Wild orchids of the Algarve
Somewhere in the still spring-green hills just inland from the wild coast of South-west Portugal, fourteen modern witches laid in a circle, heads to the center, and awakened Kundalini…
I’ll tell you, if you invite the holy spirit into your temple and truly wish to experience her secrets, it is necessary to move aside and allow her total control. Perhaps you’ve had a vision quest of sorts and have worked with certain plants or animals and know what I mean. Perhaps you are a religious person and can relate to being totally overcome with God’s love and blessings. Perhaps you’ve experienced an ecstasis sometime in your life- an elevated mental state of flow and transcendence- while deep in great work, dancing or love making. If you have no idea what I’m talking about but are curious, you are of course welcomed to read on, but be warned, April was heavy on the mysticism, so if that’s not your cup of San Pedro or you’re a one God and one God only kind of disciple or just someone who isn’t interested in my sexual journey, stop now and turn back… no hard feelings. For the rest of you, you gorgeous seekers of truth and beauty, I’m talking about magic. Is it abundant in your life or do you feel that it’s gone missing? When was the last time you outgrew your skin? When was the last time you died and were reborn? You do know that you are the head alchemist in the truth and beauty lab of your life, right? Onward then! Through the fog….
“I have lived with several Zen masters…. all of them cats.” -ET
Here are some quick and simple definitions to keep us on the same page:
Magic- a change in consciousness brought about by the raising and directing of energy to fulfill an intention.
Witch- anyone who practices magic.
Sacred Sexuality- the knowing, honoring and practice of sexuality as a divine energy of life (See (Neo)Tantra, Taoist sexual practices, etc).
Sex Magic- any kind of ritual sexual activity used in religious or spiritual pursuits.
Looking back at how my life has unfolded and how my spirituality has blossomed, I can say that my tantra/kundalini awakening began in high school, though it would be many, many years before I even heard those words much less understood at all what they meant. It would be years of fumbling around spiritually, trying this and that, studying, practicing, considering. Always growing, always changing. I got serious about my spirituality nearly ten years ago, right before I left for Hawaii and finally, in these last fourteen months (perhaps not coincidentally matched to my sobriety) I have made much time and space for a more serious devotion to my spiritual practices and pursuits in the form of the Tantric arts of yoga, meditation, breath work, massage, sensory honing and sex while supplementing with a deepening working knowledge of herbs, stones, food, anatomy, psychology, neurobiology, anthropology, dance/music and ritual/ceremony. For a long time, I took my sexuality for granted. Sex was always something I enjoyed and never really something that I had to work too hard at or for. For many years, while I worked on the other, more “mainstream” paths to enlightenment, I left out my sexuality, neglected it even, never putting together that it too deserved evolution and could be a means to elevated experiences of truth and beauty. And then it became obvious that something was missing. I had changed, but my sexuality and sexual practices had not. Sexual evolution can be intimidating when you have already been in a long-term relationship. People do not always grow at the same time and it can be difficult to “change things up” or even just ask for what you want and need. Communication is key and I am forever grateful that I have a partner who has been committed to his own spiritual journey, who has for many years practiced these arts and who has remained open-minded, adventurous, supportive and excited to advance.
“The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.” -DL
Portugal is an excellent place to more deeply explore the mystical arts, especially as they involve sex. The land is rugged and wild, the sea ebbs and flows and caresses and crashes, the sun is warm, the stars are bright and there is general freedom to be and create. For a relatively unpopulated area, courses and gatherings devoted to spiritual arts and practices abound. From Qi-gong to trance dance, tantra festivals to gong baths, it isn’t hard to find a community with which to practice reaching higher states of consciousness. Obviously many of these offerings can be found in the states and certainly some of them can be found in San Antonio, but generally, Europeans have much more relaxed views on nudity and sex than the often dysfunctional, judgmental, ignorant, and puritanical American narrative. So when the gorgeous little angel who teaches the African dance class my mom and I take every Thursday invited me to a three day retreat in the woods devoted to female sexual alchemy, conscious sexuality, yoni massage, chakra cleansing and kundalini awakening, I said “hell yes”.
