Sex in Religious Statuary

I check The Wild Hunt almost every day. Because it focuses on general issues in the pagan/polytheistic community, I can usually read it without feeling frustrated that non-Wiccan voices aren’t being heard.

Today, Jason posted something about a recent controversy in the Hindu community that has the potential to draw in pagans and polytheists, creating a giant rift among our communities as people separate themselves into different moral categories based on their opinions of nude and/or sexual divine statuary. The reason? The web site in question, Sacred Source, sells statues of deities from every culture imaginable, including ones that would be considered risqué by many Americans. They have a commitment to Fair Trade Organizations.

Here is the accusation levied by one source, the Forum for Hindu Awakening:

A Company in [the] USA named 'Sacred Source' is denigrating Hindu Deities through the statues for sale on their website. Many statues of deities are posed in very offensive manner. For example, Statue of Deity Shiva is in sexual position with a naked woman. This has hurt sentiments of billions of Hindus worldwide and all Hindus should protest lawfully against 'Sacred Source', so that they should remove such offensive [material] from their website and sales stock and also the company should apologise Hindus for hurting their religious sentiments.

Among the statues listed, they have one with a shirtless Ganesha reading. Many of the other ones include moderate nudity and cuddling, but several do actually show deities in sexual positions.

Now, I am obviously not a Hindu. I may have a weakness for Santoshi Maa because she is Freaking Awesome, but my first and foremost loyalty is to Apollon and the other Hellenic Gods. Sannion’s post for Pagan Values Month about the reverence of sexuality and sex acts in Hellenic Polytheism, Kemetism, and ancient fusion religions is an excellent primer about the religious sentiments surrounding divine nudity and sex.

Our Gods are frequently portrayed in the nude. Over a year ago, I attended a lecture for a Classical Mythology course that discussed the Gods’ bodies and the perfection of the nude statues/physical space in religious settings. In my opinion, nudity in Hellenism is elegant and strong. It shows the self-awareness of the divine beings who animate the Kosmos, and it removes barriers between the worshipper and the God being worshipped.

Our Gods’ myths frequently contain sexual elements. They are depicted in temple ruins and museums artifacts in various stages of copulation. While some people like Plato may have lamented some of the stories, Pompeii’s ruins are filled with artifacts showing various types of sexual congress. We may have ritual purity laws that regulate sexual activity — for example, washing before prayer if you have had sex in the past day — but that has no bearing on whether or not we find religious materials offensive. Satyrs have erections. Pan has sex with goats. Deal with it. I mean, should we protest every company that sells stuff like this?

To bring this back to the issue at hand, I went to an exhibit on Bactria while interning in DC two years ago. While the gallery did not allow pictures, it provided a beautiful example of cultural exchange, fusion, and translation. Several of the most beautiful pieces in the exhibit depicted one of the Hindu Goddesses (I think Laximi) showing a fair amount of skin. I definitely know I’ve seen sacred statuary of her with well-defined primary sex characteristics in historical galleries on many occasions.

Celebrating the divine is about more than dressing them up in pretty clothes and offering incense at shrines. It is about respecting and acknowledging their relationships with one another. Sometimes, those relationships are sexual. Sometimes, the Gods will be depicted (nearly) nude with other deities or with (gasp) books.

Maybe this position shows a lack of religious refinement on the part of Hellenism or myself. We can’t all be Apollonius of Tyana, for crying out loud. But in all honesty, when I hear people talk about grave denigration of deities, I do not think about commercial religious statuary. I think about people being raped in temples or having sex on the altar of Athene or the Christians hacking the Gods’ statues to bits or the Victorians snapping off statues’ penises because they were total prudes. And these ARE issues that should be addressed.

I am very happy that my religious search led me to a faith that is fairly sex- and body-positive.