Voluntary castration has existed as a religious practice up to the present day, openly in India and secretively in other parts of the world. Gods in a number of different cultures were castrated, a mutilation that paradoxically tended to increase rather than diminish their powers. This cross-cultural examination of the eunuch gods examines the meaning associated with divine emasculation in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, the Roman Empire, India, and northern Europe to the degree that these meanings can be read from the wording of myths, early accounts, and the castration cults for some of these gods. Three distinct patterns of godly castration emerge: divine dynastic conflicts involving castration; a powerful goddess paired with a weaker male devotee castrated because of his relationship with her; and magus gods whose castration demonstrates their superiority. Castration cults associated with some of these gods--and other gods whose sexuality was ambiguous, such as Jesus--some of them existing up to the present day, illuminate the spiritual powers associated with castration for gods and mortals. Keywords: castration, eunuch, Osiris, Kumarbi, Ouranos, Cybele, Attis, Adonis, Combabus, Indra, Shiva, Odin, Hijra, Skoptsky

The Castrated Gods and their Castration Cults: Revenge, Punishment, and Spiritual Supremacy

In the course of the human past the elimination of the testicles of boys and men – what we call castration – has taken place for a variety of reasons. Many times it was meant to deliberately hurt people. It is and was also performed, though, as a therapeutic measure by well-meaning physicians. Studying the motivations of medical practitioners involved in castration practices provides insight into the deontology and cultural context of these healers. This article explores the healing activities of the physicians of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds in this special field of surgery. In the extant literary sources we find medical indications for castration which are quite obvious to a modern eye, but also more mysterious and unexpected occasions which need to be explained from the historical context. Keywords: Greece and Rome; castration; generative organs; medical history; masculinity

König, Jacqueline G. M.. "Emasculating healers. Medical castration practices in Greco-Roman antiquity*" Journal of Ancient History, vol. 9, no. 2, 2021, pp. 221-237. https://doi.org/10.1515/jah-2021-0002