Maing Sacred the Profane

Halloween has, throughout time, been a night when the veil between the worlds, thins; when the finite distinctions between the real and the fantastic become ethereal; when we celebrate life, death, and all the glory that both encompass.

For many years, I have followed a tradition of the Earth Goddess, and worshipped all that is good and just in our world and in nature. As such, the Feast of Samhain, All Hallow's Eve, Halloween, is a sacred and holy night to those of us pursuing the sacred that is found in what many consider "pagan."

Try as we might, we have never been able to truly separate our beliefs from the beliefs of Wiccans in most people's minds, and so we attempt to bridge the gap in knowledge and overcome ignorance by offering our ritual and celebration publicly, at our most sacred of ceremonies; the Samhain Sacrament.

An evening of revelry and thanks to our gods and goddesses, we embrace the sanctity of the bodies we have been given. Most of us are women, and in a culture that celebrates everything masculine, and sees the feminine, not as sacred or divine, but as objects, we keep hold of the ancient idea that we are vessels of love, vessels of purity, vessels of lust, and everything in between.

We walk the line between virgin and whore in a world that simultaneously rejects and rejoices in woman as sexual predator and sexual object.

It was my year to lead the ritual, and though I had seen it before, many times, I was nervous. I wanted the sanctity of the night to be reflected in my calling of the quarters, and to show in the way I held sacred space for others.

The one thing I didn't want was to have our sacrosanct ritual to be marred by the bad publicity we had received in previous years. Painted by local rags as a "creepy sex cult," an "orgy of fanatics," and a "aberrant exhibition of deviance," I wanted desperately to demonstrate the reverence in which we hold the mating of two people; the experience and celebration of life on its most visceral level.

Martine walked toward me, calling to me in her musical, lyrical way, with a man at her side, both of them illuminated by the bonfire I was nurturing with all the skills I possessed. "Sam," she said, "I would like to introduce you to Michael Edwards, anthropologist. He is studying goddess rituals for a book he is writing. I've been explaining our beliefs and practices, but I thought he should speak to you since this is your night."

I was immediately wary. A book? How would he illustrate our ways, our practices? And could I do anything to alter the common biases that he probably held.

He extended a hand, long and slender, but strong; speaking of labor and contact with the earth. I stood, and took it in mine, meeting the eyes of a tall, lean, athletic man, with blue eyes, and dark hair; a day's worth of growth on his face. Slightly gray around his temples, I judged him to be around forty, but a fit forty. His hand grasped mine in a warm embrace, and I felt his energy seep into me. He was genuine and curious, and open minded. "Good," I thought.

"I'm pleased to meet you, I'm looking forward to witnessing the ritual. Martine has been a good tutor, and I feel like I understand what you are doing here," he said.

"Well, we are merry met. I hope you'll give us the time to demonstrate the power of the rituals." I said, nervous under the intense, scholarly gaze he gave me.

"I plan to. I should reassure you that I have traveled extensively, and seen many things that cannot be accounted for rationally. I believe that there are forces in this world, older than we, that we cannot seek to explain or control, only to experience." His strong face lit up with an open, honest smile, and I relaxed a little.

As we had been speaking, one of the acolytes had invited the observers to come up the hill to the fire. Some, I recognized from past years; the druidic practitioners, the Goths dressed in black with heavy makeup, the wannabe witches. Others were strangers. I wondered which were the curiosity seekers, and which were the sensationalist media people I wanted to avoid.

Martine, standing ironically tall and powerful in her five foot frame, clapped her hands, and said, "well Michael, hopefully Sam will provide you with many new sights this evening and a new perspective to take with you into the next years of your study. We should sit though, it is almost time."

She turned and walked away with the confidence that spiritual, sexual power brings. He would follow like a sheep, not even aware of the power she exerted over him. He began to turn to follow her, then shook his head, and smiled as the mirror of my thoughts washed over him.

"That's pretty impressive," he said to me, truly joyful at the realization that he had been under a spell; subtle, but sure.

