What exactly is "Hieros gamos"?
Hieros gamos is Greek for Hierogamy and literally means sacred marriage/union. Across cultures, it was understood it was between a god and a goddess (theogamy) and simultaneously invoked by participants within the ritual acting in the part of the god or goddess or both, infused with the power of a deity. Before going further, I want to provide the caveat that I am neither a scholar nor am I a Hellenic Polytheist, and their interpretations will likely be better than mine.
We know from ancient sources that a celebration of the hieros gamos took place between Zeus and Hera in the month of Gamelion, and that an enactment of the hieros gamos took place during Anthesteria in Athens. There were rumors of a hieros gamos conducted at Eleusis within the Lesser Mysteries (Persephone’s descent to the Underworld for a hieros gamos with Hades) but the sources for this are dubious and written by people who sought to discredit the Eleusinian Mysteries.
We only have the barest of fragments to go on within existing texts from that time, and one of those mention of the hieros gamos comes from the comedy Meander where the character Chairephon joked about having the hieros gamos with his wife on the 29th of Gamelion instead of the proscribed date of the 27th because he wants to dine out, as single men likely did on a sacred day where they had no spouse to celebrate with. The majority of Hellas likely celebrated the hieros gamos like an anniversary, with the married couple having sexual intercourse on that day.
One of the reasons we have so little to go on is twofold. First, mystery cults in the ancient world didn’t want their knowledge passed about, and very few accounts ever were written down. Second, because so few accounts were written, they easily destroyed by the one mystery cult that eventually came to dominate the ancient world during the fall of antiquity: the Church. Given the proclivities of the church to shun sex within its priesthood, manuscripts from the competing cults of Demeter and Persephone, Dionysos, Adonis, and Zeus and Hera Teleia describing sexual ritual were probably the first ones on the fire when the fanatics sought to purge ‘pagan’ influence from the new world order.
Thankfully, there were several cultures who practiced Hierogamy besides the Greeks, and whose account survives. The poem The Love Song of Inanna and Dumuzi describes the Hierogamy between Inanna, goddesss of fertility, and Dumuzi the shepherd king whose kingship is sanctified by having ritual sexual intercourse with Inanna. It is probably our most complete account, followed by what a lot of scholars view as a controversial interpretation of the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon), the short 22nd book of the KJV Bible that, thanks to its sexual frankness, was almost not included in canon. But the similarities with its Sumerian predecessor are unmistakeable.
Why did The Love Song of Inanna and Dumuzi survive intact while its Greek and Latin counterparts were burned? Simply because the Love Song was written in Sumerian cuneiform instead of Greek or Latin or Arabic, and was thankfully overlooked by the fanatics.
So what actually happened during a hieros gamos and what did it actually mean? What took place on the 27th of Gamelion? Interpretations vary wildly thanks to lack of sources, but it could have been any or all of the following: Zeus and Hera celebrate their anniversary of Theogamia by engaging in sexual intercourse. The Hierophant and Hierodule of Hera Teleia would engage in sexual intercourse with each other, each invoking a deity. There was also the household celebration of hieros gamos, where a husband and wife would celebrate Zeus and Hera’s anniversary and the institution of marriage.
I want to close by saying to the Hellenic Polytheists or other scholarly pagans who follow this blog that if I got any of this wrong, please provide me with better interpretations. I shied away from more modern, new age interpretations of the “Great Rite” for a reason… mostly because they are based on mixing the hieros gamos with later medieval alchemical writings and a heavy dose of 20th century new age fluff claiming ancient origin. The internet (as well as most books) make it very difficult to separate one from the other.
