Whores and free women

who or what is a WHORE?

a woman in a workshop in cleveland last fall told me she belonged to a neo-pagan group called WHORES OF BABYLON and that the word WHORE used to mean a woman who owned her own property. perhaps related to the temple priestesses in ancient times who practiced sacred sexuality, doing rituals that were offerings to the gods and sexual in nature. because of their positions as priestesses, they were not married like most women in their societies and they earned income through the rituals that meant their survival did not depend on the marriage union to a male husband/ provider.

i like the idea that a whore is a woman owns her own property...OWNS HER OWN PUSSY...meaning a woman who has discovered how to enjoy sex for herself, and not just to lay down to be filled with babies, as is often the case of woman in repressive patriarchal societies.

i travel to india often, and many of the women there who i have talked to still don't expect to enjoy sex. they lay their bodies down as a wifely duty to their husband. this is so upside down from the natural way of things, in tantra it is the woman who has more sexual energy than the man. when women have not tapped into and opened their sexual power and pleasure, those are the times it seems the man has more sexual energy. in many societies, a woman who would claim to enjoy sexual pleasure would be labeled a whore, a bad wife, an unfit mother. the supression of the sexual energy is directly related to the supression of the women. why? because women are the energy of sex and desire. show me a culture where the men are covered in burkhas so they won't entice the women to sin. and the woman who is accused of enticing the man to sin is punished or shunned. eve ate the apple. the woman and her curiosity and desire fucked us all up.

i grew up in a household where my mother told me to keep covering up. she told me all men think about is sex, so we needed to protect ourselves. she would always be pointing at other women on the streets, saying how they were dressed like sluts, encouraging the men to act like dogs. i used to think that she was more obsessed with staring at the women's asses than the men. that's what repression does, leads to obsession.

my mother became a street preacher in her 40's. she began to run a sober living in her home. i had already moved out when i came to visit her one day, and she wouldn't let me in her house because she said i had too much sexual energy and would make the men sin and think of sex. i just remembered thinking that i couldn't help it, this is just the way i am. i am sex. and i was young and in my early twenties and probably was dressed inapropriatly testing out this new power i had, wanting to understand how it affected others and myself. i had always felt different, i never could swallow that sex was something that kept you from god, in it's naturalness, it always made me feel closer to god. when i found tantra, the worship of a mother god with practices to enjoy and empower through the sexual energy, i felt a completing. i was home.

a woman who has come to understand, appreciate and look forward to the pleasures her body is capable of is called a WHORE. a woman who feels that having discovered the power and pleasure of her sexuality and expects to enjoy her body and becomes aware that she can choose her sexual partners is called a WHORE. sexual energy is FREEDOM energy, which can also be expressed as chaos. this energy is so powerful, it can move like a tsunami and leave the destruction of a lot of societal conformity in it's wake. so we repress it mostly. how many husbands pretend they are not sexually attracted to other women they see to appease their wives? and yet, don't we all know this can't possibly be true? so we tell each other half truths.

we tell half truths to "keep it all together". to keep our commitments. when the energy of freedom/chaos begins to stir, it threatens to tear our houses down, much like a natural disaster, a forest fire or tsunami. sometimes the destruction is a part of a new creation process we can't see the shape of yet.

i had a student new to tantra send me an email, saying that when she talked to people after class, they had all lost their jobs, marriages, houses, cars...etc. she said was this a necessary part of the tantric path. i laughed because in america, i find a lot of students looking for tantra are looking to add something to their lives. add a better sex life, find how to call in a soul mate, experience more pleasure. well, the mother of creation is everywhere and everything, so why do we feel so separate? getting back into bliss nature is less about what you add to your life and more about coming into awareness about the blockages you have and learning to let them go. everyone says they want to release their blockages, but it is scary to let go of what you know, even negative patterns.

do you need to lose everything to be on the path of tantra?

that depends on the agreements you have made. if you agreed to a marriage or job based on a set of security issues you outgrow, then the day might come as you feel your healthy ego more, that you outgrow those agreements. then you will have a decision to make.

working with sexual energy, SHAKTI is working with the DIVINE MOTHER, DESIRE, working to weave between the urges for both freedom and survival...FREEDOM & BONDAGE.

oh ye man and woman, tame your kundalini, bow to hladini...the energy of DESIRE...do not hide from yourself your secret desires...do not live as a stranger to your own nature and mind.