RCG-I Seasonal Salon Summer Solstice 2004
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Summer Solstice 2004 Home Page Do you see the forest or the trees? |
Sacred Body, Sacred SexDeborah Hoffman-WadeI am a daughter of Goddess and as my heritage (Bavarian, Austrian and Scottish) celebrates the great Solstice with the joy of sexual pleasure. While we always speak of the beauty of Maypole dancing we seldom talk about after dancing celebrants would retire to the open fields where they would have sex with anyone and everyone in the plowed fields in order to insure the fertility of the land and prosperous yield of crops. May was a month of sexual freedom throughout rural Europe up to the 16th century. Marriage bonds were suspended for the month of May, commenced again in June - hence, June weddings. Body, sexuality and spirituality was not an anomaly to our ancestors. The Queen of Heaven, Mother of All, Creatrix of the Universe, was worshipped and celebrated for tens of thousands of years as the primary deity. Sex was a joy and a celebration in antiquity and people loved life, taking great enjoyment from nature and from sexuality. We are beings of pleasure. Yet, we live in a sex-and-pleasure- negative culture. Most of us are very fragmented and wounded around our body and sexuality. We often have a very limited experience, which leaves us feeling deeply unsatisfied. We know that there has to be more to sex and we want more. Sacredness is not used here in any conventional religious sense. It refers to natural sacredness. Sexuality is sacred in its most natural form when it contains the whole mystery of life. Opening our body to its full pleasure potential requires embracing the different parts of ourselves that have been fragmented so we can feel whole again. When your body is worshipped as a temple for sexual ecstasy, spirit becomes tangible. You then experience the reconciliation of body, sexuality and spirituality. It is about meeting one’s self, which is at once a deep and total acceptance of life. It is about changing what you need to change in order for your soul, your spirit to match your image or body. Sacred sex teaches the reconciliation of body, of mind, of sexuality and spirituality. A deeply ingrained and culturally-induced rift between body, sexuality and spirituality haunts us. The split between body, spirituality and sexuality is a deep psychic schism within almost everyone in our culture, which prohibits enduring, loving relationships to form. The rift is generational, cultural, sociological and religious. Merging the three is virtually impossible without specific healing. Sacred sexuality is the natural integration of body image, sexuality and spirituality. Unfortunately, this natural integration has been broken by the processes of acculturation and socialization. Most of us grow up hearing negative messages about our body and our sexuality. No wonder we often feel confused and fragmented sexually. For all of us this rupture has created not only a sexual but also a psychic wounding. Pleasure through touch can be cultivated. Yet one must know how to stop and take time: take the time to taste, to touch, to listen, to watch, to feel and to perceive through our senses. The time and space to love our body and our selves seems to come last in our personal priorities. Body shame and unworthiness in regard to receiving pleasure will often stop a person from expressing her intimate needs and desires. Communicating about sex takes courage, commitment and caring and it is fundamental in order to establish an intimate climate of trust inviting mutual discovery. This intimate communication skill will make it possible to go through the resistances in the way. Every time more veils are dropped between partners, more consciousness opens to them. It will reveal itself in the daily living of life and in creative expression. This is what sex and pleasuring looks like when you are healing the body-sexual-spiritual fragmentation. In evaluating our progress in healing our sexual-spiritual split, we need to ask ourselves: What motives do I bring to sexuality? What do I want from the sexual aspect of my nature? What are my personal beliefs around my sexuality? We know our healing is progressing when our answers emphasize spiritual fulfillment, integrating power and surrender, and the desire for shared experiences of pleasure. Each of has a cosmology, a belief system that guides our choices and our lives. We develop creeds to meet our needs and our beliefs. I encourage you to develop a Sexual Creed, a sexual statement of your beliefs around body, sexuality and spirituality and I offer mine as an example. I believe that:
