AUROGRAPHY: How does it relate to Smell and Human Sexuality?
Interactions between odours and the human electromagnetic field seem to have opened a way to study human equilibrium and erotic behaviour.
Presenting the results of their work on ‘the electric component of the electromagnetic field’ created by the biocurrents (biological electric currents) of the cardiac muscle, the biologists Pavel Guliaev, Vladimir Jabotin and Nina Schlippenbach of the University of Leningrad published an article in 1968 in Reports of the Soviet Academy of Science (vol. CLXXX No. 6). They gave the name of ‘electroaurogramme’ (from the Greek aura, ‘breath’, and gramma, ‘picture’, hence ‘aurogramme’: ‘picture of breath or emanation’) to the recording and measuring of the electric field around the human body, namely, in the space surrounding the body. These scientists discovered that after the brain, the knees and the heart have the largest fields, although other researchers are convinced that the two primordial human motor centres are the genitals and the brain.
Scientists at the University of Kazan in Russia observed a strange phenomenon: when two individuals undergo aurogrpahy at the same time, the two aurogrammes are altered, being either in harmony with or in opposition to each one. This made it possible to study compatibility or incompatibility between a man and a woman, raising the possibility of finding the ideal ‘soulmate’ or sexual partner for each individual.
The scholars equally noticed that if one centre is stronger that the other, it may cover it with its zone of influence. The first sphere succeeds in drawing the other one into a kind of electric exchange, which is contrary to the laws of conventional physics. This strange phenomenon was supposed to explain personal attraction and antipathy between individuals.
Based on this observation, Russian scientists conjectured that mate-swapping or changing of partners might enable them to restore a couple’s equilibrium by harmonising their aurogrammes.
The wave of eroticism that was breaking over the urban society originated in the cold and socialist Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe where the people began to hold relatively liberal views on religious morality and taboos of sex, although rural areas were somewhat sheltered from it. This surge of eroticism or the release of sexual forces to the point of obscenity has been interpreted as a need to rid oneself of moral inhibitions handed down throughout the ages and throw off the restraints of decorum in society.
French author Robert Charroux (1909-1978), in one of his books which have become international best-sellers, notes that husbands and wives have been deceiving each other since the beginning of known time, which has led to ‘the oldest profession in the world’: prostitution.
From 1960 onwards, Charroux had won a large readership both in Europe and America and was widely known for his books on ancient mysteries of archaeology and prehistory. From 1930 to 1943, he was a civil servant in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and then served as the Minister for Cultural Affairs in the French Government for the following two years.
Mate-swapping and open marriages
Wondering why so many couples are mismatched and why there are so many cases of sexual incompatibility which cause dissension, unhappiness and even tragedy, the author explains that there is no electric harmony between husband and wife who need to restore their equilibrium. According to him, human beings are naturally inclined to have multiple sexual experiences or they are driven by a need to change partners. Hence, Charroux notes that the idea that mate-swapping is a kind of therapy, has attracted the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes and even some Russian scientists.
Yet, not only moralists, but people in general, have been critical of this life-style, as it seriously undermines the very fabric of society as well as sanctity and fidelity in marriage. In an open marriage, which is a form of non-monogamy (having more than one partner at the same time), the two partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity. Although some couples have reported high levels of marital satisfaction and long-lasting open marriages, others have dropped out of it to return to sexual monogamy. A 1981 survey concluded that around 80% of couples in open marriages experienced jealousy over their extramarital relationships. More recent surveys showed that 75-85% of adults in the United States were against extramarital sex while similar levels of disapproval were observed in other Western societies as well. A research was carried out, surveying over 33,500 people in 24 nations and found that 85% of people believed that extramarital sex was always or almost always wrong, mainly due to religious and moral reasons. In a 2005 study, over 100 college women viewed open marriage as one of the least desirable forms of marriage. Ninety-four per cent said that they would never take part in a marriage where the man has a right to sex outside the marriage while 91% said that they would never participate in a marriage where the woman has a right to sex outside the marriage.
Engaging in sex with a number of partners increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS although this does not apply to open marriages alone. Several authors have considered open marriages to be psychologically damaging, as sexual non-monogamy proves too difficult for most couples to manage and consequently, these authors regard open marriages as a ‘failed’ lifestyle. Others claim that strong social disapproval of such marriages may lead to a loss of psychological and health benefits and keeping their life-styles secret may reduce the amount of social support available to people in open marriages.
