Wikipedia women go to temple to give away
sex.
We copied this from Wikipedia articles to help you understand the sexual
slavery that has gone on of the thousands of years. All this on the pretence of spirituality. Remember that also
comes from a time when women had absolutely no rights in India in question tradition or any other part of the
world. This is to verify a research and to qualify the foundation of our teaching. The base of this page you'll
find a link to the Wikipedia page link.
Let's have some common sense here. Just because ignorant ancient
cultures did it does not mean we have to support that level of
ignorance.
Ancient Near
Eastern societies along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers featured many
shrines and temples or "houses of heaven" dedicated to various deities. According to the
5th-century BC historian Herodotus, the rites performed at these temples included sexual intercourse,
or what scholars later called sacred prostitution:
The foulest Babylonian custom
is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her
life.
Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle
with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of
attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a
great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which
the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home
before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he
casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the
Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for
that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and
rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to
her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair
and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for
some of them remain for three years, or four.
There is a custom like this in some parts of
Cyprus. [2]
A number of other ancient authors corroborate Herodotus's
account. By their testimony it appears that not only in Babylonia and Cyprus, but throughout the Near East, ancient
societies encouraged the practice of sacred prostitution. The British anthropologist James
Frazer accumulated citations to prove this in a chapter of
his magnum opus The Golden
Bough (1890-1915),[3] and this has served as a starting
point for several generations of scholars. However, Frazer took his sources mostly from authors
of Late Antiquity(i.e.
150 - 500 AD), not from the Classical or Hellenistic
periods.[4] This raises questions as to
whether the phenomenon of temple prostitution can be generalized to the whole of the ancient world, as earlier
scholars typically did.
The research of Daniel Arnaud, Vincienne Pirenne-Delforge, and
Stephanie Budin [1] has cast the whole tradition of
scholarship that defined the concept of sacred prostitution into doubt. Budin regards the concept of sacred
prostitution as a myth - arguing that the practices described in the sources simply never existed. A more nuanced
view, espoused by Pirenne-Delforge, suggests that ritual sex did exist in the Near East, but not in the Greek or
Roman worlds in classical or Hellenistic times. [1]
Tradition distinguished two major forms of sacred prostitution:
temporary prostitution of unwed girls (with variants such as dowry-prostitution, or as public defloration of a
bride), and lifelong prostitution. [5]
According to the noted Assyriologist Samuel Noah
Kramer, kings in the ancient Near Eastern region of Sumer established their legitimacy by taking part in a ritual sexual act in the temple of the
fertility goddess Ishtar every year on the tenth day of the New Year festival Akitu.[6] '
The Roman emperor Constantine closed down a number of
temples to Venus or similar deities in the 4th century AD, as the Christian church
historian Eusebius proudly
noted.[7]
Sacred marriage.
The practice of sacred prostitution has not been substantiated
in any Ancient Near
Eastern cultures, despite many popular descriptions of the
habit.[8] Scholars generally believe that a
form of "sacred marriage" ritual or hieros
gamos was staged between the king of
a Sumerian city-state and the High
Priestess of Inanna,
the Sumerian
goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare, but no
certain evidence has survived to prove that sexual intercourse was included. Along theTigris and Euphrates rivers there were many shrines
and temples dedicated to Inanna.[citation
needed] The temple of Eanna, meaning "house of
heaven"[9] inUruk[10] was the greatest of
these.
The
temple housed priestesses of the goddess, but there is no evidence whatsoever that they or any other women
performed any kind of sexual services in any cult.
In the Hebrew Bible.
The Hebrew
Bible uses two different words for prostitute, zonah
and kedeshah (or qedesha ) The word zonah simply meant an ordinary prostitute or "loose
woman".[16] But the word
kedeshah literally means "consecrated" (feminine form), from the Semitic root q-d-sh (קדש) meaning "holy" or "set apart".[17]
Southern
India.
In Southern India, devadasi is the practice of
hierodulic prostitution, with similar customary forms such as basavi, [28] and involves dedicating
pre-pubescent and young adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then
work in the temple and function as spiritual guides, dancers, and prostitutes servicing male devotees in the
temple.
Human Rights
Watch reports
claim that devadasis are forced into this service and, at least in some cases, to practice prostitution for
upper-caste members.[29]
Various state governments in India have enacted laws to ban this practice prior to India's independence and since. They
include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi (Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi
(Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act,
1988. [30] However, the tradition continues in
certain regions of India, particularly the states of Karnataka and Andhra
Pradesh. [31]
A similar practice
of Kāmamudrā often involved immature
girls, and was criticized as only benefiting the tulkus.[32][33][34]
In some parts of ancient
India, Nagarvadhu "bride of the city" was a
tradition where women competed to win the title.[35]The most beautiful woman was chosen as
the Nagarvadhu and was respected like a goddess. She served as
a courtesan,[36] and the price for a single
night's dance was very high, within reach only for the king,
the princesand
the lords.
