This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
Jacobus Le Moyne, who travelled as artist with a French Expedition to Florida in 1564, left some very interesting drawings representing the Indians of that region and their customs; and among them one representing the “Hermaphrodites “—tall and powerful men, beardless, but with long and abundant hair, and naked except for a loin-cloth, engaged in carrying wounded or dying fellow-Indians on their backs or on litters to a place of safety.
He says of them that in Florida such folk of double nature are frequent, and that being robust and powerful, they are made use of in the place of animals for the carrying of burdens…
Similar stories are told by Charlevoix, de Pauw, and others…It is needless, of course, to say that these were not hermaphrodites in the strict sense of the term—human beings uniting in one person the functions both of male and female—since such beings do practically not exist.
But it is evident that they were intermediate types—in the sense of being men with much of the psychologic character of women, or in some cases women with the mentality of men; and the early travellers, who had less concrete and reliable information on such subjects than we have, and who were already prepossessed by the belief in the prevalence of hermaphroditism, leapt easily to the conclusion that these strange beings were indeed of that nature.
De Pauw, indeed, just mentioned, positively refuses to believe in the explanation that they were men dressed as women, and insists that they were hermaphrodites!In 1889, a certain Dr. A. B. Holder, anxious to settle positively the existence or non-existence of hermaphrodites, made some investigations among the Crow-Indians of Montana—among whom the Bardaches [which refers to double-spirit, a term that has come to be used by North Americans to denote “gender-variant” people] were called “Boté.”
And Dr. Karsch, summarising his report, says 2:—“This word, bo-té, means literally ‘not man, not woman.’ A corresponding Tulalip-word which the Indians of the Washington region make use of is, according to Holder, ‘burdash,’ which means ‘half man, half woman’—and that without necessarily implying any anomalous structure of the sex-organs…[ellipses in original] The Crow-tribe, in 1889, included five such Boté, and possessed about the same number before…
The Père Lafitau, whom I have quoted before and who was a keen observer and a broad-minded man, says, in one passage of his Sauvages Américains:
“The spectacle of the men disguised as women surprised the Europeans who first landed in America. And, as they did not at all understand the motives of this sort of metamorphosis, they concluded that these were folk in whom the two sexes were conjoined: as a matter of fact our old records always term them hermaphrodites “…
…What interests us here is the evidence of the wide-spread belief in hermaphroditism current among the early European travellers. That a similar belief has ruled also among most primitive peoples is evident from a consideration of their gods…
The tradition that mankind was anciently hermaphrodite is world-old. It is referred to in Plato’s Banquet, where Aristophanes says:—
“Anciently the nature of mankind was not the same as now, but different. For at first there were three sexes of human beings, not two only, namely male and female, as at present, but a third besides, common to both the others—of which the name remains, though the sex itself has vanished. For the androgynous sex then existed, both male and female; but now it only exists as a name of reproach.”
He then describes how all these three sorts of human beings were originally double, and conjoined (as above) back to back; until Jupiter, jealous of his supremacy, divided them vertically “as people cut apples before they preserve them, or as they cut eggs with hairs”—after which, of course, these divided and imperfect folk ran about over the earth, ever seeking their lost halves, to be joined to them again…
I have mentioned the Syrian Baal as being sometimes represented as double-sexed (apparently in combination with Astarte). In the Septuagint (Hos. ii. 8, and Zeph. i. 4) he is called ἡ Baal (feminine) and Arnobius tells us that his worshippers invoked him thus [Thomas Inman, Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism (1874 AD), p. 119] “Hear us, Baal! whether thou be a god or goddess.” Similarly Bel and other Babylonian gods were often represented as androgyne [John M. Robertson, Pagan Christs (1908 AD), p. 308].
Mithras among the Persians is spoken of by the Christian controversialist Firmicus as two-sexed, and by Herodotus (Bk. i., c. 131) as identified with a goddess, while there are innumerable Mithraic monuments on which appear the symbols of two deities, male and female combined [Ibid., p. 307].Even Venus or Aphrodite was sometimes worshipped in the double form. “In Cyprus,” says Dr. Frazer in his Adonis, etc. (p. 432, note), “there was a bearded and masculine image of Venus (probably Astarte) in female attire: according to Philochorus the deity thus represented was the moon, and sacrifices were offered to him or her by men clad as women, and by women clad as men (see Macrobius Saturn iii. 7, 2).”
