Queen of Swords

. . . can be a harrowing thing.

I have been led to connect with a very special man who is at a point of intense transformation in his life, one involving spirituality, BDSM, and his deepest authenticity. I have suddenly found myself combining the role of erotic priestess and spiritual director, and it is both dizzying in its intensity and incredibly grounding in the sense of feeling like I have been led to embrace an aspect of my Work which I have intuited since adolescence but never thought to actually fulfill.

What I am doing looks very little like any description of "sacred prostitute" I have ever seen, but that makes it no less authentic, only that much more unique. There are blessings I am uniquely qualified to mediate -- and there are others I am not. All I know is that last week, as my time with him wound to a close, I felt that I had achieved something very important for myself, that I could in some sense die now, having fulfilled an important part of my mission here. Of course, it is better to live and keep doing my Work. . . but there was still a sense of "It is accomplished."

The "harrowing" aspect comes from my awareness of the profound changes in his life that I did not cause -- they were underway before we connected -- but for which I have become a potent catalyst. I am aware of how very careful I need to be in what I say, for he has invested me with significant authority, and will be vulnerable to mistakes I make. I must be vigilant and attentive in my own devotions and practices to make sure I remain an open channel to the Divine, and not get caught up in my own ego, whether that manifests in reckless pride or fear.

This is where my training as a spiritual director is finally coming into focus, for although there was a limit to what I could learn at a Christian seminary, the principles of direction transcend path. I am even more grateful for having had that experience.

This is also the point where I have started to understand how a submissive woman can also be a priestess. I need to be careful about how much I put into print about someone else's journey, so I can't go into detail, but suffice to say that a puzzle I struggled with years ago has been resolved in a positive way. And I know that without my experience with LM and Michael I would not have been brought to the point where I would have the wisdom to be capable of negotiating this particular ambiguity.

LM and Michael initiated me into my queenship and into sacred sexuality. This man, unknowing, has been the vessel by which I have been initiated into being a hierodule, another aspect of my life which I had yearned for but believed to be impossible. And once again, it is an Emperor who is responsible for that initiation.

I have been learning quite a bit about myself over the past few weeks: how much I still need the challenge of intellectual pursuits, how much BDSM nurtures me even in the absence of a romantic partner, how my priestessing can work, where I still need to grow in terms of handling conflict with others. . . .

Two or more years ago, while shopping for Winter Solstice gifts for my teacher, I found a beautiful dragon pendant: silver curls with amber insets. It was expensive enough that I would not have bought it for myself, but I thought she would like it. But when I was assembling her gifts to send, it just didn't seem to fit. I took a chance on spoiling a surprise, called her, and asked if it sounded like something she would like. She said, essentially, "Thank you, but no -- not my style."

That pendant has sat on my dresser ever since. Until yesterday. And today. My dragon is rising. Rising in response to the intellectual challenge of graduate school. Rising in response to Odin's presence in my life. Rising in response to putting my body on the line in BDSM scenes. Rising in response to being called beautiful and hot and desireable. Rising in response to facilitating a public sacred sexuality group. Rising in response to daily spiritual practice which I created. Rising in response to reconnecting in new ways with some of my fundamental archetypes and mythic meta-story. Rising, rising, rising. . .





"A New Beginning" by Katerina Romanova

The (friends locked) post I made earlier this morning seems to have knocked a lot of things loose and rearranged them.

( Further insights and developments )
For the past two years I have been confronted again and again with the necessity of letting go of old and outmoded perceptions of myself. I have had to let go of much that I have cherished whose time has now passed. I am not yet fully sure of what form my sexuality will take in the months and years ahead, but I am finally understanding that my old self-image(s) simply will not work. This is a new life, a new existence, a new reality.

I am not who I was.

I've known for years that for me the erotic wasn't necessarily connected to the sexual, but after my intensely sexually erotic year with L&L and the lack of non-sexual erotic contact with others during that time, I lost track of that knowledge.

As I wrote in my last post, I've been aching for erotic connection -- but I've been extremely reluctant to risk exposing my romantic and sexual selves to anyone new. I'm afraid that the experiences won't be able to measure up to what I've lost, and that actual exposure of those still-bruised parts of myself will surface new waves of grief in really awkward, painful situations.

But venturing into the erotic while consciously separating it from the romantic and the sexual enables new kinds of healing to take place, as well as being fun and self-nurturing in a range of other ways.

One of the more interesting conversations I've had with my therapist has been around the topic of my feelings about engaging in regular exercise or active recreational pursuits. As my recent post "New Perspectives" described, I just haven't had an emotional connection to it -- and this kind of boggled my therapist. In fact, I got the impression that she's never before run into anyone who didn't have anything that was important to them that could be emotionally tied to fitness in a meaningful way.

For most of my life, my only desire to engage in exercise was motived by an intellectual understanding that it was An Important Thing to Do -- and while I enjoyed the positive results when I did it consistently, the satisfaction wasn't deep enough to be an ongoing motivator when stacked up against time and energy commitments to other things -- or outweigh simple inertia, sad to say.

But this morning, I want to dance more. I want to continue ballroom dancing classes and be able to get out on the floor during dance parties and have fun dancing well to a variety of music. I want to get out the short stack of bellydancing DVD's and books and do that too. I want to explore Nia and get some muscle in my moves.

The missing piece? The Erotic.

Erotic is one of those words that can be defined multiple ways, but for me it means "energy connection and exchange with the Other". That's what I've been achingly missing since my loss of L&L, and that's what I found -- in a much lower key but still real way -- last night on the dance floor, particularly with Jeremy.

My body has very little meaning or interest to me unless it's serving as a way for me to connect with another human being in an erotic way. Not necessarily a sexual way, but a way that involves energy touching, interacting. And because my mind is extremely erotic, I can have an erotic encounter without my body being involved in an overt way. Last night with Jeremy there was no sexual energy in our dancing, but the act of maintaining "tone" in our connection, moving our bodies together in harmony, following his lead, was definitely erotic.

One reason that bellydance hasn't "done it" for me in the past is that whether I'm doing it alone or in a class, it's a solitary activity, one in which my energy has never engaged with another's. I know that this exchange is possible, that others experience it, but there hasn't been enough in those first stages to get me past them. Maybe now that this aspect of myself is becoming more clear to my conscious mind, I'll be able to work with it in a positive way rather than just react on an instinctive level.


I strongly believe that this tipping point is being reached as a consequence of my spiritual practices, and specifically my recent message from Ereshkigal that I need to let go of a particular behavior pattern and replace it with something healthier, with Inanna's assistance. I was expecting some hard work, but it may be that my willingness to say "yes" has allowed for a lot to be done without my conscious need to struggle.

I'm not saying that I'm going to declare the issue resolved. This is all very fresh and exciting and new, and it's going to be meaningless unless I'm able to maintain it over time. But it's a delightful turn of events. I feel like I'm being taken care of.