Recently, I've been thinking about our "predecessors", the men and women who came before us who have had relationships with spirit beings. That got me thinking about the history of spirit love in general. The first chapter of Donald Tyson's Sexual Alchemy goes over a lot of key details, but I suspect that's not the full picture.
What do we know about the history of spirit love? How much do we know from records and tales, and how much was inevitably lost for one reason or another? Where did it all begin, if it ever did "begin" as we would know it? What made a bunch of spirits from God-knows-where decide that the human race was worth loving?
I'm curious to hear what you guys think on the matter.
History of Spirit Love
Re: History of Spirit Love
It sounds like an essay prompt.
I think if you put aside the race / spirit question, and reframe it as spiritual-sexual couplings between different kinds or different tribes of beings, it seems like it would be common in mythology but rare or secret in practice, especially in the more structured societies.
Could also consider that today there's a defined difference between a human and a spirit. To some ancients, a being was a being.
Which is another way of saying I don't think there's a history for this largely because it's a private matter probably.
As far as the why? Reciprocal energy, maybe opposites attract, maybe even social political marriage (I'm reaching with that last one like different clans having arranged marriages).
From the human side of things I think it's less thinking more doing.
I think if you put aside the race / spirit question, and reframe it as spiritual-sexual couplings between different kinds or different tribes of beings, it seems like it would be common in mythology but rare or secret in practice, especially in the more structured societies.
Could also consider that today there's a defined difference between a human and a spirit. To some ancients, a being was a being.
Which is another way of saying I don't think there's a history for this largely because it's a private matter probably.
As far as the why? Reciprocal energy, maybe opposites attract, maybe even social political marriage (I'm reaching with that last one like different clans having arranged marriages).
From the human side of things I think it's less thinking more doing.
-
Fightersword
- Posts: 145
- Joined: Wed May 25, 2022 9:55 pm
Re: History of Spirit Love
It's kind of hard to say because a lot of activities and experiences that revolved around those practices are meant in different ways than we mean it today. For example, Shamanic spirit wives were often closer to tutelary spirits than what we define as spirit lovers today. The shaman in question might have some spiritual experiences with the spirit, but they would also have their family in the normal way. The spirit wasn't there to be his wife or lover.
I think what made this happen, and I don't doubt that it's been happening in some form for all of human history, is what we have in common with these spirit lovers. That is: a strong desire for intimacy. If we are beings with souls and spiritual existences, and we make a good mate for a spirit, and both sides are willing to put in the time to develop that intimacy, then it makes no sense for those spirits to avoid humanity. At least that's how I see it. Given these relationships are so deeply personal and not worship-based, it's not surprising that we see the phenomenon only very rarely in history. There are some myths that allude to relationships such as these, though they tend to involve deities coming down and having sex with a human (Zeus is the obvious case, Aphrodite had that one lover as well) and then leaving. Given how people worshipped back then, this was a smaller step away from spirit lovers than it might seem to be today, though it's obviously still a good distance from our one to one, long term relationships. The rest of us would have just been seen as crazy, desperate, or both.
It's still funny to me: In terms of actual sense, a person who is having consistent experiences with a spirit, who looks at those skeptically, and who decides the spirit exists, has far more supportable reason to believe in that spirit than most Christians have to believe in God or Jesus. Yet, we're the ones who get smacked with the crazy stick, entirely because we're the minority. It's a testament to the fact that what we define as sane and insane on a society-wide level isn't based on what actually is sane or insane. That's not to say Christians are insane for believing in God, they certainly are not, just that there's a stronger case to claim that of them than people have to claim we're the insane ones.
I think what made this happen, and I don't doubt that it's been happening in some form for all of human history, is what we have in common with these spirit lovers. That is: a strong desire for intimacy. If we are beings with souls and spiritual existences, and we make a good mate for a spirit, and both sides are willing to put in the time to develop that intimacy, then it makes no sense for those spirits to avoid humanity. At least that's how I see it. Given these relationships are so deeply personal and not worship-based, it's not surprising that we see the phenomenon only very rarely in history. There are some myths that allude to relationships such as these, though they tend to involve deities coming down and having sex with a human (Zeus is the obvious case, Aphrodite had that one lover as well) and then leaving. Given how people worshipped back then, this was a smaller step away from spirit lovers than it might seem to be today, though it's obviously still a good distance from our one to one, long term relationships. The rest of us would have just been seen as crazy, desperate, or both.
It's still funny to me: In terms of actual sense, a person who is having consistent experiences with a spirit, who looks at those skeptically, and who decides the spirit exists, has far more supportable reason to believe in that spirit than most Christians have to believe in God or Jesus. Yet, we're the ones who get smacked with the crazy stick, entirely because we're the minority. It's a testament to the fact that what we define as sane and insane on a society-wide level isn't based on what actually is sane or insane. That's not to say Christians are insane for believing in God, they certainly are not, just that there's a stronger case to claim that of them than people have to claim we're the insane ones.