sexuality-and-religion

"A man's wife is permitted to him. Therefore, a man may do whatever he desires with his wife. He may engage in relations whenever he desires, kiss any organ he desires, engage in vaginal or other intercourse, or engage in physical intimacy without relations, provided he does not release seed in vain. ... Nevertheless, it is pious conduct for a person not to act frivolously concerning such matters, and to sanctify himself at the time of relations, as explained in Hilchot Deot. He should not depart from the ordinary pattern of the world. For this act was [given to us] solely for the sake of procreation. ... Our Sages do not derive satisfaction from a person who engages in sexual relations excessively and frequents his wife like a rooster. This reflects a very blemished [character]; it is the way underdeveloped people conduct themselves. Instead, everyone who minimizes his sexual conduct is praiseworthy, provided he does not neglect his conjugal duties, without the consent of his wife."

"An adult man who engaged in intercourse with a minor girl less than three years old has done nothing, as intercourse with a girl less than three years old is tantamount to poking a finger into the eye. In the case of an eye, after a tear falls from it another tear forms to replace it. Similarly, the ruptured hymen of the girl younger than three is restored."

"May the lady of the right commands and inalienable divine powers, Nance, be praised in all the countries!"

"The lady, the matriarch of Enlil, Nance, the lady of abundance who lives in in the Land, [...] the child of Enki, acting as a good woman for a good household, is to make the appointments. After she, as a good woman for a good household, has made the appointments, the regular offerings and daily goods of the house arrive unfailingly from the Bursaj."

"The went into the sacristy and made glittering silver ecde cups ready for her. The temple cook [...] and prepared hot and cold food for her. [...] After the meat had arrived in large bowls and cool water had been brought from the Sirara-canal, after the festival trappings had arrived from Lagac and wine had been brought from the countryside, her great oven which vies with the great dining hall, Nance's shrine of food offerings, was humming."

"There is perfection in the presence of the lady. Lagac thrives in abundance in the presence of Nance. She chose the cennu in her holy heart and seated Ur-Nance, the beloved lord of Lagac, on the throne. She gave the lofty sceptre to the shepherd. She adorned Gudea with all her precious divine powers. The shepherd chosen by her in her holy heart, Gudea, the ruler of Lagac, placed the lyre Cow-of-Abundance among the tigi drums and placed the holy balaj drum at its side. While sacred songs and harmonious songs were performed before her, the kintur instrument praised the temple. The chief musician played the ibex horn for her: the song 'The house has been granted powers from the abzu, the sacred song of the house of about the princely powers was performed."

"She is concerned for the orphan and concerned for the widow. She does not forget the man who helps others, she is a mother for the orphan; Nance, a carer for the widow, who always finds advice for the ; the lady who gives protection for refugees. She seeks out a place for the weak. She swells his collecting basket for him; she makes his collecting vessel profitable for him. For the righteous maiden who has taken her path, Nance chooses a young man of means. Nance raises a secure house like a roof over the widow who could not remarry."

"She is beer mash, the mother is yeast, Nance is the cause of great things: her presence makes the storehouses of the land bulge and makes the honey [...] like resin in the storerooms. Because of her, there stand vessels with ever-flowing water; because of Nance, the baskets containing the treasures of the Land (𒌦) cover the ground like the silt of the river."

"There is a city, there is a city whose powers are apparent. Nijin is the city whose powers are apparent. The is the city whose powers are apparent. The mountain rising from the water is the city whose powers are apparent. Its light rises over the secure temple; its fate is determined. There is perfection in the city; the rites of mother Nance are performed accordingly. Its lady, the child born in g, Nance, the lady of the precious divine powers, is now to return."

"Nance, sister praised by the Anuna! Mother, beautiful matriarch of Enlil! Nance, delighting in her pelican, erected a lapis lazuli shrine, and set the holy pelican by her feet. [...] She who loves the fishes and birds! [...] You are she who does not belittle! [...] Mistress mother Nance, it is sweet to praise you!"

"Upon the water like a large pelican. Stepping onto earth from heaven."

"I, the lady, will ride on my boat, I will ride home. I will ride on the prow of the boat, I will ride home." Its canopy of gold and fragrant cedarwood sparkles for her on the sea. Its cabin shines for her like rejoicing moonlight on the sea. "My husband is the tax collector of the sea, Nindara is the tax collector of the sea."

"Fishes will grow for her in the sea. Fishes fly around for her like swallows."

