HILLEL Tribal rituals of spouse exchange. Neolithic hordes dancing naked upon the heath. Whole cities pouring into the streets in libidinous revelry. Throughout human history these practices have been used as a means to extend kinship ties, as celebrations of fertility, or as an annual blowing off of steam. Erotic rites were common in Canaan when God made His covenant with Abraham. As late as the 1940s “extra-mateship liaison” was an approved custom in 39 percent of cultures studied throughout the world—from the Himalayas to the South Seas and from the Arctic to the Amazon. Today we know that there is a deeper, unconscious motivation behind the rituals. They combine the two biological imperatives that paradoxically have governed the sex lives of humans for eons: the drive to seek long-term partners for raising children, and the equally powerful drive for genetic and sexual variety. Of course, many of us do not accept shared eroticism between couples as a normal part of life. Sensual play between more than two people is often seen as coercive, compulsive, or even evil.