"She is impressive," I answered, surprised, but gladdened that he was strong in spirit and intellect. I felt comfortable with his presence at our ritual. I watched him turn to follow her, and I retreated into that quiet space in my mind to compose myself and cleanse my heart before I called the quarters and began the annual sacrament.

A hush began to draw over the assembled crowd, and I felt a silent peace settle over me like a blanket. It was time.

My fingers rose to the ties binding my robe to open them, and, breathing in, seeking that moment of nothingness between my inhale and exhale, I dropped my robe. I heard, vaguely and distantly, gasps and giggles as I revealed to all watching, my naked form. I was neither ashamed, nor proud.

I knew that I was attractive; I stood almost six feet tall and was lean from years of dancing the rituals around many fires like this one. My hair, red like the flames, was long and healthy, and my breasts still firm at 35.

But this ceremony was not about pride at my body, it was about the celebration of the sacred feminine, the revelry in life and fertility, and thanks for the harvest.

My body began to move in a dance, neither rhythmic, nor rhythm-less; it simply moved in time with the pulsing energies of the earth. And I began to speak, my voice carrying, and sounding unearthly, even to my own ears.

"I call upon the east, bring the air like the eagle aloft, touch my flesh with your breezes, open our minds to your knowledge, and bless this, our sacred circle." I waved the smoke from the fire toward the east with a grace that, I knew from past years, seemed unnatural, and turned to my right.

"I call upon the south, bring the flame like a serpent, weaving mysteriously, kiss my flesh with your heat, opening our bodies to your promises, and bless this our sacred circle." I continued drawing the circle, calling the quarters, until all those around me could feel the stillness and security of the space I held with my mind, body, and spirit.

In silence, the others of our group, the believers, rose, dropping their dresses and robes, stepping into the ring around the bonfire, and began to move with me, our bodies hearing and responding to the sounds of the earth.

Someone began to sing a wordless chant to our goddess, and we moved from this world across the thin border to the next, in the trance-like state of the true believers. We straddled the worlds of life and death, inviting those around us to feel that world, because only with a knowledge of death, can you truly experience life.

I began to feel the spirits of the earth-bound gathering close to feel the beauty and energy of life our ritual created, and I knew that they were as enraptured as the mortal watchers they hovered among. I called out in a voice that was inhumanly loud and resonating to them, and asked them to see the doorway we had created. I cautioned them to wait until we could open it fully for them, to release them into the world of spirit were they would achieve freedom from the earth they had been forced to walk for unfathomable spans of time.

The moment was upon me; I felt it in my heart, and in my loins. I must choose the one among the watchers to help me send the energy of life into the doorway; to become one with me as an elegua to guard the veil between the worlds from evil and death.

Men came from all across the country to witness our ritual, hoping to be chosen, but we, the sentinels of this ritual, always knew which of them was truly open to giving their potent energy, their seed, to the world.

I looked into the crowd, studying carefully the energies resonating from each of the souls there before me, and I met the eyes of Michael, Martine's guest. The aura about him spoke of the power I needed, and the ability to give freely of his spirit. He would be the one.

I ceased my sensual undulations, while my followers continued to dance around me in a frenzy of carnal energy. Many of the women were already experiencing the little death of the orgasm as the energy of our circle rose to unprecedented heights.

Facing Michael, legs shaky beneath me, I beckoned to him. Surprised, but desiring to experience and understand the ritual, he rose and came to me, surely and steadily. He stopped inches before me, uncertain of what he was to do.

I took a deep, calming breath to control the anxiety within me. I didn't want to do anything to mar the ceremony, to detract from the needs of the spirits, from the needs of the world.

I reached out to him, and began to remove his clothing; he studied me academically as though trying to memorize each element of the ritual, unconcerned at his emerging nudity.

As his body materialized before me, I noted scars on his chest, and tattoos of dots on his biceps and thighs, the echoes of other sacred rituals to foreign gods. I didn't recognize the patterns, but I felt them, primitively, as power marks.

I motioned him to the alter we had prepared, and laid him atop it before me. I gently, purposefully, drew the sacred symbols on his chest, stomach and thighs with the dust of the earth, the dust of our ancestors, and watched his flaccid member begin to rise.

