Of these beings here, the essence is clearly the earth; of the earth, the waters; of the waters, the plants; of the plants, the flowers; of the flowers, the fruits; of the fruits, man; of man, semen.

Prajapati[1] then thought to himself: “Now, why don’t I prepare a base for that semen?” So he created woman and, after creating her, had intercourse with her. A man, therefore, should have intercourse with a woman. Prajapati stretched out from himself the elongated stone for preparing Soma[2] and impregnated her with it.

Her vulva is the sacrificial ground; her pubic hair is the sacred grass; her labia majora are the Soma-press; and her labia minora are the fire blazing at the center. A man who engages in sexual intercourse with this knowledge obtains as great a world as a man who performs a Soma sacrifice, and he appropriates to himself the merits of the woman with whom he has sex. The women, on the other hand, appropriate to themselves the merits of a man who engages in sexual intercourse with them without this knowledge.

From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Upanishads, translated by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 88.

Footnotes

1. Prajapati is literally “lord of creatures.” He is the creator god par excellence in the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. He is the father of the gods and the demons, as well as of all creatures. (Glossary, op. cit., p. 411)

2. Soma is a sacrificial drink pressed from a plant, a drink that apparently had mind-altering qualities. The drink is personified as a god and later identified with the moon. Thus the term often simply means the moon. (Glossary, op. cit., p. 413)