Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your positive comments, and apoligize if I made any that were negative.

It seems to me that the more a religion represses sex the more perverted the practicioners of the religion become.

The Christian tradition did not repress sex. Mary Magdeline was a PROSTITUTE that Jesus saved from being stoned to death by the Jewish Clergy. She did not believe in him until that moment. She followed him until his crucifixion and believed in him until her death.

Tantra was a sect in India that held the sex act as a sacred rite. In certain far easter countries including Japan, sects still worship the penis in the form of a Phallic statue. There are a lot of religions that do not make a BIG ISSUE of sex.

Religion is peculiar and the BEST of them teach UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. It is sad that many people will not tolerate other cultures and other belief systems.

It is in places like this board where participants are interested in a non-mainstream subject where all seem to be the most tolerant. That is a sad connotation to the state of religion in the world today.

I hope that we all realize that the REAL lesson of September 11th is that the only thing that should be intolerable is intolerance itself.

A-1

...those who doubt the sensuousness of the Bible should read "The Songs of Solomon". Youth is the time for falling in love but it can happen at any time. I long to see a "love story" involving a Eunuch in the archive. My attempt was the last episode of "the last night for Briony" but I am not satisfied with it. Somehow it is not what I wanted it to be.

The Songs of Solomon are, perhaps, are the most beautiful love verses ever penned bar none! Keep in mind that Solomon had around 250 wives and 300 concubines. That is what would have happened if Elvis Presley were an ancient Jewish king.

Truly, we find some who have this type of sexual charisma today, but somehow the wisdom of Solomon has escaped them for the most part.

Well, I have "overposted" my welcome here, I think, so I will sign off for now.

A-1

Et Al,

This is an interesting bit of discourse, in my faith, all things are governed by a simple/complex rule;

"An Ye harm None, do as thou wilt."

It also can become Very interesting as the person who is learning interprets ‘harm None'.

This Rede does Not give Licence. It also Demands the utmost in Personal responsibility.

i have always felt an attraction towards eunuchs, but i have never fet that this was a religious issue. personally, i would doubt that it would be, but that is my own humble opinion.

A-1, thank you for trying to keep the Jesuses properly separated on the Archive. It’s easy to just remember that I’m Jesus A., and the other one is Jesus H. (O.K., O.K., I know that someone here will be offended by blasphemy, but I can’t imagine accepting any diety who doesn’t have a sense of humor.)

Anyway, to get back to the original question. The only current mainstream religious group that I am aware of practicing castration is the hijira of India, most of whom (85 to 90%) are Hindu. They are accepted AS Hindu by most, but not all, other Hindus. They worship the standard Hindu dieties and take part in Hindu ceremonies. The other 10+% begin life as Moslems, but are apparently not accepted as Moslem by other Moslems in India. Most of them also begin to practice Hindu ceremonies and to honor the Hindu dieties. I have read one Indian sociologist who claims that no hijira begin life in any of the other religious groups in India. I’m doubtful, and expect that there must be a handful of Christian, Buddhist and Jain hijira somewhere in India.

Paolo suggested that there might still be some Skoptsy around. This is a reasonable supposition. A group was reported on in the 1970s in the Ukraine. There have been at least a couple of independent reports of a small group of Skoptsy in Turkey (where they need to stay very much under cover in a mostly Moslem state).

The Skoptsy would claim to be the only TRUE Christians. Their theology included the idea that Adam and Eve were created without sex, in the true image of God - both of them. (As A-1 reminds us, all angels are sexless too. In Constantinople, court eunuchs were sometimes mistaken for angels when they traveled the city, and, according to some reports, vice versa as angels managed to travel in cognito as eunuchs.)

According to the Skoptsy, the addition of sex to humans was their punishment for disobedience of God’s will. Theologians, of course, have a field day with an assertion like this, but hermeneutics is not an exact science and this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Genesis! Read it yourself. Skoptsy argue(d) that castration returns men to their original state, as created in the image of God. (Women had their breasts and labia removed.) They interpret Revelation 14:4 as meaning that the Judgement will not come until there are 144,000 Christian eunuchs who were castrated before they experienced any sexual activity.

