Tag: godspouses

Compersion for Lokeans

Wiktionary defines compersion as:

  1. The feeling of joy one has experiencing another’s joy, such as in witnessing a toddler’s joy and feeling joy in response.
  2. The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy.

There’s been a lot of talk lately, around the ol’ Lokean campfire, about jealousy and strife in our circles, particularly in social media posts. Tension occasionally erupts between so-called “Baby Lokeans” and the more experienced devotees, between those who are “serious” in their practices and those who seem to take Loki too lightly, and sometimes even between Loki’s godspouses (and/or godspouses and non-godspouses). Sometimes people bail from these online communities because they just can’t take it anymore.

I have a modest proposal (somewhat different from Jonathan Swift’s, though Swift is a family name…). And that proposal is that we consciously cultivate compersion as a community, personal, and spiritual value. This doesn’t mean that we throw our own discernment or feelings out the window and obligingly wallow in whatever might seem odd or nonsensical to us, but to at least feel happy FOR the other Lokean, if nothing else. The polyam and non-monogamy folks have been cultivating compersion for years (and yeah, it can be a struggle). Here’s a good article from Elisabeth Sheff, Ph.D., a person I respect.

So…

Annoyed by a Marvel fanperson posting their tale of a drunken dream orgy with a Hiddleston look-alike? Feel something like happiness for them (even as you restrain your snark and scroll quickly past the comment section). They’re just “longing to publish [their] prosperous love” (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen).

782px-Yggdrasill,_the_mundane_tree_(26938965955)
Ygdrassill, the World Tree

Miffed by another godspouse’s account of hot vibratory tantric encounters with the patron deity of your polytheistic pantheon(s)? Get over it. Be glad for them. That person may have been working for years on a complex meditative practice with Loki as a cosmic daka, yielding revelations of Asgard and the other eight worlds as a sort of Vajra mandala. This person may simply want to share the numinous fruits of their labor for the good of all sentient beings (or they might want to sell you the best damn vibrator on the planet). Try to ignore your suspicions that they’re simply boasting.

Besides, Loki’s marvelous ability to be in many places (and shapes) at once benefit all of us, godspouse or not.

Right? (Let’s assume we can all agree to that…)

1920px-Kongokai
Kongokai (vajra) mandala – Shingon tantric buddhist school. fromwww.bujinkan-france.net. Public domain.

Are you squicked because someone’s relentless oversharing reminds you too much of your own gushing newbie self, once upon a time? Focus instead on the wonder of your own passionate path and leave others to their own discoveries (and later embarrassments). Feel joy for them as a fellow traveler. Like most of us, they too will grow into a deeper understanding of their own wyrd, though they might not develop the classy restraint of Jane Austen (who is really very funny).

I’ll admit it. There are times when I want to stuff my eye sockets with cotton balls. Some things I cannot unsee. Some things I wish I’d never read. I have the same response in supermarkets, though, and if someone wants to fill their shopping cart with twelve cartons of Hostess Ding Dongs to dedicate to Loki (or feed to their children), it’s really none of my affair.

Yes, you can leave a group if it no longer serves you. No, you don’t have to read or respond to drivel. But try to allow for the possibility of other paths to joy and discovery, even as you rush to log out. After all, our own path beckons beyond the keyboard–whether silly or severe or all of the above. We can have gobs more fun with that.

Compersion may be key to creating and nurturing frith in our online halls. Let’s see what happens when we are honestly happy for our Lokean kin, no matter how much we weary of godPhone™ text messages and runic bitch slaps.

Hail Loki! Have another donut!

P.S. The above is general observation and nothing that pertains to anyone in particular,  except that paragraph five (counting after the definition) is me making fun of myself. 

####

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sex Magic

Sexology is my profession. Magic is a consuming “special interest.” Tantra has been (and is) a link between the two. So my bookshelves contain more (far more!) than first editions of the male and female Kinsey studies and The Guide to Getting It On. I’ve also got The Art of Sexual Magic (1995) by Margot Anand (tantric-inspired), Secrets of Western Sex Magic (2001) by Frater U.D., and the more recent Sex, Sorcery, and Spirit (2015) by Jason Miller. Here’s a review of Miller’s book by Donyae Coles and here’s an interview with Miller from Down at the Crossroads podcast (one of my favorite podcasts, by the way). I’ve also got tons of other books dealing with tantra, Taoist practices (though I gave a bunch of Healing Tao books away recently), sexual ecstasy and transcendence, magic, and so on.

