Temple

The history of the Temple of Ishtar

Photo by Ritch Davidson, Cosmic Photography

In Her Temples in many lands from Egypt to Assyria to Babylon to Crete to India, in Rome and Greece and many Celtic lands, Her Temples had Sacred Priestesses who were also called Prostitutes by those of body denial religions. Her worship was in the arms of the Priestess who embodied and represented The Goddess(s). These worshipers are sometimes known as pagans.

A fundamental difference in the concept of worship is important to note: In the Temples of the old ways people would go to the temple TO BE WORSHIPPED not to worship. Women would go to the temple to serve the Goddess to embody Her, to represent Her, to be worshipped as Her. Women would spend a day, or a week, or a year serving at the Temple as a priestess, as a sacred Prostitute, as a whore in service to the Goddess. There they would be worshipped as the incarnation of the Goddess, as The Goddess Herself.

Men would come to Her Temple TO BE WORSHIPPED. Men would be welcomed and served by the Priestesses and men would represent the divine male principal, the Horned One, the Sacred Bull, The God. Men would come to the temple to give their love and passion to The Goddess, and would receive the passion, love, and affection of The Goddess.

But some three millennia ago there came monotheists who refused Her Worship preferring instead to be diminished in body and spirit. They called Her, "The Whore of Babylon, who leads men into fornication." They called our sacred sexuality "sin," and cast shame on Her sacred Priestesses. They held up a "virgin" as the ideal that women should imitate instead of the sacred Goddess that they had always held as the most sacred image of Woman. This is essentially the state of things in the modern world.

The two principal deities of ancient Babylon were Baal and Ishtar. Baal was the god of war and the elements and Ishtar the goddess of fertility - both human and agricultural. These two deities have roots going back before Babylon to Nimrod at Babel and to Assyria. Through the ages they were imported into other nations and under different names but always retaining the same basic characteristics. Baal was also called Bel, Baalat, Molech, Merodach, Mars and Jupiter, and was frequently represented as a bull. Ishtar was also called Aphrodite, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Cybele or Sybil, Diana, Europa, Isis, Semiramis and Venus. The two main elements in the worship of Baal were fire and human sacrifice, usually children.

Ishtar was worshipped via offerings of produce and money as well as though fornication with temple prostitutes. It is this last characteristic that helps make the tie between religious Babylon and kings and merchants. In his book The Secret of Crete, H.G. Wunderlich reports that before marriage, every woman in Babylon was required to go to the temple of Ishtar and lie with a stranger. We have a similar report from Gerhard Herm in his book, The Phoenicians (1) , where women in the Canaanite cities of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were required to become prostitutes for a day and give themselves to foreign guests during the spring festival. This festival survives today in the name of "Easter", which is derived from the word "Ishtar". Note that the women were to prostitute themselves with strangers or foreigners. In ancient times, the foreigners in these cities were mostly composed of traveling merchants and political dignitaries. In the third century A.D. the historian Eusebius described the patrons of these temples in this way: "It was a school of godlessness for those dissipated men, who had ruined their bodies in the pursuit of luxuriousness. The men were soft and effeminate, were no longer men; they had betrayed the honor of their sex; they believed they must worship their god with impure lust."

The full text and pictures from an excerpt chapter from Sacred Sexuality by A T Mann and Jane Lyle

Excerpt chapter from The Mythology of Sex by Sarah Denning

 

Links:

Another group with similar (but also differing) interests is: The Society of Ishtar
 (thanks to them for info and text relating to the history and meaning of Temple of Ishtar)
Their festival is FreedomFest July 1-6, 1999 in Santa Fe.

Shrine of Ishtar ( be sure to click the last link on the page - nice shrine!)

Shrine of Innana

Ishtar, Lady of Heaven

Ishtar Gate Inscription

The Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ version 1.7

Excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh

Epic of Gilgamesh - complete text

Analysis of The Epic of Gilgamesh

Babylonian Mythology:

University of Chicago Mesopotamia Index

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~edaniel/outlines/mesopot.htm

http://www.sron.ruu.nl/~jheise/akkadian/m_index.html

Books: (with links to order the book from Amazon.com)

Sacred Sexuality by A T Mann and Jane Lyle

The Mythology of Sex by Sarah Denning

Sacred Pleasure : Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body- New Paths to Power and Love by Riane Tennenhaus Eisler

The Sacred Prostitute : Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts, Vol 32) by Nancy Qualls-Corbett

HISTORY

1. "Everyday Life in Babylonia and Assyria", H. W. F. Saggs (1965), many good B&W illustrations
2. "Myth, Ritual & Religion Vol 2", Andrew Lang (1913), chapters on Egypt, Aryans in India, Greeks
3. "The Sumerians", C. Leonard Woolley (1995), early history thru Hammurabi, nature of the society
4. "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (ancient)
5. "The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre" (1992), excellent photos and scholarly comments

ANTHROPOLOGY

6. "Primative Mythology: The Masks of God", Joseph Campbell (1959), lots of relevant material
7. "Ancient Rites and Ceremonies", Grace A. Murray (1929), anthropology of rites used in historical times by primitives
8. "The Roots of Ritual", James Shaughnessy, ed. (1973), famous anthropologists pontificate on curious native customs

