The Hieros Gamos

Few things are less understood than the hieros gamos the sacred marriage.
Considered to be the Holy Grail of sexual rituals, is it within reach of comprehension
and explanation?
Philip Coppens

One of the most intriguing, nebulous and controversial

topics of history and magic is the hieros gamos, the
sacred marriage. Believed to incorporate both sex and
ritual, it should not come as a surprise that throughout
history, it has attracted many and often, those who should
truly well stay clear of it. Its fame has meant that the theme
was used by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, where he
described it as how man could achieve a climactic instant
when his mind went totally blank and he could see God.
Brown is not the only one who has linked the experience
with tantrism and the withholding of orgasm. He is, of
course, also the man who considered Mary Magdalenes
vulva to be the Holy Grail.

The quest to define the hieros gamos foremost is one of answering the question who and when it was
performed. Some including Dan Brown link it to temple prostitution, while others see it as the king
of the country who marries the land in the form of a high priestess to rejuvenate it. For the
Greeks, it was more abstract. They considered it a marriage between the gods and hence apparently
outside of the reach of ordinary human beings. It was only in the Jewish and medieval tradition that the
hieros gamos became linked with magic and ritual and it is therefore here that we find the current
obsession with it. As such, in 1605, Cesare della Riviera wrote that in Europe, the tracks of these
ancient rituals pass through the Gnostic schools, the alchemical and cabalistic currents of the Middle
Ages and Renaissance where numerous alchemical texts can be read on two levels.

What is the hieros gamos? At its core, the sacred marriage is more of a sacrament than a ritual. It is a
marriage between husband and wife, but is of a sacred nature: it is a marriage blessed by the gods,
with active participation of those deities, present in the act of lovemaking between the two humans.
Focusing on the king having sexual intercourse with the high priestess is thus largely a misnomer, as
the king was equally a high priest, and the queen a high priestess.
In the 20th century, Carl Gustav Jung studied the hieros gamos through the Rosarium Philosophorum,
a series of twenty woodcuts, printed in Frankfurt in 1550. The images have a clear sexual and royal
nature: a king and queen are depicted with the sun and the moon, sharing a bed, performing sexual
acts, as a result of which they become one, and are transformed. And it is with these woodcuts that we
come to the core of the hieros gamos: indeed, the primary purpose of the sacred marriage is that two
equals, twin souls, a husband and wife, reunite through the hieros gamos. In short: the hieros gamos,
or sacred marriage, was not a marriage of just any human beings, but of twin souls.
 The concept of twin souls more popularly
known as soulmates is as old as civilisation
itself. Isis and Osiris were both sister and brother
and husband and wife: twins. Rather than seeing
this as an incestuous relationship, the ancient
Egyptians were using this imagery to portray a
complex metaphysical framework.
They like so many other religions believed
that each human being possessed a soul. That
soul was half of one unit, which consisted out of
one male and one female half. This meant that for
every human being alive, there was a perfect twin
soul. The quest in this lifetime was to find that
twin soul, and be reunited with it. This was the
truest of loves; the greatest quest. If not the Great
Work of Alchemy. The alchemist Nicolas Flamel
stated that he was only able to accomplish the
Great Work while in the presence of his wife
Perenelle, but it was equally accepted that the
majority of marriages here on earth, was not
between twin souls.

Once the twin souls had found themselves, apart

from understanding the true depths of love and
kinship they shared throughout their many
lifetimes together, the hieros gamos would be
completed at some point. What was it? It was
seen as God personally attending a sexual activity, in which the human beings male and female
each get infused by the divine essence of the male and female component of God.
The best-known historical example of such a sacred marriage is between King Solomon and Queen
Sheba. The story relates how the Queen of Sheba travelled from her homeland to meet Solomon, to
perform the hieros gamos with him.
This story is discussed by Kathleen McGowan in her fact-based novel Book of Love. She relates that
ancient traditions stipulate God had both a male and female aspect: El and Asherah. Tradition relates
that they desired to experience their great and divine love in a physical form and to share such
blessedness with the children they would create. Each soul who was formed was perfectly matched,
given a twin made from the same essence. [] Thus the hieros-gamos was created, the sacred
marriage of trust and consciousness that unites the beloveds into one flesh.

