian described the punishment of women who declined to shave their heads in mourning for Adonis: "For a single day they [had to] stand offering their beauty for sale … [in a] market … open to foreigners only, and the payment [became] an offering to Aphrodite [Astarte]" (1976:13-15). The Christian writers accused pagans of indulging in orgies in honor of Aphrodite, ritual pre-marital sex, and "cult prostitution" (Oden 2000:142-144).

From here (http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM05/spotlight.htm).

Also check
Ritual Prostitution, Sacred Prostitution, Temple Prostitution (http://www.yoniversum.nl/dakini/ritprost.html)
Temple Prostitution (www.bts.edu/TROBISCH/WhoAmI/papers/Temple%20Prostitution.doc) (it's a .doc)
acred Prostitutes (http://www.moondance.org/1997/summer97/nonfiction/sacred.htm)
Sacred Whore (http://www.ishtar.tv/temple/index.html) (the essay is in the article section.
The Original Whore with the Heart of Gold (http://www.widdershins.org/vol2iss1/b9607.htm)
Sacred Sinners (http://www.getethical.com/em_full.php?id=127&cat=Sacred%20Sinners)

[Silverfire Darkmoon]

I just remembered something. The Bible speaks of 'temple prostitutes', and something just occurred to me - the Bible also denounces the Israelites during Jerusalem's decline (ie, Kinds I and II, Chronicles I and II) of prostituting themselves to other gods and engaging in 'whoredom'. Theoretically then, could not the Biblical context of temple prostitution mean something aside from, or in addition to, ritualized sex? The notion that occurs to me is a priest or priestess, who has forsaken YHVH for other gods and is therefore degrading him/herself for another deity.
Of course, I may be wrong.

[Agaliha]

I brought this topic up here: Religious Prostitution (http://www.mysticwicks.com/showthread.php?t=131361&highlight=prostitution)
Also I found this book to be very informative: Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution (http://www.amazon.com/Love-Sale-World-History-Prostitution/dp/0802141846/sr=1-2/qid=1158373868/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-0445417-1493666?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Nils Johan Ringdal

I find religious prostitution (ancient) to be interesting.

There are also modern women that claim to follow the path of the priestesses of Ishtar and Inanna and provide sex acts.

[Twinkle]

Here is a link with information on a present day Sacred Prostitute.

http://sexuality.org/l/workers/mtsp.html (http://sexuality.org/l/workers/mtsp.html)

Edited to add: Not for young eyes. If it's too much, feel free to delete.

[Agaliha]

Ah, that's what I was refering to Twinkle-- about the modern women.

[Kaylara]

Here is a link with information on a present day Sacred Prostitute.

http://sexuality.org/l/workers/mtsp.html (http://sexuality.org/l/workers/mtsp.html)

Edited to add: Not for young eyes. If it's too much, feel free to delete.

Seems to me that she's not whoring herself out, she's having sex in the context of a healing seminar. At least in this article. This doesn't strike me as a present day relgion either. It's one thing to have sex in a safe environment with people who you trust, and another to be selling yourself on the street. The two are not the same thing.

[plumedsnake]

I always love to observe the modern western attitude to sex and all things sexual. It is almost as if it is embarrassing. Sex is not only a natural things but in most societies it is also of immense religious significance. Far from being sinful or carnal, it is actually spiritual. The relationship between a God and his devotee is thought to be sexual. Even in early christianity, Christ is the groom and the christians are the bride. And this wasn't just metaphor. There are real sexual implications to this.

My real interest is where and when did the squeamishness about sex come into european thinking? especially the perversion that Sex is unspiritual. It couldn't have come through christianity. That's a real puzzle for me.

[omar]

I always love to observe the modern western attitude to sex and all things sexual. It is almost as if it is embarrassing. Sex is not only a natural things but in most societies it is also of immense religious significance. Far from being sinful or carnal, it is actually spiritual. The relationship between a God and his devotee is thought to be sexual. Even in early christianity, Christ is the groom and the christians are the bride. And this wasn't just metaphor. There are real sexual implications to this.

My real interest is where and when did the squeamishness about sex come into european thinking? especially the perversion that Sex is unspiritual. It couldn't have come through christianity. That's a real puzzle for me.

It came from those Puritons on the Mayflower that escaped from Plymouth, England in 1620. The Royal Navy should of sunk that ship.