Far be it from me to comment on this strange book called the Kama Sutra. In the internet age, this treatise on sexual initiation no longer interests anyone, not even teenagers. Certainly it details the sexual positions from the simplest to the most twisted, but on the screens we see much worse …
Unanswered Questions
This heavy book asks more questions than it gives answers. The author exposes the act, from the front, from behind, with the mouth, with the feet. It also lists all the practices and situations where sexuality can intervene. Really comprehensive and informative … if it was meant for pimply kids. But it is not.
So what for this treaty? These are not laws or moral precepts. It’s a textbook that could be called Sex For Dummies. The sexual act is considered in a very free, open and tolerant way. The purpose of this treaty is not to codify sex, nor to frame it, on the contrary. Society does not find its account, nor the law, only the individual and his search for pleasure. Whether he is straight, LGBT, pedophile or zoophilic. No taboos.
The Kama Sutra is therefore a tutorial. Just a tutorial. But for whom? For which sex illiterates? What innocent, what retarded man could need these kind of lessons? Above all, who could have had the absurd idea of exposing to his human fellows the various tips and tricks that make sex more exciting, more naughty, more enjoyable? Why would normal people need such a treaty?
I went over and over this question in my empty head, and the light came on. Looks like a superhuman tutor wanted to educate ignorant creatures. The ones he had just made? … Increase and multiply, said the god of the Jews to his good people. To motivate them, this god or another had to praise the merchandise to them …
And while I ruminated on this hypothesis, I thought I remembered a detail at the very beginning of the treatise. Suddenly fundamental detail. I got hold of the Kama Sutra in Alain Daniélou‘s translation, the best. He adds his comments, and there, my favorite Indianist disappointed me a lot. I will come back to that.
Divine Sex
At the beginning of the work, the author gives its origin. She is divine. That’s what I thought…
Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures, after having created men, composed a treatise of one hundred thousand verses, defining the rules of social life on the triple level of civic virtues, prosperity and sexuality.
Manu, the self-born son of the god, set aside the aphorisms regarding civic and moral virtues in his Dharma Shastra.
Brihaspati set aside the aphorisms about politics, economics, and prosperity in his Artha Shastra.
Shiva’s companion, Nandi, set aside the thousand chapters concerning sexuality creating the Kama Shastra. (source)Kama Sutra, translated by Alain Daniélou
The list goes on, other gods or devas have taken, modified, reduced the hundred thousand original verses, no doubt to adapt them to the evolution of human society. During these modifications, which probably continued for centuries, the new writers, believing they were doing the right thing, threw out the baby with the bathwater. The baby, the divine fruit, was the initial tantrism, the possibility of using sexuality for the purpose of awakening. What has totally disappeared from the current treaty …
Greco-Latin antiquity evokes the Vestals: women who practiced self-giving love with passing foreigners. Pure tantrism, a way of awakening through sublimated pleasure, this practice was found not only in Greece or Rome, but also in Celtic lands, in Africa, etc. It is derived from the ancient Dionysian mysteries, which according to Daniélou are Western adaptations of primitive Shaivism, the time when sex was not forbidden by religions : it was called the pleasure of gods.
This time lasted longer than we imagine, as long as the most dirty sex remained shrouded in a divine halo – Donatien de Sade has been called the divine marquis…
So God Prajapati composed the first Kama Sutra. But Daniélou doesn’t care. He does not see the importance of this fact: a god, we will see what his role is, is at the origin of this incredible text. Daniélou misses the main info given to us at the beginning of the sutra. Hence my deep disappointment.
In the 1980s, few authors were aware of the authenticity of mythologies. No one had yet understood how we were created, by whom, and for what purpose. Yet all this information is given in the various planetary mythologies. Only we still took this precious data for symbolic bullshit …
Who is Prajapati? Does it have an equivalent in Western mythologies? I think so. His name means the Lord of Creatures. So it was he who designed them, these creatures. He is one of the Hyperboreans, his mission is clear: he was responsible for populating this wild planet. He worked like hell in his genetics lab, with his shakti, of course. Which immediately reminds me of another couple of divine geneticists, Prometheus and Athena among the Greeks or Enki and Ninhursag among the Sumerians.
Prajapati is therefore the technician graduated in genetics, the gifted researcher who knew how to manipulate test tubes, microscopes and genomes, in short, a modern doctor, more modern even than our most modern researchers. See how right I am to blame the esteemed Daniélou for not having tilted on the consequences of this information given in the preamble: Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures, after having created men … etc.
The Lord of Creatures is none other than the main referent in charge of terrestrial fauna. Huge ! The usual mistake is to see only symbolism, to take Prajapati -Enki, Prometheus- for a simple personification of natural forces, but not at all. This guy did exist. His descendants continue, in my opinion, to create life on earth and other planets entrusted to his care. He’s a pro, a seasoned expert. It certainly has the right to life and death over all individuals, it even happens to eradicate a species – animal or human – when it becomes too invasive. But God he is not.
The notion of God in the current sense of the term is not that old. I am sure that Greco-Latin antiquity did not have the conception of Gods that we have of God the One. Our time confuses the gods and the Source. Big blunder. Let us reread the classical and ancient texts, the only way to understand the semantic shifts which have led to this confusion.
Pleasure of the gods
On this relief of an Indian temple, we see gods playing orgy. Yes, gods. What allows me to affirm it is their gigantic size. We see a little woman, as small as our human species. She too participates in the rejoicings – in the enjoyments? and seems to be enjoying it. We can understand it according to the adage: kiss like a god. No doubt it comes from there …
This single image makes us understand that the gods are people like us. Bigger, more evolved, more educated … but largely as wanton as some modern humans. Swing your pig god … The slogan did not exist yet, simply because our ancestors liked it. In those bygone days, no one could fault it. Today, the delicious pleasure of the gods is only a memory: we make a whole cheese out of it … Damn kaliyuga.