I'm Obsessed with Orphism!

I have been working very long hours the last few months, and my brain is feeling a little overheated. That may be why I've become obsessed with Orphism! When the spirits come calling they need to be acknowledged, hence this post. Maybe it will help my brain cool down.

Orpheus by Karoly Ferenczy, 1894

Orphism was a strain of Greek religious philosophy supposedly founded by Orpheus, the mythical bard. Orpheus was considered an expert on all things religious because he had descended to the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, and learned the secrets of life, death and the universe while he was down there. After failing to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living Orpheus founded an all male religious movement in Thrace. This outraged the Thracian woman, who wanted their men back, and they tore Orpheus into small pieces. His head continued to sing and prophesy after death, however, until it was finally buried by the Lesbian (and lesbian) poetess Sappho. As if this all doesn't make Orpheus sound queer enough, he also supposedly was the lover of Calais, the winged son of the North Wind.

My recent obsession with Orphism started when I was poking around the Web for information about Hercules. I've been interested in Herc ever since I was a child. He's most familiar to us by his Roman name, but the Greeks called him Herakles or Heracles, and he's appeared in many forms. He's a mortal hero who gained immortality, he's a constellation, he's a god on Mount Olympus, he's a shamanic figure (according to scholar Walter Burkert), he's syncretized with the Phoenician god Melqart, and he's one of the Daktyls, the divine helpers of the great mother goddess Rhea Cybele.

And, according to some Orphic texts described by a writer named Damascius, he was also a primal god who gave birth to the universe. According to these texts, in the beginning of time there existed only water and dirt. These two mingled to produce slime, and from the slime was born unaging Herakles, also known as Time. This version of Herc was a giant snake with three heads, those of a bull, a lion, and a god. Some accounts also give him a pair of wings growing from his shoulders. Nice!

Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, with egg, in one of the 1980s Luigi Cozzi Hercules films.

This primordial Herakles is described as bisexual, or hermaphroditic. He's a big musclebound snake deity, so naturally he makes love to himself. Be honest - wouldn't you do the same it you were the only being in the universe? This act of divine self-love produces a gigantic cosmic egg, which is filled with so much Herculean super-cosmic love power that it explodes into two halves. The upper half becomes the sky, or Ouranos (Uranus to the Romans) and the lower half becomes Gaia, the earth.

The Orphic creation myths then continue in a vein similar to the standard mythic creation described by Hesiod. Ouranos and Gaia make love and give birth to the Titans, including Rhea and Kronos. Kronos eventually castrates Ouranos and declares himself king of the universe. To prevent his children from castrating him, he eats them as soon as his wife Rhea gives birth. Rhea is not too happy about this, and tricks him into eating a stone rather than her last child Zeus, who she raises secretly in a cave. Zeus defeats Kronos and the Titans, and kicks them down into the deep underworld of Tartarus. And then....

Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1823

And then, the Orphic creation myths deviate from the standard Greek myth. In a big way. According to a recently discovered parchment called the Derveni papyrus, Zeus is aware of prophecies that he too will someday be overthrown by a son. But he figures out a way to avoid this fate! The giant severed phallus of Ouranos, "the phallus who had first ejaculated the brilliance of heaven," is still flying around in the atmosphere. Zeus grasps it and swallows it down. By this act of cannibalistic oral sex he absorbs the universe's generative power into himself and becomes the supreme god.You see, Kronos was simply eating his divine offspring, but Zeus actually eats the generative source of all the gods and goddesses. He's not just going to be another player in history - he's going to be history itself.

Well, my brain feels a little cooler after getting some of this down in writing. I think you can see why Orphism is interesting to me as a gay man. It was founded by someone who loved men, and the original lesbian has a role to play as well. A giant, hermaphroditic, serpentine version of one of my favorite deities creates the world through some self-pleasure. And Zeus absorbs the power of the universe through oral sex. It's a fantastically queer view of religion and the universe, and I can understand why it was so popular in the ancient world.

Underneath the somewhat lurid mythology, Orphism also has things to say about the nature of the human soul and how we should all act in the world. Hopefully I'll get to write about those aspects of it soon.

A Brief History of Gay Werewolves: Part 1, the Ancient World

I have to confess, one of my favorite movies of all time is The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf.

I can't explain it, but something about this supremely cheesy movie really connects with me on a deep level. Maybe it's the basic premise - 1980s B movie superstar Sybil Danning is Stirba, the queen of the werewolves and she's hell-bent on world domination! Maybe it's the authentic Transylvanian settings combined with the low budget Hollywood faux punk rock fashion. Or maybe it's the catchy theme song, performed by a band called Babel. The howling punk rocker in the wrap around glasses really takes me back to my youth.

One thing very memorable about The Howling II is that it features a bisexual werewolf menage a trois between Stirba and a male and female minion. That's not something you'll see in any of the Twilight movies!

Hollywood generally portrays werewolves as physical monsters and lycanthropy as an infectious disease. One minute you're walking along the moors, minding your own business, and then - bam! You're bitten by a werewolf, strange hair grows on your body, and you start running around naked and attacking people. Sexual metaphor, anyone?

The real origins of the werewolf lie in ancient male initiations and in shamanic practices. Many all-male societies throughout history have identified with the power and strength of predatory animals. The leopard men of West Africa, and the berserkers ('bear shirts") and ulfhednar ("men clad in wolf skins") from Norse societies are just a few examples.

