Ritual Transvestism ( Males as female )

[Guest guest]

Ritual transvestism was a feature of many ancient priesthoods, and

can still be found today among a number of traditional peoples.

Perhaps the best known examples of priestly transvestism among the

ancients are the priests of Cybele, who castrated themselves at their

initiation and thereafter wore only women's clothes. The Roman

historian Tacitus claimed that, among the Germanic peoples, the

priests always dressed as women. He could have seen examples of the

practice closer to home : Cybele was one of the most enthusiastically

worshipped deities in Roma, and ritual transvestism was a feature of

Roman festivals such as Lupercalils, which was held every February

15, probably to celebrate the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus.

The Church Father, St Augustine condemned men who clothed themselves

as women at the feast of Janus, saying that they could never enter

heaven.

 

Ritual Transvestism survives in a number of cultures, often

coinciding with area that retain myths of the primordial, bisexual

beings that played some part in the creation of the world. For

example, among the Navajo, the nadle is a man who was told to become

a woman by the moon, in a dream; and the shamans of the Dayaks of

Broneo likewise become transvestites after receiving spirits

instructions in their dreams. However, ritual bisexuality does not

always coincide with myths of bisexual creators. For example, the

ChuChi of Siberia have a type of Shaman known as a "soft man"

who

dresses and behaves as a woman, and sometimes even takes a husband.

 

There are various explanations for the behaviour of ritual

transvestities. They are striving, consciously or unconsciously, to

attain the state of androgyny in which they unify the complementary

aspects of male and female, and thereby attain a superior, divine or

near-divine, state. Another suggestions, put forward by some

advocates of the supreme Goddess, is that at one time all religious

and magical knowledge belonged to a women. As a results, when men

first began to appropriate religious authority they dressed as women

so as to make themselves more acceptable to the spirits and forces of

Nature. The proponents of this theory points to the Celebes as an

example of a culture that never made the transition from a female to

a male dominated religion. They claimed that, despite the efforts of

an incipient male priesthood, ritual power remained in the hands of

the women, who nevertheless came to accept assistance from an order

of transvestite male priests called tjalabai or "imitation

women"

 

Some ritual transvestites open claim to emulating and in the service

of a goddess. Th e hijras of the Indians subcontinent, in a manner

reminiscent of the priests of Cybele, castrate themselves while

gazing at a picture of the Goddess Bahachura Mata and repeating her

name so as to identify with her. The Dayaks usually invoke spirits in

the name of the great goddess, Ini.

 

The historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, wrote in Shamanism that

Dayak religious practice " shows clear traces of a feminine magic

and

matriarchial mythology". On the other hand, a Chukchi soft man is

not

attempting to emulate any goddess. He is instructed to change sex by

a male spirit, called a ke'let, who becomes his

"husband". These male

spirits are so powerful and protective that, despite their bashful

manner, soft men are the most feared shamans among the Chukchi.

 

*** Male followers of the Krishnan cult in India dress in women's

clothes to identify themselves with the gopis, or cowherds, who were

seduced by the god Krishna. ***

 

These form of ritual transvestism is undertakes because " all

souls

are feminine to God "

 

Bisexual creator beings occur or have occurred among the myths of :

1. the ancient Indus valley civilization *****

2. ancient iran

3. ancient summer

4. the Phoenicians and other ancient semitic people

5. ancient Egypt

6. aegean cults, such as Orphism

7. asia minor

8. old Germanic and Baltic peoples, and in various strands of

European folklore and mysticism, cush as Kabbalism and alchemy

9. ancient nubia, extending from the Nile to the Libyan desert

10. the kunama of eastern sudan

11. the hunde of Zaire

12. the dogon-bambara of mali

13. the villi-kongo, luba and chokwe of southwestern Angola and

Zaire

14. the tonga lala of Botswana dna Zimbabwe

15. the vedic, Hindu, Tantric and Shakti-worshipping traditions

of India, as well as local groups such as the Musahar ******

16. the kochin, Naga, Abor and Khasi or northern Burma and Assam

17. the Taoist and Confucian traditions in china

18. the Se-plakai of Malaysia

19. groups in Pulau Nais

20. the Dayaks of Borneo

21. Bali

22. groups dispersed through islands from Sumba to Aruthe

aboriginals of northern Australia

23. the aboriginals of northern australia

24. the Widaro, Yatmul and other groups of northern New Guines,

New Ireland, and Admiralties and neighbouring islands

25. the Maori of New Zealand

26. the Tongans, Tahitans and Raiateans of Polynesia

27. Hawaii

28. the zuni and Navago

29. the Sauk, Fox, Dakota and Omaha

30. the Cherokee

31. the Aztecs and Maya of Mesoamerica

32. the aymaras of the central andes

33. the araucanians of Chile

34. the lenguas of Paraguay

 

