It is my premise that women’s sexual nature under-girds and pervades all aspects of our lives; that our sexuality is intricately linked to our creative energy and inseparable from our spiritual nature. I believe sexuality, for women, is central to our sense of identity-- to our awareness of being connected to the earth and to all its creatures. Furthermore, through our sexual energy, I believe we intuit a greater relationship to the very stars, to cosmic patterns, to the rhythms of the universe. I propose that our sexuality is the generating force of our power and that we need to reclaim this power, use it joyfully to enlighten, to enrich, and to heal.
To spell it out more specifically: First of all, I’m convinced that sex is sacred energy that permeates our lives. I perceive that there is something of the erotic to be found in every aspect of our human existence in the world, particularly in that of living in a physical, mental and emotional body.
Secondly, in my work, I’ve come to believe that , for women, sexuality is central to our sense of identity and inextricably connected to our self-esteem. But women have become alienated from their inherent erotic nature, mistrusting its appearance as a dangerous or forbidden aspect of themselves, because sex has been defined in terms that empower males and disempower females. I believe women need to reclaim their sexual power as equal to that of men, both in their personal relationships and in the larger society.
Thirdly, mounting examples of the denial, denigration, and damning of girl’s and women’s sexuality are demonstrated by the legal systems, governments, health systems , schools, religions and financial institutions that influence all our lives. I’m convinced that an empowered healthy feminine sexuality is a key to worldwide healing at both the spiritual and the profane levels of civilization.
Finally, I believe this healing can be achieved by both men and women through a rebalancing of the feminine and masculine energies in ourselves and our relationships. I hope that by re-visioning positive symbols for the feminine, by re-telling our myths and stories to affirm both men and women, and by re-imaging our sexuality united with our spirituality, we can together bring about the balance needed to save the world for future generations.
Because Woman’s sexuality is the essence of her power, the Sacred Feminine has been badly maligned. It has been all but lost amid distortions of history based on masculine supremacy. Male-god religions teach people to separate the body from the spirit; they teach that the flesh is unclean, sinful, to be despised, while the spirit is holy, pure, to be upheld. I believe it is a travesty to teach such division of self from self. I am convinced the Goddess is never so torn, for she teaches us to engage our body with our spirit; she entreats us to love with our body, mind and soul.
In telling the tale of female sexual and spiritual experience, I refer frequently to factors in history and mythology and religion and culture which have been devised in the dominant male format, ignoring or denouncing women’s input. I write about these things, not to bash men, but to tell the part of the story that has been left out. Deliberate denial of the female’s equal participation and contribution in the creation of our world, both sacred and secular, lies at the heart of the problem addressed-- the imbalance between male and female sexuality and spirituality. Woman’s voice has been silenced to the detriment of everyone. This book is one attempt to make that voice heard again.
I refer to matriarchal (women-led) and matrilineal (heritage traced through the mother’s line) cultures, contrasting them to patriarchal (male-ruled) culture. Many people have rightly become sensitized to a kind of female chauvinism, growing out of certain quarters of the feminist movement, which loudly denounces the patriarchy. I do not advocate such reverse sexism. I am not anti-men, but I do hold the male-dominator society at fault for the imbalances we all struggle to right. It is a fact that Western society has been constructed around an andocentric bias, with an underlying current of misogyny, that has largely excluded any serious female input for the past several thousand years.
First, before anything, comes Mother. Although some have argued for the Father in her stead, informed scientific study reaffirms that the Mother is the foundation, the formative principle, the origin of all lives on earth. Of all archetypes named, the Mother is paramount. She is foremost among the gods; the premier creative principle whose image is boundless, for she bears all others in her vast, prodigious lineage. Moreover, the Mother is magnificently sexual. Her holy endeavors of creation, destruction, and regeneration evoke the erotic, arouse the passionate, stir the chthonic, and call forth the deepest forces of primal carnal energy. The archetypal Mother’s body is the receptacle, the container, for all vital energies in their emerging, growing forms. Her womb, her breasts, her heart all receive and hold within them the nurturing, nourishing force that sustains life, that creates viable relationships between one and another. In our circle of archetypes, therefore, we begin with the Mother.