"At Nance's house, the river of the ordeal cleanses a person. [...] No obstinate or threatening utterance shall arise."

"At new year, on the day of rites, the lady libates water on the holy. [...] On the day when the bowls of rations are inspected, Nance also inspects the servants during the appointments. Her chief scribe Nisaba places the precious tablets on her knees and takes a golden stylus in her hand. She arranges the servants in single file for Nance and then it will be decided whether or not a leather-clad servant can enter before her in his leather, whether or not a linen-clad servant can pass before her in his linen. Any registered and [...] hired person about whom observers and witnesses claim to witness his fleeing from the house will be terminated in his position. [...] The king who always cares for the faithful servants, Haia, the man in charge of registration, registers on a tablet him who is said to be a faithful servant of his lady but deletes from the tablet her who is said not to be the maidservant of her lady. [...] These words are ultimate; nothing is to be added to these rites."

"The runner-fish (kackac) hastens (kac) to her. The gurgur fish makes the sea surge up (gurgur) for her. The flash-fish (jiri) makes the sea sparkle (jir) for her."

"A fish is held in her hand as a staff. [...] Fishes are put on her feet as sandals. [...] She has fishes wrapped around her body as a regal garment."

"I am the mistress, so let my birds assemble for me where the sheaves are gathered! I am Nance, so let my birds assemble for me where the sheaves are gathered! Let the birds of heaven and earth stand at my service! Let every bird without a name bring offerings!"

"My lady, your divine powers are mighty powers, surpassing all other divine powers; Nance, there are no divine powers matching your powers. An, the king, looks joyfully at you, as you sit with Enlil on the throne-dais where the fates are to be determined. Father Enki determined a fate for you. Nance, child born in Eridug, sweet is your praise."

"[T]he lady of the storerooms, [...] with vessels with ever-flowing water and with [...] reed containers which never become empty, she ordered her herald, lord Hendursaja to make them profitable."

"The guarantor of boundaries, the expert in righteous words, lady, wise woman who founded Lagac. [...] The lady who like Enlil determines fates, who is seated on the throne of Sirara -- she, the pure one, looks at her powers. At the house which has been granted powers from the abzu, in Sirara, the gods of Lagac gather around her. To weigh silver with standard weights, to standardise the size of reed baskets, they establish an agreed ban measure throughout the countries."

"For the lady who cares for all the countries, the queen, mother Nance, sees into their hearts: the orphan, [...] the widow, [...] the waif delivered up to the powerful, the powerful delivered to the powerless, the mother who scolds at her child, the child who talks obstinately to his mother, the younger brother who talks against his elder brother or talks back his his father. [...] Nance sees into the heart of the Land as if it were a split reed."

"Anyone who [...] his hand and reaches out for something forcefully, and whose hand matches his mouth and who commits violence, who changes a firm foundation or alters a marked out border, who is rushing to the place of oath, [...] who desire something after having acquired something, who does not say "I have eaten" after having eaten, and does not say "I have drunk" after having drunk, and then says, "I will set a bowl before you, I will filter beer for you"; [...] then Nance does not allow him to eat any bread with fat or shining eggs, because of the violation."

"Once a certain calumny is spread, it remains effective till your dying day and beyond... Thus, the rape of four nuns in Jhabua kept figuring in 1999 Christian lists of "Hindu atrocities on Christians" even when a largely Christian gang of local tribals pleaded guilty... Yet the calumny continued to spread, even in supposedly neutral sources."

"In particular, all manner of small incidents within the Christian community were at once blamed on the evil hand of Hindu nationalism. In Kandhamal, Orissa, a Christian man murdered a girl and her little brother. At once, a cry went up in the secularist and Christian media that Hindu nationalists had perpetrated the crime. When the official investigation revealed the true story, it was reported only marginally in Indian papers and not at all in the international media, which had eagerly carried the initial allegations. Likewise, in the Central-Indian town of Jhabua, a quarrel among mostly christianized tribals led to the rape of four nuns. With no Hindu nationalists in sight, the media decided nonetheless that this was an act of Hindu nationalist cruelty against the poor hapless Christian minority. Though the official investigation confirmed the total innocence of the Hindu nationalists in this affair..., their guilt has been consecrated by endless repetition in the media. While the media in India couldn't prevent the truth from quietly making itself known, the international media have never published a correction, and the story of "four nuns in Jhabua raped by Hindu nationalists now keeps on reappearing as an evergreen of anti-Hindu hate propaganda."

