When men began to seek a share of the religious and magical knowledge which had generally been seen as the property of women, they often tried to make themselves resemble women so that the spirits would find them acceptable. The most common method was to dress in women's clothes.

Because of this, transvestitism is found in a majority of ancient priesthoods. Priests of Germanic tribes were said to be muliebri ornatu, men dressed up as women. Norse priests of sunrise and sunset rituals were men whose office demanded they dress and style their hair as women. Even Thor, the thunder God, received his magic hammer and was filled with power only after he put on the garments of the Goddess Freya. At the ancient Argive "Feast of Wantonness," men donned women's clothes and temporarily assumed female powers in violation of specific taboos. Cretan priests of Leukippe always wore female dress and so did priests of Heracles, in memory of their god's service (in female dress) to the Lydian Goddess Omphale, personification of the omphalos (navel, hub of the world, center of the Goddess's body, source of all things). Men in Moses Maimoneides day put on women's clothing to invoke the aid of Venus.

Roman priests of the Magna Mater dressed as women, and transvestitism figured greatly in Roman rites of the Lupercalia and Ides of January. Before his conver-sion to Christianity, St. Jerome even partici-pated in ritual transvestitism although his biographers apparently pretended he had worn women's clothes by mistake. (Am I the only one who finds this laughable?)

In the 12^th Century, the clergy participated in the pagan rites in the nave of the church wearing women's clothing. During the Inquisition, it was said that male and female witches actually changed sex with each other by wearing each other's clothing.

Men's transvestitism seems to be rooted in the ancient desire to practice female magick. It has also been argued that it was perhaps most likely that shamanism was originally a profession of women, and for men to enter it, they had to become as much like women as possible. In the Celebes, religious rituals were in the hands of women who were assisted by male priests dressed as women. In Borneo, magicians are required to wear female clothing. Siberian shamans often wore women's clothing, and the greatest being those who could "change their sex" to female, take husbands, and live as homosexual wives. In Malaya, the manang (shaman) puts on women's clothing after initiation and remains a transvestite for life. Almost all the spirits invoked by a manang are in the name of Ini (Great Mother).

To this day, some Native American peoples view the homosexual berdache as a gifted medicine man. To become a berdache, a man—usually in adolescence—receives a dream from a Moongoddess in which she orders him to turn female and become one of her own. He then dresses and lives as a woman, and is accepted by the tribe as the woman he wants to be. He is revered as having special powers and conducts rites and rituals in the community. (An excellent book which discusses this is The Spirit And The Flesh: Sexual Diversity In American Indian Culture by Walter L. Williams, 1986, Beacon Press, Boston.)

The Krishna cult in India still demands ritual transvestitism for men who adore the feminine principles by identifying themselves with Krishna's Gopis. They wear feminine jewelry and clothes, and even observe a "menstrual period" of a few days. It is the theological doctrine of this cult that "all souls are feminine to God."

Resource: The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker (Ed), Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books (1996).

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