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…
