Chapter 11 a holy altar

Sex is the most natural relationship between men and women. The so-called "most natural relationship" is the most natural, most natural, least forced, and most in line with nature, so it will happen naturally.Because sex is the most natural relationship between men and women, in China, when it comes to "relationship between men and women", it often refers to sex, and sex is often euphemistically called "relationship between men and women", or simply "men and women". ".However, for a long period of history, this most natural relationship has also been the most mysterious, most hidden, and most shady relationship.Not only does it fail to appear in the hall of elegance, even outside the "hall of elegance", in the poor streets and alleys, on the edge of the fields, it may not be so "sounding", and most of them still have to use slang words, slang, folk songs, ditties, codes, etc. Riddles, allegory and other forms of tortuous expression, at least have to turn a corner, not so naked.

As for formal education, there is no such thing as sex.China's traditional history attaches great importance to education and requires our next generation to be a knowledgeable and educated person.However, regardless of ancient education or modern education, the cultural knowledge imparted does not include sex.It seems that sex is neither culture nor knowledge, or something that can be learned without a teacher.As a result, knowledge about sex can only be passed on from parents (mainly mothers) to their children in a vague way before marriage. Since there is no such thing as sex education, and sex itself cannot be prohibited or suppressed, teenagers who yearn for sex knowledge have no choice but to use pornographic books as "teaching materials". The bad influence and serious consequences are self-evident .What's more serious is that long-term taboo will cause an abnormality in the psychology of a nation.Therefore, as soon as many Chinese people mention sex, or those related to sex, they will immediately become mysterious, even neurotic: or they are extraordinarily serious, and their faces cannot be more straight; or they are highly vigilant, stringy It can't be stretched anymore; or it looks weird, with a cold smile hanging on the corner of its mouth; or it's sneaky, with a deep light in its eyes.At least he would change the topic immediately, Wang Gu talked about him left and right, but regretted it after changing the topic.This is really not normal.It appears to demean sex, but in fact it exalts it.Let me ask, if sex, like the emperor, cannot be discussed casually, then doesn't it also have a "supreme status"?The result, of course, is to suppress and rebel, and to cover up the truth.

What's more, the relationship between men and women is not limited to sex, there can also be other relationships.For example, there can also be friendship, comradeship, etc.But in China, it seems that the relationship between men and women other than sex is not recognized.As a result, other relationships between men and women are inexplicably banned as sexual relationships, resulting in extremely abnormal social interactions between men and women.For example, using the method of creating "peachy news" to create confusion or attack others, etc.The reason why these methods can work is precisely because of the mystification of sex.

So, why is sex mystified in China and become a sensitive and taboo topic?This has to start from the beginning. In fact, in ancient primitive times, there was nothing unnatural about sex in China, just like in other nations in the world.At that time, sex was neither mysterious nor taboo, nor scary nor obscene.People don't have to be vague in their talk and they don't have to be sneaky in their actions.It is a very natural physiological behavior like eating, sleeping, excreting and so on. But it was also in primitive times, to be precise, about the early Neolithic age, that things began to change a bit.Sex is paid attention to as a particularly important thing, and sex, sexual organs, and sexual behavior are pushed onto the sacred altar and become objects of worship.This is the so-called "sex cult" in history.However, the purpose of this worship is not sex, but procreation.Therefore, its accurate name is not "sex worship", but "reproduction worship".

Reproductive worship was a solemn, sacred and vital matter in primitive times.Its ultimate goal is the continuation of the race; its immediate cause is the threat of death.Primitives had a short lifespan and a high mortality rate.According to research, the average life expectancy of the Nitadites is less than 20 years old, and no adult in the cavemen exceeds 30 years old, and the death rate may be as high as 50%.Natural disasters, accidents, injuries from wild animals, and enemy attacks may kill people anytime and anywhere; and medicine has not yet been invented, and a plague or a war may bring disaster to the entire ethnic group.In fact, a death rate as high as 50% is equivalent to telling us that the possibility of "inheritance" is only half; and the possibility of extermination is also almost half.This is really a matter of life and death, dangerous!

Fortunately, in the face of irresistible death and the threat of 50% "genocide", our ancestors showed a very calm and realistic attitude: since death is irresistible, it is better to create life than to resist death; Instead of dying, it is better to try to live more. Therefore, reproduction is regarded as the most important matter related to the survival of the race.However, the primitive ancestors still didn't understand the principle of reproduction.They have not yet established the "science" of reproduction, so inevitably a sense of mystery arises, and they believe that reproduction comes from a mysterious force.As long as this mysterious power is obtained, new life forms will be continuously created, and the life of the race will be preserved and continued.