There are a great many mentions of eunuchs in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. It has been argued by historians that there are more mentions of castration and eunuchs per thousand words in the Bible than in any other long, connected text from the ancient world. They were clearly very much in people’s minds. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, at least Daniel and Nehemiah, among the prophets, were eunuchs. Many other eunuchs figure prominently in the narrative.

Christians tend to split as to whether they prefer the Old Testament or the New. There are clearly differences between them in many areas. Some favor the thought that the birth of Jesus superceded the Old Testament. Some favor the primacy of the Law of the Torah. The Old Testament has an emphasis on reproduction, the New has an emphasis on chastity.

Whether or not there are other “Christian” groups that practice castration, I do not know. My piece on The Evangelical Church of the Lambs of Christ was a projection into contemporary Los Angeles of Skoptsy theology married to Fundamentalism. It COULD happen.

That there are groups outside the mainstream faiths is almost certain. Heaven’s Gate can’t possibly be the only such group. They just haven’t come to our attention yet.

Jesus mentions :

JesusA (imported) wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2002 8:13 pm In Constantinople, court eunuchs were sometimes mistaken for angels when they traveled the city, and, according to some reports, vice versa as angels managed to travel in cognito as eunuchs.

Just as sort of an aside, but the Author John Julius Norwich writes in his series of books about Byzantium, that artwork of the time often depicted angels dressed as eunuchs (of that period, as far as dress).

Don't ask me what page it's on - there's 3 books, and they're all huge ... it's in there somewhere.

:p

While this thread is current I would like to describe (confess?) one of my most secret fantasies.

I have always (20 years or so, anyway) had a secret ambition to start a religious order that is ran by female priestesses and the men accepted into the inner circle as priests would have to become eunuchs. The eunuch priests would not be in Mistress/slave relationship like in a BDSM scene, but have a respected position within the monastic community. The head chamberlain (a eunuch) would rank just below the head matron or high priestess.

The order wouldn’t advocate emasculation for the general population. Those who aspired to become eunuch priests would be answering a very special calling. They would have to be tested and deemed worthy by the order before they could receive the rite of castration and initiation. Becoming a eunuch would not guarantee that the former male would get to cuddle and snuggle with the priestesses. He would simply be assigned duties and living quarters within the monastery. Any relations that might transpire between the eunuchs and priestesses would be voluntary between the individuals; neither a right nor a rite.

The women would probably also have to make some kind of commitment to celibacy (but not necessarily to chastity) to become a priestess. This would not preclude nights on the town with virile men. But within the confines of the monastery there could only be women and eunuchs. (Kind of like the Forbidden City in China.) Both priestesses and eunuchs would be free to resign their posts and return to the mundane world. However, since the eunuch would have made a physical commitment by his alteration, it is unlikely the eunuchs would ever elect to return to a life in the world at large. The order wouldn’t be a cult in the strictest terms. No one would be coerced to enter and no one would be coerced to remain.

For lack of a better term I have referred to the order as a monastic community. Such words as monastery, cloister, abbey, and convent carry a connotation I don’t wish to convey. They conjure up images of gloomy medieval asceticism. Nothing could be farther from my own vision. Such religious complexes of the order would be seats of learning and research, where members could pursue the arts and science. They would actually become small universities in their own right. In fact, they would resemble the campus of a small college. The order would frequently host joyous festivals open for the general public.

I don’t know if anything like this would appeal to anyone on this board. It would definitely require women to become interested as much as men (future eunuch priests). Otherwise, it will remain nothing more than a bizarre male fantasy. Also, it probably couldn’t evolve to the level described above during the lifetime of most adults living today. We could see nothing more than the humble beginnings of the order. It would require a commitment to something that would not come to fruition until after we were long gone.