342px-Beguiling_of_Merlin
The Beguiling of Merlin by Burne-Jones.

The “sex magic” umbrella is pretty big: there are energetic practices (e.g., tantric, Taoist) designed to refine and boost sexual energy, to be directed in whatever manner you please; practices which imbue sigils with orgasmic energy (again, use as you wish); sex with deities and spirits; and the creation of various sexual/spiritual “elixirs.” Really, with a little practice, a good time can be had by all!

The first time I came across mentions of “sex with spirits or gods” was prior to my sexology or tantra studies, actually. I was reading Polynesian Family Systems of Ka’u, Hawai’i by Mary Kawena Pukui and E.S. Craighill handy (back when Hawaiian culture was also a consuming special interest of mine), and was fascinated by various accounts of “spirits as mates” in the chapter called “The Psychic Phase of Relationship” (pp. 116-159). These spirits were called kane or wahine o ka po–men or women of the night–and did not seem to act in a manner that Western researchers would be likely to deem incubus, succubus, or “sleep paralysis” experiences. Nor will metal bands be named after them.

Nowadays it is common to come across “god spouses” on the internet, and I give ’em all due respect.

I find this topic massively interesting, having had a few inexplicable experiences myself. And as a sexologist, I’d really like to find a sexological or socio-cultural anthropological study of this phenomena. (I’d do it myself, but I don’t have access to research funds or an internal review board.)

If I plug “sex with spirits” into Google Scholar, the first relevant thing that pops up is Achieving Invisibility and Having Sex with Spirits: Six Operations from an English Magic Collection ca. 1600 (Klassen and Bens). It looks like a good read–I bookmarked it for later. And if I achieve invisibility beyond the usual “I’m old so no one notices me anymore” thing, I’ll be sure to blog about it.

There are also practices mentioned where one meditatively imagines oneself as the form of a deity or a deity’s partner, in order to evoke the desired energies.

As for links with magic and tantra, before I left Hawai’i a very accomplished tantra dude showed me how to use the “Tai Chi Sword” (first two fingers pointed, thumb closed over the last two fingers) to hook, twist, and pull a few lurking entities down and away from the ceiling of my home. There actually was a kind of freaky “haunting” there on Mano Street, and I felt it most the first night I slept in one of the guest bedrooms (I had already loaded most my furniture in the container for shipment back to California). It was a very unpleasant encounter and one of the first I’d ever had with a noxious entity! I really had to banish the “f” out of the thing. Now I know why a couple of houseguests refused to sleep in that room.

I hadn’t known at first that tantra was associated with magic. Like most Westerners who end up involved with Neo-Tantra, I assumed the main focus was sex and transcendence. I’ve been told–anecdotally–that the taboo associations with tantra in India have more to do with magic than they do with sex. But don’t quote me. This may not be accurate.

As I look through the stack of books on my table, I can see that symbols and sigils are a major topic. The idea is to use orgasmic energy to invest a sigil with magical power to affect change. The sigils are created with specific meaning and intention. In Anand’s book, this is covered in the chapters called “Creating Your Magic Vision” and “Sexual Alchemy: Charging Your Magic Symbol.” Miller’s book deals with sigils in the chapter called “Flying Solo.” (I honestly haven’t done more than skim through the Frater U.D. book, so I can’t comment on the content with accuracy.) Since I’m in need of a literary agent and publisher for my fantasy novel, I’m strongly considering the above method to draw the right agent to me (even as I do the copious research necessary to find and approach such people).

As a younger woman, I’d imagined I’d fill my declining years with cats, orchids, and a study of slime molds. Now that I’m well on my way to being what my oldest son fondly calls “a fruit bat,” I do have the cats and two orchids which manage to survive my lack of talent for plants, but sex and magic do seem to have replaced slime molds as my obsession of choice. So why not delve as deeply and powerfully as possible in these matters, while I still have life and breath and will?

This blog is part of that fun.

Are you a fellow traveler? Please comment and “like” below. 

####