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Sexual ritual
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Sexual rituals fall into two categories: culture-created, and natural behaviour, the human animal
having developed sex rituals from evolutionary instincts for reproduction, which are then
integrated into society, and elaborated to include aspects such as marriage rites, dances, etc.
Arguably indeed, 'sex in its more ritualized and symbolic varieties...has moulded the shape of
civilization'.[1]

Sometimes sexual rituals are highly formalized and/or part of religious activity, as in the cases of
Hieros gamos, the hierodule and the OTO. Contemporary sacred sexual rituals have been tagged
as 'structured, symbolic, manifestation, ceremonies, tradition, everyday, habit, grounding, magic,
solemn'.[2]

Contents
 1 Rites of passage
o 1.1 Wedding as orgy
 2 Interaction ritual
 3 Compulsions
 4 Tibetan art
 5 Private worship
 6 Literature
 7 See also
 8 References
 9 Further reading

Rites of passage
Part of the rites of passage of growing up are what have been termed 'rites of separation from the
asexual world...followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality'.[3] These may be
formal or semi-formal - 'for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the
ceremonial dances of the whooping crane'[4] - or take the form of a more private induction:
'formal and artificial...the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among
Staffordshire figurs and papier-mâché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of
nightmare'.[5]

Freud was particularly interested in Ethnological accounts of 'the "ceremonial" (purely formal,
ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place' in connection with 'the taboo of virginity'.[6]

Wedding as orgy

Freud also noted that in 'numerous examples of marriage ceremonies there can be no doubt that
people other than the bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our traditional
"groomsmen"), granted full sexual access to the bride'.[7] To his followers, 'the wedding as orgy,
with the bride taking on all the men present, is the clear historical reality behind the modern
jokes...and the climactic line-up or "gang"-kissing of the bride, by all the men present'.[8]

In such a view, 'other examples of sacred or permitted public coitus of all women with all men
do survive, in similarly modified "kissing" form', as under the mistletoe 'to revive the dying sun
at the winter solstice, when the strongest human "life-magic", namely ritual intercourse, is to be
deployed'.[9]

Interaction ritual
To the sociologist looking upon 'sexual intercourse as interaction ritual...sexual intercourse is the
ritual of love; it both creates and recreates the social tie (since Durkheimian rituals need to be
repeated periodically, as solidarity runs down), and symbolizes it'.[10] In similar fashion, Margot
Anand has pointed out that 'rituals pervade our daily life and give it a sense of ceremony and
celebration(...)a ritual, through your own unique symbolic gestures...will help you transform your
lovemaking into a special and sacred act'.[11]

Erving Goffman has noted however 'the considerable informational delicacy of this form of
interaction', and how 'individuals may use darkness to ensure strategic ambiguity'.[12]

Compulsions
In perversion, sexual rituals may emerge as a necessary part of sexual activity. For the
criminologist, 'sexual ritual involves repeatedly engaging in an act or series of acts in a certain
manner because of a sexual need'.[13] Within a relationship, 'the Compulsive libido type takes
advantages of opportunities to use the specific sexual ritual that causes intense arousal, and in its
stronger form, the Compulsive lover can only arouse using the sexual object or ritual.[14]
In any relationship however, 'a sexual habit that becomes routine or stylised...can lead to a sexual
ritual', so that 'if you don't have a way to talk to your partner about your sexual relationship, you
may find yourself...stuck in sexual rituals that could be limiting your sexual enjoyment':[15] as a
wife might say, '"Same old technique, same old Lewis. It's you all right, I'd know that old routine
anywhere'.[16] Thus one's sex life may all 'be about rituals: the ritual of sex in the morning, or the
ritual of sex at night; and the ritual of sex at anniversaries, and the ritual of sex at Christmas'.[17]

Tibetan art
In the Buddhist art of India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, yab-yum is the male deity in sexual union
with his female consort. The symbolism is associated with Anuttarayoga tantra where the male
figure is usually linked to compassion (karuṇā) and skillful means (upāya-kauśalya), and the
female partner to 'insight' (prajñā).[18]

The symbolism of union and sexual polarity is a central teaching in Tantric Buddhism, especially
in Tibet. The union is realised by the practitioner as a mystical experience within one's own
body.[19] Yab-yum is generally understood to represent the primordial (or mystical) union of
wisdom and compassion.[20]

Tantric Buddhism is itself an outcrop of Tantrism, advanced techniques of which included 'the
ritual sex act (Maithuna) which was a feature of Tantric yoga'.[21] Given that 'sex is holy to a
Tantric...Tantric art, writings and religious rituals glorify sex'.[22]

