Sex as an offering to goddess?

I read in the newspapers today about the Tamil author Perumal Murugan, who is to be felicitated in the Fourth Indian Languages Festival to be held on November 28^th. This author got into problems with the local Hindu and caste-based groups for having offended the Hindu sentiments. In December 2014, there was an uproar in Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India, regarding his novel, “One Part Woman’” a literal English translation of the Tamil title, “Madhorubhagan,” a novel which he wrote in 2010. Highly disgusted with the Hindu opposition to what he had written, he announced his decision never again to write another word. According to him, the author Murugan was dead.

The author writes about a tradition that prevailed in India around 1935-1940, some 75 years back, in Thiruchengodu, a temple town in Tamil Nadu. Here there is a temple for Ardhanareeswaran, an idol of Shiva, left part of whose body is that of a woman, his consort, Parvathi. It is half male and half female, that is, ‘One part woman.’ In the ancient Hindu chariot festival held in this temple annually, there was a tradition, where childless women can go to the temple and choose any man to lie with and if she becomes pregnant, it is taken as ‘god-given child’ or ‘god’s child.’ Such a man is called ‘anonymous sami.’ The novel spins around a childless couple married for 12 years, who attend this festival and the wife, on the encouragement of the mother-in-law and other relatives, ventures into this tradition and it creates huge problems, for her husband presumably was not a party to this decision. This is the story. The objection was that it showed Hindu traditions in a bad and derogatory manner and that the book should be banned and author taken to task.

This is extraordinary. That there was a tradition like the one mentioned in the novel cannot be disputed. The author has done his research sufficiently for he is also a Tamil Professor. There are other resources which mention such traditions in the 19^th and beginning of 20^th century in India. For example, Abbe J.A. Dubois, a French Catholic Missionary working for 31 years in the Madras Presidency of British Raj, writes about such practices in his book, “Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies.” This book was published in 1897.

Abbe talks in his book about barren women flocking to the Temple in Tirupathi, again in South India, where they are told that Lord Venkateshwara will come in the night and grant them their desire. And it was the priests of the temple who really fulfilled the dreams of these women. He describes another temple in Nangungud, near Mysore, again in South India, where women go to cure their sterility. And they were indeed cured, but in similar fashion. He writes that this happens in Junginagatta also, on the banks of Cauvery River during January festivals.

So what are we objecting to? Is not such a tradition seen in many of the ancient cultures around the world, before Christianity conquered them all? Abbe himself quotes from the writings of Herodotus that similar prostitution by decent family women occurred in the name of religion among Assyrians and Babylonians, in the Temple of the goddess Mylitta, the Aphrodite, and consort of Assyrian god Ashur. So should they object now? It all happened so many centuries or decades back.

We have the Temple of Artemis, the Great Artemis of Ephesus, mentioned in the Bible, Acts 19.28. 34. Ephesus is in the present Turkey and was a great place of worship of the goddess Artemis, a goddess of fertility, depicted with many breasts. She was the great mother earth, causing humans to be born and sustaining them. She was also the goddess of moon and the hunt. She was served by eunuch priests and young maidens.

The Roman goddess of fertility was Diana, equal to the Greek goddess of Artemis. Diana was a virgin goddess of hunt, moon and child birth. Her shrines were always under great sacred oak trees and her male priests will have to fight and kill the reigning priest to occupy that post. Even here such clandestine night visits were made even by the aristocratic women to offer their sex with some unknown men in the temple premises as an offering to the goddess.  

Going further back in time, Ashtoreth, the female principle of fertility was worshipped as goddess through our Canaan, mentioned in the Bible, warning the Israelite not to become pray to their lewd cults. Ashtoreth was the fertility goddess, the consort of the male god Baal or Moloch. In the Mesopotamian region of Assyria and Babylon of yester years, Ashtoreth was called Ishtar and she was a goddess of sexual love and warfare. Sacred prostitution abounded and her devotees had sex with the priests and priestesses of the goddess and considered it as an offering to the goddess.

Well, so this was the dark side of the religions in many parts of the ancient world. It was in the past and may be trying to come back through many ways in the modern world. There is nothing new or to be ashamed of, particularly in India. It was all over the world, in different forms. 

It was only with the coming of the teachings of Christ, such worship was considered morally wrong and these gradually disappeared from the world. The Judaeo-Christian culture, which pervaded the world after 1^st century AD, almost put a stop to these practices. To India it came quite late, in the 19^th century.

God of Bible warns Israel repeatedly against sexual sins. In Leviticus 18:20-24, God commands,  

“Moreover you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife, to defile yourself with her.

And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination,

Nor shall you mate with any beast to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before a beast to mate with it. It is perversion.

Do not defile yourself with any of these things; for by these the nations (before you) are defiled, which I am casting out before you.”   

The sins of the Amorites were these sexual sins and God threw them out and planted His people Israel there, so that they would prove to be holy, following all his precepts.

God asked the Israelite to destroy the altars, sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images of the gods and goddesses of the Canaanites, who were before them in the Promised Land (now Palestine). 

This command was given so that Israel will not fall for the abominations practiced by these nations. Exodus 34: 15-17,-

“lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice,

And you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.

You shall make no molded gods for yourselves.” 

The sad thing was, in spite of all these warnings, Israel did play the harlot with the gods and goddesses of those nations around them and got punished and the ‘land vomited them’ and were displaced.

As we look around our world today, there are increasing sexual assaults and violence and extremes of sexual behavior, against which God of the Bible, both in the Old Testament through His prophets and in the New Testament through Christ and his Apostles, warned severely.

But who listens to these warnings? If we have listened we would have been a far better world, morally, psychologically and emotionally.  

Who listens? Only those guided by the Holy Spirit of God and those who have become His children by accepting Christ, His provision for saving us all from our sins. Let us strive hard to be those blessed people.