When Sex Was Sacred

In the ancient worship of the Divine Ancestress, sex was a holy act

As late as the 1st Century BC, high born women of respectable families worked and lived as sacred intimates in the temples of the Divine Ancestress. The Goddess, who was the primary deity, went by many names, depending on the culture — Inanna, Nan, Nut, Ishtar, Isis, Au Set, Asherah, Attar, and Hathor, to name just a few. In all of these cultures, she is also often referred to as The Queen of Heaven — the Goddess who brought not just sexual love and procreation, but the gift of all life, wisdom, truth, and justice.

In many of the earliest known creation stories from very different parts of the world, we find the Goddess-Mother as the source of all being. In the Americas, she is the Lady of the Serpent Skirt — of interest also because, as in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the serpent is one of her primary manifestations. In ancient Mesopotamia this same concept of the universe is found in the idea of the world mountain as the body of the Goddess-Mother of the universe, an idea that survived into historic times.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

The temples of the Queen of Heaven often owned most of the arable land and kept the records for the community. In many ways, they were central to the life of their respective cultures. In most of the cultures that revered the Queen of Heaven, both married and single women lived for some period of time in the temples of the Goddess and they were honored and esteemed for doing so.

The sacred sexual customs of the female religion offer us another of the apparent ties between the worship of the Divine Ancestress as it was known in Sumer, Babylon, Anatolia, Greece, Carthage, Sicily, Cypress, and even in Canaan. Women who made love in the temples were known in their own language as “sacred women,” “the undefiled.” Their Akkadian name of qadishtu is literally translated as “sanctified women” or “holy women.”

The legend of Innana and Enki listed the sacred sexual customs as another of the great gifts that Inanna brought to civilize the people of Erech. The Queen of Heaven was most reverently esteemed by the sacred women, who in turn were especially protected by her.

When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone, page 154

Far from the dismissive term, temple prostitute, that was later given to these women by the first archeologists to learn of them, qadishtu and their sisters were the representatives of the Goddess on earth and considered some of the most high-status people in the society. Women of wealthy and royal families participated in this practice, as well as other women of the community.

In later times when the worship of Yahweh was becoming more prevalent, it was still the noble and the royal who were the least likely to give up the worship of the Queen of Heaven entirely. “According to the Bible, King Soloman, at about 960–922 BC, worshipped Ashtoreth as well as other local deities. He was eventually threatened with the loss of his kingdom for having forsaken Yahweh and revering the Queen of Heaven.” (1) There are 27 verses in the Bible that describe the struggle to wipe out the worship of Asherah and her consort Baal. In 1 Kings 15:13, Maacah was removed from being the queen mother because she made a “horrid image as an asherim” (a devotional depiction of the Goddess.)

In the earliest times, and even well into recorded history, life was religion and religion was life. There was no distinction between the two. But to describe the worship of the Goddess as a “fertility cult” would be as apt as referring to Christianity as a “death cult.” Having sex with a representative of the Goddess on earth was a spiritual thing, a religious act of devotion, and not just sex, per se. Conventional prostitution also existed at the same time but did not serve the same holy purpose.

For thousands of years these sexual customs had been accepted as natural among the people of the Near and Middle East. Inherent within the very practice of the sexual customs was the lack of concern for the paternity of children — and it is only with a certain knowledge of paternity that a patrilineal system can be maintained.

These ancient sexual customs were denounced as wicked and depraved and it was for this reason that the Levite priests devised the concept of sexual “morality”: premarital virginity for women, marital fidelity for women, in other words total control over the knowledge of paternity.

When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone, page 160

Dismantling the temple systems of the Queen of Heaven also gave the men who did so the power of their assets and influence. Demonizing sacred sexuality meant that those who supplanted its practitioners could themselves become the center of the community, the keeper of the records, and the place where people turned for help and healing.

Sex went from having the potential to be a holy act, invoking the Divine, to something that was for the pleasure of men and for procreation. It was not just a seismic shift in personal power, but in societal power as well. The way that this impacted the sexual power of women in the modern age will be explored in another article, coming soon.

© Copyright, Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love.

(1) When God Was A Woman, Page 173