ABSTRACT
From the very beginning of his awareness of sexual experience man has realized that it brought him more than simply physical pleasure; in some mysterious, almost magical way it intensified his consciousness, expanded his awareness and heightened the experience not only of the physical body, but of something else as well. This was not the only factor that led to man’s association of sex and magic. Sex, because of its link with procreation - the closest man comes to being in the godlike position of creating life - also held mysterious, powerful connotations. Ancient legends linked the creation of the earth with the sexual activities of divine beings; other myths attributed to the gods various characteristics of sexual prowess and desire, and rituals almost inevitably employed sexual imagery and stimulation, though often carefully disguised, to arouse and direct this basic human energy. Often the gods and their worshippers in ancient Greece were portrayed in states of sexual excitement, as the pleasure and intensified consciousness of sexual stimulation was shown to be a part of the ecstasy of religious worship. Often, it was held that the faithful became possessed (with all its sexual overtones) by the gods during the acts of sexual intercourse - states of ecstasy, visions, voices and experiences of the supernatural often accompanied the heights of sexual excitement. In this experience, in which the physical body seemed to fuse with a higher existence, man believed he came closest to the divine, to the creative life processes of which sexuality is a manifestation.
