RITUAL CHASTITY. - In non-Christian religions, ritual chastity means the observance of sexual continence prior to the celebration of a rite or of an action believed to be influenced by supernatural sacro-magical powers. In the practice of all religions, in order to enter into contact with the "sacred" one must be in a state of purity (ἁγνεία, castitas), which is attained through fasting, through abstinence from some particular food (castus, castimonia the Latins called it, with the meaning of privation), or also through abstinence from sexual contact.
The repugnance toward sexual contact depends on the fact that it weakens one's powers, takes away spiritual lucidity and the freedom of the spirit, and therefore renders man less capable and thus less suited to place himself in contact with the divine world and — since we are dealing with primitive peoples — to dominate the forces of nature and of life. In woman too the sexual act violates the potentiality for fecundation enclosed in the condition of virgin, and in any case weakens it.
Moreover, the pollutions connected with the sexual act are considered as a miasma that renders the individual impure and therefore unworthy to address the divinity, and all the more — as in the case of the priesthood — to make himself intermediary between it and men.
The idea that sexual purity is necessary in order to approach the divine world is confirmed by the fact that in several rituals prepubescent children and boys are charged with the rite and considered as the most suitable intermediaries between the community and the gods.
Ritual chastity is required above all on the night preceding the celebration of the rite, but it can also be imposed for more than a day. Among primitive populations, sexual abstinence is prescribed for the time of sowing, to avert adverse meteorological conditions, to propitiate actions of hunting, fishing, and war, during which the women of those engaged in them observe a rigorous sexual abstinence, which they supplement with songs and dances in order to strengthen the force of the man far away — a force that would remain weakened by their infidelity and would place him in a condition of inferiority before the animals to be captured or the enemy.
In Brahmanic India, he who offers the sacrifice, besides external purification and fasting, must rigorously abstain from sexual contacts (Āpastamba-gṛhya sūtra, X, 14, 10); even the horse destined for the great annual sacrifice (aśvamedha) must not mate; and if, despite the vigilance to which it is subjected, it transgresses the rule, an expiatory sacrifice is required.
In Greece, on the second day of the Anthesteria (end of February), the basilissa, wife of the archon king, before proceeding to the hierogamy with the simulacrum of Dionysus, must observe, together with the 14 matrons who form her retinue, ritual chastity; at the Thesmophoria, which fall in the month of Pyanepsion (end of October), the women of Athens must abstain for 3 days from food and from sexual contacts.
The thirty-year chastity imposed on the Roman Vestals (Plutarch, Numa, 10) serves to strengthen their function as guardians of the hearth of the State and of its prosperity, represented by the penus, or storehouse of provisions. This fertilizing force inherent in virginity is also proved by the rite that took place in the temple of Juno Sospita at Lanuvium, where, if the serpent sacred to the goddess ate the meal offered to it by a virgin, it was considered a good omen for the fertility of the year (fertilis annus erit [Propertius, IV, 8, 14]).
In Rome, during the festival — secret and reserved to women — of the Bona Dea (May 1), they had to abstain from sexual commerce (Plutarch, Quaest. rom., 20). In the Oriental religions that spread through Rome during the Hellenistic era, sexual abstinence is widely documented. The Bacchanalia, prohibited by the Senatusconsultum of 186 B.C., entailed 10 days of abstinence, including sexual abstinence (Livy, XXXIX, 11).
Regarding Isis, Plutarch (De Iside, 2) affirms that the goddess, through the prescribed sexual abstinence, tames in men "unbridled voluptuousness." The complaints of Tibullus (I, 3, 23), of Propertius (II, 28, 61; 33, 1, 5; IV, 5, 35), and of Ovid (Amores, I, 8, 15; III, 9, 33) about the severe reserve of their respective girlfriends on the festive recurrence of the goddess are well known (cf. also Juvenal, VI, 535).
As for Cybele, Hippolytus (Ref. haer., V, 9) affirms that her initiates had to observe chastity during the days of her festival. The duration of this abstinence was 9 days according to Ovid (Met., X, 435). And finally Mithra, an austere god, who admits no elements of voluptuousness into his myth, could boast among his followers virgins and continent men: "habet et virgines, habet et continentes" (Tertullian, De prescr. haer., 40).
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Nicola Turchi