This bearded female deity is sometimes also spoken of as Aphroditus, or as Venus Mylitta. Richard Burton says [The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886 AD), vol. x., p. 231]:—“The Phoenicians spread their androgynic worship over Greece. We find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian Aphrodite called Hierodouloi (Strabo, viii. 6), who aided the 10,000 courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple….[ellipses in original] One of the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus, where, as Servius relates (Ad. Aen. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptred and mitred like a man. The sexes when worshiping it exchanged habits, and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice.”
The worship of this bearded goddess was mainly in Syria and Cyprus. But in Egypt also a representation of a bearded Isis has been found,—with infant Horus in her lap; while again there are a number of representations (from papyri) of the goddess Neith in androgyne form, with a male member (erected). And again, curiously enough, the Norse Freya, or Friga, corresponding to Venus, was similarly figured. Dr. von Römer says:—
“just as the Greeks had their Aphroditos as well as Aphrodite so the Scandinavians had their Friggo as well as their Friga. This divinity, too, was androgyne. Friga, to whom the sixth day of the week was dedicated, was sometimes thought of as hermaphrodite. She was represented as having the members of both sexes, standing by a column with a sword in her right hand, and in her left a bow.”
In the Orphic hymns we have:—
“Zeus was the first of all, Zeus last, the lord of the lightning; Zeus was the head, the middle, from him all things were created;
Zeus was Man, and again Zeus was the Virgin Eternal.”
And in another passage, speaking of Adonis:—
“Hear me, who pray to thee, hear me O many-named and best of deities,
Thou, with thy gracious hair…both maiden and youth, Adonis.” [ellipses in original]Again, with regard to the latter, Ptolemaeus Hephaestius (according to Photius) writes:—
“They say that the androgyne Adonis fulfilled the part of a man for Aphrodite, but for Apollo the part of a wife”…
It is evident that the conception of a double sex, or of a sex combining the characters of male and female, haunted the minds of early peoples.
…there was always a tendency to cultivate and honor hermaphroditism, and to ascribe some degree of this quality to heroes and divinities. The other possible reason is that as a matter of fact the great leaders and heroes did often exhibit this blending of masculine and feminine qualities and habits in their actual lives, and that therefore at some later period, when exalted to divinities, this blending of qualities was strongly ascribed to them and was celebrated in the rites and ceremonies of their religion and their temples….
H. P. Blavatsky also noted the following in her book The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, Stanza I, Beginnings of Sentient Life, “In the esoteric philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite; hence the bearded Venus in mythology.”
Lastly, Edward Carpenter references an issue that we covered in Manly P. Hall “man was primarily androgynous” which you can consult for details:
And these again are interesting in connection with the account of Elohim in the 1st chapter of Genesis, and the supposition that he was such an androgynous deity. For we find (v. 27) that “Elohim created man in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him, male and female created he them.” And many commentators have maintained that this not only meant that the first man was hermaphrodite, but that the Creator also was of that nature.
In the Midrasch we find that Rabbi Samuel-bar-Nachman said that “Adam, when God had created him, was a man-woman (androgyne);” and the great and learned Maimonides supported this, saying that “Adam and Eve were created together, conjoined by their backs, but God divided this double being, and taking one half (Eve), gave her to the other half (Adam) for a mate.”
And the Rabbi Manasseh-ben-Israel, following this up, explained that when “God took one of Adam’s ribs to make Eve with,” it should rather be rendered “one of his sides”—that is, that he divided the double Adam, and one half was Eve…As an FYI as to when such fanciful and mystical reinterpretations came about note: Samuel ben/bar Nahman/Nahmani who lived early 3rd c. early 4th c. AD. Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon aka RaMBaM) lived 1135-1204 AD.
Rabbi Manasseh-ben-Israel lived 1604-1657 AD.
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