And so I found myself one of fourteen sister-witches, with three more to guide and protect us, gathered together to awaken, heal and strengthen our powers through practices of sacred feminine sexuality and sex magic. It would be impossible to describe to you here everything that happened, but please, if you are interested, let’s talk in person…. Or wait for the book. It’s coming, I promise. What I can tell you is that it was INTENSE. These kinds of pursuits are why they burned witches at the stake, y’all. Looking in from the outside it wouldn’t be hard to think us as a cult who had fallen prey to demonic possession. But it wasn’t demons possessing us. It was demons we were exorcising….the demons of our past sexual traumas, of lives in service to the patriarchy, of sex lives gone cold, babies born and died, bodies scarred and judged, grief, loss, pain. We, the enchantresses of our own becoming, took our poisons and turned them into pleasure! It’s no wonder that the symbol for Kundalini is Snake. According to many native traditions, Snake medicine is transmutation and is about ‘creation, for it embodies sexuality, psychic energy, alchemy, reproduction and ascension’. It’s about ‘accepting all aspects of our lives, about the knowledge that all things are equal in creation, and that those things which might be experienced as poison can be eaten, ingested, integrated and transmuted if one has the proper state of mind’. And so for three days we moved energy and made magic through a variety of ancient meditation, breath-work, and massage practices. We took a closer look at our own physiology and each others’ to better understand our physical beings. We took sexual-spiritual journeys through partner assisted energy work and yoni massage. We laughed, we cried, we orgasmed like goddesses.
Life’s a risk either way. Might as well be amazing like this gal.
For most of my thirty-fourth year I was fixated on my own death to a degree that brought me much pain, anxiety and panic. In my sobriety I had to re-face my issues surrounding my grief for the loss of my dad and sister partnered with becoming a mother and face my own mortality like never before. Part of my healing was learning about the death rituals of cultures around the world and getting retuned in with the infinite nature of life as well as recognizing and honoring all my own little deaths. And practicing death. I remember the first time I heard the English translation of savasana- corpse pose. I remember how the woman at the front of the room told us that what we were was no longer, and to close our eyes, let it all fade away and to fade away with it. Since then, I use every savasana as a time to commune with my death, with the spirit of Death, and to be reborn. When it finds me, and it always does because it’s everywhere, I want to meet it with respect and calm and reverence. So I practice. During my yoni massage/ sexual-spiritual journey I definitely had a death experience. But I had a life experience, too. Phoenix was born through cesarean surgery and Ive lamented that I didn’t have the birthing experience I thought I was meant to have. I don’t know if I will have another child and at times I have felt that my yoni also missed the opportunity to fulfill one of her divine purposes- to bring forth new life. Well, not anymore. In my journey, I was made love to by god, had a full on labor and birth, realized I gave birth to the next embodiment of my worldly self and began to die. I wasn’t afraid this time. I knew I had died ten thousand deaths…I would be back. So I settled in and let it all wash away. When I came back to myself anew, I slowly opened my eyes, sat up and was surrounded by sisters, mothers, aunties. I was surrounded by and an important part of a powerful circle of women who had made the magical mundane explode into eternity. It was amazing. Each woman, with her own story, her own path to walk, but unmistakably linked together in the web of the whole.
Vice-sorcerer at P’s school
My friends, how often do you practice dying? How often do you allow yourself tiny deaths so that you can be reborn? How often do you become Snake and transmute energy and accept the power of the fire? Magic abounds and we are all magicians and enchantresses. Every time you mix salts and oils into the caldron of your bathtub, if you light a candle and quietly sip a blend of herbal tea, when you turn raw ingredients into a delectable dish for the pleasure of someone you love, are you not setting out to change and improve your state of being. Are you not making your mundane just a little more magical? I encourage you to seek, see and practice not only intense, full body mind/body/soul magic, but also everyday magic that makes life smell, taste, sound, look and feel more rich and alive. It’s all in the practice. And let me know how it’s going and what you do to achieve higher states of consciousness. I’d love to compare notes. In the meantime, all men and women reading this who are sexually active should consider familiarizing yourself well with yoni and lingam massage. It might not take you right to god’s doorstep, but it’ll certainly get you closer to the neighborhood. You deserve it.
Until next month, my loves. May the love you make with yourself and beyond be more holy, more fun, more wild and more free.
“Release the outer skin of your present identity. Move through the dreamlike illusion that has insisted on static continuity, and find a new rhythm as your body glides across the sands of consciousness, like a river winding its way toward the great waters of the sea. Immerse yourself in that water, and know that the single droplet which you represent is being accepted by the whole. Feel Snake’s rhythm and you will dance freely, incorporating those transmuting forces of the universe as a part of your sensual dance of power.”