A mother expresses her erotic spirit in the acts of conception, gestation, birth-giving, and nurturing. A woman and her child constellate the quintessential amatory bond, without which neither would thrive. Their spirits dance ardently to one another’s drum-beat, rapturously sharing their combined charismatic powers. Wherever we devote ourselves to nourishing, tending, spawning, and hatching creations of the heart, we expend “mothering” energy-- which is essentially amorous and sensually derived. It is erogenous energy arising from deep in our body-- in our womb-- where compassion, devotion, and protective urges are held.
Although the quintessence of sexuality is rooted in a mother’s eroto-genetic relationship with the children of her womb, the mere suggestion that there may be sexually magnetic energy between mother and child triggers alarms in the modern human psyche. We have suppressed the knowledge that our first erotic feelings are aroused in our mother’s embrace-- that our sexual identity is embodied within those earliest sensual experiences-- because Woman’s erotic influence upon Man’s libido is awesome, and we have all learned to deny the reality of our mutual carnal genesis. I submit that motherhood has been divested of its profound erotic beauty because men dread that power. Our culture’s vehement insistence that mothers are not sexy is a reflection of our implanted fear of sexuality.
Our planet, Earth, is first form-giver, and thus first model of motherhood for all that is born and lives on her body. The concept of our home planet as our universal Mother is older than any can guess. And this seminal idea persists within the depths of human conscious, despite all the efforts of modern scientific logic and patriarchal religious propaganda to prove otherwise. Millennia of humankind perceived the Earth as Mother, producing and nurturing Life. Poets and bards throughout the ages have extolled the planet’s nature as feminine. Re-created in the fertility cycles and body contours of every woman, Earth remains ever the prototypical nurturing female.
Mother Earth breathes. Her breath is the air, the wind. It rushes through, moves around within her body, cleansing, winnowing, polishing, breaking, making waves. From her ocean’s silent depths emerge the first biological life-forms, crawling onto land barely cooled from geologic orgasms oozing fertile volcanic mud and ash. Over eons creatures multiply, continuing to evolve new speciae in ever varying form and size, from microscopic bacteria to giant plants and monstrous animals. Integrated within unique patterns of their own breath-rhythms, each species repeats endless cycles of birth, life, sex, death, regeneration. All are synchronized by Mother Earth’s inhalations and exhalations-- by her inception and her expulsion-- by her giving and her taking of life.
This cosmic evolutionary pattern is microcosmically repeated by the human embryo during its development within the womb. Immersed in amniotic waters, an embryo begins life undifferentiated, gradually evolving more complex organs-- dividing, separating-- eventually differentiating to become a male or female fetus, and emerging as a fully formed infant into the world. The maternal body mimics Earth’s primordial generative magnetism and Woman bears nascent life.
The mysterious fluids of women’s bodies echo the deepest secrets of incarnation. Menstrual blood recalls the essential fecundity of Woman, amniotic birth waters recollect our oceanic origins, breast milk holds the vial of life as does dew on morning flowers. The blood flow of Woman is a reminder to us of the lifeblood of the land-- a fertile, fecund, juicy river of universal vitality in which we all thrive. The female is natural author of our existence, her maternal earthy-fleshly force echoes deep in our bones generation upon generation.
Male-god religions have attempted to erase the memories of our essentially earthy beginnings by sanitizing symbols of the pungent ripeness of flesh and blood, the erotic intensity of sex and birth, the profound passion of death and degeneration.# Denied a respectful place in our shrines, banished from our sanctuaries, these venerable components of our life-- the fleshly, lusty, carnal, salacious, prurient, lascivious, erotic, sensual, sensuous-- get sequestered in the nighttime of our souls and may emerge as dreaded demons haunting our sleeping libidos.