Sacred sexuality is the cultivation of the art of love and respect. It offers an ongoing training for intimacy and the reconciliation of body, sex and spirit. Wholeness is our birthright, it's up to all of us and each of us to reclaim it! Goddesses and Heroines of Sexuality Aisha Qandisha- Arabic peoples N. Moroccan, a sexually free Goddess who loved seduction. Anat- A Canaanite Goddess of open sexuality representing immense ecstatic energy and lust. Aphrodite- Goddess of impersonal, indiscriminant lust, a great believer in polyamory whose sexuality could not be contained to one person. Astarte – West Phoenicia Goddess of the womb. Untamable sexuality, she is celebrated as the morning star. Cotys – In Thrace, far north of Greece, she is revered as the Goddess of Sexuality. She had secret festivals releasing the forces of life trough erotic celebrations. The secrecy of the ritual was so guarded that if you described it to non-initiates, you were put to death. Eoster/Ostara- The German-Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring and Sexuality. Her Anglo Saxon name (Estre or Eastre or Eostre) that survives as Easter, and is the root of the word, “estrus” (unbridled, regular sexual frenzy). Flora – Flowers are the sex organs of plants, so it makes sense that the Romans loved her. She is the patron of sacred prostitutes ad worshipped I public orgies from April 28- May3rd. The best way to celebrate her was to make love to a passerby and then send them on their way with an erotic medallion and flowers. (The word "orgy" comes from the Greek word "orgia" meaning "secret worship".) Freya/Frigg – Freya, the Norse/German Goddess is the essence of sexuality and magick. Utterly open in her loving, she loved everyone equally. She takes all as her lovers. Scholars believe there were sexual orders dedicated to her. Hathor – Egyptian Goddess of sun, heat, ruler of the sky and complex embodiment of feminine possibilities. She is the patron of bodily pleasures: joys of the eye, in art, cosmetics, garlands, delights of motion, dance and love; and all the pleasures of touch. Her Priestesses danced ad played drums and tambourines and enjoyed other sensual pleasures. Her feasts were carnivals of intoxication and pleasure. Ishara/Ishtar – Ishtar is the Near East’s complex image of multiple possibilities of womanhood. She is warlike and lustful energy of the female. She is the free loving temple Goddess who adored the “glad-eyed Ishtar of desire, the Goddess of Sighing.” Great sexual temples where dedicated to her. She taught that anyone who denies sex denies life. Jezebel – Jewish queen, one of only two women that ruled the Hebrews. Jezebel was a priestess of the Goddesses of her region who sanctified sexuality. The Hebrews murdered her. Lilith – Lilith is the Hebrew Goddess of independent equal sexuality. She refused to lie only beneath Adam, so she divorced him. Tricking Jehovah into revealing his sacred name, she gained power over time. She liked to fly to Eden and have happy little orgies with the elemental spirits. Mylitta – is the Phoenician Goddess of Sex. Her Priestesses worshiped her by burning incense, wearing wreaths or jewels around their heads and performing the sacred rights of love. The women would set up booths or camp in groves and would enjoy making love to anyone who passed by. A fire goddess, she was renewed by drops of falling fire and wax, which renewed her youth. She combined the force of flowing water and the force of heavenly fire into highly sexual energy. She is personified as a nude, bearded woman. Naama – Canaanite for pleasant, this Goddess is so beautiful that no one can resist her. She seduced them with her sweet cymbal music. Qadesh – An Egyptian Goddess who embodied the holiness and sacramental reverence toward sexuality as an expression of divine force. Sadzimari- Georgian Goddess of the wilderness, she would take the form of other women and make love to their mates. She especially liked to come to the beds of shamans and priests. Sheila na Gig – Smiling lewdly, this Irish Goddess exposes her vagina to the world. She is the great symbol of life and death. Tiazolteotl – Aztec Goddess “earth’s delight” is the Goddess of the four-fold moon, the witch of sexuality. Turan – Etruscan culture was woman honoring where children took their mother’s name and assumed their mother’s status. This culture loved large women, strong and sexual women. She was an Etruscan Goddess, Queen of Life, and the Mistress of sexual dominance. The Goddess of Dominatrixes everywhere. All Her temples were outside the city walls in the country, as to protect the innocent and the children. Voluptia – Roman Goddess of sensual pleasure, especially sexual. Every time we call some thing or someone voluptuous, we invoke her sexual nature. Bibliography Monaghan, Patricia. The New Book of Goddesses and Heroines. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications. 1997 Farrar, Janet and Stewart. The Witch’s Goddess. Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing. 1987 |
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