Shamans and witches across the world are able to travel in animal form, although it is usually their soul that is roaming abroad as an animal, not their physical body. For example, Norse legends tell how warriors' spirits would battle in the shape of bears or walruses while their bodies slept at home. In folktales, many witches meet their doom when their animal soul is accidentally killed by a hunter. And in 1692, a Livonian man named Thiess confessed he was a werewolf, but claimed he and the other werewolves traveled to Hell to battle evil witches for the fertility of the crops. Clearly, some ancient shamanic practices for a long time.

Werewolves make their earliest appearance in Greek mythology when King Lycaon of Arcadia murders his son Nyctimus, and then tries to feed him to Zeus in an attempt to discredit the god. Outraged, Zeus resurrects Nyctimus and turns Lycaon and his men into wolves. There may be a hidden gay theme here because in many Greek myths resurrection is a metaphor for homosexual initiation. For example, in a very similar story, King Tantalus kills his son Pelops and tries to feed him to the gods. They resurrect Pelops, but when he comes back from the dead he's so incredibly handsome that Poseidon takes him for a lover. Did something similar happen between Zeus and Nyctimus? The myths don't say, but I have my suspicions.

Lycaon turned into a wolf! Is the naked guy Nyctimus?

You would think the Arcadians learned their lesson, but it was rumored they still practiced human sacrifice in historic times.  A small piece of human flesh would allegedly be placed into a large pot of stew, and the man that accidentally ate it would be transformed into a wolf for nine years. If he abstained from eating human flesh during that time he would regain his original form. Around 400 BC, a former werewolf named Damarchus was declared the champion boxer at the Olympic games. I have no evidence that Damarchus was gay, but the Greeks did celebrate homosexuality and athletes competed naked and covered in oil. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Naked men and wolves also featured heavily in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated in mid-February each year until the Roman church outlawed it in the fifth century AD.

To celebrate this winter holiday, the Romans sacrificed a dog to the wolf-god Lupercus. This happened in the same cave where a she-wolf suckled the orphans Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome. Afterwards, young noblemen ran naked through the streets, striking women with bloody strips of dog skin to promote fertility.

Hercules and admirers.

The Romans had observed for Lupercalia for centuries, but weren't quite sure why they did it nude.  The sassy poet Ovid had an answer - it was ordained by the god Pan (who may have been Lupercus by another name).

According to Ovid, in the distant past Pan lusted after the voluptuous queen Omphale. One night he crept into a tent where she was sleeping with her love slave, Hercules. But when Pan ran his hands up under Omphale's dress, he got a surprise: Hercules and the queen had engaged in some cross-dressing, and he was really groping Hercules. Not being fond of rape, Hercules literally kicked Pan out of the tent. Pan skulked off into the hills.

Since that time, Pan has demanded his worshippers be naked so he wouldn't be surprised at what he was grabbing. Strangely, this Roman holiday of blood sacrifice, nude road races and drag queen musclemen gradually was transformed into our modern Valentine's Day.

So, in the ancient world there were wolves, werewolves, gay sex, and gender variance. Surprisingly, it's in the Middle Ages where all these things come together and gay werewolves have their heyday. I'll discuss that in my next post.

Dancing In A Cave

The ancient Greeks told a story that went something like this:

A long, long time ago, the great goddess Rhea gave birth to Zeus, who was destined to become king of the gods. During her contractions Rhea clawed at the earth in pain. Magically, five beautiful men emerged from the grooves her fingers made in the soil.

It had been foretold that Rhea's brother/husband Kronos would be overthrown by his children, and he had already eaten Zeus's five older siblings to prevent this prophecy from coming true. Rhea was determined that her final child wouldn't be consumed, so she deceived Kronos and presented him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, claiming it was her newborn son. Greedily, Kronos swallowed it without opening the cloth.

Rhea hid baby Zeus in a cave, and instructed the five beautiful earth-born men to guard him. They were armed with swords and shields, but never used them for violence. Instead, they used them when they danced.

Even though he was a god, Zeus was just a baby and sometimes screamed and cried. To prevent Kronos or other malevolent forces from hearing the divine baby, and to keep him entertained, the men would dance inside the cave, singing, chanting and clashing their swords and shields as they moved in ecstasy.

A Korybant dancing over the infant Zeus.

These dancing demi-gods were known by several names: Korybantes or Kuretes ("the youths"), or the Daktyls ("fingers"). Some Greek writers claimed these were all distinct groups of deities incorrectly being lumped together, while others felt they were all the same deities. Their entry at Theoi.com gives you a good idea of how ancient writers viewed the dancers.

In addition to protecting baby Zeus, the Korybantes also protected the divine infants Dionysos and Zagreus. They helped Minos locate his missing son Glaucus, who had fallen into a giant vat of honey. These divine dancers also taught humankind the arts of dancing, music, metallurgy and magic, much like the fallen angels do in the ancient Jewish Book of Enoch. Some writers also claim that the Korybantes were transformed into lions and pull the chariot of the goddess Cybele. The contemporary scholar Walter Burkert notes that many cities in ancient Greece had societies of sacred male dancers who identified themselves with the Korybantes and enacted their role in rituals.

A few weeks ago I was in Provincetown and went dancing at a late night party in a bar's basement. The ceiling was low, the lighting was dim, and the music was a wordless throb. The room was full of men, some shirtless, some in crazy drag, and almost all of them dancing. I spent the night on the dance floor, dancing with friends and just dancing in the crowd.

Still dancing in the cave?

 I've gone to a lot of gay dance clubs in my life, and every now and then something clicks and I'm transported into a deeper realm. This was one of those nights. Sure, I was really in a seedy room with cheap decorations, but for a few hours we had broke through the wall separating our mundane world from the spiritual one that hides just out of sight.

That night, I was dancing in a cave with other semi-divine beings. We were the ancient earth-born men, working our magic through music and motion.