But deep in our bones we remember our sacred erotic venereal inception, our earthy origins. From Mother Earth we learn about the cycles and rhythms of our human bodies. The bond we inherit through our physical bodies to the Earth connects us to all her creatures forever. From her example we learn about the dangers of careless exploitation, pollution, waste, abuse, malnourishment, and general irreverence for life, which stems from a disrespect for our own bodies. In her vulnerability Mother Earth gives us a dynamic, expressive, outreaching image that can inspire more confident expression our female body-power.
The Divine Mother, in her great sexual power, has been with us for at least thirty thousand years. A proud assemblage of mythological Divine Mother goddesses can help modern women recognize, understand, accept the long denied sexuality of our own divine mother-selves. Each of these goddesses demonstrates a uniquely sexual and sensual bond with the child of her womb. Here, in the Divine Mother’s realm, we see Eros linking the Goddess’ feminine power with her own masculine principle in her son-- the ultimate blending of yin and yang.
Worldwide, ancient mystery-myths of Mother and Son embody elements of the daemonic, of the soul’s deeper meanings, which entail matters beyond personal human grasp. Each goddess Mother not only gives birth, nurtures, and finally takes her son as lover; but ultimately she inspires his death, endures her grief at the loss of him, then brings him back from the dead, regenerated through her womb.
Divinity and Motherhood are linked in the psychic symbolism of every age. Yet, our real mothers suffer a great injustice, due to the inevitable failing of human nature to provide divinely perfect love. We forget that Divine does not always imply benign. A Divine Mother’s love reaches far beyond the personal, to the profound. It is all-embracing, reaching beyond plain reality to inscrutable mystery. The Eros of divine motherhood manifests as tough love, a force both kind and cruel. She’s fierce in her passion whether loving or enraged.
Modern morality is scandalized by old myths that tell of a Goddes Mother who takes her Holy Son as her Lover. The pseudo-puritanical ethos of contemporary urbanity sees only a surface image reflecting maternal violation of an innocent child’s sexual boundaries. In our perverse focus on the idea of a mother abusing her baby, of using his innocence for her personal pleasure, we become blind to deeper meanings. Beneath the surface of the story lies the powerful truth that there is no greater, no more magnetic sexual energy, than that between a woman and the child of her own body.
It is this extraordinary bond that patriarchal religions have fought to deny, tried to obliterate, through their vehement denigration of the feminine and motherhood. Such an essential role has become suspect and tightly controlled by the social systems of dominator cultures in order that women won’t surpass men in worldly power. Man’s fear of his entrapment by Woman, his hatred of the feminine within himself, his violent abuse of any with polemical qualities from his own, his adamant resistance to sensuality, his denigration of pleasure-- all are consequences of the fundamental male denial of his utterly helpless need for the female. It appears evident that the Mother has been denied sexuality in patriarchal cultures in order for men and boys to pretend they have dominance over women and girls.
Let me be very clear: In the archetypal context that I depict, the Divine Mother’s sex with her child does not impregnate. It is not about penis-vagina intercourse. It is about sensuality, about tenderness, about gentle caring and playful flirtation. It is about smiles of loving comfort and tears of passionate compassion; about holding without binding, and about letting go without rejecting. There is nothing whatsoever to fear in the sensuous embrace between mother and child, regardless what age, as long as it isn’t poisoned by the jealousies of adult lust and licentious greed.
The Divine Mother and Child enjoy a profound unity, created from fundamentally undying, unconditional love, flowing freely in both directions. And, although such bonding is equally important to mother-daughter pairs, I focus here on the relationship between mother and son because of its relevance to the insidious problems of male violence and misogyny throughout the world.
The Goddess, as Grandmother, had tremendous power in the ancient world, for her varied manifestations were revered as bringers and takers of life. She was midwife and mortician. Just so, women still wear the potent mask of Grandmother, despite society’s attempts to suppress this powerful feminine figure. We adore her and we are horrified by her, for she inspires our kindest respect as Old Wise Mother, while, simultaneously, she arouses our greatest terror as Hag, harbinger of death. Moreover, she remains a viable force of feminine sexuality in the face of declining physical traits that are stereotypically labeled “unbeautiful” by society.
