Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds. – Susan Sontag
Westerners, mired as they so often are in black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, often have difficulty understanding syncretism, the tendency for deities, religious practices or even entire religions to combine into new forms; they can’t imagine how a person could be, say, a Christian and a pagan at the same time. Faced with religions like Voodoo or goddesses like Santa Muerte, the typical response of a Christian or Muslim is to brand such beliefs “heresy” or even “devil worship”; even most secular Westerners tend to think of their political faiths in the same way, as comprehensive systems that must be embraced completely or rejected totally, with no allowance for drift or fusion. But while the Occidental mind tends to think of religion as a checklist, the Oriental mind tends to view it as a buffet from which each individual can pick and choose whichever elements of each faith appeal to him. Chinese people traditionally practiced a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism; the Japanese mixed Buddhism with Shinto; my Vietnamese manicurist in New Orleans attended an Asian Catholic Church but displayed a crucifix, a picture of the Blessed Mother and a shrine to the Buddha in her shop. And the Islam practiced in Java, syncretized with a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and the native Kejawen belief system, would probably be quite shocking to orthodox believers living much closer to Mecca (both physically and psychologically). I recently discovered a fascinating article about how this fusion has combined with two other practices – ancient sacred prostitution and modern capitalism – to create the unique observances of Gunung Kemukus, a shrine in central Java.
…Every 35 days, the Friday of the Gregorian calendar intersects with Pon, one of the five days of the ancient Javanese lunar calendar. Its eve is an auspicious date at Gunung Kemukus…[site of a] ritual [which] can guarantee success in business, usually for those at or near the bottom of the ladder…Pilgrims mostly come from Indonesia’s Javanese-speaking core, but some travel days across the massive archipelago to get here…First, prayers and offerings must be made at the grave of Pangeran Samodro and Nyai Ontrowulan…[then] pilgrims must wash themselves at…[a] sacred spring…then they must find a sex partner…of the opposite sex…[to whom they are not married]…Many people believe the ritual only works if you return at seven consecutive, 35-day intervals, either the night before Friday intersects with Pon, or when it crosses with another Javanese day, Kliwon…
…Pangeran Samodro was [the prince of] Demak, a [16th-century] Muslim sultanate [which was one of the successor-states of the recently-fallen Majapahit Empire. He had]…an affair with…Nyai Ontrowulan, [one of his father’s wives,] and the two were forced to flee. They were staying on Gunung Kemukus when they were found…[in the act by the father’s soldiers,] killed, and buried together in the one hole…[the legend arose] that whoever [finishes] their sex act will receive blessings from Nyai Ontrowulan…local government and religious authorities promote a G-rated version of the story, with the prince cast as a devoted proselytiser of Islam…but…no one is…trying to shut the ritual down…scores of traders [sell] aphrodisiacs, food, novelties, miracle cures and kitchen appliances…[while] shacks [offer] drinks, karaoke, prostitutes and rooms for sex. There are multiple tolls to get in, and businesses are levied a daily charge. With between 6,000 and 8,000 pilgrims arriving on the busiest nights…it’s…big money…for the local community and…government…about half of the women who show up are commercial sex workers. Another 25 percent are “part-timers”…who…accept money if it’s on offer. The 1980s was when…sex workers, as well as other businesses, started moving into the area…[and] also when the local government decided to spread its own cleaned-up version of the ritual — while at the same time profiting from sex-seeking pilgrims…Since the 1998 fall of the Suharto regime, religiously-minded authorities have cracked down on many legal red-light districts…[but] Gunung Kemukus…has come to be seen as a safe place…
Neither the ritual itself nor the way the local government unofficially protects it while officially disavowing it are any surprise to me; government officials in every land and time have always been among the greatest patrons of and parasites upon harlots. What I find especially interesting, though, is how religiously-connected prostitution, which is persecuted in both traditional and modern forms in other countries, has survived here by changing its form; and also how religion, which in some places is used as an excuse for persecuting whores, is in Java used as an excuse for protecting them.
I read the article you linked to, and found a few others on the net on this topic. I am surprised at myself for being a little ick’d out that it is almost required as part of a religious belief. I am all for free will, and people being able to do whatever they want with their bodies, with whoever they want. But this just makes me think of all of the abuses by members of the church and the BSA.
IDK, maybe I am just not as open as I thought I was.
Interesting piece (no pun intended). Thank you for writing it.
The next island over (Bali) is one of the few places in the world where the tantric version of Shakti, or worship of the devine feminine, still exists.
In Thailand, sex is used as part of magical rituals as well:
http://www.pattayadailynews.com/en/2008/07/17/cunning-monk-beguiles-woman-into-black-magic-sex-ceremony-in-pattaya-motel/
However, there the practice is condemned as black magic, though the authorities have had little success in stamping the practice out.
