The Goddess has guided my personal spiritual quest for the past thirty years or more, and I’ve found Her imminence in my life empowering and liberating. I have learned that the Goddess includes so much more than merely a feminine approach to God. Her lessons encompass all of Nature, the Universe, and Creation. Moreover, these lessons do not exclude the masculine, but advocate a true balance between male and female sexual-spiritual-creative energies. Thus, I came to write this book in an attempt to portray the intimate intermingling of the divine with the mortal, the sacred with the profane, in all aspects of our lives. But this is no easy concept to grasp, and I remain a seeker even as I aspire to teach what I’ve learned to others.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE INTRODUCTION TO MY UNPUBLISHED BOOK:
SEX
AND THE GODDESS; The Unfolding of Woman's Secred Sex and Erotic
Spirit
This book was over twenty years in its birthing. The Goddess Wheel revealed itself to me in a flash of insight, in 1986, while I was conducting the first of many groups in which women came together to explore the connections between sexuality, spirituality and creativity in their lives. In the years since then I have reworked, revised, and fine-tuned the manuscript at least a dozen times , but the basic circle of women’s psycho-spiritual qualities has remained constant. In the many workshops and women’s circles where I have presented this model of the varied facets of a woman’s inner self, women always seem to “get it” instantly.
The feedback these women give me runs along these lines:
“I liked
the non-judgmental tone of naming various aspects of womanhood.”
“It helps me understand myself better, to realize that my sexuality
is such a big part of who I am.”
“I see that sexuality is not only
about what I do in bed with a partner, or how I dress and look
physically. It is also about what I feel and think about life
overall, and how I express my creativity, and how I find happiness.”
“Seeing how the Goddess Wheel includes all these different faces
helps me start to accept parts of myself which I always felt were
somehow bad or wrong.”
“It has helped me understand and feel more
kindly toward other women who are different from me sexually.”
“I
really liked the ideal that women should be encouraged to act freely
and express all their inner self.”
“I really like the challenge of
exploring sexuality and spirituality together as integral in my life.”
Why I Wrote This Book
I had been a sex therapist and educator for fourteen years by the time I began writing this book. I had listened to hundreds of women and men describe their concerns about sexuality and intimate relationships. I learned of the rich diversity and great potential that women’s sexuality holds in the world. I also learned how women have been taught to deny or feel ashamed of their sexual power. I learned, too, that most of us have grown up judging our female sexuality almost entirely from the perspective of a male sexual model, and we tend to define ourselves on the basis of how we think men view us. I saw that men have just as many doubts and questions about sexuality as women do, and that many men are hungry to learn about sex from a woman’s perspective.
In working with my clients, I perceived how we’ve all assimilated an incomplete and imbalanced view of human sexuality. Over years of counseling women and men and couples about sexuality, I discovered that many people have no clue about how sex infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Moreover, I came to see that many people are afraid of their sexual power because they have learned to think of it as something dirty, dangerous, and sinful. But, as I worked on this book, it was gratifying to find that many women and men are receptive to the Goddess’ message of sacred sex and erotic spirit, because they realize that sex has been presented all out-of-kilter for centuries.
Meanwhile, in my personal life, I experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Through reading, traveling, talking with friends and colleagues, I learned about the long hidden history of a female face of God. My religious upbringing had been in a traditionally devout Christian home; but my parent’s faith was not rigidly or exclusively defined. They taught me to be open-minded and, with their diverse circle of friendships, my parents modeled a non-judging acceptance of different faiths. Therefore, it was no great leap for me, in my questioning of the church’s teachings, to adopt and integrate an image of a female deity.
I wish to make it clear from the start that, while the archetypes discussed in this book are of women, the lessons they have to teach us about human sexuality can enlighten people of both sexes. The feminine aspects of sexuality are available for men to experience, just as women can experience the masculine-- from within their inner opposite selves. We all need to better understand female sexual energy, both in ourselves and others. Likewise, of course, a better understanding of male sexual energy is needed, but, except in that the feminine throws light on the masculine-- I will leave the male’s story for my brothers to write.
Sex is a subject with many sides , some of which are raucous, racy, raunchy, ribald, and often vulgar. Moreover, the ancient images of feminine power show how every aspect of ourselves holds light and dark energy, and, like the sun and moon, both are necessary. I will describe female sexual-spiritual experience showing both positive and negative potentials. While I try to impart a stimulating sense of pleasurable eroticism permeating life, I also invoke the dark, mysterious and dangerous aspects of our vital sexual power.
People have forgotten that female sexual energy is as potent as male sexual energy because human sexuality has been defined solely in male terms for nearly five-thousand years. While, like men, women can enjoy the physical performance of erotic techniques, this is only part of the picture of human sexual expression. The other part-- an internalized experience of psychic emotional connections, of ecstatic body responses-- has been denied women and men since patriarchal religions separated the spirit from the body. While sex and the erotic dimensions of spirituality pervade our daily lives, we’ve learned to deny this truth. In denying it we have created a world where violence masquerades as eroticism, and where sex is used as a means to convey and hold power over others.
Since the Bronze and Iron Ages, both Western and Eastern religions have cast women and sex in league with the devil. We are conditioned to react with shock, to dismiss any who suggest there could be healing light within those deep shadows. But many have observed that the devil, as an evil power, is actually a relative newcomer on the mythological scene. They say he is possibly a construct of misogynistic (woman-hating) men who have invented the devil to cover up fear of their own sexual vulnerability. Yet, I am reminded that “evil” spells “live” backward, and I’d make a guess that the devil must once have lived in the light. In this book, both dark and light are acknowledged as equally essential to our creative spirit and sexual power.
Feminist historians, sociologists, anthropologists and archeologists are bringing to light important new evidence that shows very clearly that women’s sexuality, women’s creative powers, haven’t always been denigrated. In fact, what is being disclosed by recent investigative research is quite the opposite of what we have been taught. A long concealed historical truth reveals that humankind once held great reverence for Woman as a divine creative force who is at all times a strong sexual being. The pantheon of goddess figures being revealed to us by scholars seems endless. The ancient female images appear without limits as to their erotic energy, beauty, profound creativity and their more awe-ful qualities of destructive, transformative power.# But it remains difficult to find the original versions of Goddess lore behind centuries of androcentric revisions, under layers of misogynist defamations. So, we will need to revive, reconstruct the old stories-- retell them in our own way and add to them our own.