Make love not war

Sex vs. War: The Temple of Hathor

Make love not war, that was the belief in the ancient temples of the Egyptian Goddess Hathor. Priestesses were trained in the arts of pleasure, art and sacred sensuality to distract men from war.

The legend is that, Ra the sun god was growing old, and became angry when people stopped worshipping him. He consulted with the other gods and decided to turn his angry gaze on the world. The wrathful Goddess Sekhmet emerged from his eye to bring his punishment to the world. She had the body of a woman and the head of a lion.

Sekhmet was fierce and turned men against each other so that the earth ran with the blood of war. She enjoyed the taste of blood so much that Ra became afraid she would destroy the whole world. He could not stop her, so he played a trick on her and poured beer dyed red with pomegranate juice onto the battlefield. Sekhmet drank it up and became so intoxicated that she slept for three days. When she woke up, her taste for blood had been appeased. 

She transformed into another form, Hathor, who became the goddess of pleasure. The daughters of Hathor were priestesses who taught men the art of pleasure and lovemaking to distract them from violence and war. Lovemaking also transformed the negative energy of the soldiers into healing love and bliss.

Later religions created a separation between god and pleasure of the body. The ways of the Goddess of pleasure were suppressed and forgotten, although we still feel the desire to merge our bodies with a higher love through sensual union.

Pleasure and sensuality are medicine to heal and empower our bodies and help us evolve beyond negative patterns and stories that no longer serve us. Where pleasure and sensuality are suppressed, there is often violence and fear.

Life should be ecstasy and pleasure. Our own bodies are the gateways to this empowerment if we learn to work with our pleasure.

Tantra and the sacred feminine give us the tools to awaken pleasure in our bodies to heal and empower ourselves.

"What is the role of a woman in tantra?"

TANTRA FAQ: "What is the role of a woman in Tantric meditation?"
I thought I would share a very good question that was emailed to me this morning:

Q:
in one of your talks, you mentioned "playing roles". 
within the context of a tantra partner meditation, is there a role that a woman plays?
or is it a crapshoot of experiences?  or both?

or when a woman softens to the energy of her partner, 
is her experience that of his energy and how that energy flows and what it needs?  
the sit then becomes a cutting through all the external structures to
a deeper understanding of how your energy interacts 
with the energy in front of you.
I woke up today wondering ;)

A:

well...the masculine and feminine dynamics are fluid in both males and females
some sits with a man i find they move more towards the shakti feminine energy expression and i sit in the grounding shiva masculine position
think of the male/female sacred energy dynamic like the positive/ negative ends of a battery
and then think of that range as being fluid, no one is entirely feminine or masculine energy

the "role" of a woman in the sit, i think is to be in self-enquiry of the experience happening inside herself and awareness of the play and exchange of energy with her partner

when i have sat with a very solid "base" male partner, i find that the serpentine energy really begins to flow and move because it is grounded in safety, and i really enjoy this feeling of flow in my body and appreciate being based to have that experience

there is a lot to look at here, when we think of the "role" of a woman both in tantra sitting partner meditation and in how we live in the world...
in relationships, i think that the feminine needs to be able to surrender to the masculine, but that it is difficult as a woman to surrender to men who are not stable or safe
of course we are all evolving, so there is no "perfect partner" who makes us feel perfectly safe
but as i travel the world and see so many communities where the women have become the bread winners and the mothers, and there is a wounding in the masculine causing alcoholism and abuse, i see a deep pain in the soul of the world
a deep pain in the sacred masculine soul and the sacred feminine soul
i hope we are finding ways to mend this deep soul pain mirrored in the masculine and feminine

the "role" of a woman in these tantra practices is not the old idea of woman= passivity
i have been told before that i can be masculine, because i can be very directed and dominant
but look at the tantric goddesses, they are very powerful, so i think there is a place for a very powerful woman to meet with a very powerful man
and both give and take the dominant position in a natural flow
this dynamic calls both partners to be in their power, to face their weak places and to be humbled and grow
but what do i know?

love from calcutta

dear crazy strong beautiful humans i love

i am in kolkata this morning

yesterday i walked the the crazy, suffocating back alleys where the sex workers live and work...children playing soccor in the streets next to piles of rotting food,

women sitting lined up against the bright painted walls, all staring at me with black eyes rimmed in kajol as they wait to be selected by customers to be paid for pleasure or some fascimile of pleasure...their eyes looked back at me like the eyes of time....dark, glassy, unpenetrable

what are we here for?
i mean BIG, what are we here for?