Role of smell in human sexuality
It has been found that each individual’s aurogramme is closely related to the sense of smell. Whether this odour is simply a sensation with a material basis, or it has a certain spherical organisation, was studied and it is thought that the field of emanation of the odourous particles takes the shape of the aurogramme and may be carried away by aurogramme waves.
When a couple finds each other’s odours pleasant and even sexually exciting, and especially if each has a unique odour of his/her own, it can be observed that their aurogrammes are in harmony, which means that they are sexually compatible.
However, at the physiology convention held at Cannes, France in 1967, Kunt Larsson of the University of Göteborg in Sweden, Jacques Le Magnen of the Collège de France and Dr. Azémar of Avignon, also in France, hypothesised that odours do not directly stimulate the sexual motor centres. Nevertheless, they confirmed that the hairy parts of the human body, along with the smell of the breath, played the greatest part in arousing desire. This means that desire is directly related to the most animal features of a human being.
Perfume manufacturers are well aware of this and they always choose animal substances as the bases of their products: musk (a glandular secretion of the Asian musk deer), civet (from the anal scent glands of the civet-cat) and ambergris (a waxy substance from the intestines of the sperm whale).
Sexologists have found that some women naturally secrete sweat with a unique, aphrodisiac odour that acts as a lure to attract men. It has been noted that women are much more sensitive than men to aphrodisiac odours, especially at the time of ovulation, and they have a veritable sexual attraction towards fur garments, which would seem to indicate that they are instinctively more animal than men.
French author Jacques Marcireau, in his book Histoire des rites sexuels (History of Sexual Rites), writes that attentive examination of the oldest rite, which is bestial copulation (Eve and Serpent), leads to a surprising hypothesis on the origin of humanity, namely, that women, the first non-animal creatures, had sexual relations with animals which produced hybrids, and that the progressive elimination of these monsters by natural selection gradually gave rise to humans, with its two sexes. The writer, therefore, assumes that the male sex would be physiologically posterior to the female sex. Although Marcireau’s theory is open to debate, he says that ‘sacred prostitution’, the right of a feudal lord to deflower a female vassal on her wedding night, worship of the lingam (penis) and the yoni (vagina), and circumcision are vestiges of mysterious practices which were once universal and played a key role in the formation of religions and societies.
In L’Odorat et la sexualité (Smell and Sexuality), R. Harari reports how the builders mixed musk with the mortar to construct a mosque in Tabriz, Iran. In hot sunlight the walls gave off a strong musky smell which, according to legend, intoxicated lovers.
Findings of Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was an English physician, author and social reformer who studied human sexuality and co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality and published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations. In his book Sexual Selection in Man (1905) Ellis wrote that smell contributed much to the role of sexual selection. He asserted that smell could heighten sexual attraction with certain climates, claiming that people are often lured by odours in the East, particularly in India and in “Hebrew and Mohammedan lands”. Describing the odours inherent in various races, Ellis said that the Japanese have the least intense bodily odour.
Interestingly, even if a man can smell external odours perfectly well, he is almost totally unable to smell his own odours, especially his breath. Human beings are not bothered by foul odours coming from themselves, even if they can smell them to some extent.
If the hairs on a hunting dog’s muzzle are cut off, he can no longer follow the scent of the game; if the same thing is done to a cat, it becomes cowardly and cannot catch rats. To discourage attackers, the badger, an omnivorous nocturnal mammal, emits a foul odour, but it itself does not smell it, or at least it has no unpleasant effect on it.
It is believed that in prehistoric times men in backward regions had noses, particularly nostrils, more fully developed than those of modern man. A drawing carved on a bone found in a cave at Isturitz, France, shows a man crawling after a naked woman with bands around her ankles. His outstretched hands give the impression that he is trying to seize her and his large nose is pointed towards her, as if he were sniffing her like a dog. Isturitz is an important palaeolithic site in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountain straddling the border of France and Spain. Scholars wonder whether the shrinking of the nose and nostrils through the ages may not signify an appreciable lessening of a faculty that once partially governed sexual and social behaviour. ***
