I'm researching the materially of semen in Asia and so far I’ve found out some fascinating
connections between semen, ancestry, rice, whiteness, and consciousness.
I begin with Japanese anthropologist Ohnuki-Tierney's impressive Rice as Self, where she charts the many ways white rice stands for the
purity and superiority of the Japanese race, the pearly radiance of the skin,
the positive energy of deities, money, and the origin of semen and breast milk. She also reminds us how each grain of rice is considered within Shintoism an individual spirit whose consumption rejuvenates humans and gives them a
soul.
Jump to our own tradition: Revelation 21:21: “The twelve gates were
twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl!” In the 2008 remake of The Day The Earth
Stood Still, pearly sphere-gates come out of the ground and, like semen, carry
life to its new home. Considering liquids are naturally spherical, pearls appear
like drops of semen. Could the materiality of this important fluid influence such revelatory
images in our myths and in our popular science fiction?
Scientific literature and cultural
perceptions revealing semen as dangerous, disgusting and dirty are fairly new.
When we relax our imaginations and look to our own rituals and to mythologies about semen, we can see how the materiality of the substance becomes a conceptual
ground for images of purity, soul, self, and even community. As Janet Carsten (2004) makes clear, concepts of kinship are linked to substances of the body, such as
blood, milk, and semen. These become metaphors for unity and sameness. Semen’s pearly,
white, milky, oily, flowing materiality, explains Victor Turner, help it signify achievement, wholeness, flow , self worth, and communitas. Turner argues that within an ethnic identity, homogeneity is sought instead of
heterogeneity. “The members of the community are to be regarded, at least in
rite and symbol, a unit...seamless...purified from divisiveness and plurality.” Japanese identity centers on white rice not only because it is a staple food and we "are what we eat," but also
because of its uniform whiteness. Sentgen (2010) points out that “the most
important phenomenological characteristic of substances is the fact that they
can be divided without losing their identity.” Rice concretize abstract ideas like ‘imagined communities’, and anchors subjective, imagined relationships in a shared, material substance. Without objects such as rice, the Japanese experience and shared identity would be “as
airy as the wind,” as Michael Serres puts it. “In
fact, the objects…stabilize our relationships.”
The most important characteristics of Japanese rice are its qualities of luster, purity, and
whiteness. Tanizaki Junichiro, in his influential novel In Praise of Shadows,
explains the beauty of rice succinctly: “Each grain is a pearl.” This is not just an aesthetic pronouncement.
For example, in the past rice was used as money in Japan, and rice fields meant
status for Lords. The term for cooked rice, gohan, can stand for all
food, as bread can stand for all food and money in English. Rice-wine, nihonshu,
“Japanese liquor,” remains the staple drink in rituals and ceremonies. At a
wedding, rice wine is drunk to consecrate the marriage as white rice is thrown
at brides here in America as white bread is placed in the mouths of Christians
during communion.
The Japanese origin myths of rice are also
quite fascinating. In one, the deity in charge of food is ritually slain and
various grains came out of his corpse: “rice emerged from his abdomen, millet
from his eyes, and wheat and beans from his anus…” The eyes, mouth, and
anus are all important places in Japanese bodylore, but the abdomen, which
houses the fetus, is believed to be the home of the soul. This is why hara-kiri,
“stomach cutting,” is the well-known cultural institution of male suicide.
Opening the stomach releases the soul.
Interestingly, within Shinto
cosmology, rice is the only grain given a soul. Each grain of rice is a kami
named Uka no Mitama no Kami, a spirit-force supporting material life.
Unlike most kami who possess both positive and destructive attributes, rice
kami are completely innocent, unable to do harm.
After further creations and kami appear, the
gods dispatch a grandson, Ninigi-no-Mikoto, to be the first Man to receive the
rice and rule Japan with his decedents. The great grandson of Ninigi-no-Mikoto,
called Jinmu, was enthroned as the first emperor of Japan, and the imperial
sovereignty has to this day remained in the dynasty established by Jinmu some
two thousand or more years ago. Japan did not have a Warrior King
tradition. The shogun were the warriors. The Emperor was,
"the guardian of rice-plants." According to many Japanese
historians, the key role of the dynasty is to enact the Onamesai,
a rice harvest ritual. Part of the secret ceremony involves the emperor lying
on a bed and two women "receive the emperor's soul that is departing from his body and
renew it."
