Gay & Spirituality 🏳️🌈
- Justin Heath
- Jun 20, 2023
- 6 min read
The Truth about Being Gay and What it Means on a Spiritual Level!
In honor of pride month, let’s discuss some facts about being gay and its relation to spirituality. There is a lot of misguided information and discrimination on those of us identifying as gay. On a personal level, my sexuality was one of the biggest challenges in my life because of the incorrect information and misguided hate towards the gay community I encountered at a young age in the form of religious dogma and discrimination. It was very hard on my self-esteem because I knew internally that I was gay, but the way society and religion made it seem, it automatically made me an abomination of a human, or at least that’s how my child mind saw it. As I’ve gotten more mature in my spiritual journey and in myself as a spiritual being, I’ve realized that the stigma of the LGBTQ community is just like all the others; lies to make you forget your power.
This is why it is so important to do your own research and experience life to find out the truth of who you are. On a spiritual level, what I have found is that humans that identify as gay have always had a place in ancient society, as well as in the spirit world. The gay community identifies with both masculine and feminine energies. Whether you are a male who is connected to his femininity, or female more connected to their masculine energy or like me; someone who internally feels like both a male and female, it is totally normal to be this way. As a spirit, we are androgynous beings, we have no female or male bodies, we are just spirit or light.
Some of us that have incarnated physically are still connected to this truth to help us on our journey. This is a very powerful position when you know the truth of what it is, but if you believe the lie that you are going to hell or are less than a heterosexual identifying person, this power will be stripped from you. To help support the truth that I have discovered on my journey, I have found many facts of how the gay community has always played a major part in society and how this view of homosexuality was displayed in ancient history.
Many ancient civilizations had a heavy presence of homosexuality. In ancient cultures, there was no need for labels such as LGBTQ+ because there was no difference noted between what is now defined as homosexual and heterosexual relationships. There was no separation to encourage labels, there was only relationships, whomever one chose to love was one’s own business. In most cases, the only stigma attached to male-male romantic relationships was the status of one’s partner. Sexual identity and prohibitions on same-sex relationships only begin to appear after the rise of Christianity which rejected practices associated with earlier religious beliefs.
SN: Christianity and the deity “Jesus” was created using the Ancient Khemetic spiritual principles of Horus, Osiris, and Isis. Christianity was used to gain power and control over many cultures and since then has spread all over the world. For more on this, read the book “The Historical Origin of Christianity by Walter Williams.” This is noted to let you know that you have to truly understand the history of a religion before you blindly believe it’s teachings.
Now back to the subject at hand. Let us start with Greece and Rome. In these cultures, a freeman who “played the part of a woman” in a relationship was thought to have compromised his manhood, but no thought was given to the relationship of two men.
Most ancient writers passed over an individual’s sexual orientation unless it had some connection to a major event, other than that sexual identity was a non-factor. Romans and Greeks followed similar models, an older man cultivating a relationship with a younger man would be beneficial and was seen as normal. Sexual aspects of the relationships were least important. There had to be genuine affection and respect shared by both parties in the relationship for their association to be considered honorable.
Married Roman men regularly had affairs with male lovers, and the only dishonor attached to this was the male playing a passive role as it was considered to go against his manhood, all other sexual acts were not criticized. It is to be noted that the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” did not exist in ancient languages. These words were coined in 1869 CE.
Many gods and goddesses in ancient history were bisexual or transgender, such as the goddess Inanna (Ishtar) in Mesopotamia. This goddess could turn men into women and men into women with the power of transformation. The god Enki is said to have created a third gender, neither male nor female.
What is today referred to as a "non-binary" gender was recognized over three thousand years ago as a third gender created by the divine will. The gods also blessed same-sex relationships as is clearly seen in the document The Almanac of Incantations, which contains prayers for both opposite and same-sex couples. A man who had sex with a man of his own social status was thought to bring good fortune and prosperity while only trouble could come from a same-sex relationship with someone above or below one’s status. The only thing that mattered was the status of who you had sex with, not the gender.
For the Chinese culture, they followed this same model in upper-class men and monarchs taking male lovers from among their courtiers, but this was acceptable because the upper-class lover would ennoble the lower-class beloved. Records referencing same-sex male relationships in China date back to at least 600 BCE, and same-sex couples are mentioned in poems, anecdotes, and histories with more frequency starting with the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE).
Same-sex relationships in Japan were also considered ennobling during the Pre-Meiji Period (800-1868 CE) and were not only blessed but encouraged by the great Buddhist sage Kukai. Kukai (a Kobo Daishi, aka“The Great Teacher”) founded Shingon Buddhism in Japan c. 806 CE and continues to be revered in the present day. The Japanese regarded romantic attachments and sex as a natural part of life whether the object of one’s desire was one’s own sex or the opposite.
Gender fluidity was recognized in Egypt throughout its long history and, as in other cultures, drew little notice and no condemnation except when a male of a certain social status "played the part of the woman" in sex. Scholar Colin Spencer notes, "Bisexuality in the male was accepted as natural and never drew adverse comment, but passive homosexuality made the Egyptians feel uneasy. There was no concept of a "homosexual" relationship in Egypt, only relationships. When male-male sexual relations are mentioned negatively, it always has to do with one male surrendering his masculine power to another in sex, not in a relationship. A man being dominated by the other was frowned upon.
In Thailand , a third gender, known as the Kathoey ("lady boys") have been recognized since the 14th century CE, although they almost certainly existed previously. I visited Thailand and spoke with the locals. They informed me that parents encourage their first son to be a lady boy and lady boys are the more popular students in school.
The law code Manusmriti (c. 1250 BCE) treats same-sex and opposite-sex relationships equally, and both this work and the famous Kama Sutra (c. 400 BCE) reference a third gender known as the Kinnar (also known as Hijra).
****Both of these groups are marginalized in the present day, but there is nothing in the ancient texts that stigmatizes them and, unlike other cultures, no loss in status attached to a third gender playing a passive role.
Native American tribes recognized a third gender known in the present day as a Two-Spirit who was both male and female. The ancient term for this gender has been lost, as many aspects of Native American language and culture were through the European colonization of the Americas, and so this is a modern designation. The Two-Spirit was greatly valued by the community and, as with the adherents of Inanna and Cybele, were thought to have been transformed from male to female by the gods. A boy who embarked on the vision quest rite of passage to manhood would be visited by a deity and shown who he truly was and, if chosen as a Two-Spirit, would return to his community and begin dressing as a woman and performing work associated with the female members of the tribe.
There are a number of different designations for people identified and self-identifying as a third gender. Among these are the Ashtime who, like the Two-Spirit of the Americas, are men who identify as women and perform women’s traditional tasks. Many of these are married to men and, although marginalized today, as in Thailand and India, were recognized as divinely transformed beings in the ancient past.
In Conclusion, same-sex relations in all of the above cultures were negatively impacted at first by Christianity and Christian missionaries. Before that, the same kind of religious intolerance was spread by Islam and even faiths such as Buddhism, which, as noted, initially encouraged same-sex relationships. This kind of intolerance is born of and fed by ignorance and fear which is perpetuated by societies and communities trying to preserve what they see as "traditional values" without understanding that among the most basic of such values is love and respect for other people. What this means is society’s view of same-sex relationships is based on lies, not history. I write this blog to encourage everyone identifying with these ancient gods and goddesses of androgyny to know their power and use it to inspire them to live in their truth.
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