It happened back in December when our circle was planning the ritual for Winter Solstice. Ours is an open circle of women in the Dianic tradition, and we encourage newcomers to join us for ritual planning. It allows them to meet everybody on a casual basis outside of sacred space. It also underscores the point that we create our rituals from ourselves and from our own lived experience and not from some book or "authority." Spirits were high and fun was in the air when the conversation leapt ahead to Beltaine.
"For Beltaine, why don't we use a dildo for a talking stick?" suggested one of the women playfully. We giggled about that idea and added many variations on that theme that livened the merry mood even more. As I write this, we have not yet met for Beltaine planning, so I don't know if we will actually make something of this idea. We're a democratic group, and who knows what we'll actually weave into our ritual? Now that we come to it, however, why not incorporate sex toys into our religious expression?
After all, sexuality is a fundamental part of many of our pagan religions. We are not restrained by the negative proscriptions against sex propounded by Pauline or Calvinist theology. We freely admit and take joy in sex. The pages of Widdershins, are liberally adorned with naked witches. We consider skyclad to be a vestment. Any "transformation" we experience in our Great Rite is not, after all, about bread and wine is it? So why not reclaim sex as an integral, openly expressed part of our Beltaine Sabbat?
I went to do some research on the topic. Not too many books on the shelves of pagan bookstores these days offer much help in the way of explicit sexual rites during a Sabbat. Scott Cunningham in The Truth About Witchcraft Today admits that "a few Wiccans may utilize sex as a joyous, energy-raising experience during ritual," but he is at pains to point out that it is rare, private and only with a life partner. Starhawk, Diane Stein and Barbara Walker speak only about maypoles at Beltaine -- a phallic symbol no doubt, but not directly sexual in an active sense. Ffiona Morgan in her Goddess Spirituality Book speaks of the Great Rite performed by women in the evening after the maypole dance. It is one very hot description! Every woman gets to be communion, if you follow my drift.
I finally had to go back to 1980 and Z. Budapest's Holy Book of Women's Mysteries, for one of the most explicit and positive affirmations of sacred sex in ritual. She holds that the Goddess is universally and intimately connected with religious sexual practices. She says that the essence of the Great Rite is the fact that ancient women related sexually to more than one man or woman during its celebration. While she focuses on women loving women sexually, Budapest does see pleasure as a virtue in all connections. "Oneness in all Nature is much sought after in the sexual union," she writes, "be it with female-male variations, or female with female and male with male. Creativity generally, rather than procreation exclusively, is the object of Tantric, Wiccan, Earth religion practices."
By nature, Budapest contends, sex is divine and promiscuous, and not at all possessive. Religious sex is open and inclusive. It goes beyond personalities, beauty requirements or any other externally imposed considerations. She admits that bonding sexually with more than one person is seen as a terrifying threat to couples who have assumed responsibilities together and who fear losing their exclusivity with each other. She dismisses such fears by claiming that a bond that cannot hold through a divine sacrifice, and expand in religious sexual rites seasonally for the honor of the Goddess, cannot hope for Her blessings for very long. When she wrote those words, the AIDS pandemic had not reached the frightening proportions that it has today. Now when we engage in multiple sex rituals, we have be careful not to spread diseases. Maybe what we need is a ceremony for anointing the holy latex prior to our Great Rites.
Budapest says that orgasm in sex bursts through the ego, which is the single biggest roadblock to our connection with the Goddess. In a Dianic circle, the collective female community becomes possessed by Her and unbridles female sexual instincts from the far recesses of the third layer of the brain, diminishing the fears, the guilt and the oppression of female sexuality. "The healing power of sex as it releases energies to the orgasm is proof of having tapped a most Divine source of energy," she writes.
The Beltaine ritual she proposes in her book does not involve sex toys. After performing the five-fold kiss (forehead, lips, breasts, yoni and feet) and reciting the Charge of the Goddess, the women all place flowers into a blanket. The corners of the blanket are drawn up, and each woman reaches in blindly to pick a flower. In this way, they choose their initial ritual partner. Not that pairing off is required. In fact, she emphasizes that the goal is communal pleasuring. Massage, stroking, anointing all over with oil, kissing and all manner of love-making is carried on in unhurried transports of ecstasy. There is no requirement to achieve orgasm to make pleasuring acts sacred. After all, are not all acts of love and pleasure Her rituals? Those who are shy or just not ready for open sexuality participate actively in whatever way works for them, as long as it contributes to the total communal experience.
I myself enjoyed one of these rituals -- at the Women of Wisdom conference, no less, a few years ago. We did not strip nor engage in direct sexual contact. Rather, each woman lay on the floor surrounded by the others. We were in the chapel, which is round and created a womblike effect. As the women stroked the one in the center to the music, the priestess massaged her scalp and repeated into her ear "Thou art Goddess, Thou art Goddess." It was very sensual and spiritual at the same time. I felt my ego controls drain away like beads of water off a Teflon pan. I was totally relaxed and caught up in the moment of the music and the touching. I closed my eyes and did not relate to any one individual. It was a communal pleasuring and, even on this lighter level, it was deeply moving.
That experience was not in my own circle, nor did I even know most of the women there. I wonder if I had known them whether it would have been easier or more difficult for them or for me to participate. Sometimes we can do things with strangers that we are more reluctant to do with those we will deal with in other contexts. One year, my circle paired off during a Beltaine ritual to massage each other's hands and feet with oil. I wonder how receptive they would be to more intimate pleasuring.
At least the idea of using dildoes for talking sticks is not too far over the edge for them. I got the clear impression that every one of us has a small arsenal of pocket rockets to choose from. If not, it is as good an excuse as any to visit Toys in Babeland and get some more. Toys in Babeland is just a few doors up from Edge of the Circle, one of our paper's major advertisers. If we do decide to use vibrators in our Beltaine Sabbat, I am confident that even the open declaration in circle that we are sexual creatures will have a powerful energy raising effect. Reclaiming our sexuality as sacred is an important and empowering affirmation of our pagan identity.