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ANAHITA..."an ancient shrine of Anahita was to be found in Balkh, a temple so rich it invited plunder.........Aredvi Sura Anahita, Persian goddess of heavenly waters..."Aphrodite-Astarte was the goddess of the Aqua-Vitae. Both a divinity of the sky and the earth waters. (Campbell: 1968..pg 332)......"Most beautiful woman in the Avesta. Anahita: Undefiled, immaculate. The river goddess. Of noble lineage and well formed." (Acta: 1985..pg 665)...Iranian version of Astarte (June Campbell: pg 38)..."non-Iranian Anahita" (Dhalla 1963 pg 125)..."undefiled, is the name of a mythical river as well as that of a female divinity of the waters. She resides in the starry regions. Classical writers speak of her sanctuaries founded aat Pasargadae, Ecbatana, Kangavar and other places. She is assimilated into Artemis, Aphrodite, Athene-Minerva, Hera, Magna Mater, Ishtar, and Nanaia. She overleaps barriers of Mt Alburz where her cult becomes obscene rites. She is celebrated in some of the longest Yashts and in the 65th chapter of the Yasna...Eighth month of the year and tenth day of the month are named after the waters of the Ardvi Sura...Pliny says that a temple of solid gold was set up in the temple of Anaitis" (Dhalla...pg 226)..."non-Iranian Anahita" (Dhalla: 1963..pg 125)...
"Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities. It is the harmonization of opposites.".....
"In Hinduism, the Devadasi tradition (देवदासी "servant of god") is a religious tradition in which girls are "married" and dedicated to a deity (deva or devi) or to a Hindu temple and includes performance aspects such as those that take place in the temple as well as in the courtly and mujuvani [telegu] or home context. Originally, in addition to this and taking care of the temple and performing rituals, these women learned and practiced Sadir, Odissi and other classical Indian artistic traditions and enjoyed a high social status. Though traditionally, they carry out dances in the praise of lord, they also evolved into Sacred Marriage over time."
Greece...."To what extent such a sacred marriage was not just a way of viewing nature, but an act expressed or hinted at in ritual is difficult to say" the best-known ritual example surviving in classical Greece is the hieros gamos enacted at the Anthesteria by the wife of the Archon basileus, the "Archon King" in Athens, originally therefore the queen of Athens, with Dionysus, presumably represented by his priest or the basileus himself, in the Boukoleion in the Agora."
"In the Tantric Buddhism of India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, yab-yum is a ritual of the male deity in union with his female consort. The symbolism is associated with Anuttarayoga tantra where the male figure is usually linked to compassion (karuṇā) and skillful means (upāya-kauśalya), and the female partner to 'insight' (prajñā). Yab-yum is generally understood to represent the primordial (or mystical) union of wisdom and compassion.....Maithuna is a Sanskrit term used in Tantra most often translated as sexual union in a ritual context. It is the most important of the five makara and constitutes the main part of the Grand Ritual of Tantra variously known as Panchamakara, Panchatattva, and Tattva Chakra. The symbolism of union and polarity is a central teaching in Tantric Buddhism, especially in Tibet. The union is realized by the practitioner as a mystical experience within one's own body."
"In ancient Greece and Anatolia a hierodule, from the Greek ἱεροδούλη (ἱερόν "temple" + δούλη "slave"), was a temple maid in the service of a specific deity, often with the connotation of religious sexual rites. Her services would technically be sacred because of the service she provided to the deity. The priestesses of Inanna/Ishtar were known to be hierodules, or nadītu in the native Sumerian language."
"Greece did not know sacred prostitution at the same scale that existed in the ancient Near East. The only known cases were at the fringes of the Greek world (in Sicily, Cyprus, in the Kingdom of Pontus and in Cappadocia), and the city of Corinth where the temple of Aphrodite housed a significant number of servants at least since the classical era. In 464 BCE, a man named Xenophon, a citizen of Corinth who was an acclaimed runner and winner of pentathlon at the Olympic Games, dedicated one hundred young girls to the temple of the goddess as a sign of thanksgiving. We know this because of a hymn which Pindar was commissioned to write, celebrating "the very welcoming girls, servants of Peïtho and luxurious Corinth". During the Roman period, Strabo states that the temple had more than a thousand sacred slave-prostitutes."
"The Kama Sutra (Sanskrit: कामसूत्र, Kāmasūtra) is an ancient Indian Hindu text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature.....Perhaps compiled by Vātsyāyana, a Hindu philosopher in the Vedic tradition who is believed to have lived during time of the Gupta Empire (4th to 6th centuries CE) in India....Historians attribute Kamasutra to be composed between 400 BCE and 200 CE. John Keay says that the Kama Sutra is a compendium that was collected into its present form in the 2nd century CE....Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra has 1250 verses."
"Some Taoist sects during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) performed sexual intercourse as a spiritual practice, called "HeQi" ("Joining Energy"). The first sexual texts that survive today are those found at the Mawangdui tombs. While Taoism had not yet fully evolved as a philosophy at this time, these texts shared some remarkable similarities with later Tang dynasty texts, such as the Ishinpō. The sexual arts arguably reached their climax between the end of the Han dynasty and the end of the Tang dynasty. After 1000 A.D. [CE], Confucian puritanism became stronger and stronger, so that by the advent of the Qing dynasty, sex was a taboo topic in public life. These Confucians alleged that the separation of genders in most social activities existed two thousand years ago, and suppressed the sexual arts. Because of the taboo surrounding sex, there was much censoring done during the Qing in literature, and the sexual arts disappeared in public life. As a result, some of the texts survived only in Japan, and most scholars had no idea that such a different concept of sex existed in early China."
