Sex is life. It’s a simple truth that came up in a conversation recently. We are here because of sex, for many it’s a powerful, magical thing to hold sacred. Many of our deities, especially the female ones, are depicted in distinctly sexy ways, and the wheel of the year is often expressed as a narrative of reproduction.
I tend to resist all of this. Not least because sexual expression amongst humans is a lot broader than reproduction. Some of us are celibate, or unhappily single, some of us are non-sexual, and some of us have histories that make the celebration of sex pretty much impossible. How a person feels about their own body, their own desire, what scope they have for expression and acceptance – is all part of this mix. Some desires should not be expressed or accepted; anything that involves the non-consent of a participant.
Fertility is a tricky issue too. We could do with a collective slow down on human fertility. In many parts of the world, we’re living longer, child mortality is down, and our populations are expanding. Human fertility puts enormous pressure on the planet. We manipulate and control the fertility of other creatures – largely the mammals we eat – to work for our benefit, and we’ve changed wheat to the degree that it cannot naturally self seed – it cannot reproduce without our participation. Sex can be both one of the most natural, and one of the least natural things we get involved with.
Sex can be power – if you think about who is allowed to have sex, and who is allowed to enjoy it, the issues of power balance are considerable. For a lot of history, sex has been a part of male power over women, with ignorance and shaming reducing the scope for women to enjoy it. The ‘lie back and think of England’ advice from Queen Victoria offers us sex as something women must endure, not enjoy. Sex is incredibly political, and it’s only relatively recently that the law recognised that rape in marriage was even possible. A wedding ring, we’ve finally decided, is not consent to anything at any time forever. What does it say about us that for so much of human history we’ve been happy to make rape part of the institution of marriage while being horrified by women who express and enjoy their sexuality? And there are plenty of places in the world where that’s still happening.
Sex is a big concern for religions. Who is allowed to do it, and under what circumstances. If you look at religious laws, what it often comes down to is a way of controlling women’s sexual activities so that men can be confident about who the father is. Any religion that encourages people to deny the flesh for the sake of the afterlife tends not to be very keen on sex at all, and will tolerate it only between man and wife for the purposes of producing children. The pleasures of the flesh are often represented as being at odds with spirituality, so in a fair few traditions, dedicating to a spiritual life means celibacy.
The theme here for me, is allowing some people to dictate to other people what their relationship with sex ought to be. Whether it’s ‘you have to have sex to be initiated’ or ‘you cannot have the sex you want and be acceptable to god’ there are issues of control. We don’t have to have sex at Beltain. As Pagans, we should not feel obliged to do anything sexual, nor obliged not to. Consent is everything. If we’re not harming, or abusing someone else, then what we do, or don’t do, should be our own business. We can honour the energies of life without having to enact them. We can enact on our own terms should we choose to.
If sex is not celebratory and magical for you, then you need to start from where you are. Feeling pressured to react in a certain way is no kind of liberation, and if Paganism means to hold its head up as a sex-positive spirituality, we must also have room for those who say no.
Druid Life 
Yeah… one of my problems with the Wiccan wheel of the year. I find the notion that all life is erotic a bit truer – eros encompassing not only sex but love and creativity but then eros is edged with its opposite, thanatos, the death drive. Although sex and death of course come together in ‘the little death’.
Ah reminds me of the you are not really Pagan unless you have sex with a variety of partners, which was left over from the sexual revolution with you are a prude if you do not have sex with several partners.
I believe that most of the confusion around sex has been intentional, twisted manipulation to dishonor and dis-Empower the Feminine. Every misaligned understanding has ALL been a myth interwoven into our culture to create a belief that each of these layers is ‘normal’ when in fact, each is insane. There seems to be a huge push on all fronts of this agenda as the Divine Feminine is emerging to reclaim Her balance. For me, these days I amuse myself with the idea that ‘man’ was created int he image of God…but in those terms, ‘man’ means all of humanity….so the caveat question is God, or the All-That-Is, the Ultimate Creator….actually in the form of a woman?
Tracing blood lineage through the paternal side never made sense to me. Except through distinct resemblance to the father, there is not much in the way of physical proof, short of DNA evidence, that a child is related to their father. It is quite a bit more difficult to deny the evidence of “Yes, I saw that child come out of that woman’s body”, so matrilineal relationship seems to be a more pragmatic option.
Quite, and I think so much long term sexism has been about the desire to get control over that process of fertility.
Coo Article! I couldn’t have done a better job! Awesome composition and well articulated. I practiced Zen, Shamanism and other minor pagan belief systems from Central and South Asia for yeaes, traveling, learning and practicising from their original sources. More I come to the West, more mechanical it becomes and less spiritual, soul not involved. In many of our beliefs, sophisticated and enriched satisfation/pleasure of the femal partner is divine and the key to open the gates of many rituals. it is a sacred unification to fuse and be responsive to each others senses and presence. Takes time and is difficult to achieve, only through patience. I spent years on this and had great partners. But since I moved here, unfortunately all everyone is after getting on with it and move on. It appears that no one is interested in the art form and the peaks of feminine satsifaction to unlock the keys to all we seek for. Sex is one of the most powerful keys I know and it all starts with consent and desire. Thanks for the article. Seems like some people figure this thing out rather than most people surrounding me where I am 🙂