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Location: Bhutan, Northwest Asia, winter 2003
I’m writing from 13,500 feet elevation with a bloated
stomach (due to low air pressure combined with a huge gourmet
breakfast) at the foot of Mt. Jhomolhari, the most
sacred of Bhutanese mountains. According to Tibetans there
are rainbow palaces on these peaks inhabited by goddesses
and spirits, however these goddesses are part of Tibetan culture,
just four miles away, as the bird flies across the Bhutan
border and into China (Tibet). Tibet is the backside of this
magnificent 24,130 ft mountain I’m gazing upon. I'm a
tourist from Seattle in mid-trek with friend Ann, from Kentucky
on a 9-day hike through the world’s best-preserved monarchy
and by some accounts the most isolated culture left on the
planet. |
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In order to get to Bhutan requires a mandatory flight on
the royal Bhutan airline, the only airline serving Bhutan.
We awaited the flight two days in Bangkok to get over jet
lag and happened to stay at the Bangkok Hilton where there
is a special place I’ve heard about but never visited
in person. When the hotel was built the locals fought to preserve
the last remaining fertility temple in Thailand. The temple
consists of an alter surrounded by hundreds of penises of
all shapes, sizes and colors carved from wood, rock and styrofoam.
The penises are accurate representations from the pleasure
ridge around the head down to bulging veins. Some even have
legs. One lonely, old growth tree remains of the great forest
that once was Bangkok and is said to house a fertility spirit
that still lives in the tree. Infertile women and couples
in need come from all over the world in hope that praising
the spirit and/or penises will bring them a child.
The fertility goddess predates Thai culture, was common to
all humanity pre-domestication plants and animals and as I
have found is very much still alive in Bhutan where yak herding
matriarchs use six-foot penises painted on their house, ribbons
tied around a multi-colored shaft with semen exploding out
across the wall to ward off bad spirits and attract the fertility
goddess. She, the goddess only lost her power when farming
was invented and a surplus of food appeared allowing populations
to grow uncontrollably for the first time. The fertility goddess
was then slain and replaced by the population control man-god
and here we all are today with big daddy in the sky and big
brother on the ground!
During my trip to Bhutan, I saw some amazing lifestyles, forests,
artifacts, cliffside monasteries, the remote city of Paro,
which is actually just one main street with a Sunday market
full of beautiful specimens of fruit and vegetables brought
up from the Indian plain, 110 degree stone bath where heated
rocks by firewood are placed in a water trough carved from
a single log where you sit within, buttermilk (Yak milk) tea,
monk ceremonies and chanting in preparation for the Kings
arrival and rice alcohol with a farmer in his farmhouse. All
of these places, people, ubiquitous images of Buddha, and
every aspect of life are threads in a continuous, living mythological
weave where miracles are happening everyday; the next door
dog is a reincarnation of a family member and yeti, ghosts,
gods and spirits fill the invisible spaces between all things.
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Travel Writers: Is the Fertility Goddess Still Alive? by
Leonardo DiFrancesco