"In 1999, they tried to make the most of a spate of incidents between Christians and non-Christian tribals in which a few Christians got killed (mercifully far fewer than the periodic harvest of martyrs in Pakistan). They falsely blamed Hindu activists for some inter-Christian rape cases and for a series of bomb attacks against churches, which turned out to be the handiwork of a Pakistan-based Muslim group, Deendar Anjuman. Before ill-informed but consequential international audiences such as the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, they managed to uphold their original story, but in India the campaign to blame Hindu activists for everything had badly lost its credibility."

"These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh."

"Distortive or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism. There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation. No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindus. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish. And foreign correspondents used to trusting their Indian secularist sources have likewise developed a habit of swallowing and relaying highly distorted news stories. Usually, the creation of a false impression of the Indian communal situation is achieved without outright lies, relying rather on the silent treatment for inconvenient facts and a screaming overemphasis on convenient ones. (...) So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindus. Even if you are found out, most of the public will never hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences.(...) These days, noisy secularists lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in Jhabua, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh and more recently in the court verdict on the matter. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician's two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter, who came forward to clarify that she happened to be in the US at the time of the “facts”. Harsh Mander has already been condemned by the Press Council of India for spreading false rumours about alleged Hindu atrocities in his famous column Hindustan Hamara. Teesta Setalwad has reportedly pressured eyewitnesses to give the desired incriminating testimony against Hindus in the Gujarat riots."

"In the worldwide perception of Hindu nationalism, the association with raping nuns and bombing churches has stuck."

"It was predicted that communal violence would increase a hundredfold if the BJP were allowed to come to power. In reality, the BJP term in power has been the most peaceful year since decades. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, Islamic killings of Hindus have markedly decreased. That terrorists killed twenty Hindus in Jammu (an incident that went strictly unreported in the Western media) on the eve of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s peace mission to Pakistan is first of all the responsibility of the killers themselves, even if not preventing this massacre was secondarily also a failure of the security forces. Note that most of the victims of the remaining communal violence were Hindus -- hardly the doing of the Hindu nationalist government. The Christian missionary lobby had aptly sensed the frustration of the India-watchers at seeing the “unexpected” success of the BJP in maintaining communal peace, hence its initiative to launch an international slander campaign alleging BJP atrocities against the Christians. More than ever, they could count on the foreign experts to amplify their propaganda. The world media consumer was told about the rape of four nuns and about the killing of a Christian girl and her little brother “by Hindu fundamentalists”; but not about the subsequent finding that the culprits had in fact been Christians. [..] In their desperation, the secularists tried to make the most of a few incidents in tribal areas with a history of Hindu-Christian friction. An eager international press guzzled down the stories, which passed into the received wisdom and the US Congressional Record. They have firmly remained there, even after allegations of a Hindutva hand in the matter (as in the Jhabua rape case, an inter-Christian crime) had been proven false in the court of law."

""Nuns have been raped", according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which blamed "Hindu nationalism" in a report presented nearly a year after the Jhabua incident, when the truth was already well-known."

"A climate has been created in which every allegation against Hindu activists enjoys a priori credibility while every complaint of Hindu victims is shrugged off or even maligned as hate propaganda... A similar case is the rape of four nuns in Jhabua, also in 1998: in spite of Christian allegations, it turned out that Hindu militancy had nothing to do with the crime and that half of the gang of perpetrators were tribal Christians themselves, yet this "rape of nuns by Hindu fanatics" keeps reappearing in press stories about "Hindu atrocities on Christians"."

"Among others, the fable of the Greeks, that the constellations of Piscis Australis, the Southern Fish, was the fish into which Venus transformed herself to escape from the terrible giant Typhon. This evidently arose from the astrological doctrine, that the sign Pisces is the exaltation of Venus. That this original intent of mythology was afterwards corrupted both by poets and priests, there needs no argument to prove, as it is abundantly evident in history; but that fact only serves to confirm its real and reasonable origin. Let it no longer be supposed that the sages of the East occupied themselves in inventing childish and unmeaning fables. When unlocked by the key of astrology, the secrets of ancient mythology are replete with science, harmony, and intelligence."

"The force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes, and seemed to be as potent as X-rays; but in America neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force — at most as sentiment. No American had ever been truly afraid of either."

