Eroticism, Sexual Physiology and Embryological Themes in Late Antique Soteriology

A proposal for a postdoctoral research project

 

Zeke Mazur

Doctoral Candidate,

University of Chicago

ajmazur@uchicago.edu

 

During the period of this fellowship, I would like to investigate the pervasive but under–remarked imagery of sexuality, eroticism, gender, and reproductive physiology in late antique Gnostic and Platonic literature dealing with salvific and / or ritual “ascent” towards the divine.

 

The idea for this research project arose from the observation that although late antique religiosity is conventionally associated with antisomatism, ritual techniques of salvation often employed models drawn from eroticism and / or sexual physiology itself (the theme is, of course, quite ancient, and is already evident in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus).

 

This research will have four interrelated textual foci: [1] the Patristic heresiologies; [2] the Coptic Nag Hammadi corpus; [3] the Greek medical literature on sexuality and / or embryology; and [4] the Chaldaean Oracles and other Platonic texts relating to theurgy.

 

The point of departure will be an examination of the Patristic accounts of sexual ritual among the Gnostics. The topic emerges in Epiphanius’ description (Panarion 26.4.3-8) of a sect whose members perform a ritualized coitus interruptus, sacramentally collecting and consuming the semen of the man and also, whenever possible, the menses of the woman, for the purpose of ‘recycling’ the divine substance inherent in the human soul. Although Epiphanius’ account has been treated with skepticism, elsewhere in Patristic literature as well as the Nag Hammadi corpus itself one can also find intimations of ritual praxis modeled upon the structure of human sexual physiology that also resonates with sexual and embryological themes in Gnostic protology. Thus, for instance, there are subtle suggestions that human sexual fluids–– semen and menstrual blood–– were believed to be consubstantial with the primordial, pneumatic efflux of the transcendent deity: an efflux often referred to as a sperma imbued with pneuma (just like semen, which is said in Hellenistic medical literature and in Stoicism to be a mixture of pneuma and other substances). Here one may detect echoes of an ancient conception according to which the soul, brain, spinal marrow, and semen comprise a hydraulic continuum with a limited economy of vital fluid. Salvation was dependent upon the control of precious sexual fluids, either through rituals involving their sacramental use (one supposedly “libertine” option), or, alternately, through contemplative practices that sought to reverse the natural downward flow (the “encratite” option). Sexual physiology was thus understood as a microcosmic homologue of reality, and that the body itself was envisioned as a vertical conduit extending between the celestial head (often encoded as “male”) and the terrestrial genitals (encoded as “female”), along which the divine “seed” could either descend and dissipate through “emanation,” i.e. ejaculation and sexual reproduction, or, conversely, ascend towards reintegration with its source, in an act most often evoked with erotic, reproductive, or nuptial imagery. I would suggest that this cognitive metaphor underlay a broad range of ritual speculation in late antiquity.

 

This project will help to deconstruct the overly–simplistic category of “antisomatism,” and to situate Neoplatonism and Gnosticism within a more complex discourse of embodiment, gender, and the hermeneutics of metaphor.


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