Iwan Bloch, BeitrSge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, ErsterTeil, Dresden, 1902 (excerpt) (book)

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Excerpt from:

Iwan Bloch, BeitrSge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Erster

Teil, Dresden, 1902.
 

pp. 120-123

Finally, we come to the strangest of all religio-sexual phenomena: homosexuality

and pederasty for religious reasons, a phenomenon that is characteristic of primitive and civilized peoples in equal measure. How can religious pederasty, or its ubiquitous spread, be explained? The fact that homosexuality for religious reasons exists is a matter beyond doubt, but the explanation of it is very difficult and uncertain. My suppositions about the origin of this astonishing custom are as follows.

If the usual, normal sex act appeared to primitive man as something

miraculous, demonic, supernatural, in which the gods must have a hand, then the observance of same-sex relationships between men must have definitely seemed to him to be a pure miracle, as the effect of a higher spirit infusing these unnatural inclinations into the human being.[1] Thus these first few beings "disinherited from the joy of love" were brought into mysterious relation with higher beings and viewed as earthly representatives of the gods. The abnormal, miraculous, unusual expression of a perverse orientation of the sexual drive was interpreted as a higher, more holy one. One should always remember that primitive man is far removed from applying our moral standards to these phenomena. His indifference with regard to them offers a precise analogy to that [indifference] which even today our lower classes exhibit with respect to these things. If the moral standpoint is removed, then the primitive human being caught up in animism and demonism sees only the puzzling, physical act itself, which requires an explanation in the given sense.

This religious understanding of homosexuality condensed then into a

religious practice, insofar as those womanish, homosexually-inclined men were designated as priests. However, since they were usually not present in sufficient number, they were artificially cultivated; or at least the attempt was made to create the appearance as though the male priests were women. When it is reported of South and Central American tribes that the male priests had to wear women's clothes,[2] this corresponds in folk-psychological terms with the report by Herodotus (II, 36) that the priests of the gods in ancient Europe, except in Egypt, had to wear long hair. We have already become acquainted in the aforementioned reports from Martius with the intimate relationships between magic and artificially cultivated pederasty among the South American Indians. Falkner and Bastian report that among the Arauks the male magicians are plainly forced to abandon their sex and don feminine clothing. They are also forbidden to marry and are usually selected already as children, with particularly feminine-looking ones being preferred.[3] Hammond reports about the "Mujerados" of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico that they are absolutely indispensable for the religious orgies. Pederastic practices constitute a significant component of the religious ceremonies of the Pueblos. Likewise, the effeminates of Florida were particularly fond of attending religious celebrations.[4]

Similar situations are found among the civilized peoples. The "holy"

pederasts of the Sakalaves of Madagascar,[5] find their counterpart among the civilized peoples of antiquity in the pederastic priests of Baal Peor, Kybele, Aphrodite, and the Dea Syria.[6]

Pederasts are called "holy ones" (qadeshim)[7] in the Old Testament

for the same reasons as this attribute is given to them by primitive peoples. Even the pederastic act itself, or at least disgusting insinuations of it, were viewed by Baal Pegor as "holy" and were dedicated to him.[8]

The temple of Aphrodite Hetaira in Athens served, according to Apollodorus,

as a residence for female and male hetairai, [9] and the cult of the "Mother of the Gods" Kybele exhibits no less indications of religious homosexuality in its castrated priests (galli).

It is known that in the Satanic cult of the Christian Middle Ages, unnatural

sexual offenses between the same sexes were viewed as something sanctified.

Even female homosexuality, or tribadism, can arise for religious reasons.

A female branch of the Cainite sect founded by Quintilla "led back to the famous Sappho in every respect" and gained wide distribution in North Africa thanks to the zealous sermons of its founder.[10]

In any case, especially among religious fanatics who joined together

in particular sects, we find a whole number of sexual anomalies combined which are all justified by religious reasons. However, it can scarcely be assumed that all members of these religious communities were afflicted by congenital sexual perversions. No, the profound association of religious mysticism with the sexual drive is what reveals itself here in the sexual degenerations of an unleashed imagination. This can be demonstrated from the relatively harmless, but worrisome in its consequences, "aseminal cohabitation" of the recent Oneida sect in North America to the Satanic cult of the Cainites, the Manicheans, and the Templars, which embrace the most heinous sexual vices, the latter of whom aped the holy rites of the Christian church in order to glorify the principle of evil, but in so doing [word missing] into the purely sexual ...
 

Footnotes

1 Usually in the form of dreams, as with the Otoe Indians in North America.

Karsch, "Uranismus oder PSderastie bei den Naturvslkern" in: Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Leipzig, 1901, vol. III, p. 132, and Sauk Indians, ibid. p. 121.
2 F. Karsch, op. cit., p. 123.
3 Karsch, op. cit., pp. 157-158.
4 Ibid., p. 119.
5 Ibid., p. 102.
6 That the pederastic effeminization of the Scythians, known as th*leia no*sos, has a religious origin, is shown by W.H. Roscher ("Das von der 'Kynanthropie' handelnde Fragment des Marcellus von Side," Leipzig, 1896, p. 25, note 61).
7 Cf. J. Rosenbaum, Geschichte der Lustseuche im Altertum, 6th edition, Halle, 1893, p. 122-123.
8 Cf. Rabbi Salomon Jarchi's commentary on Numbers 25: Eo quod distendebat coram illo foramen podicis, et stereus offerebant." In J.A. Dulaure, Des divinit*s generatrices ou du culte du phallus chez les Anciens et les Modernes, Paris, 1885, p. 67.
9 W.H. Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, Leipzig, 1883, p. 89.
10 P. Dufour (pseud. of P.L. Jacob), Geschichte der Prostitution, vol. III, Berlin, 1901, p. 35.
 

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