Most Wiccans are familiar with the idea of sacred sex, enacted in ritual symbolically as the blade is inserted into the chalice. But I've never encountered the Great Rite in its full glory and I'd wager that most Pagans I know haven't either. Yet we read so much about sex as a sacred rite, the ultimate raising of magickal energy, a powerful connection to the divine. What do we really know about these concepts, much less practice? A couple of recent blog posts got me thinking about the subject.

Susan Reimer-Torn, scholar, author and life coach, recently wrote for the Women and Spirituality blog about The Sacred Prostitute. In this post she presents a discussion of the role and historical significance of temple priestesses performing sex as sacrament vis-a-vis a conversation over dinner with a group of friends. A learned group, even they had to dust off their knowledge on the subject. But Susan tells us:

In the words of the Jungian scholar Marion Woodman, "She is spiritually receptive to the feminine power flowing through her from the Goddess and at the same time, joyously aware of the beauty and passion in her human body." Through physical delight and spiritual ecstasy, "she opens the masculine to the potency of penetrating to the divine and the feminine to the rapture of surrender."

The article goes on to describe a conversation with an acquaintance of the author who was an exotic dancer, with clients for whom she would have sex:

This refreshingly open and articulate woman explains that the Sacred Prostitute is an intermediary: it is she who soothes men brutalized by war or other combative arenas, she who absorbs their aggressive energy so they might return exorcised and balanced to domestic foyers.

While I can embrace the idea of a woman acting as a conduit for feminine divine power and through whom sex is a joyous means to find awareness of the body's beauty and passion for both partners involved, viewing sacred sex as something meant solely to benefit men is the point at which I take issue with the idea of women in the role of "sacred prostitute." I spent years in a relationship wherein I "soothed" a man brutalized by his own particular combative arenas and I wasn't so pleased when the domestic foyer to which he returned was someone else's. Intellectually I can appreciate the concept of the sacred prostitute - and even accept that as a matter of historic fact the role may have been primarily in the service of men - but I need to find a realm of sacred sexuality that doesn't involve me getting betrayed by my ex-partner in spiritual ecstasy.

Dianne Sylvan's great post Sacred Sexuality, or Something deals primarily with reclaiming sexuality after an abusive experience. Her early experiences with Wicca were "inundated with sexual imagery and language" which made it difficult for her to accept, finding her new spiritual path "terrifying and liberating" at the same time. She writes:

If a woman came into Paganism already bearing a traumatic sexual history, how much harder would it be for her to find any sense of her own sanctity if she reaches out to her newfound community only to be assaulted again by the very people, in the very place, that was supposed to represent that sanctity?

Dianne goes on to discuss her own personal journey toward finding the sacred in sex, despite her earlier experiences, both with abuse and within the Pagan community. I think the essence of what she's getting at here is how one goes about arriving at an expression of sacred sexuality that works for you. Each of us comes to the divine in different ways (pun intended).

My own personal practice of the Craft is about to take a left-hand turn as I begin training in the Feri Tradition. Feri is not Wicca, so I may soon find myself redefining who I am as a witch. One of the things that convinced me that Feri was for me was its emphasis on personal power; one of the things that intrigues me about it is its emphasis on sacred sexuality.

The Feri Tradition is a relatively secretive tradition, and while there is information available in books and online about Feri and its beliefs, there is much more information that is not available unless you are in training or an initiate. On the subject of sex, I found a discussion of Victor and Cora Anderson's views on sexual ethics at Lilith's Lantern, but actual practices are kept private. This is probably as it should be, to keep salacious detractors who would only defame Feri from sticking their noses where they have no business being. However, it's easy for anyone to learn enough about Feri to know that the philosophy is very sex-positive and the tradition encourages its followers to reclaim sex as a joyful and magickally powerful act.

One of the most widely available resources on the Feri Tradition that provides a fairly open discussion of sacred sex is T. Thorn Coyle's book Evolutionary Witchcraft. In her book, Thorn points out that sex is one of the energies that we reclaim from the dominant culture, where it has become "twisted beyond recognition." In teaching us to treat sex as sacred, she is giving us a way to reconnect with the life force and to fuel the passion that "creates our power" as witches and as spiritual, divine beings.

. . . to Witches, sex is holy. You can use your sexual energy for many things: charging tools and spells, aligning your soul, opening up to abundance, feeding Deity.

I have used sexual energy in spell work before and, yes, sexual energy is powerful. You don't have to be a witch to know that! However, that the Feri Tradition takes sacred sex beyond a means to raise magickal energy and adds an emphasis on sex as a way to find personal power and fulfillment brings me closer to the kind of liberation and empowerment that I hope to find from sacred sex.

Thinking about my past sexual experiences - at least those that could be considered in any way meaningful - I'm not sure that any of them have provided the kind of transcendental qualities that I believe take sex from the realm of really good roll in the hay to encounter of or with the divine. I believe in divine immanence, and I do include myself when I look to the world around me to find potential expressions of and vehicles for the divine. Mostly through meditation and shamanic journeying, I have had some powerful personal encounters with divine. And I do believe there is something sacred in the way that the Sun shining on my face has the power to transform me, even if it just lightens my mood. But I wonder what it will take for me to experience for myself sex as a sacred act.

Luna at Stars for Eyes has a few astute things of her own to say about how to recognize the sacred:

Something sacred brings us closer to the Divine. It doesn't drive the best part of ourselves underground or make us sick for a week. The "sacred" doesn't leave us feeling "scarred" or "scared." It will never scatter our energy to the wind. It will never betray.

