Some
questions I have raised about the Hieros Gamos (Holy Marriage) in the
Ancient World:
- Was the Bridegroom always the King? Was the Bride always the High Priestess or a Priestess?
- If a Priestess, how was she chosen to represent the goddess/be the divine consort?
- If not the King, how was the Bridegroom chosen? Was he the strongest man? or a man who had proved himself? Did proving himself involve a quest?
- Does the Priestess represent the Goddess? or the Land? or both?
- We know that the mythologies tell of the Bride searching for the Bridegroom after his death, and returning him from the depths, but do the Brides, or women at all, get to go on other searches or quests? Or do they passively wait for a man to turn up? And if so, why? Does it derive from the myth of the Shekinah being 'lost'?
- Does it make sense to frame the hieros gamos as the holy grail of relationships?
- Does 'sacred harlotry' negate the concept of the hieros gamos as the reunion of souls? (How does the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 fit this?)
- Is the flip-side of the hieros gamos the concept of 'droit de seigneur' - the opposite of the soul-mate relationship?(In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, the King, 'does whatever he wants... takes the girl from her mother and uses her, the warrior's daughters, the young man's bride...' Herodotus mentions a similar custom among the Adyrmachidae in ancient Libya: 'They are also the only tribe with whom the custom obtains of bringing all women about to become brides before the king, that he may choose such as are agreeable to him.')
The
hieros gamos has been said to be both ritual and sacrament, not only
the union/marriage between a woman and a man, but also a rite of
mysterious and sacred significance, and a means of grace and
transformation. Through it the nature of the divine as the active and
actual combination of male and female is both affirmed and
transcended: the divine is more than female/male, completely
transcending gender, but making divinity known to us in this way, and
enabling us to participate in the divine.
In
the ancient myths of the hieros gamos, the Bride and Bridegroom were
twin souls - often in fact sister and brother as well as wife and
husband, for example Isis and Osiris. This does not endorse incest,
but, it has been said, is rather an attempt to portray the complexity
not only of the divine but also of the human: each person possessing
a soul was nonetheless only 'half of one unit', which consisted of
one male and one female half. The greatest quest of life was thus to
find and be re-united with one's twin soul. The reunion of souls in
the becoming of 'one flesh' reflects and embodies the union of the
male and female aspects of God, Asherah/Malkut and El/Yesod.
This
does, however, raise another question: if the hieros gamos is the
reunion of twin souls (termed Samadhi in Tantra, relating to Shiva
and Shakti, and the dissolution of the individual in unity and cosmic
consciousness), how can it be open to anyone? Is this where the Quest
comes in, that is, the quest to find the soul mate? And, as I asked
above, is it always the man who goes questing?
It
has been suggested (Maureen Murdock: The Heroine’s Journey) that in
a patriarchal society, a woman's first step had to involve a
separation from her mother, that is leaving her home and going out
into the world on her own. This 'mother/daughter split' necessitated
an identification with the father, and an adoption of the masculine
perspective, in order to journey through the 'road of trials' and
overcome the 'myth of feminine inferiority'. Having achieved the
'illusory boon of success' the woman would invariably encounter 'the
father's betrayal' and realise she has lost an important part of
herself along the way. She now, therefore, has to 'descend to the
Goddess and reconnect with the Feminine, healing the mother/daughter
split, and finding 'the Man with Heart'.
(The
goddess Inanna found and fell in love with the Shepherd Boy, Dumuzi.
Was he her 'Man with Heart'? Had she been questing, or was the find
fortuitous?)
The
concept of a Quest serves as a plot device in much mythology and
fiction - a difficult journey, symbolic, allegorical, or actual,
involving the overcoming of many obstacles, towards a goal or a
prize, after which the hero (yes, hero, not heroine) may return home
- although for some, the return home is either not required (Galahad
for example) or not possible (Aeneas). And for yet others, the
supposed quest is a device created by an antagonist, hoping the hero
will be killed or simply disappear for good.
I
have found only three examples of heroines on quests: in the
Norwegian fairy tale 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' the princess
seeks the prince, her husband; in The Seven Ravens, a German fairy
tale collected by the brothers Grimm, a girl seeks her seven brothers
who have been turned into birds, and in Metamorphoses by Platonicus,
Psyche searches for Cupid, and is set tasks by Venus, including a
descent into the underworld - which story brings us back again to the
hieros gamos, the death of the King, and the Bride's search for him.
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