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Sexual Mythology
Even The Stones. Marie Jakober, Edge Science Fiction And Fantasy Publishing, Alberta, Canada, 2004. Last month we looked at myths, ancient, modern and future, searching for the underlying “myth” that binds American culture. Myths are stories that explain how the world got the way it is and thus why you should behave this way or that way to be safe. This month let’s focus on one powerful core behavior that binds all humanity, and possibly all beings out among the stars, sexuality. Humans shroud this area of behavior in veils of mystery, suspense, horror, and spirituality—even magical power. Reproduction is our immortality and our children the biggest investment we can make. Kabbalistic tradition says that in ancient times, when the Jews gathered at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, God asked for a guarantee that it would be treasured properly. The Jews answered that their guarantee would be their children. As a result, since only the mother’s identity is sure, Jewishness passes through the mother, though the father’s heritage bestows the tribe identity. But most of human sexual mythology does not revolve around children. Pregnancy may be regarded as an awkward complication to indulging in good, clean fun. Sexual mythology today is shrouded in multitudes of urban myths, many of them spawned by famous books. Some of those books combine a sprinkling of facts with imagination to reach controversial conclusions. The more controversial the conclusion, the more promotion money is spent on the book, the more likely you’ve read it. The feminist movement gave rise to many books of this type and now, decades later, mythologies and oral traditions have grown up around these controversial concepts. The interesting point for a magician to note is the way group minds have formed around these new myths. I read an article online recently, and not thinking much of it at the time, didn’t save the URL. It discussed the current demographic trends in the USA in terms of the 2004 presidential election and the way the USA is split with the Republicans holding the center of the country. The author pointed out how people have created neighborhoods of politically and/or religiously like-minded people clustered within cities and towns. By living with and listening to only those who believe as you do, you can become convinced your view is indeed the majority view. Or if it is not, it should be because it is the right view—after all, just look at all the people who agree with it! How could anyone disagree? Such is the power of the group mind. I have four SF/F books here that illustrate various sexual mythologies that are now regarded in some communities as just such obvious laws of nature and reality. The first is one we discussed last month, Even The Stones by Marie Jakober. In a male/war god dominated society, the reign of a goddess has been overthrown so as to institute marriage that restricts a wife’s sexual access but not a man’s. A queen regains the throne by promising her goddess she will restore goddess worship and a woman’s right to choose any man as lover, even if she’s married. Inheritance thus passes through the woman, rather than the man. A swordswoman, Kiri, thinks about the warriors who followed the god Mohr rather than the goddess Jana: They had most of the land and the wealth. They had the swords. They had the power of command, and the confidence which came with it, the sense of their worth and rightness. Jana’s people had only numbers on their side, and some real if limited power, and the sovereign; none of this in Kiri’s view accounted for the depth of Theron’s fear, and the fear among all those who followed Mohr. What they feared most was inside themselves. “You must never weaken, people of Kamilan!” Theron cried, “Do not yield to witchcraft and harlotry! Do not believe in the false promises of false prophets! Mohr’s people must be a stern and steadfast people!” Even the Stones depicts the struggle between the feminist spiritual forces and the masculine forces and does an excellent job of defining that conflict in terms of the modern sexual mythologies that are now accepted. Freedom’s Gate by Naomi Kritzer likewise shows us what it’s like to be a woman swordsman, a security guard, in a man’s world. In this world, harems often include women and young boys who are slaves, and various sorts of sexual torture are considered the right of the rich. Now escaped slaves have banded together out in the wilds and are preparing a massive attack on this civilization. Hard trained and hard living Lauria must pose as a virgin concubine in order to infiltrate the enemy camp and retrieve an escaped boy-slave. Again the lines of war are drawn over the issue of freedom of sexual conduct, and violence is used to impose the will of one on another—violence rather than persuasion. Laurell K. Hamilton continues her wildly successful Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series with Incubus Dreams. If you haven’t read this extremely complex series about a vampire executioner in love with a master vampire, I suggest you start with Guilty Pleasures. Each of these novels is named for a nightclub usually owned by a vampire. Here, Anita regains control of her desperate need for sex, the ardeur, every 6-12 hours or so, but in the process has long, detailed intercourse with a large number of people, many of whom she barely knows. These encounters are regarded as “metaphysical emergencies” because it often is life or death for herself, a vampire or other being who is magically tied to her and feeds on her energy. The sexual styles in this book go from ordinary sweaty sex, polyandry and troikas, to S&M and bestiality, all revolving around the lifestyle of professional strippers who happen to be shapechangers. Most of the book is taken up with this—however, overall Hamilton has regained control of her material. This book makes sense and has a strong plot that culminates in a new threat which Jean Claude, Master Vampire of the City, must face soon. In twelve volumes, Hamilton has gradually and relentless attacked and deconstructed Anita Blake’s personality, changing her life into something she would never have recognized. And she has resisted every step of the way, clinging to her personal ethics as item by item those ethical stances are stripped away. She’s a hero who’s a loser. It is the underlying psychology of this character change which is of most interest to the student magician as it depicts the results of channeling more magical power than the personality is able to handle. And lastly, let’s compare all these to P.M. Griffin’s Star Commandos 12, War Prince. This is the conclusion to a twelve volume action-romance series about a telepathic bond with a genetically engineered human who might as well not be human for the differences in culture. This series started off as a typical action SF novel about a woman in a commando unit during an interstellar war and gradually grew into something pretty close to the modern “Futuristic Romance.” In War Prince, the series comes to a graceful and satisfying conclusion, well worth following the entire story of the character change of a woman commando who falls in love and matures gracefully into a consort within the halls of interstellar power. In the first two novels discussed here we see the injustices and un-justness of a male dominated world ruled by the assumption that there is no other way to make people behave than to use power and force. Men own women. Given that premise, what happens to human values when the rule of power and force is extended into sexual behavior? Or it could be looked at another way. Perhaps the unquestioned myths that govern sexual behavior create the larger, political world. Or maybe both sexual behavior and political biases are the results of these shared mythologies. These four novels represent four myths. Even The Stones shows how the world is built by the gods. Freedom’s Gate shows how whatever has been built can be changed by the oppressed, exiled and downtrodden. Incubus Dreams and the whole Anita Blake series, where vampires and were-animals have civil rights, depicts a world gripped by magic in the control of the uninitiated. And Star Commandos 12: War Prince completes a series chronicling the place of the soldier-couple in a war as it ends and changes both sides. In each of these four myths, it all comes down to the love of a man and a woman before they have children. Tarot cards: Emperor and Empress, the same force manifesting in two ways, polar opposites, but identical. Send books for review in this column to: Jacqueline Lichtenberg, email jl@simegen.com for instructions. |
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