The title of Grandmother carries both power and dread, as culture’s obsession with youthful physical appearance vies with an instinctive regard for the wisdom of age. We struggle with our sexual identities as we age, fearing that with the loss of youth we lose attractiveness-- and with our looks goes our sexual life. Yet, history and reality often prove us wrong. When we dare peer at the aged directly, a venerable eroticism and gracious sensuality greets our gaze. But, as it has often been noted, a culture that sees death as a menace will find it nearly impossible to celebrate old age.
Grandmother is the Goddess of Menopause, representing the mature woman who has passed her climacteric. In classic mythology these goddesses are instructors and helpers in birth and other significant life-passages, such as a girl’s menarche. Some are guides to the hidden places-- the underworlds and dark chambers of the psyche, helping women through periods of loss and depression. Almost all Grandmother deities are Death Goddesses in one form or another, for they prepare the passage of souls from this, to the next, incarnation.
Today we portray old women comically, or we pity them and scorn them. Our fast-paced, youth-seeking, death-fearing culture lost sight of the immense power and beauty of aged women long ago. At best we shake our heads sadly, silently looking away from the “disfiguring” reminders of our own advancing years. In other, we may appreciate the character shining from their wise old eyes; the history evidenced in wrinkles and scars on their ripening body. But, seen in ourselves, such signs point only to a dreaded end and evoke disheartening comparisons to over-glorified memories of our younger days.
The Mother archetype, as Grandmother, helps us claim our “old woman sexuality” as a vital, vigorous asset to be enjoyed with wisdom, humor, candor. The grandmothers in our lives teach us to look at life with a fresh eye. They spin the yarns from which we weave our history. They tell the tales from which we sketch our understanding of life. The Old Mother within sees the humor in our struggles; recognizes the lessons hidden within our defeats; welcomes the opportunities that come with each new day’s challenges. She helps us look directly at the possibility of endings, losses, deaths. She teaches us to stop denying our fears; to name what terrorizes us and so diminish its power over us.
The grandmother goddess has a magnanimous erotic spirit. Hers is a sexuality that embraces all of life without holding, without judging, without expecting or demanding any more than the present moment. However, as a generally feared part of ourselves, the Old Mother appears shadowed and cloaked, concealing dreaded knowledge about the connections between death, decay, endings, and our sexuality. Like the waning lunation-- a metaphor for destruction and renewal-- the Grandmother’s sexuality shines through a deteriorating, weakened body, to reveal a sparkling inner spirit that never dies.
The Wildwoman is the animal part of us who roars, howls, snarls, screeches with untamed primitive passion. She teaches us to live freely without undue moral constraint, to give liberal reign to our amorous urges, to feed our carnal cravings. She conducts the dance of hormones, leading us to orgasmic ecstasy. And she teaches us how to use sex as a means to survival.
Spiritually, the Wildwoman is Heathen. Acting without premeditation, guided by a primitive immediacy, she harkens to an innate instinct for survival. She embodies the barbaric force of primeval life, manifesting as an animal presence in our dreams. She leads us away from civilized constraints by attacking cultural inhibitions. She conveys our savage sexual urges with gusto, tracking freedom through the sacred psychic wilderness within.
Sexually, the Wildwoman is ardently uninhibited, instinctively spontaneous. With her as our guide, we lustily crave, voraciously indulge our natural appetite for physical pleasure. We act on our erotic urges with unrestrained hedonistic gratification. We prowl in search of a thrill.
This archetype is not neat, not easily controlled, not to be taken lightly. She is the keeper of an inner bestiary, the choreographer of a psychic circus of barely contained passions waiting to be uncaged. When too long restrained, too deeply repressed, her powers can erupt in madness.
But the madness of the Wildwoman is ultimately a catharsis, a cleansing, a release of pent-up emotions that brings us back into balance with ourselves. The Wildwoman’s madness is a reaction against the repression of instincts; it’s an attack against our culture’s insane over-rationality. In her profound madness, the Wildwoman brings us peak sensations of lusty paroxysm, shaking us out of complacency, awakening our enthusiasm to enter the tragic and comic struggles of life.