I just thought I would present the idea. Is this just a jerk-off fantasy or does it have potential? Comments?

Farrell

Most Christian churches teaches that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because God judged their homosexual lusts. I tend to disagree. Gay people were found in all the cities all around the known world at that time, not only in those cities. If God struck at gay people, He would have destroyed those other cities as well. I also don't believe that all the citizens were gay, so why destroy all the people? For me to accept that hundreds of men and boys wanted to have sex with two men out of love or lust is unthinkable. Where have this ever happened elsewhere in history? After an orgy of such proportions, any man would most probably die from internal injury.

The Bible states at many places what the "sin exceeding" of Sodom and Gomorrah is. Yes, A1 is correct. The angels was moved to destruction because of RAPE. Remember, in those days is was required that any person entering a city had to report to the authorities at the town square. There they had to inform the authorities regarding their business in that city. The Bible states that Sodom and Gomorrah (and three other surrounding cities) just survived a terrible war against king Kedorlaomer of Elam. (Genesis 14) The authorities of Sodom and Gomorrah were obviously very alert to covert activities from the defeated enemies. The men attacking Lot's house were angry because they most likely reckoned those men (angels) as spies. The angels wanted to go to the square when they entered the city, but Lot convinced them to join him in his house right away. Those years (and even today at places) men RAPE other men not out of lust, but rather to humiliate. The Romans also had this reputation. Lot gave his daughters to be RAPED and BEATEN ("Lot told those men to do to his daughter as they pleased) but the mob wanted to punish those spies (angels). Just think for yourself...it's not in gay people's nature to want sex with a woman. The gay men I know cannot even remotely consider sexual relations with a woman. Why would Lot then give woman to gay men? Lot gave his daughters to be tortured in the angel's stead. This same thing actually happened somewhere else in the OT where a girl was wrongfully killed. The prophet then cut her up into 12 pieces which was sent to the 12 tribes of Israel.

So, what was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Ezekiel 16:49-50 declares, "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me...". These "detestable things before me" could include sexual immorality, but those cities were destroyed for lots of reasons..."sin exceeding". The lack of hospitality was a big reason for their destruction as well. God takes this kind of sin quite seriously. Even Jesus said to his disciples that if the "lost sheep of Israel" did not welcome them in their homes..."Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city."

ALBEIT...their are two places in the Bible where I cannot get past the fact that the text condemns homosexual acts. It is right at this point that I recommend that my fellow Christian gay brothers go celibate and even consider castration. Up to them of course.

How did you manage to dig up a 12 year old thread? Ground penetrating radar?

hehe

A bit off topic, but...

One explanation I've read for God ordering the destruction of a civilization (Whether by His doing, or having the Israelites do it), is the presence of the Nephelim (Genesis 6, KJV). Those giants were in the land, before the flood, and then again after. The Nephelim, for those who believe, were the offspring of Fallen Angels and human women. They weren't nice people, and in each instance of one of these bloodbaths, you'll find that the civilization was made up of them and those who followed them.

I also once countered a person who thought that any castrated male couldn't go to Heaven, based on Deuteronomy about having been "wounded in the stones or having his privy member cut off...not entering the congregation of the Lord," with this - if God doesn't like eunuchs, then why'd He hang out with Daniel and the lot of them? Why that guarantee is Isaiah? Your god would send an innocent little boy, let's say, castrated in childhood, to Hell? Sounds like a god I want nothing to do with.

It's much like saying "Well, Jesus loves me, but He hates you!"

Back to the subject at hand. Other than a few cults, I think we're still out of luck on a modern, accepted religion that advocates castration.

Paolo wrote: Fri Dec 26, 2014 9:59 am How did you manage to dig up a 12 year old thread? Ground penetrating radar?...

Yeah! I just noticed myself. I was actually going through old posts out of boredom but did not realize I actually commented on one. Interesting topic though.