by William Dean
(04/16/03)
Ah, spring. What an erotic season. At long last, we're thrust from the frigid and covered bodies into the budding, blooming, naked power of Nature in all her glorious fertility. Harkening back to who-knows-when, the rites of spring are still celebrated in countless sensual and lusty ways across the whole panoply of humankind.
As you may have already seen from several sex blogs and other websites, the great Kanamara Festival in Kawasaki, Japan, gets under way in early April. Even Japanese people, used to the annual event, find the giant penis statues invigorating and exciting. Who wouldn't? Held at the Wakiyama Hachiman-gu Shrine close to the Kawasaki Daishi station, the festival honors three main mikoshi, or portable shrines, each featuring an oversize circumcised erection. One is made from a tree, another of black iron or steel, and another is hot pink! After suitable ceremonies, the mikoshi are lifted on volunteers' shoulders and paraded down the streets. The pink one is niftily carried by transvestities. You go, gurlz! As they traverse the crowded streets, the minoshi are vigorously shaken by their carriers, perhaps in imitation of a good hard shagging and in hopes it will spew forth good luck and fertility to eager couples. Like any good festival, there's plenty of music from the traditional Kodo-style drummers and delectable cock-shaped candies galore for worshippers and tourists to buy, lick, suck, and taste for that spring-inspired sugar rush.
Slightly earlier than the Kanamara, in Basel, Switzerland, the Fastnacht has been celebrated since sometime before 1376 as a Euro-version of Rio's and New Orleans' famous Mardi Gras. For three days and nights, the city is swarmed by bands in outrageous costumes, people-powered floats, and masked revelers as they "kick out the jams" before settling in for the personal sacrifices of upcoming Lent. A friend of mine from the U.S., in Basel for the first time, said she'd never seen anything like it, and marveled at the apparently traditional custom of "tie cutting." According to her, Basel women can snip the necktie of any married male and then "make the two-backed beast" for one night with no repercussions to the marital status of either party. Apparently, the Swiss have more on their minds during Fasnacht than banking, cuckoo clocks, stamps, and chocolate!
Assuring fecundity, good crops, and celebrating the return of spring weather, while giving thanks to Whomever you may believe is in charge of such things, probably stretches back to the earliest agrarian socities. From the East, rituals and rites spread across the Near East and Europe, culminating in the Isis-Osiris cults of ancient Egypt and the Lupercalias of ancient Rome. In some cultures, the Corn God and Queen would publically mate while everyone else just got to watch, but orgiastic revelry -- even between plebs and aristocrats -- was the order of the party in pagan Rome.
Unable to completely suppress the holiday merry-making of the spring equinox, the early Christian and Catholic patriarchs merely adapted the seasonal spree to a time of piousness, including Lent and Easter. During the Middle Ages, however, even priests and bishops were drawn into the upending of staid behavior and could be seen riding backwards on mules, cutting irreligious capers in the great cathedrals, and even, so rumors go, committing fornication with willing city ladies amid the skirling music and dancing.
The Renaissance, of course, saw a return to many classical doings, from art, architecture, and philosophy, to -- surprise! -- rites of spring. The origin of the May Pole dance, for example, is as closely allied to the Japanese Kanamara Festival as one might imagine. The ribbon-bedecked and flower-decorated May Pole represents a large, erect phallus and the circular dance around it is designed to bring couples together for, well, coupling.
This simplified spring rite, too, was condemned and suppressed in England by the Puritanical, led by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and by the followers of John Calvin. The early colonists to America, during that time, imported their stern outlook on sensual things, especially condemning dancing and frivolity as "devilish and heathen-like." The suppressors themselves were roundly condemned with the restoration in 1660 of King Charles II and for another fifteen years, America, particularly in Virginia, saw the yearly May Pole raised high and the ribaldry of spring returned to its rightful status.
In our own times, the ancient and venerable spring rites are still commemorated with the annual Spring Break, when collegians frequently drink to excess, go topless or naked, and cavort. Spring is also the time when numerous Pride festivals take place, as of old, complete with costumes and the carrying about of erect phalli. So, there you have it, a mini-tour of what spring means; a time, as the old saying goes, "When a young man's (and woman's) fancy turns to love." Spring, a time of passion and desire after the long, cold winter; a time to let your buds spring forth, your bloom to blush openly, and to celebrate the timeless rituals of mate with mate. Go for it!
