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I learned an interesting thing today about Zoroastrianism in late antiquity. It needs a bit of background.
Menstrual taboos in the rabbinic Jewish tradition have included, amongst prohibitions on sex and general bodily contact, the concept of tumah. Tumah is a delicate word; it means unclean, but not in the sense of physically dirty, as it was once explained to me, no, it means spiritually dirty.* It's essentially a visceral concept; anything which makes people go "ewww!" probably has tumah involved somewhere. Creepy-crawlies, dead bodies, genital discharges of various kinds - all spread tumah by contact, and so do menstruant women.** Certain household items can pick up tumah - things like food and chairs, although not things like bathwater. Therefore, menstruant women (and dead bodies, and people with STDs) aren't supposed to go around touching things too much because they'll make them tameh.
These days, we don't bother too much about most of these - unofficially because it's jolly impractical, and officially because we can't do some of the purification rituals and also because we don't have a temple, which is where tumah becomes really incredibly bad news. But we still impose a whole bunch of restrictions on menstruant women, because even though we've more or less got over the whole bugs-are-ick thing, we haven't got over the whole women-are-ick thing.
Anyway, purification rituals - crockery you have to smash up (remember I said impractical), some things you can dunk in water, some things you have to use the ashes of a red cow sacrificed in the appropriate way (ditto). Women you dunk in water after you're quite, quite sure they're not icky any more.***
So much for rabbinic Judaism. You thought that was bad? Zoroastrians, quoth my lecturer, thought that a menstruating woman could make things tameh even just by looking at them, never mind touching them. We thought the rabbis were frightened of women's bodies - they're positively lions compared to Zoroastrians.
And women could make anything tameh - not only some kinds of utensils, as the Jews, but absolutely anything. Of course, this poses a problem when you come to purification time, because she makes water tameh: as soon as she touches the water (even with her glance) it's tameh too, so dunking in it won't help her.
Fortunately, there's one substance which even the Zoroastrians don't think is affected by contact with a menstruant. Urine. To purify herself, the ex-menstruant must stand in a bowl of pee and wash her entire body with it. Shall we go over that again? Not only has this woman effectively destroyed everything she has come into contact with over the past week or so (and imagine if she'd accidentally caught sight of the new food processor), and not only has she had to restrict her movements considerably so as not to make the entire locality spiritually undesirable, but she has also had to remember to collect pee, - and now she has to stand in a bowl of stale pee and wash her entire body with it. Surfaces, crevices, inside and out.
To me, all this smacks of a fear of women's bodies made official by religious law and taken to its logical extreme; if a woman's body is shown to be truly disgusting, it is legitimate to fear it. I'm told that if I was on a higher spiritual plane, I would see the whole process for the beautiful thing it is, and even those hankies would be a divine experience.
I don't think the flight's leaving any time soon.
* So that's all right then.
** Because they're icky.
*** We're so concerned about the ickiness that we make them shove hankies up where the sun don't shine for an entire week after they've stopped menstruating, the idea being that if you poke the hanky around hard enough and for long enough you can eventually be sure there's no ick left in there. Likewise we make them wash, take off their makeup, pick off their scabs, blow their noses, clean their ears...because women's bodies are icky. Men never have to blow their noses, after all.
Menstrual taboos in the rabbinic Jewish tradition have included, amongst prohibitions on sex and general bodily contact, the concept of tumah. Tumah is a delicate word; it means unclean, but not in the sense of physically dirty, as it was once explained to me, no, it means spiritually dirty.* It's essentially a visceral concept; anything which makes people go "ewww!" probably has tumah involved somewhere. Creepy-crawlies, dead bodies, genital discharges of various kinds - all spread tumah by contact, and so do menstruant women.** Certain household items can pick up tumah - things like food and chairs, although not things like bathwater. Therefore, menstruant women (and dead bodies, and people with STDs) aren't supposed to go around touching things too much because they'll make them tameh.
These days, we don't bother too much about most of these - unofficially because it's jolly impractical, and officially because we can't do some of the purification rituals and also because we don't have a temple, which is where tumah becomes really incredibly bad news. But we still impose a whole bunch of restrictions on menstruant women, because even though we've more or less got over the whole bugs-are-ick thing, we haven't got over the whole women-are-ick thing.
Anyway, purification rituals - crockery you have to smash up (remember I said impractical), some things you can dunk in water, some things you have to use the ashes of a red cow sacrificed in the appropriate way (ditto). Women you dunk in water after you're quite, quite sure they're not icky any more.***
So much for rabbinic Judaism. You thought that was bad? Zoroastrians, quoth my lecturer, thought that a menstruating woman could make things tameh even just by looking at them, never mind touching them. We thought the rabbis were frightened of women's bodies - they're positively lions compared to Zoroastrians.
And women could make anything tameh - not only some kinds of utensils, as the Jews, but absolutely anything. Of course, this poses a problem when you come to purification time, because she makes water tameh: as soon as she touches the water (even with her glance) it's tameh too, so dunking in it won't help her.
Fortunately, there's one substance which even the Zoroastrians don't think is affected by contact with a menstruant. Urine. To purify herself, the ex-menstruant must stand in a bowl of pee and wash her entire body with it. Shall we go over that again? Not only has this woman effectively destroyed everything she has come into contact with over the past week or so (and imagine if she'd accidentally caught sight of the new food processor), and not only has she had to restrict her movements considerably so as not to make the entire locality spiritually undesirable, but she has also had to remember to collect pee, - and now she has to stand in a bowl of stale pee and wash her entire body with it. Surfaces, crevices, inside and out.
To me, all this smacks of a fear of women's bodies made official by religious law and taken to its logical extreme; if a woman's body is shown to be truly disgusting, it is legitimate to fear it. I'm told that if I was on a higher spiritual plane, I would see the whole process for the beautiful thing it is, and even those hankies would be a divine experience.
I don't think the flight's leaving any time soon.
* So that's all right then.
** Because they're icky.
*** We're so concerned about the ickiness that we make them shove hankies up where the sun don't shine for an entire week after they've stopped menstruating, the idea being that if you poke the hanky around hard enough and for long enough you can eventually be sure there's no ick left in there. Likewise we make them wash, take off their makeup, pick off their scabs, blow their noses, clean their ears...because women's bodies are icky. Men never have to blow their noses, after all.
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