 

Adapted from The Goddess : Power, Sexuality and the Feminine Divine.

Shahrukh Husain.

[Guest guest]

*** Male followers of the Krishnan cult in India dress in women's

clothes to identify themselves with the gopis, or cowherds, who were

seduced by the god Krishna. ***

 

 

The Sakhis are Sadhus who have chosen Rama or Krishna as their deity,

are characterized by a strong, sentimental devotion and total self-

surrender to one of his earthly 'incarnations' as the god-king Rama

or the divine cowherd Krishna.

 

The deity is regarded as a 'person' with whom the devotee can

establish an intimate bond, which usually takes the form of a Master-

slave relationship.

 

Some sadhus, however, dare to regard him as their Lover, and since

the deity is a male, it follows quite logically that they have to

play the part of 'mistress' of the Lord. They are designated as

sakhis.

 

They imagine having an erotic 'love' relationship with him. Some

sakhis even go to the extreme of pretending to have regular sexual

intercourse with their Lord -- except on the days when they're having

their 'period'.

 

Obviously, the sexual overtones of their behaviour make them rather

suspect in the eyes of other ascetics, since repression of sexuality

is the norm, not its projection. Even if this projection is aimed at

a deity.Nevertheless, it is a recognized way of expressing devotion

to a deity -- and devotion is a characteristic of all sadhus.

[Guest guest]

1. "During the night of Kali some young man went through a

spiritual

transvestitism and mimicked the dress of female devotees. Wearing

crimson saris, they adorned themselves with flowers. Several weeks of

abstinence and rigorous preparation gave this men the mental power to

enter into a spiritual trance this evening as they entered the temple

grounds after the ceremonial bath in the temple bathing ghats. They

stood stark naked, their bodies shivering slightly from the ascending

transformation, while women dressed them as females. This was the

best way to invoke the divine goddess within – they sublimated

their

maleness and became female. The elders considered this the highest

form of Tantaric worship any male can perform to Kali "

 

Kali's Odiyya : A shaman's True Story of initiation.

Amarananda

Bhairavan. Pg 2. Chapter one : The night of Kali.

 

2. "During his Vaishnav Sadhana, Sri Ramakrishnan regarded

himself

for sometime as a female friend of the Divine Mother. He completely

immersed himself in this role and actually looked like a woman.

Dressed in a sari and surrounded by other ladies, not even Mather

Babu recognized Sri Ramakrishnan during one Durga Puja festival in

his house … Sri Ramakrishna looked upon God from a female point

of

view "

 

Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Ellizabeth U Harding.

Chapter 5. Ma Kali's God intoxicated mystics. Pg 262.

 

And my conversation with a psychologist :

 

"Gender identity refers to the inner feeling of maleness or

femaleness. In essence, it is the gender of the inner self – that

part of an individual that is not seen, the individual's

perception

of himself or herself. It is not necessarily related to his

anatomical sex and is independent from his or her social sex role.

 

Social sex role or femininity and masculinity is a cultural

phenomenon.

 

Gender identity is also distinct from sexual orientation, which

denotes a person's preference for his or her sex partners."

 

What am I up to? Not sure but these issue of Spiritual / Ritual

Transvestism fascinates me.

 

 

OM ParaShaktiye Namaha

[Guest guest]

"Central and essential to all traditions of transformation is the

notion of opposites or dualities and their reconciliation. There are

at least three major pairs of opposites, whose mutual balancing and

integrating is important in shamanism, and alchemy and yoga as well:

the balance of male and female; the reconciliation of good and evil;

and the integration of human and animal consciousness.