Asia [
edit ]
Deuki is an ancient custom practiced in the far western regions of Nepal where a young girl is offered to the local temple to fulfill an earlier made promise to gain religious merit. The girl serves the temple
as a prostitute, similar to
India'sdevadasi tradition.[37] The practice is in
decline,[38] but girls are still dedicated.
The child of a Deuki is known as a Devi.
Central and South America.
This image from the Codex
Borgia depicts Ichpōchtli, goddess of
love, marriage, flowers, art, music, women, magic, spinning, fertility, sex, weaving, and
changes.
The Mayans maintained several phallic religious cults, possibly
involving homosexual temple prostitution.[39] [40] Aztec religious leaders were
heterosexually celibate and engaged in homosexuality
with one another as a religious practice, temple idols were often depicted engaging in homosexuality, and the
god Xochipili (taken from
both Toltec and Mayan cultures) was both the patron of homosexuals and homosexual
prostitutes.[40][41][42][43]
The Inca sometimes dedicated young boys as temple prostitutes. The boys were dressed in girls
clothing, and chiefs and headmen would have ritual homosexual intercourse with them during religious
ceremonies and on holidays.[44][45]
Xochiquetzal was worshiped as goddess of sexual power, patroness of prostitutes and artisans
involved in the manufacture of luxury items.[46]
The conquistadores were horrified by the
widespread acceptance ofhomosexuality, ephebophilia, pederasty,
and pedophilia among Central and South
American peoples, and used torture, burning at the stake, mass beheadings, and other means to stamp it out
both as a religious practice and social custom.[40]
In 2 Maccabees 6:1-4 the ‘Greek’ rulers
of Jerusalem (king Antiochus IV
Epiphanes of the Seleucid
Empire in Anatolia, Syria and eastward) are accused of desecrating
theJerusalem
Temple and calling it the temple of
Olympian Zeus and bringing prostitutes
(hetairai) into that
Jerusalem Temple and having sex with them there:
The Gentiles filled the temple with
debauchery and revelry; they amused themselves with prostitutes and had intercourse with women even in the
sacred court.
Revisionist criticism of "widespread sacred
prostitution" [
edit ]
Recently some scholars, such as Robert A.
Oden,[47] Stephanie Lynn
Budin[48] and others,[49][dead
link] have questioned whether sacred prostitution, as an
institution whereby women and men sold sex for the profit of deities and temples ever existed.
Julia
Assante believes that the classical view of temple prostitution is more of a construct of the 19th-century Western
European mindset than a true representation of the facts.[50]
While there may well have been some religious prostitution
centred around the temples of Inanna/Ishtar, Assante suggests
that the concept of the 'sacred marriage' (hieros gamos) has been
misunderstood. It was previously believed to have been a custom whereby the king coupled with the high priestess
to represent the union of Dumuzid withInanna (later called Ishtar).[51] It's much more likely that
these unions never occurred but were embellishments to the image of the king; hymns which praise Middle
Eastern kings for coupling with the goddess Ishtar often speak of him as running 320 kilometres, offering sacrifices, feasting with the
sun-god Utu, and receiving a royal
crown from An, all in a single day. One
scholar comments: "No one, to the best of my knowledge, has been so wooden-minded to propose that human actors
played the role of Utu and An at the banquet".[52] Not all authors are convinced,
however.[51]
Stephen O.
Murray writes that biblical passages ban qdeshim
and link them with gods and "forms of worship detested by orthodox followers of Yahweh". [19]Celia Brewer Sinclair has written that
"the ethical demands of the covenant preclude worshiping Yahweh in licentious sexual rites (sacred
prostitution)". [20]Male priests who engaged in
(homosexual) sacred prostitution were called kadesh or qadesh (literally: male "holy one"); the word evolved
semantically in ancient Hebrew to take on a similar meaning to "sodomite". [21] The Hebrew word kelev (dog) in the next
line may also signify a male dancer or prostitute. [22] Some scholars [which?] see the injunctions against foreign
worship, including male sacred prostitution, as possibly the original cause of what would later become
Judaism's condemnation of homosexuality. [21]
Recent Western occurrences.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, some religious cults practiced
sacred prostitution as an instrument to recruit new converts. Among them was the alleged cult Children of God, also
known as The Family, who called this practice "Flirty Fishing".
They later abolished the practice due to the growing AIDS epidemic.[53]
In Ventura County,
California, Wilbur and Mary Ellen
Tracy established their own temple, the Church Of The Most
High Goddess, in the wake of what they described as a divine revelation. Sexual acts played a fundamental role
in the church's sacred rites, which were performed by Mary Ellen Tracy herself in her assumed role of High
Priestess.[54] Local newspaper articles about the
Neopagan church quickly aroused the attention of local law enforcement officials, and in April 1989, the Tracys'
house was searched and the couple arrested on charges ofpimping, pandering and prostitution. They
were subsequently convicted in a trial
in state
court and sentenced to jail terms: Wilbur Tracy for 180
days plus a $1,000.00 fine; Mary Ellen Tracy for 90 days plus mandatory screening for STDs.[55][56]
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