Sacred semen

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In pre-industrial societies past and present, semen and other body fluids, like body parts, were regarded as sacred because they were believed to have had magical properties. Blood is an example of such a fluid, but semen was also widely believed to be of supernatural origin and effect and was, as a result, considered holy or sacred.

At one time, it was believed that a woman’s menstrual blood formed the human soul and that mothers, therefore, were the source of the souls that animated their children. As the matriarchy gave way to the patriarchy, this idea was replaced with the notion that sperm create the soul.

Early Gnostic Christians worshiped the phallus, anointing themselves with semen. They also drenched the Eucharist in human semen before consuming it and, on Palm Sunday, along with the palms, a phallus was borne in the Christians’ celebratory processions.

Dew was once thought to be a sort of rain that fertilized the earth and, in time, became a metaphor for semen. The Bible employs the term “dew” in this sense in such verses as Song of Solomon 5:2 and Psalm 110:3, declaring, in the latter verse, for example, that the people should follow only a king who was virile enough to be full of the “dew” of youth.

It was widely believed, in ancient times, that gemstones were drops of divine semen which had coagulated after having fertilized the earth. The Chinese believed that jade, in particular, was the dried semen of the celestial dragon and caressed the gemstone to feel close to the source of life.

Based upon the resemblance of dandelion juice to human semen, it was believed that the flower magically promoted the flow of sperm.

In early Christian belief, the angel Gabriel gave the Virgin Mary a lily, commemorated as the fleur-de-lis, which magically filtered God’s semen into Mary’s body by way of her ear.

The orchid’s twin bulbs were thought to resemble the testicles, and the ancient Romans believed that the flower sprang from the spilled semen of copulating satyrs.

Barbara G. Walker recounts these examples of sacred semen in The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, the thesis of which is that myth and folklore show a pre-patriarchic rule by women that was later supplanted by masculine culture.