The power of the ritual began to usher everyone into the realm of lust; the penultimate defiance of death, the only creator of life. A heavy, musky, scent permeated the air, and all the observers, of this world and the parallel one, untouchable except at this most sacred of times, felt their passions inflame, their bodies responding to the undeniable call of the god of lust.

I felt my own body preparing to offer its power to the doorway; a rush of warmth between my legs, a pressure building in the source of my power and pleasure, the slick sensation within me as I moved in the prescribed motions around my anthropologist, lying attentive and powerful before me.

Michael's eyes bored a hole into me, his sharp, penetrating gaze taking in everything I did, every motion I made, in a communing of intellect and manly desire. His aura streamed out from him in bolts of red, and his shaft rose to its fully rigid state; his internal desire demonstrated viscerally before me and the witnesses.

He was large, and solid, bulging beckoningly to me from the nest of hair at the vortex of the patriarch power needed to complete our spell.

I walked with purpose to the alter and climbed onto it, straddling him. I chanted the incantation of protection and surrender with my eyes glued to his. In that moment, the power of the ancestors came into me, and I was more alive and sensitive than I had ever been before.

I lowered my dripping center of power onto him, his gasp echoing my own as our energies merged and melded, swirling around us. I began to move slowly, allowing the desire to smolder, rising slowly, and he met my motions with a surety of purpose. He was completing me, satiating me, filling me wholly in a perfect union.

Like puzzle pieces, his shaft met my gap and gently stroked the inner walls. Our sensations were heightened like those on LSD may experience. We felt through our eyes, our mouths, our noses, we smelled and tasted through our fingers, our toes, our dichotomous, perfectly matched genitals. The memory is strange, unreal, but I could taste him through my throbbing pussy; musk and earth; clean and manly.

The women in the circle slowed their dancing and circled around us. Unable to join with another, they began to touch and stroke themselves.

I saw one woman moving her fingers around her nub of sensation, another pushing her digits up into her self. They began to writhe in a frenzy of pleasure around us, slowly circling the alter, offering up the wordless chants to the need of the window between the worlds.

I took Michael's hands, and placed them on my hips as I began to move myself up and down his swollen member. He began to guide me, up and out, in and down. My hips moved in a circle of their own accord, and I began to feel the control of the earth take over me. I knew that I would soon lose control over my body as I allowed the earth to come into me and take over, and I relished this moment of joy before I would be possessed by powers older than humanity.

My conscious mind began to recede, and I felt the Other come into me; distantly, I noted that Michael felt it too. He realized that he was no longer making love to me, but something far more ancient and wise.

I was pushed out, and I began to watch, from somewhere outside myself, as my body moved off of him, and turned to place my hips above his head. I observed my own mouth closing over his shaft, as his mouth closed on my secret, sacred opening. I felt everything as keenly as if I were still in control, though could do nothing to stop the Other from taking what it needed from his body and my own.

The witnesses were enthralled; in a trance state, and many had begun to touch themselves. Men began to stroke their erections, women began to squeeze their legs together seeking relief.

I felt Michael's tongue enter my slippery cave of the sacred, and drink me in. I watched in fascination from outside of myself, how my body reacted, and felt his fingers, solid and strong, massage my pleasure center.

I observed my own hand, reaching between his thighs, and felt the warmth of him as my finger gently, but firmly insinuated itself inside of him. I felt his anus tighten around the intrusion, then relax into it. I tasted the promise of his ultimate pleasure emerge onto my tongue, as I moved my finger and mouth in concert.

My drifting soul, tethered closely, observed him, and felt his fingers and mouth switch, his digits extending themselves rigidly into me, as his soft tongue began to luxuriate and indulge in twirling my clit.

I felt and saw myself come; a shuddering, violent thing; and watched Michael's answering smile, his masculine power emanating from him like a tide. My body, though no longer in my control, was still mine to feel, experience, and I flung my ephemeral head back in pleasure, mimicking my physical body.

My body rose to its knees, leaving him wanting as my finger withdrew from him, and the heat of my mouth fell away. I saw my hand beckon him up, as my physical self lay back into the hands of the circle of sacred members.

