Sacred Prostitution and Sexual Liberation

This article is about sex, and so, in the end, I have refrained from euphemisms or propriety. Sex is messy, sex is sexy. Sex is often pornographic. This will be too.

After a long time of celibacy, not entirely intended, but not worked against, I light the altar a few days after All Hallows. I am lighting the candles, and burning the incense and not simply meditating or praying or praising or praying for. I am raising the chalice. I am working with intent. I am working for sex to come.

Several hours later I have still left the Grindr app on. Normally I would have gone to bed, but this night is full of an unfinished energy. When the man hits me up, I invite him over. I have already had sex with another man a few hours earlier, but at the altar I was calling for more than one experience and my bod longs for more. This is how I consecrate myself as a hierodule, a priest of holy sex, a sacred prostitute.

When the other man has left, my body is exhausted and I am discombobulated. I will still be feeling this tomorrow. There is a different energy to the magic and to the altar than there has been in a long time. I am rooted to the earth and to life in a different way. I am UNAFRAID and un heavenly, uncerebral, of the body, not entirely solitary and in control, but a man of needs who has answered the needs of others.

Years ago, when I was just entering into the world of the Craft I read about a witch or a pagan who said she was a sacred prostitute. This electrified me, made me curious and made me dubious. Did she actually mean she was doing what temple prostitutes did of old? The witch Gemma Gary speaks of consecration as a “walking away” from the norms we have inherited from Christian society, and many of us never really walk away from them. We flirt with sexiness, but are afraid of sex. Revealing pics, innuendo, the occasional half hearted and drunken hook up are the stuff of the new day. In the Craft there is talk of the chalice and the blade, simulated sex in rituals or perhaps sex between chaste couples, but the actual, sober, intentional choice to give one’s self away sexually is rare. To do it in the context of the holy, to assert that in the same way a Christian priest maintains celibacy for the good of the world, and that somehow this has something to do with his work at his altar, your giving your body away has something to do with the work of your altar, is a total walking away from—or at least reversal of—norms.

This is not a way for everyone. There is a lot of substitutional and not-quite work that would be witches do. I heard two girls talk about how if blood was called for in work you should use Kool-Aid instead.  The truth is, if blood is called for, then blood is called for. The actual work is not words of a spell written down in some book. The working will always tell you what it needs, and to offer one’s body in the Great Work is a powerful act. So far, I have no known blood to be called for, but my sexuality has very often been required.

But to talk about sex of any form in the Craft, we need to talk about how we receive sexuality as a society. We are still, more or less, a Christian society with European Christian norms. To say we are Judeo-Christian is not entirely accurate. This is a world where heterosexual marriage or something close to it, is prized, and in that world sexual expression is honed like a missile in the direction of monogamous union. In this paradigm, sexual freedom or experimentation cannot possibly be fostered, or at least it is fostered in the same way as all college freedoms are—at a certain age for a certain time to get them out of your system and propel you toward heteronormativity. No college slut remains a slut, and this was intended.

What people quickly forgot or never knew is that there is really only one way to be sexually liberated, and that is to leave behind old constructs and actually have sex, something that, at the end of the day, is not for everyone. The only way to really know about sex is to have it. The only way to be any good at it is to do it a lot, probably with lots of people. Like any other practice, it will not always be good.

Imagine if you were hungry and realized that human beings should cook and eat and you decided to cook. Imagine if someone told you that ideally you should only cook for and eat with a special person in a special relationship. Imagine if you have never so much as fried an egg, but you saw Martha Stewart make a seven layer cake with her own butter cream frosting and were disappointed that your cooking attempts fell flat of that the first, second and third time. Imagine if you were still upset about how crappy your fried eggs turned out after three tries, and walked out of your kitchen in disgust and shame, and then returned to it when you realized that human beings were eating creatures and you needed to eat and you needed to cook, and you, who never went into the kitchen, didn’t understand your utensils or the way the oven worked, were once against disappointed because you were still expecting cooking to be like something you’d seen on the Food Network.

           

Well, now, this is how we approach sex in his modern world.

Most people are not sexually liberated. Most people are deeply afraid of their bodies, the bodies of others and of feeling too much pleasure. Dressing sexy is not sexual freedom, talking about sex is not sexual freedom, acting out of drunkenness or addiction is not sexual freedom, rainbow flags and marches for gay rights are not sexual freedom. Freely enjoying your body and the body of others and giving yourself to the pleasure and sensuality of sex is sexual freedom. To freely choose to have sex with different people in the sane and sober light of “no I wasn’t abused or have daddy issues” is something we’re not familiar with. To do it as a spiritual call is to walk away from norms.