Sex and Spirit Excavations

The last two weekends have been extremely intense as far as focused work with Ereshkigal and Inanna. Actually, two weekends ago it was Ereshkigal and LM all day, yesterday it was all three of them in the morning, followed by an initiatory virtual intimate exchange.

I'm doing some deep excavations around how my sexuality and my spirituality intersect. There are patterns that seem to go back a very long way, patterns I need to understand if I am to go forward. I was reminded on Sunday morning that my sexuality has a great deal in common with Inanna's: it's unruly, transgressive. It doesn't fit well with being a wife.* It's where my feral nature comes from. LM called me his Feral Queen, and I loved the way the nickname combined both wildness and order. In some ways, it's both Inanna and Ereshkigal.

I don't yet understand how, but this weekend has made it even more clear than before that my sexuality is part of my priestess work. I don't think it will be any one particular way, or the same in all contexts. But I have to bring it with me to the altar, into Ereshkigal's throne room, into my public life as a priestess. It's part of the primal magic that I work with LM as my priest.




(*Standard disclaimers apply. I don't mean to imply that wives can't be sexy-wild. These are my own subjective archetypes and experiences.)

The Sacred Stranger

One "tradition" of the sacred prostitute places significant importance on the supposed (not attested) practice of a virgin having sex for the first time in the temple with a stranger.

Yesterday I had my first erotic exchange with someone new since LM's death. It was a distinctly initiatory experience, a rite of passage marking the end of one phase of my mourning and my renewed willingness to be open to these energies. I'm quite sure the impulse came directly from Inanna.

I had approached a long-time reader of my sex blog with an invitation to write a collaborative, first-person scene with me. It wasn't just a creative project; I brought my intimate self to the encounter, and knew he would as well. We created a scenario that put some distance between our personnas, because I needed to be able to engage the erotic without needing to make a personal relationship commitment. I created a scenario that resonated with the truth of my history and emotional state without replicating it.

Our characters met as strangers, and while within the scene I offered my name, he declined to give his. Instead, he wrote this:

"Call me what you will; it doesn't change what I am. In this place, at this time," I say slowly, a spark in my eyes betraying the weight of the repeated phrase, our bodies drawing closer together with each beat of our hearts. "I am he who offers you a chance at healing; I am he who has been entrusted with your care."

I don't think he had any idea of the archetype of the sacred stranger. He had no idea that by typing those words he helped to make what felt at the beginning like a tremendously risky experiment a truly sacred and healing experience. I had known that he understood and took quite seriously the trust I had placed in him and what this encounter meant to me. I didn't expect him to express it so distinctly and movingly -- and with such sacredness -- within the scene itself.

In the end, instead of feeling like I was a hierodule, I felt that I had been blessed by an encounter with one. It was he who mediated the healing of the Divine into my heart and soul.

For _Storyteller_

Because how often does one see a military turtle??


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