Echoes of the sacred marriage can be found in the Song of Songs, directly linked with Solomon and
describing love making. The title highlights it was the holiest of all songs, underlining its importance.
Margaret Starbird has pointed out that there are strong parallels between the Song of Songs and
poems to the Egyptian goddess Isis. Of course, both Solomon and Sheba and Isis and Osiris were
twin souls, and hence able to experience the hieros gamos.
The Song of Songs became very important for the Kabbalists, specifically following the Book of the
Zohar, which saw the Song of Songs as a prime example of the hieros gamos. It is in the Zoharic
Kabbalah that God is represented by a system of ten spheres, each symbolizing a different aspect of
God, who is perceived as both male and female. The Shekina was identified with Malchut, which was
identified with the woman in the Song of Songs. Her beloved was identified with Yesod, which
represents Gods foundation and the phallus or male essence.
Within the Jewish religion, Malchut and Yesod are El, the fatherly creator god, and his consort,
Asherah. He was identified with the bull and She with the mother goddess. Indeed, women who have
experienced the hieros gamos note that they have experienced this mother goddess energy, some
even mentally visiting some of her sanctuaries during the experience. The imagery also reveals how
long our ancestors have been familiar with this sacred marriage: the link between the bull and the
earth goddess is visible on the walls of Catal Huyuk, built in the 8th millennium BC.

The hieros gamos should therefore be more appropriately labelled the reunion of twin souls, while
incarnate in the body, through sexual activity, involving the active participation of the male and female
aspect of God: What God has put together, let no man separate.
Those who have experienced such union find it largely impossible to describe beyond words. They
are, however, capable of breaking down the experience in some components. The man will become
one with El, while the female melts with Asherah, the Queen of Heaven. During this union, it is
entirely possible that Asherah or El is more prominent in one partner than in the other. During these
encounters, the sexual activity exceeds and is different from a normal orgasm; it is normally more
intense, prolonged and multiple, whereby the orgasm itself is more energetic, rather than physical.
However, the presence of this divine energy should not be seen as a form of possession; normally, the
human sexual energy is equally present, and the sexual experience is a balance and interplay
between both energies. To put it crudely: the hieros gamos is a foursome: two human beings, and El
and Asherah operating with and through them.

Where does this leave the reputation of the hieros

gamos as a form of temple prostitution? Asherah
has been linked with the Mesopotamian Ishtar,
whose cult did involve sacred prostitutes.
However, should we perhaps see in these women
initiatrices: women who prepared and taught
certain methodologies as to how sacred sexuality
should be experienced between partners, so that
their union could lead to a sacred marriage?
Interestingly, the worlds oldest poem, The Epic
of Gilgamesh, relates how when Gilgamesh
discovers the wild man Enkidu, he sends him to
Shamhat, a priestess of Ishtar. She was
instructed to teach Enkidu how to live as a
cultural human being, suggesting that our
ancestors identified culture specifically with how
to make love properly the hieros gamos way.

These examples, and the example of Solomon

and Sheba, make it clear that the quest of the hieros gamos is not open to anyone: it is only the
bailiwick of twin souls. It is why Flamel noted that it was only possible to be performed with Perenelle,
clearly not only his wife, but also his twin soul. It is also not so much ritual, but total union of body,
mind and spirit: the two parts of one soul become united in the body, thus accomplishing in the body
what they were at the beginning of time: a unity. The Great Work. And this union was blessed by the
sacrament of the hieros gamos, in which God themselves, present at the separation of these souls at
the beginning of time, reunited and blessed the two lovers.
So even though tantric yoga as such has nothing to do with it, tantrism does know about this state of
perfect union and has labelled it Samadhi. It is the state where the respective individualities of each of
the participants are completely dissolved in the unity of cosmic consciousness the two units are
reunited. For tantrics, the deities are not El and Asherah, but Shakti and Shiva.

Because it is restricted to twin souls, the hieros gamos might not hold the sexual and ritual appeal
that many would like to give it. But it is nevertheless the most important sacrament of all, as it was the
completion of the quest of the soul in life: to find his twin soul and reunite, and within this love,
continue their life, combined.
People who have experienced the hieros gamos agree that this is a unique experience. One person
stated that during the hieros gamos, both partners experienced total orgasm, though this was without
any physical activity through a physical connection, the other partner experienced perfectly the
sexual stimulation the other person was sending in the mind in short, the partners were both not only
reading the other persons mind, but interacted within that mind as one unity of cosmic
consciousness. Another person described it as utter bliss or what heaven must have felt like. The
feeling of heaven on earth may indeed be what the hieros gamos was all about: the twin souls in
heaven, experiencing their divine union on earth. As above, so below?