About sacred sex in particular, she concludes with:

The sacred does not need to be validated by another, and yet another, and still another person's sex organs. Sacred sexuality, when we really engage it, pierces all illusions and connects us to our beloved on the absolute deepest levels of our being. People who scatter themselves across a sea of bodies will never know this. What I am talking about is transcending the self, the other, and reaching the Divine through the deepest love possible. The most profound honor one can bestow upon another is to see them as Radha, the lover of Krishna. Radha is the embodiment of total love, positively dripping with it. But, only through loving Radha can Krishna understand what it means to love himself, even though he is the God of Love. And he becomes enraptured with loving Radha because her love for him is the only thing hotter than he is in the universe.

Does love have to be present for sex to be sacred? Luna makes an extremely powerful case that it does.

Activist and social philosopher bell hooks, in her book All About Love, (which is a profound treatise on the subject and a brilliant exploration of what we, in our modern society, need to change in order to experience true love in our lives - but that is a topic for a different blog post) begins by telling us that in order to discuss love in any authentic or spiritual way we need to define what it is we're talking about. She chooses to put forward that M. Scott Peck's definition, from his famous self-help book from the late 1970's The Road Less Traveled, is the one we should be using. It is:

. . . the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

If we use bell hooks' and Scott Peck's definition of love, as opposed to a more socially conventional definition of romantic love, to answer my question about whether love needs to be present for sex to be sacred, then I would venture to say that it does. At least for me (and clearly for Luna). It's difficult for me to imagine that I could experience sacred sex from a relatively casual encounter if I could not experience sex that felt sacred to me within the context of a relationship wherein I truly was in love. But if I was in love, what was missing? Was I the only one extending myself? Does this spiritual nurturing need to be mutual? Where does this leave me?

To imagine the context wherein sacred sex is possible, perhaps it's necessary to embrace the idea that there is more than one type of relationship that is capable of providing a commitment to mutual spiritual nurturing - love as hooks and Peck define it. As I begin to consider what my life as Feri might look like, I can imagine a relationship - either with a teacher or with a fellow practitioner - within which a level of trust exists that would lead me to be able to participate in a sexual encounter that would reach the level of sacred for me. I go back to my statement about being intrigued by the Feri Tradition's beliefs about sacred sex as a way to reconnect with the life force and to fuel the passion that "creates our power" as witches and as spiritual, divine beings. It is precisely the potential that following the Feri path may bring me to the point where my personal experience of the divine is expanded and transformed that is of paramount importance to me. If this includes a newfound ability to experience the Holy O then yay me.

I'm sure you don't have to follow the Feri Tradition to benefit from some of the lessons it has to teach us about sacred sex. But maybe a more accessible way to approach the idea of sex as conduit to the divine is from a spiritual point of view without any particular religious framework. One of the healthiest attitudes about sex and the divine I have ever come across is presented by Sera Beak as she explores her "deliciously unorthodox approach to igniting your divine spark" in The Red Book.

The chapter of The Red Book that deals with sex and spirituality, entitled Open Up and Say Ahhh, begins by telling us:

As Tantrists and mystics have been declaring for centuries, sex, with the right awareness and intention, is actually an incredibly valuable and wonderful tool for spiritual growth.

. . . the ordinary act of lovemaking can be just as viable a path to higher states of consciousness, to a connection with All That Is, as meditation or prayer or any other traditional religious or spiritual ritual. How great is that?"

How great indeed. Apparently this has been true for millions of people across history and cultures. Even celibate nuns experience the same physiological effects from spiritual ecstasy as do those people who have had incredible orgasms. I kid you not. It was part of a study conducted by psychologists at the University of Montreal. And Sera draws the conclusion from this comparison that "mystico-erotic experiences" are "actually a natural part of our organic wiring." She goes on to discuss the science of sacred sex, deities linked to sex, the history of when sex became a sin (and how women became the scapegoats for this), certain truths about sex and religion across the globe, and lots and lots and lots of other good stuff. Just go read the book already; I cannot recommend it highly enough.

But what about how we actually go about getting some of this sacred sex for ourselves? You've heard the expression that the body is your temple? Well, Sera's advice is "temple yourself to find yourself." There are lots of ways to turn sex into a more positive experience, to love your body and yourself, to have some fun, get the blood flowing, and somewhere in the process even to discover the divine. She implores us to find our own unique sexual expression, "to be as conscious during sex as you would during any other part of your spiritual practice," to treat our bodies as divine, and to "be aware of the divine energy swirling around you as you have sex."

This is good advice for all of us. There are so many ways that the sex-negative messages from our culture influence us, even if we think we are so progressive and evolved and hip. Even for those of us who are more accustomed to looking for the divine in unusual places it can be difficult to take that final step of accepting that we are just as divine as the tree we just danced around or the Goddess whose likeness we just pasted into our book of shadows (or as Sera Beak would call it, our Red Book).

. . . this is the thing about divine energy: It's supposed to be everywhere. See, sexuality is less about the actual act of having pretty good sex for seventeen minutes twice a week and much more about surrounding yourself with an ever-simmering sensual energy, pulsing just underneath your daily life and infusing almost everything you do. It's like you're always just a little bit horny, just a little turned on, but the object of your gentle lust isn't just your lover, it's divine life itself.

Isn't that the whole point of magick? Isn't that what we, as witches, strive to find and make of our practice of the Craft - divine life itself infusing everything we do? If I can find something magickal about taking out my rubbish (which I just did the other day, tossing out an old love charm that I decided was doing more harm than good), then certainly I can find a way to infuse my sexual experiences with a little divine spark.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 6:40 PM