In the secret Tachikawa school of Shingon Buddhism,
sex is holy, and a student eats his master’s semen as a means for mind-to-mind
transmission. Epiphanius, the great Church Father, reports that an early
Christian group, the Borborites, also practiced eating semen as a Eucharistic
ritual. Like the Shingon Buddhists, they understood semen and menses to be “The
Body and The Blood of Christ.” Phenomenologically, these fluids carried with
them states of joy, shame, shamelessness, community, and revelation. Here we
should be reminded of Raymond Kelly’s discussion of the Etoro people of Papua
New Guinea, where boys ingest the elder’s semen, or “penis-oil,” as a rite into
adulthood and a way to receive the mind-lineage of the tribe.
In Buddhism, semen is believed to exist in
both men and women, metaphorically related to bodhicitta, meaning ‘mind
of enlightenment.” In Tibetan, semen is called tigle, meaning literally
‘dot’ or ‘essence.’ Translator Keith Dowman elaborates that refined
semen is “stored in the heart center as “radiance”, which produces long-life
and gives a shine to the complexion. Unrefined semen is excreted during sexual
intercourse and is, of course, procreative seed. The refined semen in the heart
center permeates the body as Awareness; “heart center” is here a metaphor for
the all-pervasive sphere of essential being (dharmakaya). Loss of semen,
by any means, causes life-span to be shortened and causes a pallid complexion.”
Clifford: “The brightness and radiance of the face is said to come from the
essence of “semen” at the heart…From the years one to twelve the essence of
“semen” supports the growth of the body. From twelve to fifty it goes to
strength, or during pregnancy, to the breasts for milk. From fifty to
one-hundred it goes to maintenance of the body.”
For the male tantric practitioner of any
lineage, withholding semen during real and/or imagined sex is a crucial aspect
of spiritual practice. The seventh Dalai Lama describes the feeling:
“The outer consort, in nature fire, melts the life-drops that course through the seventy-two thousand channels, bringing them into the
central channel, giving rise to the four
ineffable joys. Outside, all
sensory movement of mind and energy ceases…”
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, semen is
used as a metaphor for Vairochana, the Originator of all phenomena, the Cause
of all Causes. “As the Universal Father, Vairochana manifests or spreads forth
as seed, or semen, all things; his Shakti, the Mother of Great Space, is
the Universal Womb into which the seed falls and evolves as the world-systems.”
In Buddhism, we personally experience the
eternal “Clear Light Mind” for a brief second at the moment of orgasm. Semen is
thus not only a symbol for this mind, but also a physical incarnation of
it. Japan is where this esoteric Buddhist view of semen mixes with the
shamanic Shinto one of rice.
Beloved Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama
uses white polka-dots in her important 1967 film “Self-Obliteration.”
To better understand how a substance from the
body can be so closely related to a substance from the earth, we can look to
Etoro’s neighboring tribe, the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea. They relate
semen to oil that comes out of a sacred hole in the forest. This oil makes the
entire forest a realm of immense ritual importance and spiritual power linking
the living with the dead and humans with spiritual entities. Their bodies are
understood in terms of the semen-oil produced by the god, Afek. Tilley reports: “Oil-soaked taro is fed to domestic boars,
bamboo tubes of oil are buried to promote the growth of taro, and oil is rubbed
on the skin to make it glisten and ensure personal well-being. Shrines
throughout the forest are anointed with oil. Oil is conceived to flow under the
landscape itself in the realm of the spirit world.” The tribe’s leaders talk of
oil as “our blood, our semen, our bone, our heritage from our ancestors…our
life.” Oil is to the Bimin-Kuskusmin as rice is to the Japanese.
In Japan, semen is also associated with
chthonic forces and mythic origins of the world. According to the most ancient
Shinto text, the Kojiki, (A.D. 712), ancestors of all creation, Izanagi and
Izanami, Sky-father and Earth-mother thrust down a gifted “heavenly
jewel-spear” into the “oily” ocean of chaos. They move it around, pull it out,
and drops from the spear’s tip become the onogoro, “self-hardening,”
islands of “luxuriant reed-plain-land-of-fresh-rice.” The sexual overtones are
obvious, as are the geological, volcanic ones. Vannovsky’s interpretation of
the Kojiki, Volcanoes and the Sun argues the mythical penis spewing
forth self-hardening semen should be understood as volcano spewing forth magma.
