Lust: demon, goddess or physiology?

In the ancient Middle East there existed two diametrically opposed views on lust. On the one side were the Zoroastrians, who considered lust a demon, and strived to combat and eradicate it. On the opposite side were the Babylonians and Assyrians, who believed lust to be a divinity and a goddess. Naturally, the Assyrians and Babylonians worshipped lust.

I believe by thinking of lust as an entity, demonic or divine, you isolate and identify it as a distinct being for your consciousness, a being that is separate from your "self." From such a position, you will be able to perceive and appreciate how this entity comes to you from outside, whispers to you, possesses you, feeds off your energy, and leaves once it has satiated its appetite.

The people of Mesopotamia believed it was an honor to worship the goddess. And cults of sacred prostitution arose around the character of a sex goddess known as Ishtar and Melitta to the Babylonians and Assyrians respectively. She was known as Aphrodite to the Greeks, and Venus to the Romans. I believe modern prostitution and pornography is simply an extension of this ancient cult of Ishtar, and even today there is a pronounced element of worship of sex and lust and female body parts attached to pornography.

However, to the east of Mesopotamia, on the Iranian plateau, the Zoroastrian Aryans held fast to the idea that lust was a malevolent demonic being, and they considered it their religious duty to wage war against it, and to starve it, for they believed that the world had originally been a paradise but subsequently a dark enemy called Ahriman had arrived on earth together with lust and a host of other demons to conquer mankind, but that one day it would be defeated totally and vanquished from the world together with all of its demons, and another age of paradise would ensue. The Aryans and the Assyro Babylonians fought many religious wars over the centuries and were old enemies, as you can imagine. The Aryans called those demons diivs, or daivas, which is where the word divine comes from.

Today, there can be no doubt that lust rules the world. It whispers and commands, and mankind obeys. We, foolishly believing lust to be a part of our physiology, consider its commands to be our own thoughts, and we put up no fight and make no effort to fight it. During the day it comes to us and tells us to watch porn and jerk off, as a compulsion. If we resist, it returns at night when we are helpless, appears in the form of a dream and tricks us into discharging energy. If we stop PMO completely, the wet dreams become like a vengeance, leaving one feeling inconceivably bad and drained afterwards.

The same medical professionals who advocate masturbation, who are, in my eyes, complicit in our species being robbed energetically, also tell us that lust is part of our biology and physiology, part of our selves. They even have it all worked out and explained in terms of dopamine and neural pathways and brain chemistry and whatnot, which is all good and well, except for the fact that none of it really explains the cause of the phenomenon, it simply demonstrates the mechanisms by which the phenomenon operates.


Cheers