July ‘24 1-to-1 Wiseletter (Mircea Eliade)
In July's 1-to-1 Wiseletter, I'll be breaking down a quote from Mircea Eliade, the great historian of theology of the 20th century.
Quote
The divine myth is the paradigmatic model for human union...and hence of human sexual behavior.
In virtually every culture across time, the cosmos was created by union of a feminine and masculine force, a female goddess and her male counterpart. In Greek mythology, Gaia births the Sky god Uranus first out of herself and then mates with him.
Like how a stallion covers a mare, the sky covers the earth and the world is made. You can find this in Genesis when in the beginning Yahweh hovers over the face of the waters, an act that creates the world.
Eliade's insight is profound because it points out an obvious yet easily overlooked fact: sex is mythological but myth is not sexual.
This is to say that the creation of the world is a priori to sex. Sex is a formal expression of the deepest act of existence. Once sex is understood as such, rather than recognized as just a mechanistic act of biological perpetuation or mindless pleasure, it can be felt as a synchronization between human beings and the fundamental action of the cosmos. In this way, sex becomes sacred (and should be enjoyed to its utmost!).
But without the link between the act of sex and the foundation of the cosmos, sex dislocates from its sacrality and becomes masturbatory. Or its purpose becomes exclusively relegated to the future (e.g. "sex should only be done to create children").
It is no wonder that sex was seen by Darwin and his Victorian counterparts as just another means of reproduction, a mere engine of evolution. If anything, evolution is a quality of sex, not the other way around. No coincidence that Darwin's work emerged around the same time that Nieztche declared God dead. The world of 19th-century scientific rationalism had become a desacralized one. Darwin was merely reading back to us what his culture was projecting into the world.
Sex is a microcosm of the marital act of the universe. It has been said that when two people have sex, they become married, regardless of the conscious intent of the individuals caught up in the act.
QUESTION
What is the most sacred thing in your life?
Cheers,
John
