Sacred Sex: And a Ritual for Letting Go of Shame

The animal body is good! 

Our human-animal bodies are magnificent, graceful and beautiful, complex almost beyond imagining and as mysterious as the far-flung stars . . . and yet nothing is more familiar and accessible to us than our own bodies. It astonishes me that a religious person can praise his or her Creator and champion intelligent design and still think of sex as dirty, disgusting or immoral.

In Polytheistic Animism, the sex act is sacred. It’s sacred in the same way that all of our bodily functions are sacred, and like the Jews, we recognize the holiness of everyday life with gratitude.

As animists, we know that everything is both material and nonmaterial. Therefore, the sex act is also material and nonmaterial. If sex is only engaged in as a physical activity, an entire facet of the sexual experience disappears and sex becomes dull, even boring. Marital relations begin to deteriorate and intimate experiences constantly disappoint. This can lead to a frantic search for sexual titillation, or its opposite, ennui. On the other hand, sacred sex engages all facets of ourselves, body and soul, and is therefore rich, satisfying and fresh every time. It provides partners with ever increasing pleasure and delight through the years, and is an offering to our Creator worthy of the gift with which he has endowed us, the gift of the flesh. This post is the first in a series about sacred sex.

Polytheistic Animism (Poly-Animism), because it is a theological, or god-believing, religion, allows for the existence of a Creator, a greater-than-human being who created humanity on purpose and for a purpose. In other words, we believe in some form of intelligent design. Humans may have evolved from less complex organisms, and all life on earth may have started as a bit of flotsam floating on a primordial sea, but behind it all is a grand intelligence, and this intelligence is the source of the marvelous design and functionality of our genitals.

We give thanks to the Creator of the Flesh!

We begin our Poly-Animist practice of sacred sex with gratitude for the gift of our bodies and our genitals, and the physical pleasures they offer us. Gratitude makes us humble. Gratitude reveals what we value, and what we value, we will work for and care for.

As we seek to feel and express gratitude for our bodies, we may get in touch with all the ways we’ve denigrated, damaged and ignored the needs of our flesh in the past. Are we really grateful for these bodies? Or do we think of them as an annoyance and source of discomfort, never living up to our expectations or hopes, never quite good enough or good looking enough or strong enough or young enough or smooth enough?

Once again we can return to the animist reality for understanding: the body itself is not only a material thing. Like all things, it is imbued with intelligence, emotion and soul. I’m not talking about our brains, here, which we imagine houses the mind, but with the cells, organs, bones and other material substances of the body. The body itself is alive, intelligent and ensouled, so when we send our living body messages of anger and hate, it reacts with depression, illness and withdrawal. We lose our health and wellbeing. And we lose our erotic edge. Gratitude is an antidote to the poison of self hate.

It might be difficult at first to give thanks for your body. You’ll need to work at it and practice loving your body like your body really is your self, but gratitude for the body is not only pleasing to our Creator. It will pay off in better health and amazing sexual pleasure.

Feelings of shame may also arise when we express gratitude for our bodies, especially for our genitals. As sexually liberated as Americans think we are, many of us are still deeply mired in shame, yet shame will quickly freeze our sexual response. Shame is learned very early and may be difficult to remove, but since letting go of shame is essential for a happy sex life, here’s a ritual to help you let go of shame.

The outcome:

Your body gets the message that it is sexy and good, and that you are grateful for its existence.

What you need:

Privacy, a place to bathe, a towel and massage oil or lotion, the best you can comfortably afford. If you are not able to acquire these things, you can improvise in any way that enables you to give the message to your body.

The steps:

Enter sacred space. Take a bath or shower, taking your time and soaping your body with your hands instead of a washcloth, so you can feel your skin, your hair and your flesh. Notice any feelings of revulsion or shame as they come up and consciously challenge them. Your body is beloved of your god! 

Then, dry yourself off, sit comfortably naked on the towel, and begin to apply the lotion or oil to your body, all the time speaking out loud to your body and giving it messages of affection, kindness and love. You might begin with your feet and work your way up to your face.

Expect to feel overwhelmed by emotion the first time you attempt this, especially if you’ve been giving your body hate messages for years. You may, on the other hand, just feel silly and not be able to bring yourself to speak out loud. That’s ok. Take your time. Pretend at first that you’re not ashamed. Act as if you were not ashamed. Start partly clothed if you need to and remove your clothes a little at a time. Start with just your arms. Start by loving your body for just two minutes, or without speaking the words out loud, but start. If you can do this, something deep inside of you will shift and you’ll naturally begin to eat better, treat your body better and enjoy sex more.

As you gently smooth the lotion on to your skin, speak out loud to your body, as if your body had a mind to hear. Like this, “Good body! You’ve carried me through life. You’ve put up with my bad habits, the bad food, the late nights. You’re an amazing creation. I love you. I’m grateful for you and want you to live a long time. In my eyes, you’re beautiful.”

Or, you can speak to your genitals in particular, even as you massage lotion into all parts of you. “Genitals, you are clean and good and sweet smelling. You can feel the most exquisite pleasure and I am going to give you lots of love!” (This isn’t necessarily the time to massage your genitals, but if it happens, hey, that’s fine, too. Just remember to use oil, lotion or lube that’s not irritating to your most delicate skin!)