Many of us first knew the Wildwoman while we were still girls: in the exquisite terrors of childhood frights; in our nightmares; and in the free-for-all voracity of unrestrained play. Before we got “housebroken” by social rules of nice-girl proper conduct, many of us answered to the wild call of our animal selves. That childhood volatility -- although it can seem violent to others -- is not about rage, virulent hate, or destructive venom. It is about celebrating a ferocious, unquenchable, insatiable hunger for life. It is merely the capricious and free-flowing juice of youthful vigor pouring into the stream of life.
We find the Wildwoman’s forms throughout nature. We perceive her emotions expressed in the weather around us, in the elements. From extremes of searing heat and freezing cold; through earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and tornadoes; to the balmy breezes of temperate days -- the Goddess, as Wildwoman, speaks to us. Her climatic expressions mark moments of climax in the world’s epic saga. They bring us face to face with deep, dark, hard mysteries: the mysteries of sex, mortality, and transformation.
The overriding aspect of our inner Wildwoman’s energy is her great erotic power. It is a force that sometimes feels as though it has its own will. Whether we are aware of it or not, this passionate animal force of primitive sexual energy is at home in every one of us before she gets bound and gagged by societal rules. To receive her gifts, we stand naked, unashamed, awakened to hidden desires. She rouses lusty appetites that we’ve denied ourselves all our adult lives. She shows us that the “untamed animal” we have been taught to fear is really an ally who stirs our senses and sharpens our wits.
A woman’s erotic nature is aroused to its height for the few days leading to, and during menstruation, when she is no longer fertile, unlikely to conceive. This is know in ancient goddess moonlore as a time of the “Dark Red Goddess” who is animated, hungry, self-assertive. A woman’s hormones are at low ebb now, so the level of “male hormones” become relatively prominent, emphasizing a physical drive for satiation over the emotional drive for bonding. Women are, ironically, at their physical sexual peak when they are least fertile, and this fact has caused male society to turn against the menstruating woman, calling her unclean, a devil, an animal.
Truly, during her “period” a woman’s sexual energies may enter a kind of “wild” stage… she can feel bloodthirsty, murderous, rageful, and lusty. At menstruation, her body destroys the cradle of blood it has laid in her womb. Ravenous, ruthless, predacious moods may overtake her. She can feel desperate if forced to conform too much to life as usual. She can feel crazy.
But the Wildwoman’s natural “craziness” is an action that is freely chosen and is more likely to liberate us from dysfunctional patterns. Spontaneous and impulsive, the wildish behavior is a catalyst for change of mood, of attitude, of focus, rather than perpetuating bad habits.
But as a channel for untamable Nature, sex is feared in modern Western society. It is denigrated, denied its true sacred meaning. In our obsessively superficial “purifying” of the world, we create sterility, perceiving the fleshly, pulsing, magnetic heat of sexual passion as “dirty.” We are repelled by the natural smell, sound, sight, and taste of naked life. Compulsively we hide, cover, sweep away all reminders of our own primitive animal selves.
We obsessively feed our illusions of order by controlling everything around us. There is no greater perversion than that which we modern humans have perpetrated on Nature, on her animals-- polluting, exploiting, torturing, slaughtering, “taming” endlessly, in the name of education, science, technological progress-- humans can be the vilest, most noxious beasts on the planet. In an obsessive urge to “cleanse” our environment of its common “soil” we have nearly murdered all.
But the erotic in Nature still calls from deep in our loins, rising up from our subconscious in dreams, in fantasies. The primitive urgings of life rumble deep in our bodies and minds. In struggling to deny it, to push it back down, to hide it from our own view, we may cause it to erupt in self-destructive ways through illness, accident, psychosexual perversions. In this way the ancient communal celebrations of women’s menstrual blood mysteries eventually became co-opted into the bloody violence of male religion’s sacrifice and fraternity, patriarchal war-culture’s swagger, and its gang-world initiation rites.
