MARIE DELCOURT “Hermaphroditos – Myths and Rituals of Bisexuality in Classic Ancient Times”

Marie Delcourt
“Hermaphroditos - Mituri si rituri ale bisexualitãtii în Antichitatea clasicã”
Editura Sympozion, 1996

Marie Delcourt invites us into a world long forgotten, a journey into a universe of intersexual disguise during private and public rituals. She talks of reciprocal transgender dressing on solemn occasions, when men wore women’s dresses, and women dressed in men’s clothes (wedding customs, public holidays, legends in which a transgender dressing concomitantly is mentioned with a brave deed or the seduction of a bride).

For the Greeks, the androgyne meant a superior stage of nature and the divine, proven in traditions referring to goddesses conceiving by themselves. The book is an invitation towards discovery of a world rich in myths and legends, a fusion of mythology, philosophy, and psychology.

Through the story of Aristophanus, in “The Feast,” Plato offers an explanation for the homo- and heterosexual choices: spheric, four-handed double beings existed, with double sexual organs, either both feminine, or both masculine, or one feminine and one masculine. The first sprang from the Earth, the second from the Sun, and the last from the Moon. Because of their pride and hypocrisy they were cut in two by Zeus. Each half had to search for the other, so men who were born from mixed beings prefer women, and women prefer men.  Women born from the split of a woman don’t even notice men—instead they look for women; and men born from the split of a man look only for men. In the end, they unite with their beloved being, so that their bodies become one.

I invite you to an enjoyable reading!

Beatrice Nica,
Coordinator of the Center for Information and Documentation