"Sacred prostitution was common in the Ancient Near East as a form of "Sacred Marriage" or hieros gamos between the king of a Sumerian city-state and the High Priestess of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility, and warfare. Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there were many shrines and temples dedicated to Inanna. The temple of Eanna, meaning "house of heaven" in Uruk was the greatest of these. The temple housed Nadītu, priestesses of the goddess. The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year) ceremony, at the spring Equinox."
"The roles of the sexes in the realm of Shambhala are typical. It is exclusively men who exercise political power in the androcentric state. Of the women we hear only something of their role as queen mother, the bearer of the heir to the throne, and as “wisdom consorts”. In the “tantric economy” of the state budget they form a reservoir of vital resources, since they supply the “gynergy” which is transformed by the official sexual magic rites into political power. Alone the sovereign has a million (!) girls, “young as the eight-day moon”, who are available to be his partners..... the blatant eroticism which the Kalachakra translator and researcher in Asia, Albert Grünwedel, saw in Manichaeism was not there."....http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-1-10.htm
APHRODITE, whose bull was a demiourges of Genesis, was a naked goddess, between a solar and lunar god seated on a bull....
APIA..."Saka goddess of the earth was the goddess of fertility, equivalent to the Medo-Persian Anahita." (Rudenko: 1970..pg 290)...
ARAMAITI...the Iranian Earth Goddess. Aramaic Alphabet named after her. Brought by Bon into Tibet in 500 BC (June Campbell: pg 37)...
ARTEMIS (Greece) was the many breasted great mother (twin sister of Apollo) of Asia, whom the Greeks encountered in Ephesus in 1000 BC.....Aphrodite's origins were also Asian....Both were adopted by the Greeks...."the Cretan goddess of hunting"...
ASTARTE...one of the most ancient forms of the universal great goddess, worshipped by the Iranians in her form as Anahita. Her image found in Sumeria in 2300 BC. (June Campbell: pg 38)..."It seems very likely that Astarte, as the main female of ancient Persia whose name appears in Bon texts, and who was thought to rule the stars, would indeed be the object of Padmasambhava's suppressive missionary zeal." (June Campbell: pg 41)...
ATHENA...Greece...The Temple of Athena Nike in Athens was built between 427 and 424 BC......
CISTA...."The elongated ray that penetrates the cave and reaches the head of Mithra is the equivalent of the Avestan Cista, whose sharpness of vision was manifested in various animals, but particularly in the raven (varegan). Her sharpness of vision was an expression of visibility and she is said to be white, and her whiteness is in sharp contrast to the blackness of invisibility of the raven. (Campbell:1968)...A goddess of paths, both physical and spiritual...
DAENA...Persian feminine aspect of Den...."In the Avesta: At dawn on the fourth day after death, the departed passes over the Cinwad bridge and meets the personification of his deeds. If he is righteous, a beautiful maiden appears to him amidst the sweetly smelling breeze. (If wicked she is wretched). The girl is the manifestation of one's own daena (Pahlavi: Den). The beautiful maiden is one's own inner consciousness, the internal being." (Acta: 1985..pg 583)..."The rise of Mithra and the rise of Daena are both connected with the first light of dawn, 'birth' from darkness. The appearance of Daena in the early morning light coincides with the scented wind." (Piras: 1996...pg 10)..."In the Gathic texts, the daena, after the rise of Astunat Arata from Lake Kasaoya, will render the corporeal world imperishable with their salvific gaze." (Piras: 1996...pg 14)...
DAKINIS..."mkha' gro ma: literally she (ma) sho goes ('gro) in the sky (mkha')...she who moves in space." (Reynolds: 96..pg 345)..."the Dakinis have been looked upon by the Buddhist mystics as the protectors from forces of destruction and unscrupulous profanization. The dakinis are looked upon as advanced practitioners and the highest orders of dakinis are manifestations of the enlightened ones."..(Lhalungpa: 1986..pg 460)
LAKSHMI...Goddess of wealth and good fortune...Also known as: Laksmi, Sri, Padma, Kamala, Dharani, Sita....Candhamadana is the mountain of Lakshmi...Lakshmi...India...flys on the Garuda
VENUS...Roman...deity of Venice...the original black stone of the kaaba in Mecca represented Venus...Eros. Friday. Divinity of the motions of love. Anahita (the Persian equivalent of Venus) was in particular a goddess of the fresh waters.)...
From: The Shadow of the Dalai Lama......"In the secret higher initiations of the Kalachakra Tantra sexual magical rites take place, the aim of which is to transform "sexuality" into worldly and spiritual power. The real or imaginary women (both are possible) used in these represent particular forms of energy, whereby age plays an important role. One begins with ten-year-old girls. Up to the age of 20, the female sexual partners represent positive characteristics. If they are older they are regarded as the bearers of the negative energies of scorn, rage, hate etc. and as "demonesses". In the 8th to 11th levels of initiation into the Kalachakra Tantra sexual magic experiments are made with just " one" woman; in the 12th to 15th levels, the so-called Ganachakra, a total of 10 women take part in the ritual along with the master and the initiand. It is the pupil’s duty to offer his Lama the women as a "gift". "Laity" who are to be initiated into the ritual are supposed to offer up their female relatives (mother, sister, wife, daughter, aunt, etc.). One can read in the Kalachakra Mûlatantra that "If the pupil does not hand these wisdom consorts over to his master, in order to protect his family, then [the master] may not perform this ritual." Consecrated monks and novices, however, may make use of unrelated women from various castes. In the secret ritual itself the participants experiment with the masculine and feminine seed (sperm and menstrual blood). In the Kalachakra Tantra women are regarded as mere "energy donors" for the male practitioners and once the ritual is over they have no further role to play." ....Critical Forum for the Investigation of the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala Myth.....http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/dalai_lama/Annex.htm
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico….January 2013
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