LOL, my wife was a “witch” once (still is if you ask me! :P) Anyway, she had all kinds of books and stuff and I was going through one of her “magic” books and came across a chapter on “sexual magic”. There was some AWESOMELY fun and torrid, kinky stuff in there and I was all GUNG HO to help her try that shit!
Nope – she wasn’t interested in that kind of “magic making” and she told me my “motives” weren’t “pure” – that my intrests were merely in the sexual gratification of the acts and not in the deeds they produced.
There is ALWAYS SOMETHING in the FINE PRINT that completely spoils the fun in EVERYTHING! 🙁
Israel supported the 1947 United Nations Resolution to partition Palestine into two entities – one controlled by the Jews and the other controlled by the Palestinians. Jerusalem was to be an international city.
The arabs flatly rejected it and declared war on Israel. Had they accepted it – there would have been no wars, no conflict, no deaths.
“The Plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, through the Jewish Agency.[3][4] The Plan was rejected by leaders of the Arab community, including the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee,[3][5] who were supported in their rejection by the states of the Arab League. The Arab leadership (in and out of Palestine) opposed partition and claimed all of Palestine.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan
Agreed, krulac.
It makes me wonder what planet the progressive Jews are living on. To trust the international community to protect Israel once they let go of their defensible borders is along the line of Czechoslovakia expecting Chamberlain to protect them once they surrendered the Sudetenland to Hitler.
And I’ll agree with the original poster that there are elements of theocracy in Israel – particularly that the sway the Orthodox Jews hold relative to their numbers along with the exemption from military service and gov’t subsidy that they receive but let’s have a reality check here. You want a real theocratic government where you aren’t free to practice your religion, take a long look around the muslim world. And even in those places where you are ostensibly allowed to practice your religion, religious thugs will see to it that you don’t, and the gov’t will look the other way. Coptic xtians and 15 yr old schoolgirls, anyone?
Non-muslim religionists are as free in those countries as the American Black was in the Jim Crow South. If you walk softly enough, take the abuse with a bowed head, haven’t been targeted by malicious gossip and don’t have something that one of the white thug boys want, then you might not be lynched – today.
Sorry about that, y’all; that commenter’s first comment yesterday was weird and all-caps, but seemed harmless enough so I approved it. This one (which he of course posted while I was out getting my nails done) was clearly the ranting of an anti-Semitic nut, so I deleted it and unapproved the original. Reasoned political criticism of any country is welcome on a post where it’s on-topic; garbage only two steps removed from Protocols of the Elders of Zion on a post that has absolutely nothing to do with Israel is not.
Sorry, Maggie,
I shouldn’t have fed the troll.
Not your fault; you and Krulac naturally assumed I had let him stand and so engaged him. He’s been sending me these long anti-Semitic screeds via email for weeks now; I failed to notice it was the same guy, so totally my fault.
Christians who think that Christianity doesn’t incorporate holdovers from other faiths are simply ignorant of their own religious history. ‘St. Brigit’, Christmas (and Christmas trees), and so on. Islam was slightly better at extirpating references to prior faiths, although as your article shows, the farther away from the Middle East, the more inclusive (by necessity) Islam became.
It’s weird, but anti-semitic nutcases seem to suffer from a kind of brain sickness. They show up all over, on seemingly random blogs, and post anti-semitic nonsense, or somehow steer the conversation around to Jews – and then sit back. It’s weird. I’ve not seen this with regards to other issues. The anti-semites seem to be the worst.
And on the actual issue —
Islam has to be among the very worst of religions for targeting sex workers, or sex anything; there’s a distinct and visceral hatred of women, or at least hatred of female sexuality, in Islam. Where it allows sex, it’s just allowing men to enjoy themselves. It’s very male-centric. it’s not unique in this way, but the sheer degree to which it takes this is unique. Like what was once said about military tactics: Quantity has a quality of its own.
SE Asia escaped from the fundamentalist forms of Islam for quite some time, but it’s starting to encroach now. Aceh in Indonesia is pretty far away, but the Javanese are being infected with this purist form of Islam and they run Indonesia like a Javanese empire, with scant respect for local differences, traditions or other cultures.I expect places like this island to suffer somewhat under this influence.
Gordon, do you know the Diaster called “Lumpur Lapindo” by the locals in Java? Also, Aceh has been struck down with Tsunami around 10 years ago, right? I think the God(s) already trying to cleanse ’em. If you know what i mean~
Thank you Maggie, I was about to post “who cares?” But I thought it might be discourteous to you, so I refrained.
I understand some of the Middle Eastern scholars who visited the empire of Mali in the 14th Century CE were scandalized to see that the women of Timbuktu (I looked it up) “though fastidious in their prayers tended to go naked not only slave girls but even the daughters of the Sultan.” Any religion changes as it spreads across the world. I doubt that the worship of Zeus was exactly the same in Athens and Rhodes.
In any case, thanks for telling us about this. I had no idea.