Today we are besieged by news reports of sexual perversities run amok. Investigations uncover hidden sexual addictions, compulsions, and obsessions buried in the private lives of some of our most respected leaders, our cultural athletic and artistic heroes. Children are committing murder in imitation of their heroes on TV and video. Fanatical religious adults kill other adults in the name of “saving unborn babies” while indigent mothers and children are left out on the streets to die of starvation. Life itself has lost its value to the modern day zealots who fear only for their own “salvation” and worry that an aborted fetus might be their next awaited Savior.
The Wildwoman reminds us that our bodies are containers of warm-blooded , pulsing, surging life energy. Erotic passion makes us hot-blooded, lusty animals hungry for loving. But in violence and murder we become cold-blooded, unfeeling, inhuman. To ignore and denigrate woman’s erotic power endangers all and ultimately leads to the obliteration of life evermore.
Poetry wells up from the roots of our soul imbued with the passion of the Muse. Our inner Muse creates the music of our spirit, sings the song of our soul. With it she a-muses us. She plays with us. She tickles, titillates, tantalizes, and toys with our imagination. Her energy is evocative, drawing our visions, inspiring them with the breath of excellence, bringing our dreams to life, making our fantasies live for a moment. The Muse rules the power of evocation. She is our calling spirit.
The Muse awakens us to the magic of life with stirring thoughts, inspired ideas, elevated hopes or impassioned beliefs that are aroused by contact with something beautiful, something awesome, something elegant, something terrible. On wings of inspiration, the Goddess Muse sails above our limited ego-minds to show us the splendor inherent in all creation. The Muse’s flame becomes our guiding light as we fly above ordinary perceptions to travel new heights of emotions, sensations, imaginings and understandings.
With the light of new dawning she illuminates intrinsic connections between creativity, sexuality, and spirituality. The Muse ignites an alchemical flame that creates a synthesis of our mind, body, spirit and soul. She shows that each part of us involves something of every other. They cannot be separated, for each derives from the core of our being.
Each of us is a work of art, a one-of-a-kind, signed and numbered creation. As such, we are free to sing our song, dance our dance, tell our own story in our own way. When our inner Muse is active, our sexuality radiates her erotic, evocative spirit. We can enchant, entice, amuse, entertain, and attract others to ourselves as if by magical charm.
Our inner Muse is the mental-imaginative aspect of our sexuality, without which sex would be merely a mechanical, uninspired, spiritless function. No matter how we choose to act on our sexual urges; no matter what forms of behavior we choose to express our sexual feelings; no matter by what lifestyle we choose to define our sexual selves, sex without imagination is empty.
The Goddess, as Muse, plays the music, paints the pictures, sings the songs that raise our sexuality above base bodily reflexes to heights of enchanted memory. She looks and listens, she touches and tastes and smells, she evokes all things around us to draw out their essence, bring forth their unique beauty. From every aspect of life she draws inspiration, evokes wonder. In this way, the Muse joins our sexuality with our spirituality to inspire our creativity.
The Muse is a goddess of learning and knowledge. This archetype deals not only with imagination, but with intellect itself, with the power of intelligence-- with thoughtful questions, with creative investigation, study, research, and with open communication of ideas. Yet it is not the mere exchange of information that interests her, but conversation-- which entails sharing of soul.
Soul-sharing does not necessarily require great emotion or personal disclosure. It need not involve profound ideas. It simply concerns the truth of our experience. The Muse gives women a voice that will be heard, and ability to speak our truth so that it will be acknowledged. Denying or ignoring the truth of the Muse kills enthusiasm, buries the spark of creativity, deadens the soul.
The soul is distinct from the spirit. While the spirit soars and seeks to detach from material concerns to gain a higher consciousness, the soul seeks to attach itself to our experience of life and its ordinary details. The soul encompasses our memory and our past, while the spirit flies away from such attachment in order to gain understanding of life from a transcendent perspective. We live soulfully when we open ourselves to the wonders of life without asking for explanations; when we reflect and explore without looking for proof and absolute answers. In other words, we are soulful when we muse.