In this way, the cult of reproduction was born. Reproductive worship was originally the worship of women, and first of all, the worship of female genitalia.Since all children are born to women, women and the female genitalia are therefore taken for granted as the source or dwelling place of the mystical genitalia.As a result, female genitalia (and later extended to male genitalia) were made into various images and models, and worshipped.Moreover, female genital idols are all shaped according to the state of relaxation, while idols of male genitalia are shaped according to the state of erection, because this is the state when they "exercise magic power", so it has the meaning of being worshiped separately from the human body.

However, the worship of female genitalia is, in the final analysis, the worship of man to himself.The effectiveness of this kind of worship is obviously to be discounted.The mysterious fecundity should come from and manifest in nature.Therefore, people's attention turned to those natural objects with particularly strong reproductive ability, such as fish. The fish is a symbol of the vulva. Why is fish a symbol of vulva?To put it bluntly, it is also very simple.From the outside, the shape of fish, especially the shape of two fish stacked on top of each other, is very similar to the female vulva; from the inside, the belly of the fish is full of children, with strong fecundity and the tendency of endless birth, which is enough to make people believe that there must be something in them. Embodies the mysterious reproductive power.Therefore, fish with many children and grandchildren became the object of envy, admiration and even worship by the ancestors.Primitive ancestors, especially women, hope that through this kind of worship, they can transfer the exuberant reproductive power of fish to themselves, or enhance their own functions.

The "Fish Sacrifice" and "Fish Pattern" in Yangshao Culture are forms of this kind of worship.The flounder pattern on the painted pottery of the Indus Valley Civilization, the goddess-turned-fish in the Indian epic, and the mermaid myth known to all women and children in Europe may all be explicit or implicit manifestations and remains of this worship.Due to the worship of fish, fish are regarded as the ancestors of the clan.Zhuanxu, the ancestor of the Xia nation, was a fishwife who was half man and half fish, that is, a mermaid whose upper body was human and lower body was fish.Yu's father (actually mother) Gun was also a fish, a "white-faced mermaid".

After entering the civilized age, the worship of fish is still preserved.In ancient times, the chariots used by noble ladies were called "Yuxuan", the letters conveying love were called "Fish Books", the "fish basket" carried by Avalokitesvara, and among the lanterns hung on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month were "fish lanterns". Wooden Pisces are displayed at wedding banquets in the rural areas of Shaanxi, and the New Year pictures of "There are fish every year" are posted almost all over China. "There are fish every year" means "more than every year", and the images of carp, lotus seeds (consecutive children), and big fat dolls all reveal the message of praying for more children and grandchildren.In addition, fish is also regarded as a symbol of women or love, such as the poetess Li Ye of the Tang Dynasty who said: "The ruler is as plain as snow, and it forms a double carp. If you want to know what is in your heart, read the book in your belly"; or Yuan Zhen's poem It is said that "overlapping the fish in the prime, the hands are silently opened; the slanting red is left with tears, knowing that the face is coming", all of them.