That’s how to do the ritual. Do this weekly for a year and your sex life will be transformed!

Please keep in mind that this is a religious practice. This is not a secular website, we are a church, and although this practice is useful for people of all faiths or no faith, our gods, the gods of Polytheistic-Animism, approve of and encourage a healthy sex life. Our Creator made us sexual on purpose, and our pleasure is a sweet offering to all the gods of love.

Practices: The Study of History 2

Polytheistic Animists study history to increase their knowledge, wisdom and agency in the world. You can study history as a Poly-An practice by yourself or with one or more others. I suggest selecting a starting point in time and place, or a topic or goal, and then diving in through the catalog of your local library. Many libraries have consortiums, usually at the county or state level, with catalogs that can draw from dozens of libraries in the region.

Avoid the pop-internet, since the material you find there is often shallow and highly opinionated, but make use of youtube documentaries and online university courses. Be cautious of limiting yourself to textbooks, which are crowded with dominator propaganda. Instead, read widely in print, magazine articles, too, and include a variety of points of view in your selections. If you are a slow reader, or have never engaged in learning activities after high school or college, then young adult books are a great way to start.

Help one another learn. Share book titles and cool ideas. One person in a group may have lots of resources to share on a particular topic, while others will be starting from scratch. I encourage highly educated and resourced people to seek out Sacred Green circles or churches that are looking for teachers and offer to serve.

Studying history is not just memorizing facts. Discussion is essential. Our discussions about history develop intellectual skills and critical thinking, create new cognitive connections and generate new understandings. There are no objective, black and white conclusions to be drawn from history — the past is always viewed through the lens of our personalities, cultures, and current systems of belief, so come to the study of history with a open mind. As you become more proficient at reading and talking about what you read, and as you build up a base of background knowledge, your study will become easier and lots more fun.

If you’re having trouble getting started, drop me an email and tell me a bit about your background and interests. I’ll send you some book titles to get you started. Read on, Poly-Ans! Get smart!

Practices: The Study of History

A religion is not just a system of belief. It's also a set of practices. The practices of Polytheistic Animism (Poly-An) help us reclaim the best of our human potential. These practices are meant to strengthen us in body and spirit and liberate us from dominator control. Unlike many religious practices, they are not designed to separate us from everyday life, but to engage us fully in an animist reality, so that we might sing, teach, work, vote, cook and love this alternative reality into existence. We are to live the reality we want to manifest, or as Gandhi famously put it, to “be the change we wish to see in the world.” The next few posts will describe some Poly-An practices and I’ll address additional practices on occasion in future posts.

One of the most important practices of Polytheistic Animism is the study of history. We believe that knowledge is power, so to liberate our potential for personal and social agency, we are to become lifelong learners. We’re not just looking for factual information, but for a deep, rich and diverse knowledge base, and ultimately, for the wisdom to guide us through life and to share with our children.

All fields of study are encouraged in Polytheistic Animism. Practical skill building is also highly valued, and there are particular practices aimed at improving skills, but let’s focus here on the study of the liberal arts and sciences, and the key to them all is history.

Our Poly-An study of history is inclusive of prehistorical times, mythologies, cultures, social and  political interactions between individuals and groups, and interactions between humans and the nonhuman world. Studied in tandem with anthropology, sociology, and other related topics, history helps us understand human nature and experience. It is the collective memory of humankind, and it teaches us what it means to be human. 

Through the study of history, we develop humility. We learn from our mistakes. Knowing history makes us informed citizens of our nation and the world because it clears our minds of contemporary media imagery and reveals hard truths about the power structures that control human life. It helps us make wise decisions in the present and plan for the future, and gives us new ways to interpret patterns of social interactions. We discover the way things change and stay the same. We place our sufferings and joys into a longer and more realistic perspective. Finally, history provides us with lessons in courage, morality, heroism, perseverance and other positive character traits, and lessons in cruelty and greed and the dark side of human nature. In short, it helps us to understand ourselves as individuals and as a species.

All of these benefits have been listed before. What’s unique about the Poly-An perspective is our awareness that human “finishing” * limits and contains what we know and believe. The reality into which a person is born will appear normal to that person for the rest of his life. Each generation, especially in our rapidly-changing era, believes that the world it experiences is right, true and unchangeable; what we are born into is what should be and the way it always was. We can’t help but do our human thing — we adjust, we adapt, we internalize whatever life brings our way. So, this year’s crop of middle school kids are at home in a fast, noisy, digital world, but since my brain and mind were finished in the 1950s, I find the same speed, noise and technology to be painful and intrusive. Is one of our cultural realities better than the other? Simply asking that question is the power of history, whatever conclusion we ultimately draw.

History is the only antidote to the myopia of normalcy and the unquestioning acceptance of what is. If we discover through history that this Capitalist Dominator Culture (CDC) in which we currently live is not the only possible culture, and that our current beliefs were born in an historical context, then we can begin to question, to choose, to change. The study of history has constantly come under attack in the CDC as trivial, unprofitable or impractical, but underlying that attack is this more fundamental issue — the study of history is subversive. It empowers us to see beyond our propaganda and programming, think critically about our lives, and compare what we are living now to what others have lived before us. History makes us powerful people. 

Now, go and study!

Notes: 

How to go about this study is addressed in the next post . . . * More about human “finishing” in future posts.