"Fair Venus shines Even in the eye of day ; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of softened radiance with her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace ; while meekened Eve, Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires Through the Hesperian gardens of the west, And shuts the gates of day."

"For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a MaCaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros."

"When archaeologists discover the missing arms of Venus de Milo, they will find she was wearing boxing gloves."

"Hey, Venus, I have two words for you, Aphrodite said. Venus hesitated and glanced over her shoulder at her ex-roommate. Aphrodite smiled her best mean-bitch sneer and said, 'Re. Bound.' She paused and gave a bithy smirk and then said, 'Good luck with that.'"

"I wol yow telle, as was me taught also, The foure spirites and the bodies sevene, By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene. The firste spirit quiksilver called is, The seconde orpyment, the thridde, ywis, Sal armonyak, and the firthe brimstoon. The bodys sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon: Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe, [[Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe, Saturnus leed, and Jupiter is tyn, And Venus coper, by my fader kyn!"

"Before the use of asteroids, the only significators of the feminine in traditional chart interpretation were the Moon and Venus. The socially acceptable roles for women were the Moon as mother and Venus as mate."

"Aeneas' mother is a star? No; a goddess. I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite"...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light...br>It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy."

"Could any State on Earth Immortal be, Venice by Her rare Government is She; Venice Great Neptunes Minion, still a Mayd, Though by the warrlikst Potentats assayed; Yet She retaines Her Virgin-waters pure, Nor any Forren mixtures can endure; Though, Syren-like on Shore and Sea, Her Face Enchants all those whom once She doth embrace, Nor is ther any can Her bewty prize But he who hath beheld her with his Eyes: Those following Leaves display, if well observed, How she long Her Maydenhead preserved, How for sound prudence She still bore the Bell; Whence may be drawn this high-fetchd parallel, Venus and Venice are Great Queens in their degree, Venus is Queen of Love, Venice of Policie."

"The great beauty and striking presence of Venus led to an association by the Greeks with Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte and Venus are other names given to variations of this goddess in Western history, all associated with the planet. A knowledge of close coincidence between the cycles of Venus and human pregnancy may have contributed to the persistent, but nonexclusive of female characteristic to Venus. Western attributes The Venus de Milo and Botticelli's birth of Venus (popularly known as Venus on the Half Shell) are icons of this imagery in Western culture."

"Nowhere in recorded history has an awareness of the short-and long-term Earth-sky polyrhythrns been as advanced and integrated into cultural life as in the knowledge and beliefs of the ancient Mesoamericans, and in particular the classic Maya of Central America, who flourished between AD 300 and 900. Maya felt that we owed our existence to Venus who they called Kukulcan and their astronomer-priests repaid the debt with the blood of human sacrifice. Unfortunately, almost everything we know about the Maya’s sophisticated and complex system of Venus observations/ computations/prediction/worship comes from only four books that escaped the book-burning frenzy of the invading Christians. Included in this meticulously painted bark paper books is an abundance of astronomical information, including table of solar and lunar motions and table of Venus ephemeris, or table of motions, which is accurate for over a hundred years. The entire Mayan calendar, as were those of all Mesoamerican civilizations, was based on the 260-days Venus appearance interval. The 260-day Mayan calendar is still in use today in many areas of Guatemala. The 260-day Venus interval and the 365-day year come into phase every 18,980 days, or 53 years."

"As long as Venus remained an object of distant observation in our sky, there was no way to be sure, and science fiction writers were free to populate Venus with ocean-dwelling beasts and evil dictators (news of the problematical microwaves was first published the same year that Zsa Zsa was thrilling audiences with her Venusian antics). We had to go there to demand some answers. This is where the rockets enter the story... the cold-war “space race” was on, science was along for the ride, onward to the planets."

"When their city was occupied by the Gauls, and the Romans, who were besieged in the Capitol, had made military engines from the hair of the women, they dedicated a temple to the Bald Venus."

"Garcia: Venus has aligned with Mars, which means love is in the air and maybe we will have weekends off"

"If our squawking pacifists were rational, they would perceive that war can be ended only by abolishing the several species of mammals called human; our spacecraft have shown us that Mars and Venus are perfectly warless worlds."

"Venus, in our abstract North, in this chilly Christian world, must envelop herself in folds of heavy furs, so as not to freeze."

"From Venus, the goddess of love, this word [Venereal] refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science the word “disease” was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing."