Items related to Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits
Chances are that you've heard of Tantra and Taoist sexual practices. Now, as a result of studying the inner mysteries of alchemy, Donald Tyson presents a Western system of sacred sexuality in Sexual Alchemy. Here you will learn how to have erotic relationships with loving spirits. That means the methods presented here can function as a Western alternative to Eastern sexual practices. They also can be used by a solitary person and need not depend upon the participation of a partner.
The first part of this book presents a history of sex with spirits. It also goes into the secrets of Eastern internal alchemy and how the books of Western alchemy often made secretive references to sexual magick. You will also learn how to create a physical representation of the spirit you are going to use as a partner.
The second part of the book includes the practices and techniques which the author found to be effective from other sources or developed himself. This includes techniques of diet, exercise, breathwork, banishings, purifications, and finally, an invocation ritual to summon the spirit who is going to be your lover!
Then you will learn the previously hidden secrets of having sex with a spirit lover. You'll learn how to prepare and recognize the signs that this is an actual occurrence and not simply a fantasy. And then, when you have accomplished your ritualized mating, you will learn how to collect and use the resulting, highly charged fluids for magical purposes.
Everything we are, everything we have, is a gift from the Divine. Doesn't it make sense that we use all of our abilities to honor the source from which they came? That means we can even make use of our sensual natures to honor the Gods. If you want to follow a system based on western traditions, this book can be your guide.
The first part of this book presents a history of sex with spirits. It also goes into the secrets of Eastern internal alchemy and how the books of Western alchemy often made secretive references to sexual magick. You will also learn how to create a physical representation of the spirit you are going to use as a partner.
The second part of the book includes the practices and techniques which the author found to be effective from other sources or developed himself. This includes techniques of diet, exercise, breathwork, banishings, purifications, and finally, an invocation ritual to summon the spirit who is going to be your lover!
Then you will learn the previously hidden secrets of having sex with a spirit lover. You'll learn how to prepare and recognize the signs that this is an actual occurrence and not simply a fantasy. And then, when you have accomplished your ritualized mating, you will learn how to collect and use the resulting, highly charged fluids for magical purposes.
Everything we are, everything we have, is a gift from the Divine. Doesn't it make sense that we use all of our abilities to honor the source from which they came? That means we can even make use of our sensual natures to honor the Gods. If you want to follow a system based on western traditions, this book can be your guide.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Donald Tyson (Nova Scotia, Canada) is an occult scholar and the author of the popular, critically acclaimed Necronomicon series. He has written more than a dozen books on Western esoteric traditions. Visit him online at DonaldTyson.com.
Spirit Sex in Magic and Religion
The Ayami and the Syvén
The concept of inducing sexual intercourse with spirits appears to ultimately descend from the subjective experiences of shamanism. That sex with spirits is a genuine physiological phenomenon and not a contrived fantasy is indicated by its appearance throughout the world and at all periods in human history. More often, coition occurs spontaneously, so far as the human is concerned- it is not necessary for a human being to seek intercourse with a god, an angel, or a demon for such intercourse to happen. However, once sexual union was understood to be possible between humans and spirits, it began to be deliberately cultivated by human beings for its sensual pleasures and for the supposed benefits it conferred.
In the shamanic tradition of Siberia, there are two classes of spirits that have sex with shamans, those who teach and those who serve. Among the Goldi people these spirits were known as the ayami and the syvén. The ayami is the tutelary familiar who appears to the shaman at the beginning of his training and remains with him throughout his life. Often the coming of the ayami is the event that determines a shamanic vocation. It is not necessary for the shaman to seek out his ayami- she comes to him. Where the tradition of shamanism is well established, the young shaman is not surprised by her coming, and on the contrary expects and anticipates it.
A Twenty-eight Inch Lover
One Goldi shaman described his ayami as a very beautiful woman with black hair that hung down to her shoulders, who was dressed in the ordinary female attire of the tribe. The features of this spirit were normal, although sometimes the ayami reveals herself with a face that is white on one side and red on the other. Perfectly formed in every way, she was only twenty-eight inches tall. The spirit told the shaman that she was the ayami of his ancestors who had taught them all their healing and magic, and now she was come to teach him and make him into a shaman. She said to him:
I love you, I have no husband now, you will be my husband and I shall be a wife unto you. I shall give you assistant spirits. You are to heal with their aid, and I shall teach and help you myself. Food will come to us from the people.... If you will not obey me, so much the worse for you. I shall kill you.1
After making the shaman an offer he could not refuse, she remained faithful to him throughout his life. The shaman related that he slept with his ayami "as with my own wife." His ayami lived by herself in a hut on a mountain, but often changed her residence, along with her physical form. Sometimes she appeared to the shaman as an old woman, sometimes as a wolf terrible to look upon, and sometimes as a winged tiger. In this last form she carried his soul mounted upon her back to distant lands.
The ayami gave the shaman three lesser spirit aids who appeared in the forms of a panther, a bear and a tiger. These came to the shaman in dreams and appeared instantly when he summoned them. If they were slow to approach or obey his instructions, his ayami would appear and command them. These lesser spirits are among the class of helping spirits (syvén) referred to above. Both the ayami and the syvén entered the body of the shaman in the form of "smoke or vapour" to possess him, in order to gift him with oracular speech. During possession the spirits partook of ritual food offerings (sukdu) and drank pig's blood, the drinking of which was forbidden to all except shamans, without the awareness of the shaman.
The Celestial Wife
The ayami was known in Siberian shamanism generally as the celestial wife. There were also male spirits who had sexual relations with female shamans. Presumably these would fulfill the role of celestial husband. One shamaness was observed to become sexually aroused during her rite of initiation.2 Sexual arousal was not an inevitable and invariable part of the initiatory rite of Siberian shamanism, but it was a common component.
Among the Buryat, shamanism began when the soul of a male candidate was carried into the sky by the spirit of an ancestor. The shaman was taken to the Center of the World, where he had sexual union with the nine daughters of Solboni, the god of the dawn. These nine goddesses were only worshipped by shamans, who made offerings to them. After his instruction, the soul of the shaman met his future celestial wife among the heavens and made love to her.
Among the Teleut people, every shaman has a celestial wife who dwells in the seventh heaven. When his soul first ascends, she meets him and asks him to stay with her. She prepares a heavenly banquet for her future husband and woos him with love songs, telling him that he cannot go on because the "road to the sky has been blocked." The shaman refuses to eat the food of the banquet, and declares his determination to press forward, saying, "we shall go up the tapti and give praise to the full moon."3 The tapti is the spiral groove that winds up the shamanic tree, which represents the axis of the world.
The sexual imagery is obvious. When urine is emitted from the penis, the stream will often twist itself into a spiral form, which would suggest to an observer lacking a knowledge of anatomy that the urethra itself is spiral. Sperm is symbolically linked to the Moon by its pearly opalescent whiteness. Climbing the tapti is equivalent to ejaculation. The reason the shaman refuses to eat from the banquet table is the belief, which also exists in European fairy lore, that to eat the food of the spirits is to be lost in their world forever.
This myth has a particular significance for me personally. While engaged in my year of intense training, mentioned in the introduction, I once dreamed that I climbed a tall, naked stump in a clearing in the forest and stood balanced precariously in nervous exaltation on its tip. The stump was so ancient and weathered, its bark had long ago fallen away, and the spiral grain of its wood had worn into deep grooves that gave hand and foot holds in its side, allowing it to be climbed. In the dream my body was naked and hairy, so primitive that it was almost apelike. This dream was clearly shamanic, but I experienced it years before I had ever heard of the climbing of the shamanic tree, or the tapti.
Among the Yakut people there is a myth that young celestial spirits, who are the children of the Sun and Moon, descend to the earth to marry mortal women. This myth echoes the Hebrew fable recorded in the Book of Enoch of the descent to earth of the rebellious angels, or Watchers, for the purpose of enjoying the sexual favors of the daughters of men. Even as the fallen angels teach forbidden wisdom in return for sexual pleasure with mortal women, so do the ayami of the shamans instruct their husbands (or wives) in secret techniques of magic and healing in return for their love. It is worth noting that sex is said to be had not with the "masters and mistresses" of heaven and the underworld by the shaman, but with the "sons and daughters" of these supreme gods.4
The bond between a shaman and his ayami was a genuine love bond, not merely a union of convenience. The ayami often became jealous if her husband showed interest in mortal women. However, this seems not to have been a common problem. Mortal sex could not began to compare with spirit sex. The shamans of the Teleut declare to their celestial brides: "My wife on earth is not fit to pour water on thy hands." The Yakut say that after a young man has been visited by a spirit lover, he no longer approaches girls and may remain a bachelor for life. A married man who has the same experience may become impotent toward his wife.
The Currency of Spirit Sex
These visitations by amorous spirits were not confined to shamans, but might happen to any man or woman. In the common occurrence of spirit sex, the intention on the part of the spirit was personal. They were interested in sex or affection. In the case of the spirit guide or ayami the bond was recognized from the outset as binding for life and dedicated to a higher purpose―the teaching of secret shamanic knowledge about healing and magic, the conveyance of obedient lesser spirits (syvén) to serve the shaman in his vocation, and the awakening of occult powers within the soul of the shaman. The shaman and his ayami were business partners as well as sexual partners.
The currency exchanged within this partnership was sexual potency―in Tantric terms, shakti. As I mentioned in the introduction, Shakti, the name of the great Mother Goddess, literally means power. It is convenient to apply the terms of Tantra in a more universal way, since it is in Tantra texts that the relationship between humans, sexual energy and spirits is most clearly expressed. Spirits are capable of arousing human sexuality. They are able to do this with or without the consent of the human being involved. The reason spirits arouse humans is that they derive some immediate, fundamental benefit from the sexual currents stirred up inside the human body. This is usually described as pleasure, and undoubtedly spirits experience pleasure in sex with human beings, but I believe their motivation is even more fundamental.
The basis of human sexual energy (kundalini shakti) acts as a kind of nourishment for spiritual beings and allows spirits to fix and maintain their forms and personal identities. In the same way that the act of sex between a man and a woman fixes the identity of the engendered child, at least potentially, so does the act of sex between a human and a spirit have the potential use of fixing or manifesting a specific, enduring shape and personality on the astral level. This creative energy may be used by the spirit lover to solidify its own form and sense of self; or it may engender a completely new spirit that is the child of the human and spirit couple.
Dion Fortune mentioned this phenomenon in her book Applied Magic, though she does not explicitly mention a sexual connection: "They [elemental spirits] seek as initiators those who have got a spiritual nature; the initiated man is the initiator of the Elemental being: Humans take them as pupils and help them develop their 'sparks' of individual consciousness. In return for this service the Elemental beings perform services for the magician. We read of these as familiar spirits."5
Magical Powers
The benefits of spirit love need not all be on the side of the spirit. Sexual power, provoked and sustained by the spirit, can be used by the human lover to awaken what are called in yoga siddhis (magical powers). Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras (third century b.c.), said these are to be eight in number: 1) anima- the ability to become tiny; 2) mahima- the ability to become enormous; 3) laghima- the ability to grow lighter than air; 4) garima- the ability to become very heavy; 5) prapti- the ability to obtain any desired possession; 6) prakamya- the ability to obtain any desired purpose; 7) ishatwam- the ability to control any person or thing; 8) vashitwa- the ability to control any situation.
Many other occult abilities mentioned in traditional texts might be added to the ashata siddhis of Patanjali, such as the ability to read the minds of others, the ability to project the astral body, the ability to scry unknown matters, the ability to ignite fires psychically, the ability to see and hear spirits, the ability to seem invisible, the ability to travel with extraordinary swiftness from place to place, the ability to generate internal body heat, and so on. These powers were looked upon by orthodox Hindus as black magic, and all were regarded as distractions in the search for samadhi, the Hindu version of the Buddhist enlightenment.
Famous Spirit Marriages of Ancient Times
In return for the pleasure and benefits of sex with a human being, a spirit was willing to teach his or her human lover occult secrets and difficult arts and sciences, to prognosticate future events, to warn of impending dangers, and to provide protection in times of need. In the classical age these unions sometimes assumed the status of legal marriages. One of the most famous of these was the marriage between King Numa of Rome and the water nymph Egeria, who was one of the Carmenae, a class of prophetic spirits worshipped in very early times at Rome. They were linked by the Roman writer Varro with hydromancy, or water divination.
Legend says that King Numa was in the habit of going alone at night to a small clump of trees that concealed a grotto or cave from which issued a spring. It was located near the Porta Capena in the southern wall of the old city of Rome. Here he met his celestial wife Egeria, and enjoyed lovemaking with her. She instructed him in the sacred laws that he later instituted over his people. The sacred mysteries that Egeria revealed to him, he recorded in a set of books, which after his death were burned by order of the Senate. Numa's long reign (716-673 b.c.) was renowned for its peace and prosperity, and was the happiest period in the entire history of Rome.
One of the greatest love stories in the literature of ancient Rome involved the union of the mortal woman Psyche and the god Cupid, son of Venus, to whom she was betrothed by an oracle of Apollo. Cupid came to her unseen in the darkness, although she was able to hear his voice and feel "his eyes, his hands, and his ears." He gave her his love, a palace, great wealth and spirit servants to meet all her needs, on the single condition that she never try to see him:
Then came her unknowne husband and lay with her: and after that hee had made a perfect consummation of the marriage, he rose in the morning before day, and departed. Soone after came her invisible servants, and presented to her such things as were necessary for her defloration.6
Of course Psyche broke her promise and looked upon the naked body of Cupid while the god lay asleep. At once he flew away, and she was only reunited with him after a series of long and bitter ordeals. A condition or vow that must be honored by the human partner, with a penalty of immediate divorce for its violation, is a very common feature of marriages between spirits and human beings in myth and folklore.
Marriages between spirits and humans are found throughout the folklore of Europe. The fairies were renown for their lust and love of mortal men and women. Fairies were understood to be a race of immortal, invisible beings who lived in the same hills and valleys as mortals, but in a universe that is slightly out of phase with our own. At special times such as twilight and on certain nights of the year such as June 21, the midsummer's night of Shakespeare, the barrier between the fairy world and the mortal world becomes thin. Then fairies and mortals easily meet and fall in love. Sometimes mortals simply encounter fairies by chance during the day when they pass by sacred hills, groves or springs.
Don Diego Lopez, Lord of Biscay, met a fairy on a hill in the forest while out hunting wild boar. He was so enamored of her beauty, he married her, in spite of the fact that one of her feet was in the form of a cloven hoof. She bore him two children. Elinas, the king of Albania, was also out hunting when he stopped at a spring to drink. He heard singing, and discovered the fairy woman Pressina. They were soon wed, and she bore him three daughters which she carried back with her to fairyland. One of the daughters, Melusina, had the appearance of a normal woman six days of the week, but on Saturday became a serpent from the waist downward. She married Raymond, Count of Lusignan, and made him rich and powerful through her magic. Several noble houses of France claim a direct descent from this fairy wife.
These semi-historical legends should not be dismissed as mere fable...
The Ayami and the Syvén
The concept of inducing sexual intercourse with spirits appears to ultimately descend from the subjective experiences of shamanism. That sex with spirits is a genuine physiological phenomenon and not a contrived fantasy is indicated by its appearance throughout the world and at all periods in human history. More often, coition occurs spontaneously, so far as the human is concerned- it is not necessary for a human being to seek intercourse with a god, an angel, or a demon for such intercourse to happen. However, once sexual union was understood to be possible between humans and spirits, it began to be deliberately cultivated by human beings for its sensual pleasures and for the supposed benefits it conferred.
In the shamanic tradition of Siberia, there are two classes of spirits that have sex with shamans, those who teach and those who serve. Among the Goldi people these spirits were known as the ayami and the syvén. The ayami is the tutelary familiar who appears to the shaman at the beginning of his training and remains with him throughout his life. Often the coming of the ayami is the event that determines a shamanic vocation. It is not necessary for the shaman to seek out his ayami- she comes to him. Where the tradition of shamanism is well established, the young shaman is not surprised by her coming, and on the contrary expects and anticipates it.
A Twenty-eight Inch Lover
One Goldi shaman described his ayami as a very beautiful woman with black hair that hung down to her shoulders, who was dressed in the ordinary female attire of the tribe. The features of this spirit were normal, although sometimes the ayami reveals herself with a face that is white on one side and red on the other. Perfectly formed in every way, she was only twenty-eight inches tall. The spirit told the shaman that she was the ayami of his ancestors who had taught them all their healing and magic, and now she was come to teach him and make him into a shaman. She said to him:
I love you, I have no husband now, you will be my husband and I shall be a wife unto you. I shall give you assistant spirits. You are to heal with their aid, and I shall teach and help you myself. Food will come to us from the people.... If you will not obey me, so much the worse for you. I shall kill you.1
After making the shaman an offer he could not refuse, she remained faithful to him throughout his life. The shaman related that he slept with his ayami "as with my own wife." His ayami lived by herself in a hut on a mountain, but often changed her residence, along with her physical form. Sometimes she appeared to the shaman as an old woman, sometimes as a wolf terrible to look upon, and sometimes as a winged tiger. In this last form she carried his soul mounted upon her back to distant lands.
The ayami gave the shaman three lesser spirit aids who appeared in the forms of a panther, a bear and a tiger. These came to the shaman in dreams and appeared instantly when he summoned them. If they were slow to approach or obey his instructions, his ayami would appear and command them. These lesser spirits are among the class of helping spirits (syvén) referred to above. Both the ayami and the syvén entered the body of the shaman in the form of "smoke or vapour" to possess him, in order to gift him with oracular speech. During possession the spirits partook of ritual food offerings (sukdu) and drank pig's blood, the drinking of which was forbidden to all except shamans, without the awareness of the shaman.
The Celestial Wife
The ayami was known in Siberian shamanism generally as the celestial wife. There were also male spirits who had sexual relations with female shamans. Presumably these would fulfill the role of celestial husband. One shamaness was observed to become sexually aroused during her rite of initiation.2 Sexual arousal was not an inevitable and invariable part of the initiatory rite of Siberian shamanism, but it was a common component.
Among the Buryat, shamanism began when the soul of a male candidate was carried into the sky by the spirit of an ancestor. The shaman was taken to the Center of the World, where he had sexual union with the nine daughters of Solboni, the god of the dawn. These nine goddesses were only worshipped by shamans, who made offerings to them. After his instruction, the soul of the shaman met his future celestial wife among the heavens and made love to her.
Among the Teleut people, every shaman has a celestial wife who dwells in the seventh heaven. When his soul first ascends, she meets him and asks him to stay with her. She prepares a heavenly banquet for her future husband and woos him with love songs, telling him that he cannot go on because the "road to the sky has been blocked." The shaman refuses to eat the food of the banquet, and declares his determination to press forward, saying, "we shall go up the tapti and give praise to the full moon."3 The tapti is the spiral groove that winds up the shamanic tree, which represents the axis of the world.
The sexual imagery is obvious. When urine is emitted from the penis, the stream will often twist itself into a spiral form, which would suggest to an observer lacking a knowledge of anatomy that the urethra itself is spiral. Sperm is symbolically linked to the Moon by its pearly opalescent whiteness. Climbing the tapti is equivalent to ejaculation. The reason the shaman refuses to eat from the banquet table is the belief, which also exists in European fairy lore, that to eat the food of the spirits is to be lost in their world forever.
This myth has a particular significance for me personally. While engaged in my year of intense training, mentioned in the introduction, I once dreamed that I climbed a tall, naked stump in a clearing in the forest and stood balanced precariously in nervous exaltation on its tip. The stump was so ancient and weathered, its bark had long ago fallen away, and the spiral grain of its wood had worn into deep grooves that gave hand and foot holds in its side, allowing it to be climbed. In the dream my body was naked and hairy, so primitive that it was almost apelike. This dream was clearly shamanic, but I experienced it years before I had ever heard of the climbing of the shamanic tree, or the tapti.
Among the Yakut people there is a myth that young celestial spirits, who are the children of the Sun and Moon, descend to the earth to marry mortal women. This myth echoes the Hebrew fable recorded in the Book of Enoch of the descent to earth of the rebellious angels, or Watchers, for the purpose of enjoying the sexual favors of the daughters of men. Even as the fallen angels teach forbidden wisdom in return for sexual pleasure with mortal women, so do the ayami of the shamans instruct their husbands (or wives) in secret techniques of magic and healing in return for their love. It is worth noting that sex is said to be had not with the "masters and mistresses" of heaven and the underworld by the shaman, but with the "sons and daughters" of these supreme gods.4
The bond between a shaman and his ayami was a genuine love bond, not merely a union of convenience. The ayami often became jealous if her husband showed interest in mortal women. However, this seems not to have been a common problem. Mortal sex could not began to compare with spirit sex. The shamans of the Teleut declare to their celestial brides: "My wife on earth is not fit to pour water on thy hands." The Yakut say that after a young man has been visited by a spirit lover, he no longer approaches girls and may remain a bachelor for life. A married man who has the same experience may become impotent toward his wife.
The Currency of Spirit Sex
These visitations by amorous spirits were not confined to shamans, but might happen to any man or woman. In the common occurrence of spirit sex, the intention on the part of the spirit was personal. They were interested in sex or affection. In the case of the spirit guide or ayami the bond was recognized from the outset as binding for life and dedicated to a higher purpose―the teaching of secret shamanic knowledge about healing and magic, the conveyance of obedient lesser spirits (syvén) to serve the shaman in his vocation, and the awakening of occult powers within the soul of the shaman. The shaman and his ayami were business partners as well as sexual partners.
The currency exchanged within this partnership was sexual potency―in Tantric terms, shakti. As I mentioned in the introduction, Shakti, the name of the great Mother Goddess, literally means power. It is convenient to apply the terms of Tantra in a more universal way, since it is in Tantra texts that the relationship between humans, sexual energy and spirits is most clearly expressed. Spirits are capable of arousing human sexuality. They are able to do this with or without the consent of the human being involved. The reason spirits arouse humans is that they derive some immediate, fundamental benefit from the sexual currents stirred up inside the human body. This is usually described as pleasure, and undoubtedly spirits experience pleasure in sex with human beings, but I believe their motivation is even more fundamental.
The basis of human sexual energy (kundalini shakti) acts as a kind of nourishment for spiritual beings and allows spirits to fix and maintain their forms and personal identities. In the same way that the act of sex between a man and a woman fixes the identity of the engendered child, at least potentially, so does the act of sex between a human and a spirit have the potential use of fixing or manifesting a specific, enduring shape and personality on the astral level. This creative energy may be used by the spirit lover to solidify its own form and sense of self; or it may engender a completely new spirit that is the child of the human and spirit couple.