I find it interesting that until recently it
was illegal under Japanese law to publish images of human genitals, anuses,
and/or pubic hair. Semen, however, could be shown. It is celebrated in anime porn and the recently
established bukkake porn. Bukkake, meaning "splash", is a
Japanese pornographic invention, usually consisting of a group of men
ejaculating together onto someone's face in the center. The pornographic trend
has since spread to other countries.
Reviewing the way Indian religions view semen
gives it another possible shape. Swami Narayanananda teaches that within
Hinduism, “semen exists in a subtle form all over the body. By sexual desires,
thoughts and acts, the gross semen is formed.” As yogis we are to convert
heavy (gross) semen into subtle semen, called shakti, and then keep it
from congealing back down through the use of pranayama and seminal retention.
In Play of Consciousness, Swami Muktananda compares this important body
technique to saving money. “You should preserve your seminal fluid, which is
your radiance, as you save money, watching every penny. Never forget that a
radiant human being can be formed from that one drop. If you loose it, all the
best powders and creams and rouges and lipsticks will not brighten your skin.
The radiance of the sexual fluid is the vehicle of Chiti Shakti. Chiti is, as
it were, bought with it. It is the means for activating the Kundalini and the
highest means of making Samadhi stable. Look carefully and see the condition of
the man who has wasted his sexual fluid.”
Japanese people love shirako, fish semen. The milt resembles human semen.
Semen is also the material beginnings of the
mythical substance amrita, said to leak down into the yogi’s body via
the pineal gland. This “nectar of the gods” is understood in relation to the shakti
which rises from the sacrem (the sacred) like a snake up the spine to be
transformed into bliss upon entering the brain like semen entering the vagina. Some Vedic philosophers argue amrita is just a symbol for
cerebral-spinal fluid. Nevertheless, yogis report amrita is generated by
retaining their semen during intercourse, real or imagined. This personal
mythology manifests collectively as the most sacred and expansive of all Hindu
festivals, the Kumbh Mela, centered around the group obtaining amrita from the Heavenly
Ocean of Milk. In Bengal, amrita is specifically understood as Shiva’s
semen. The Kumbh Mela is therefore the world’s largest spiritual bukkake scene.
In Indian history there are references to sacrifices of semen becoming an alternative to
human sacrifices. This is because the semen is the soul. The female ovum is
believed to be the source of blood, meat, and bones, whereas semen is the
source of the soul, vital breath, and marrow. David White notes that within
Indian culture semen is called saumya (lunar) and is also understood as
Soma, the moon deity. This helps the culture connect microcosmic semen to
macrocosmic moon.
Purhapse within a Japanese man the
materiality of semen touches the cultural acceptance and celebration of
rice-sharing. The “okuizome“ ceremony marks the moment the child, now 100 days
old, can eat rice instead of milk. Milky warm rice-wine is drunk by the adults. Soft, white
sticky rice-cakes, mochi, are consumed by everyone, offered to every
shrine, and made by men coming together in group ritual. Sometimes at new years
people get together and drink rice gruel and rice spirits. Every year it’s not
uncommon for the sticky ricecake soup, zoni, to kill several old people by
sticking to their throats.
Murakami: Lonesome Cowboy (1998)
A perfect bowl of rice may recall images of
balls filled with semen. The word for ball, tama, is the same as the
word for soul. At funerals, chopsticks are pushed into a heaping bowl of rice and
left erect and phallic, further suggesting the rice-semen-testicle complex. The
daily offering to the family ancestral alcove continues to be rice, and the
rice reeds are still woven together to create shimenawa holy ropes that
sacralize houses, temples, trees, stones, and sumo wrestlers, transforming them
into places for kami. Shide, white rice-paper lightning bolts zig-zag
from the thick ropes and might as well symbolise semen. Now we can see
bukkake above every temple doorway, and the sumo wrestler is a version of
Murakami’s Lonesome Cowboy. Moreover, the ritual magic wand used by all
Shinto Priests, the onusa, is a wooden pole with a bunch
of white shide hanging from its tip, sparkling in the sunlight.