The naked, writhing, lustful women and men surrounding the alter began to stroke my body, touching me intimately, kissing my arms, my legs, my breasts. A woman took my nipple into her mouth and began to suckle, as my hand guided Michael's shaft into my hole.

Like watching a movie, I watched the hands and mouths of the acolytes move over us, seeking to draw from us the ultimate pleasure of the flesh that would close the ritual, and swing wide the door to the other world. Tongues explored my mouth, my breasts, my clit; they tasted Michael's abdomen, his erect nipples, his anus.

He was lost to the passion and power of the group and the god of lust. I saw the man in him begin to take over, the primitive part of him rise to the front of his mind, blinding him to reason. He began to violently plow my field, his biceps standing out sharply in the reflection of the flames and the smattering of sweat that stood out in a sheen all over his strong, virile body.

The muscles in his thighs worked, expanding and contracting as he slammed into my aching, throbbing pussy, a hand snaked between us to pinch my clit, another caressed his balls. He assaulted me in the powerful grip of lust induced madness, and my body met each vicious thrust equally.

I noted, from my spirit's position apart, that his testicles had begun to contract up toward his body, and I knew that the moment was near. I dreaded and desired the moment of return to control of my body, knowing that at the moment of reunion, my senses would be assailed and overwhelmed with a pleasure so strong it would mimic pain.

My body had begun to flush, the pressure in my loins seemed unbearable, and as Michael's mouth lowered to mine, to kiss me for the first time in our coupling, I was slammed back into my body. His mouth crushed mine, bruising me with glorious pain, and my body began to shudder.

I felt him explode deep within me, crying out, and felt acutely, the responding orgasm pour out of my body. For moments, minutes, I was overwhelmed by the convulsions of my inner walls, the pleasure sweet and sharp.

I witnessed the energy created in our simultaneous orgasm radiate away from us, and into the thin wall between the worlds, creating a safe way for the earth-bound to follow. I felt their departure from the physical world and their entrance to the spiritual one. I began to sob as their relief reached me, their dream of peace and release from this plane, finally achieved.

Martine lightly touched my arm, and motioned me back to the fire. I rose, still shuddering from the power of the little death I had experienced, and said the words, the secret, sacred words that would close the doorway for another year.

The participants began to pick up their clothes, and dress, and I observed Michael absently, distractedly doing the same. When everyone was clothed, I alone remained naked to the elements, and closed the circle, allowing the quarters release from their watchful duties as sentinels.

Our witnesses began to rouse from their trance, and look at each other with wonder, not certain if they had imagined the experience or truly seen it. They began to drift away, in groups of two or three, sometimes alone, unsteady on their feet.

Unsteady on my feet with spiritual and physical exhaustion, I collapsed to the ground. My job done, I knew I could leave the rest to Martine and the other followers of our sacred path. Michael stumbled toward me, as exhausted as I was, and knelt down beside me. Sweat ran from our pores like rivers, and we smelled of each other, and that familiar musk that accompanies a sexual encounter.

"Did you experience anything you can use in your book?" I asked tiredly.

"I saw things that are unexplainable, I felt things that I have no words for, and I know things that have no basis in reason." he replied, somewhat stupefied by these revelations.

"It is the power of the earth, the need of the souls of the ancestors. Only a powerful celebration of life will allow the passing of the spirits. We are the guardians of the doorway, like Jupiter; we usher them through to the next world like Charon. It is the greatest gift we can give to the world."

"Sex as the ultimate validation of eternal life," he reiterated for me more concisely. I nodded, suddenly shy before his gaze. I glanced away, wondering what to say, wanting to say something. He filled the silence saying, "it was disturbing and frightening to feel you leave your body. I'm not sure what replaced you, what I was making love to." He mused.

"The ancient spirit of the earth, perhaps the goddess, perhaps not. I think of it as the Other. Its needs are so powerful, and it will draw from you every ounce of sexual energy you can give." I told him.

"That it did," he responded blithely, and shook his head, unable to believe his experiences. "I was wondering if, in a few days, when I have recovered, we could maybe try it without him, it, whatever. Just the two of us."