The fish symbolizes the vulva, and the frog symbolizes the womb. The frog is also one of the symbols of female reproductive worship in primitive China.From the appearance, the belly of the frog is as round and swollen as the belly of a pregnant woman; from the connotation, the frog has a strong fecundity, and a night of spring rain will form a group of tadpoles.Therefore, frogs are also regarded as a symbol of mysterious fertility, and are admired and worshipped. Therefore, in mythology, the mother god of our nation is imagined as a frog girl, which is Nuwa.Wa sound wa is actually a frog.Because it is not an ordinary frog, but a sacred frog that is the ancestor of our nation, it is not written as "frog", but as "wa".The word Wa has no other meaning except for Nuwa, so it can be seen that it was specially created for the Holy Frog or the Mother God. "Shuowen" said: "Wa, the ancient holy girl, is also the one who transforms all things." Wang Yi's "Chu Ci Zhu" also said that Wa "seventy times a day".The "transformation" mentioned here means to conceive and give birth. In fact, the stories of Nuwa creating man and mending the sky are derived from the image of the frog.On the painted pottery unearthed in Jiangzhai, there is a frog-shaped pattern with a round body and spots on it.These spots originally meant that the frog belly had many children.Later, in mythology, it became the five-color stones that patch up the sky.Our ancestors sat on the ground and looked at the sky, imagining that the round sky was like the belly of a frog, and the sky full of stars was the child in the belly, and the four frog legs became the four pillars supporting the sky. The imagination of the ancestors was very rich.Not only did they imagine the sky as the belly of a frog, but they also imagined the moon as a frog.There is a monthly profit and loss, just like the regular expansion and contraction of the belly of a frog and a pregnant woman; and the letter water of an adult woman happens to be once a month, which is in sync with the monthly profit and loss, so it is called "menstruation".Month means once a month, and menstrual means regular and routine.Xinshui comes once a month on a regular basis, which makes people think that there must be some kind of mysterious connection between the moon and the reproductive characteristics of women. Therefore, people imagined that the moon is a divine frog whose belly expands and shrinks regularly, or that there is such a divine frog in the moon.This divine frog is called "Toad", and "Toad" is transliterated as "Chang'e", and is a beautiful goddess.Because the goddess in charge of fertility in the middle of the month, the god in charge of marriage and childbirth is imagined as an old man under one month in myths and legends, called "Yuelao".The reason why the matchmaker is called Yuelao is not only because in the legend he is an old man who checked the marriage documents against the moon, but also because the moon is the best place to talk about love, and because the moon is originally the object of reproductive worship. Whether it is Chang'e or Nuwa, their prototypes are all frogs.It is precisely because the mother is a "frog" that the children are called "baby".Baby is also the little frog born by Nuwa, so it is called "Jiaowa", and Jiaowa sometimes refers to a delicate and beautiful little girl.When the doll landed, it croaked like a frog.Therefore, in the lotus pond, under the moonlight, the croaking and frogs became the symphony of life. As the god frog and mother god, Nuwa has another consort—Fuxi in the long process of mythological evolution.Fuxi is a snake.In the stone carvings and paintings of the Han Dynasty, Nuwa and Fuxi are depicted as two snakes with their tails intertwined.The form of copulation suggests sex and fertility, but the depiction of Nüwa as a snake is inaccurate.In fact, only Fuxi is a snake, and Nuwa is a frog.Because the snake is a symbol of the male root.Snakes usually seem soft and weak, but once they need to attack, they will immediately erect and be very firm, just like a penis.It hides in the grass, "ordinarily invisible, occasionally exposed", which is a perfect metaphor for male roots.Therefore, not only Fuxi in China is a snake, but Vesnu in India and Apollo in Europe are also snakes.In the same way, in the Garden of Eden, it was the snake that tempted Eve to commit the "original sin", and it was also the snake that was stipulated by God to fight against the woman for life.In these myths, it is not difficult for us to see some clues. In addition to snakes, birds are also seen as a symbol of male roots.What they have in common is that they all have "eggs".When the ancestors saw the chicks coming out of the eggs and the babies coming out of the afterbirth, they thought of the new life of human beings, which was probably the result of male eggs entering the female's belly, so they worshiped birds with a lot of eggs.So later, the male root was called "bird" and "cock" in the common saying, just like the English slang called it cock. The frog later came to the moon, and the bird flew into the sun and became a kind of divine bird—the Golden Crow.The Golden Crow is a three-legged divine bird in Japan and China.Why is it three legs?It's because of the male root between the two legs.There are toads in the moon and golden crows in the sun, and they are exactly what Nuwa and Fuxi hold in their hands. The emergence of these two types of symbolic images, bird and snake, marks the beginning of recognition of the role of men in reproductive activities; while Nuwa's transformation from frog to snake is the result of patriarchy replacing matriarchy.Many scholars have pointed out that the replacement of matriarchy by patriarchy may have been a brutal struggle in history.In this struggle, the male genitals symbolized by the snake may be used as a weapon of struggle.Men use it to conquer and occupy women, thus unveiling the curtain of the history of inequality between men and women. What's more, snakes in reality are originally terrifying things.Men use it as a sexual symbol, which itself means conspiracy and violence.Primitive ancestors were very afraid of snakes. They usually asked each other when they met while walking in the forest: "Do you have it?" They didn't dare to call it "snake" but called it "it", which shows the extreme fear.Later, I was not too afraid, so I added the word "worm" next to "it", and called it "snake".But the male root is still called "it", or "that thing", "that word".In addition, in real life, frogs are often eaten by snakes.Therefore, when the patrilineal system replaced the matrilineal system, the sacred "Frog Girl" was forced to "lose her body" and become a "Nuwa" with a human face and a snake body, making her a bit "not male nor female".It can be said that when the "frog girl" became a "snake man", the suffering of Chinese women began slowly. Of course, this process was very slow at first, and it must have been very old.If the above-mentioned anthropological deciphering of the original myths is not carried out, we will be deceived into thinking that Nuwa is really Fuxi's "snake sister", and that in Chinese history, "men are superior to women" from ancient times to the present.