Private worship
A sex organ 'makes an admirable fertility symbol, and has been worshipped as such privately
from time to time, or even publicly...gives dramatic promise of productivity and protection'.[23]
Such "worship" may only become more common in late modernity, as 'in our secular culture
sexuality often replaces religion as a means of pursuing the meaning of life'.[24]

Alan Watts maintains that 'when you are in love with someone, you do indeed see them as a
divine being...through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship
for this other person'.[25] A woman may 'want someone who adores me...like he was adoring my
breasts with his hands'.[26] A man (more ambivalently) may muse on 'the white breasts he
worships; adores; is scared of; detests'.[27] For Shakespeare, 'this is the liver-vein, which makes
flesh a deity, a green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry'.[28]

In the further reaches of chick lit, ' the male organ...becomes a tower of strength, a tree trunk in
girth, the pillar that sustains the universe...a Pillar of Hercules, sustaining heaven'[29] - evidence
perhaps that 'the phallic religious tendency is alive in the modern and the civilized...a compulsive
fascination'[30] with what Jung termed 'the phallus as the quintessence of life and fruitfulness'.[31]
Correspondingly, the Western adept may borrow, in the quest 'to create a Sacred Space...names
given to the vagina in the East, including Valley of Joy, Great Jewel, Pearl, Lotus Blossom,
Moist Cave, Ripe Peach, Enchanted Garden, and Full Moon'.[32]
Literature
In the Satyricon, the hero is throughout 'hounded by the mighty rage of Priapus of Hellespont' -
almost certainly because early on he 'has offended Priapus...by impersonating him in some
sexual ceremonies'.[33]

See also
 Ambubachi Mela
 Courtship
 Dating
 Hierodule
 Hieros gamos
 Lingam
 Marriage
 Maypole
 Neotantra
 Phallus Worship
 Sacred prostitution
 Sex magic
 Sexual Yoga
 Yoni worship

References
1. Jump up ^ Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape Trilogy (London 1994) p. 246 and p. 34
2. Jump up ^ "Sacred Sexual Rituals" p. 3
3. Jump up ^ Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1977) p. 67
4. Jump up ^ Northrop Frue et al, Northrop Frye's Writing on Education (2000) p. 92
5. Jump up ^ Antony Powell, A Buyer's Market (1981 )p. 267-8
6. Jump up ^ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 268-9
7. Jump up ^ Freud, Sexuality p. 269n
8. Jump up ^ G. Legman, The Rationale of the Dirty Joke Vol II (1973) p. 90-2
9. Jump up ^ Legman, Rationale p. 90
10. Jump up ^ Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton 2004) p. 235
11. Jump up ^ Margo Anand, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (1990) p. 71
12. Jump up ^ Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (Penguin 1972) p. 235
13. Jump up ^ J. E. Douglas et al, Crime Classification Manual (2006) p. 296
14. Jump up ^ Sandra Pertot, When Your Sex Drives Don't Match (2007) p. 8
15. Jump up ^ G. Anderson/B. K. Weinhold, Connective Bargaining (1981) p. 53 and p. 58
16. Jump up ^ Mary Stewart, Airs Above the Ground (1967) p. 98
17. Jump up ^ Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (1970) p. 47
18. Jump up ^ Keown, Damien. (2003). A Dictionary of Buddhism, p. 338. Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-860560-9.
 19. Jump up ^ Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. "Yab Yum Iconography and the Role of Women
in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism." The Tibet Journal. Vol. XXII, No. 1. Spring 1997, pp. 12-
34.
20. Jump up ^ The Marriage of Wisdom and Method By Marco Pallis
21. Jump up ^ Sophie Hoare, Yoga (London 1977) p. 19
22. Jump up ^ K. Devi, in Margo Anand, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (1990) p. 39
23. Jump up ^ Berne, p. 78-80
24. Jump up ^ Gail Sheehy, New Passages (London 1996) p. 328-9
25. Jump up ^ Watts, in Anand, p. 62
26. Jump up ^ Kate Cann, Sea Change (London 2007) p. 48 and p. 297
27. Jump up ^ Sean Thomas, the cheek perforation dance (London 2003) p. 230
28. Jump up ^ G. Blakemore Evans ed., The Riverside Shakespeare (1997) p. 229
29. Jump up ^ Amanda Hemingway, Soulfire (London 1994) p. 277 and p. 437
30. Jump up ^ C. R. Aldrich, The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization (1999) p. 153
and p. 146
31. Jump up ^ C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious 9London 1944) p. 57
32. Jump up ^ Anand, p. 72 and p. 215
33. Jump up ^ Petronius, The Satyricon (Penguin 1986) p. 157 and p. 17

Further reading
 O. E. Wall, Sex and Sex Worship (2004)

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