to create some joy in this world...because as i watched the children kick the soccor ball, i thought, how strong is the drive to be alive. how strong is the desire to find joy and happiness however fleeting in these streets, in our own hearts. and i say this whole crazy fucked up ball of wax is mothers song to us, a hymn of heartbreak and love and peace when it descends upon us like the grace of a dove.

so i love your art and the raising of your voices, why not? let's make beauty out of the chaos...

today i go on a tantric temple pilgrimage for the mothers blessings
getting ready to go to the kalighat temple
then to a baul (tantric sufis style music of bengal) group tonight
then to tapith, a tantric temple to tara where they worship openly in the cremation grounds
then teaching yoga to the sex workers
then circling back to kamakhya temple to seal the tantric yoni portal

it is most auspicious to go to these 3 temples on pilgrimage: kalighat, tapith and kamakhya, they make a triangle, yoni

full on tantra land here

love
psalm

Tantrika on monogomy and polyamoury...

thursday, april 7
gibsonia, pennsylvania

i got an email from a tantrika sister
asking:

"As a tantrika, I find it appealing to explore my love freely, to explore the depths and heights of my sexual power and my own capacity to love, transform, heal and co-create magick. As a magician, I recognize that my magickal intelligence is in part formed through my capability to be, do and flow through or with any person(or thing) as I perceive them (or it) to be in a sense, a part of my own being. Loving, intimate and erotic relationships offer a unique opportunity to explore the perception of the self in relation to the other. In this way the sense of self expands through selfness, selflessness and oneness with all.

I believe that the tantrika is inherantly polyamorous. What do you think?"

yes i believe a tantrika is inherantly polyamorous but i believe that the word polyamory and its western definition often fall short of it's layered meaning for me

i do not know if i could love monogomously
it seems to be a thing that comes in the beginning very strong when i meet someone who truly turns me on
all my energy goes into the flame with them and i want to nourish that one seed
i notice it isn't my mind that does this
rather, it is like a force of nature
(are we really so different from dogs sniffing each others asses?
meat puppets for the potent alchemy of god's pheromones?)
as there are phases to the moon, there are phases to loving

sometimes the love waxes and sometimes it wanes
sometimes it is completely full and other times completely empty
one of the interesting things about comparing love to the moon
is that the full moon is the time of endings
when the fruit is most ripe, it is about to fall from the tree
and decay, ripeness giving way to deconstruction of one form
to feed the earth and become another
when my loving is as full as a full moon
as ripe as a big cheese moon
i hate to think it is about to fall
but isn't that what we see in nature around us all?

and when the moon is empty, desolate
that emptiness is close to being filled again
but it is so hard to see in the darkness, in the emptiness of the grave
where the formless mystery is stirring her sweet cauldron of spells
to surprise us as they mature and are animated into form

i have hurt many hearts and my heart has born much hurt
i like to stay in the game, keep my heart open
in that way i am a player
i do not have any specific philosophy on monogomy and polyamory
it seems people are wired different
some more towards stability and monogomy
some more towards freedom and polyamory
what i do notice is people tend to preach their path
the monogomists think it is highest to connect and find your many faces through long term union with one other face
and polyamorists think it is highest to let go of attachment and let loving come and go freely through many faces

i think i am both polyamorist and monogomist depending on my season and reason
and add a third, because i often travel my path alone with long periods of celibacy
(nobody expects that from the tantrika!)
maybe you could call that unigomist?

shakti energy is freedom energy
is it possible to drink from the left hand cup and not stir the chaos cauldron for societal monogomy?
that would probably be difficult.
i practiced tantra in secret while i was married
i fell in love with other men too
i am not married anymore
i have had men ask for me to give myself to them only and i have said no
i have wanted to give myself to one man only and sometimes they say no
i change my mind
but so the moon changes her costume
i do not think i am fickle
i move to the rythm of nature and change

there are many people espousing free love who are not in a right way with themselves
and they are using the others bodies
let's hope they are maturing
there are many who judge others sexual energy and who make cages out of monogomy
lets hope they can be less afraid
either can be a way to hide
most important i think, is the self enquiry to be willing to look and see who we are
no more free love, now it's real love!

this tantrika is not monogomous because she is making love to every atom of all the the worlds!
infinitigomous!

p.s. i reserve the right to change my mind

love
psalm
kamakhya devi