In each case, the task is to recognize the duality that exists within

us and then to find ways to transform the opposites from a state of

divisiveness and antagonism to a state of complementarity, or

peaceful co-existence.

 

The ubiquity of the androgyny motif is well-known: the central belief

here is that all human beings are, in essence, of dual nature, though

one side or the other may be unevenly developed. Shamans, alchemists

and yogis, as well as the mystics of almost all religious traditions

have concerned themselves with the project of integrating these

polarities.

 

In shamanic cultures the mythology of Father Sky and Mother Earth is

the cosmic dualism on which this integrative project is based.

Shamans in some cultures may practice a ritual transvestism, or even

live for long periods of time completely as the other sex does, in

order to bring about a better balance of the masculine and feminine

energies. In alchemy, Sun and Moon, King and Queen, are the symbolic

representatives of the male and female energies.

 

The "alchemical marriage" between fire and water, is the union from

which arises the new "philosophers' child". In yoga practice, we also

have the notion of solar and lunar currents of energy flow, the ida

and pingala, which must be balanced for the yogi to attain

liberation. And in Jungian psychotherapy, the process of

individuation calls for integration with one's interior sexual

opposite, the anima or animus."

 

http://www.rmetzner-greenearth.org/myth_shamyoga.html

 

What am I up to? Still not sure. But its getting interesting all the

time.

[Guest guest]

yes, nora ... this is very interesting... the yin and the yang

principle, the ha (sun) and tha (moon) principle - the jungian anima

and animus .... this is what colin and i have been talking about in

earlier posts and ompremji also elaborated on a post on nadis....

while explainig hatha yoga..

 

nora says...

 

" The "alchemical marriage" between fire and water, is the union from

which arises the new "philosophers' child". In yoga practice, we

also

have the notion of solar and lunar currents of energy flow, the ida

and pingala, which must be balanced for the yogi to attain

liberation. And in Jungian psychotherapy, the process of

individuation calls for integration with one's interior sexual

opposite, the anima or animus."

 

elaborating on this...

 

"In the space outside the Merudanda (spinal column) placed on the

left and the right are the two Nadi Ida and Pingala, the Nadi

Sushumna is in the middle.

 

They meet Sushumna Nadi at the Muladhara Chakra and make a knot. This

junction is called Mukta Triveni. Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati dwell

in Pingala, Ida and Sushumna. This meeting place is called Brahma

Granthi. These meet again at the Anahata and Ajna Chakra. Ida flows

through the left nostril and Pingala through the right nostril.

Ida [sasi, Lalana, Pitryana] is called Chandra (Moon) Nadi, in its

course it conveys lunar energy. Pingala [Mihira, Rasana, Devayana] is

called Surya (Sun) Nadi , as solar energy flows trough it.

Ida is of pale, Shakti Rupa; Pingala is of fiery red, Rudra Rupa.

It's to remember that Ida and Pingala carry the prana and the apana.

Ida and Pingala indicate Kala (time,death) and Sushumna swallows

time. "

 

if you read sree lalita sahasaranama,

 

our devi lalita is described as

 

1) om brahma-granthi -vibhedinyai namaha

salutations to HER who in her ascent from muladhara breaks through

the *brahma-granthi* (the barrier of brahma to the subtle dimension)

 

 

2) om vishnu-granthi vibhedinyaii namha

salutations to Her who then breaks through the vishnu-granthi (the

barrier to still subtler dimensions)

 

3) om rudra granthi -vibhedanyaii namaha

salutations to HER who finally breaks through the Rudra granthi (the

barrier to the subtler dimensions)

 

 

thus in the kundalini yoga in the sahasara chakra , sakti meets siva

in a blissful union.

 

om tat sat!

 

love

[Guest guest]

"Moreover it is pronounced that the masculine adept of Shakti worship

becomes 'ideal' if by ritual techniques he can arouse his own

feminine quality. It is even suggested that he should undergo a

process of transvestism (known as Sakhi-bhava, 'to unman men') to

attain complete identification with the deity."

 

Kali: The Feminine Force, Ch.2

Ajit Mukherjee's "

 

 

What's im up to !!!! Frankly I don't know. But the missing

pieces are

starting to emerge now.

 

Om ParaShaktiye Namaha