Notes on "Polygamy" – freestyle

Bedouins (بَدْو) in the
Hejaz (ٱلْحِجَاز), 16th century

Notes on Polygamy |
Sunday – February 22, 2026

Polygamy as the moderns refer to the otherwise normal practice of a husband taking more than one wife, which is really referred to as polygyny, is the source of some controversy and confusion, and really it must be stated that the practice of taking more than one wife is often considered something quite reprehensible by these same moderns, and again this moral confusion is really particularly expressed in the West. Excuse my usage of the neologisms "polygamy" and "polygyny", for these words are entirely modern in origin and it's really quite clear from the prefix "poly" that the modern obsession with measurement, number, and quantification is what can be described as the source of the confusion in this connection; from this point onward I intend to only rely on the word polygamy to mean essentially what the more precise word polygyny refers to, because the practice of marriage, while being universal, is always subject to the peculiarities of a certain and defined tradition, and this fact makes it rather tedious and really intolerable to rely on generalized neologisms that only specify one aspect of marriage, in this case, yet leaves all other culturally specific aspects aside; and apart from this fact, it's also clear that marriage exists as an institution for the benefit of the corporeal, at least so far as the moderns understand, and this is why the practice of one husband taking on multiple wives tend to be more widespread, or really the default, but granted there are certain exceptions, but such exceptions go beyond the scope of this generalized post.

    In order to understand polygamy, one must understand the specific context in which polygamy is practiced and one must also take care to understand the purpose of the institution of marriage, and since most moderns only understand the institution of marriage as far as that between one man and one woman goes, increasingly marriage is also understood between members of the same sex, they fail to understand why the practice of polygamy exists in the first place and indeed why the practice of polygamy is quite normal in all major traditions of the world, including the great majority of Western traditions that once where anchored in the primordial tradition but that have been lost today. Apart from the Islamic practice of polygamy know as ta'addud az-zawjat (تعدد الزوجات) which, according to most Islamic jurisprudence (fiq), extends marriage to mean that one man may marry up to four wives, there's also the important distinction between marriage in the legal and theological sense and when a man takes on concubines, in Islamic jurisprudence this is referred to as sarāriyy (سُرِّيَة), for the purpose of engaging merely in the sensual arts, which again according to most Islamic jurisprudence is acceptable under certain conditions; and this distinction exists as well within most of the Judaic and Christian corpus but is less well defined, and the practice of marrying at most 4 wives is not a part of the Judaic or Christian revelations, even though certain people, often conservative and purposefully misinformed as they tend to be, claim otherwise. So again, there's a need to segregate marriage from sensual partnership, something that most doctrines allow only under specified circumstances, because a man taking on one or multiple concubines should be understood in the context of sacred warfare and the justice of the conqueror restoring the balance of the cosmological order, and in all major and revealed traditions the option of becoming a concubine was always preferable to the option of becoming a slave, and at any rate only men of ascendant rank were capable of being true warriors, which meant that most men had no mandate to conquer any land or any person; really the Hindu caste system describes this fairly well: only the Kṣatriya (क्षत्रिय) was eligible to receive the mandate of restoring order to the land, and within this mandate he was allowed to enter into sensual relationships with women, but no such mandate was ever extended to the commoner the Vaiśya (वैश्य) and the castes below him. The most common reason why most men only married one wife, and this holds true across most major and revealed traditions, was because most men could simply not afford the up-keeping of multiple wives and the multitude of children that such an arrangement would tend to produce, and this quite material reason is why, for the most part, the practice of monogamy tended to be the default. But default is not the same as righteous nor is it the same as moral; the fact remains that there is nothing beyond material limitations keeping most men from marrying multiple wives and even worse keeping them from doing to most women what they want, and this is actually why the institution of marriage protects women, something that seems forgotten in the Western world.

    Apropos the Western world, it's clear that marriage, like most other aspects in modernity, has been reduced to something entirely profane and merely quantitative in form; most people enter into marriage either because of material or sensual reasons, and the rampant individualism of the Western world has completely erased the primordial unity between the sexes, which is really what marriage, from a metaphysical point of view, represents – the unity in the primordial body; and this unity is still why, even in the West, the marriage between one man and a woman is referred to them becoming one, the number 1 being a sacred number symbolizing unity. Of course, the tendency of individuation and quantification serves only that purpose of division and antagonism, which is very much captured in the monstrous example of feminism, a modern confusion that goes beyond the merely infantile in this modern disorder, really this is epistemological disorientation, see "Gender-queer", which also shows how etymologically close the words disorder and disorientation are.

    But why is polygamy considered offensive or reprehensible by most moderns; wouldn't this seem rather to the contrary when taking the tendencies of the modern world into account? Indeed, at first glance it seem quite strange that moderns have such a huge problem with the practice of polygamy, since most things are considered better or "improved" when extension, division, or multiplication is concerned, but see, this multiplication only extends to the corporeal and the temporal, and not to the sacred, and apart from marriage being something sacred, there's also the egalitarian element to be dispensed with. According to the United Nations, polygamy, represents and "offense" against women and constitutes something that must be outlawed, in this case in the name of egalitarianism but also in the rather more subtle name of "preventing" sexual abuse; yes, the United Nations considers anything that doesn't strictly fall in line with the postulates of the humanist axiom to be a form of abuse that must be outlawed. And indeed, in all of the Western world, and even beyond, polygamy is outlawed and criminalized, and the pretext for this is always the same: the "protection" of women and the rectification of the aptitudes of the sexes; essentially men and women are not only supposed to be subject to the same laws, they are also supposed to be equal in every regard outside of mere "rights", but curiously enough this seldom extends to duties imposed by the state, see forced conscription. The major problem for the moderns is that they lack skillful means to approach the metaphysical order of things from a place anchored in knowledge, and this is why they are ruled like cattle that follows the prevailing winds of the least capable, the propagation of sentimentalism – the laws of the democratic regime.

    Is polygamy wrong? No, but most people consider polygamy to be wrong because they have been told that polygamy is wrong, and such is the state of the modern world: the critical mass of popular politics flows downward, from higher principles to the manifestation of the beast. But in order to understand the modern mentality you have to reach beyond the scope of this post, which is why I invite you to read more posts on this page and also to read the scholars.

Reginald Drax – February 22, 2026.