Hieros gamos

Hieros gamos of Hera (shown with Iris) and Zeus, 1900 drawing of a fresco at Pompeii.

Hieros gamos, hieros (ἱερός) meaning "holy" or "sacred" and gamos (γάμος) meaning "marriage," or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage"), is a sacred marriage that plays out between gods, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities.

The notion of hieros gamos does not always presuppose literal sexual intercourse in ritual, but is also used in purely symbolic or mythological context, notably in alchemy and hence in Jungian psychology. Hieros gamos is described as the prototype of fertility rituals.[1]

  1. ^ Hinz, Evelyn J. (1976). "Hierogamy versus Wedlock: Types of Marriage Plots and Their Relationship to Genres of Prose Fiction". PMLA. 91 (5). Modern Language Association: 909. doi:10.2307/461564. JSTOR 461564. S2CID 163770380.

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