SACRED SEXUALITY

9. "The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West", David Kinsley (1989), chapters on Inanna, Isis, Aphrodite
10. "Mystical Sex: Love, Ecstasy & the Mystical Experience", Louis William Meldman, PhD (1990), profound and well-written
11. "The 10 Commandments of Pleasure: Erotic Keys to a Healthy Sexual Life", Dr. Susan Block (1996), wise yet hilarious
12. "Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity", Aline Rousselle (1988), mostly Greek, Roman, and Midieval sources

TEMPLE DESIGN

13. "Sacred Space: Clearing and Enhancing the Energy of Your Home", Denise Linn (1995)
14. "Sanctuaries of the Goddess: The Sacred Landscapes and Objects", Peg Streep (1994), lots of great photos
15. "The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth", John M. Lundquist (1993), great photos and useful philosophy of design

GRAPHIC ARTS

16. "From the Deep Waters: Maidens of Myth and Mystery", (1996), beautiful, romantic, haunting, sexy, archetypal
17. "The Art of Arousal", Dr Ruth Westheimer (1993), chapters on voyeurism, seduction, foreplay, embrace, groups, solo
18. "The Pre-Raphaelites: Inspiration From the Past", Terri Hardin (1996)
19. "Pre-Raphaelites: Romantic, Passionate and Visionary", K. E. Sullivan (1996)
20. "Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England" (1995)
21. "Myth and Romance: The Art of J. W. Waterhouse (1994)
22. "Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum", J.E. Curtis and J.E. Reade ed. (1995), great photos

OTHER

23. "Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft", Raymond Buckland (1986), initiations, rituals, magick, healing; very kind

Currency The oldest coin currency that we know is a Sumerian bronze piece dating from before 3000 BC. On one side of the coin is a representation of a sheaf of wheat, and on the other, Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. The Sumerians called it the "Shekel" where "She" meant wheat, "Kel" was a measurement similar to a bushel, hence this coin was a symbol of a value of one bushel of wheat. (The word "shekel" survives in modern Hebrew as Israel's monetary unit.) The original shekel had as its purpose payment for sacred prostitution at the temple of Ishtar, which was the temple of life and death. The temple, as well as being a ritual center, was the storage place for the reserves of wheat that supported the priesthood, and also the community in lean times. So farmers fulfilled their religious and social obligations by bringing their contributions of wheat to the temple, and receiving in exchange a shekel coin, entitling them to a visit with the temple prostitutes at the festival time. All this also must be understood in its cultural context: The sacred prostitutes were representatives of the goddess, and intercourse with them was intercourse with the goddess of fertility herself, nothing to take lightly. At that time fertility was truly a matter of life and death. If the crops failed, there was no alternative, and everyone starved or at least went hungry until next year. And, of course, completing the magic ritual properly insured the fertility in crops, animals and children that was necessary for future prosperity.

BABYLON. (Iraq)
The capital of BABYLONIA, situated on the Euphrates River south of Baghdad in modern Iraq. The city was occupied from the 3rd millennium BC but became important early in the 2nd millennium under the kings of Babylon's First Dynasty The sixth king of this dynasty was Hammurabi (c1792-1750 BC) who made Babylon the capital of a vast empire, and is best remembered for his code of laws. This period was brought to an end by an attack by HITTITES, and the city had a mixed history until the Neo-Babylonian period of 7th-6th centuries BC - it once again achieved pre eminence when Nebuchadnezzar extended the Babylonian Empire over most of Western Asia. Babylon fell to Cyrus in 539 BC; occupation continued in the ACHAIMENID period. The city was taken by ALEXANDER in 331 BC; indeed, Alexander died in Babylon in 323. Babylon subsequently declined and was eventually abandoned after the Muslim conquest of AD 641. Because of the high water table, which has risen in the last few millennia, only buildings of the Neo-Babylonian period were accessible to the German excavators of Babylon in the first decades of this century. The city of this period covered c200 hectares, divided into two by the River Euphrates. Most work was conducted in the part of the Inner City on the east bank, which housed the palace and several important temples. The fortifications consisted of a double line of walls and a moat connected to the Euphrates, allowing boats to enter under the gatehouse bridges. The most impressive surviving monument is the Ishtar Gate on the north side of the city, approached by a processional way, and decorated with glazed bricks bearing relief figures of lions, bulls and dragons. Important buildings excavated include Nebuchadnezzar's palace, close to the Ishtar Gate. a colossal building with many rooms arranged around five different courtyards; the vaulted store rooms of this palace were formerly interpreted as the base of the Hanging Gardens of ancient repute. Another huge palace of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (605 562 BC) - the Summer Palace - was constructed to the northwest of the Inner City and was enclosed by a triangular outer wall. A number of temples were excavated, including the temple and ZlGGURAT of the city's patron deity, Marduk, which was the original Tower of Babel; little of the structure survives today after centuries of brick-robbing by later Mesopotamians.

 

Sources that mention ritual male homosexual prostitution:

 

 

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