otherwise it would prove neither pleasurable nor productive. For first sexual encounters, the preliminaries could take weeks, if not months. Six stages were required: chatting up, to ensure compatibility; fantasizing (or in religious terms, visualizing the beloved day and night in order magically to attract the desired person); and then touching – a strict 30-day regime of caressing one part of their potential partner per day, running up one side of the body from big toe to forehead and then, when the moon turned from waxing to waning, coming back down the other side. Stage four required male suitors to pull their lovers towards them psychically through intense meditation: the length of time required was determined by the woman’s tincture – it took three days if they were light-skinned, forty if they were dark. At this point, albino females must have been at something of a premium. Stage five, at last, was sex, though it demanded that the man be skilled and respectful in sexual relations, using (sadly unexplained) positions such as ‘boxing’, ‘squirrel eats anut’, ‘frog climbs a banana tree’ and ‘thrusting pig’. Stage six required the couple to start again, right from the beginning.
Even after that, properly married couples could not simply dive in willy-nilly whenever they pleased. The guides stressed that they had to practise sex at the right times. The rules forbade lovemaking on the wife’s birthday, as well as the day before a full moon, and on new moons.
Across the water in Java, the ancient sex guides adopted early Islamic rules, which were based on the Prophet’s guidance: no sex standing up, or sitting, or with the woman on top; no talk during intercourse; and sex during menstruation was banned because it created ugly children. Other written advice probably survived from older local folklore: you can tell the shape and size of a man’s penis by looking at his thumb, while a woman’s vagina reflects the shape of her mouth. Or perhaps they got those ones from the playground.
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My Place or Yours?
How to pull
Philaenis, papyrus sex manual (2 BC )
Pick the woman’s worst feature and then make it appear desirable. Tell an older woman that she looks young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks ‘fascinating’.
Top womanizers
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)
The following generally obtain success with women:
Men well versed in the science of love
Raconteurs
Ones acquainted with women from their childhood
Guys who send women presents
Slick talkers
Men who have not loved other women previously
Chaps who know their weak points
Good-looking men
Men who have grown up with women
Men who live next door to women
Men who are devoted to sexual pleasures, even though these are with their own servants
The lovers of the nursemaid’s daughters
Men who have been recently married
Men who like picnics and parties
Liberals
Men who are celebrated for being very strong
Enterprising and brave men
Men who are better looking, cleverer and kinder than your husband
Girls go mad for burnt skulls
Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla (Stage of the Love God), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)
Take a human skull from the cemetery or burning ground on the eighth day of the moonlit fortnight of the seventh month Ashvini (September-October), expose it to fire, and collect the soot upon a plate held over it; let this be drawn over the inner surface of the eye-lids, instead of the usual antimony, and the effect will be to fascinate all the women.
Turn yourself into a sex god
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)
First, get some fashionable gold hyena bones:
Good looks,
Peter Matthiessen, 1937- Hugo van Lawick