“Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

She tied you to a kitchen chair

She broke your throne, and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”

- Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

It is fascinating to contemplate the aspects of the divine feminine and sexuality in religious belief. This issue has taken center stage in the media with the release of The Davinci Code this weekend. Although the story is a blend of fact and fiction, it forces us to confront issues that many would rather leave untouched.

Conventional Christian thought seems to take a rather harsh view of female sexuality. The stories on which they base their beliefs often seem to depict it in a rather negative light… women always seem to be using their sexuality for some nefarious purpose. This seems to be born of an innate fear held by many men; the idea that women, although an “inferior” gender, possess the ability to control them through their sexuality. Throughout history, we see many stories based on this fear… stories in which otherwise virtuous men are corrupted by the charms of some evil temptress.

An interesting by-product of this fear can be found in the stories surrounding the life of Jesus. It seems as if a rather conscious effort was made to divorce the characters from sexuality. This is evident in the mythos surrounding Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is often considered to be the embodiment of the idealized woman… compassionate, matronly, and loving. She is portrayed as being conceived without sin and a virgin mother. In order to view her as “pure”, people need to strip her of any vestige of sexuality whatsoever.

We also have, of course, the far more controversial woman in the life of Jesus… Mary Magdalen. It is taught that she was a reformed prostitute, although many biblical scholars now debate if she was ever a prostitute at all, or merely confused with another Mary who was mentioned in the gospels. For the sake of argument, I will take the traditional view and assume she was a practitioner of the “world’s oldest profession”.

We see the idea of female sexuality demonized yet again. Upon entering the life of Jesus, she is “reformed”… stripped of her sexuality. She is now sanitized for Christ’s protection.

I think this is what forms the basis of people’s anger with the story set forth in The Davinci Code. In their eyes, Jesus is stripped of his purity… he is now contaminated with the taint of sexuality. This seems to be an afront to their sterilized conceptions of him.

I feel that this is a rather narrow and misguided view. It is time for us to remove the stigma from human sexuality. Sex is not filthy. It is not impure. It is not wicked. It is a wonderful, beautiful, and sacred thing. For thousands of years, people all over the world have viewed eccstatic states as a means of connecting with the divine. Sex is perhaps the purist means of achieving such eccstatic states.

I once read a great book that dealt with these subjects… “Taboo: Sex, Religion, & Magick” by Hyatt and DuQuette. I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever pondered the relationship between sexuality and spirituality.