Dion Fortune mentioned this phenomenon in her book Applied Magic, though she does not explicitly mention a sexual connection: "They [elemental spirits] seek as initiators those who have got a spiritual nature; the initiated man is the initiator of the Elemental being: Humans take them as pupils and help them develop their 'sparks' of individual consciousness. In return for this service the Elemental beings perform services for the magician. We read of these as familiar spirits."5
Magical Powers
The benefits of spirit love need not all be on the side of the spirit. Sexual power, provoked and sustained by the spirit, can be used by the human lover to awaken what are called in yoga siddhis (magical powers). Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras (third century b.c.), said these are to be eight in number: 1) anima- the ability to become tiny; 2) mahima- the ability to become enormous; 3) laghima- the ability to grow lighter than air; 4) garima- the ability to become very heavy; 5) prapti- the ability to obtain any desired possession; 6) prakamya- the ability to obtain any desired purpose; 7) ishatwam- the ability to control any person or thing; 8) vashitwa- the ability to control any situation.
Many other occult abilities mentioned in traditional texts might be added to the ashata siddhis of Patanjali, such as the ability to read the minds of others, the ability to project the astral body, the ability to scry unknown matters, the ability to ignite fires psychically, the ability to see and hear spirits, the ability to seem invisible, the ability to travel with extraordinary swiftness from place to place, the ability to generate internal body heat, and so on. These powers were looked upon by orthodox Hindus as black magic, and all were regarded as distractions in the search for samadhi, the Hindu version of the Buddhist enlightenment.
Famous Spirit Marriages of Ancient Times
In return for the pleasure and benefits of sex with a human being, a spirit was willing to teach his or her human lover occult secrets and difficult arts and sciences, to prognosticate future events, to warn of impending dangers, and to provide protection in times of need. In the classical age these unions sometimes assumed the status of legal marriages. One of the most famous of these was the marriage between King Numa of Rome and the water nymph Egeria, who was one of the Carmenae, a class of prophetic spirits worshipped in very early times at Rome. They were linked by the Roman writer Varro with hydromancy, or water divination.
Legend says that King Numa was in the habit of going alone at night to a small clump of trees that concealed a grotto or cave from which issued a spring. It was located near the Porta Capena in the southern wall of the old city of Rome. Here he met his celestial wife Egeria, and enjoyed lovemaking with her. She instructed him in the sacred laws that he later instituted over his people. The sacred mysteries that Egeria revealed to him, he recorded in a set of books, which after his death were burned by order of the Senate. Numa's long reign (716-673 b.c.) was renowned for its peace and prosperity, and was the happiest period in the entire history of Rome.
One of the greatest love stories in the literature of ancient Rome involved the union of the mortal woman Psyche and the god Cupid, son of Venus, to whom she was betrothed by an oracle of Apollo. Cupid came to her unseen in the darkness, although she was able to hear his voice and feel "his eyes, his hands, and his ears." He gave her his love, a palace, great wealth and spirit servants to meet all her needs, on the single condition that she never try to see him:
Then came her unknowne husband and lay with her: and after that hee had made a perfect consummation of the marriage, he rose in the morning before day, and departed. Soone after came her invisible servants, and presented to her such things as were necessary for her defloration.6
Of course Psyche broke her promise and looked upon the naked body of Cupid while the god lay asleep. At once he flew away, and she was only reunited with him after a series of long and bitter ordeals. A condition or vow that must be honored by the human partner, with a penalty of immediate divorce for its violation, is a very common feature of marriages between spirits and human beings in myth and folklore.
Marriages between spirits and humans are found throughout the folklore of Europe. The fairies were renown for their lust and love of mortal men and women. Fairies were understood to be a race of immortal, invisible beings who lived in the same hills and valleys as mortals, but in a universe that is slightly out of phase with our own. At special times such as twilight and on certain nights of the year such as June 21, the midsummer's night of Shakespeare, the barrier between the fairy world and the mortal world becomes thin. Then fairies and mortals easily meet and fall in love. Sometimes mortals simply encounter fairies by chance during the day when they pass by sacred hills, groves or springs.
Don Diego Lopez, Lord of Biscay, met a fairy on a hill in the forest while out hunting wild boar. He was so enamored of her beauty, he married her, in spite of the fact that one of her feet was in the form of a cloven hoof. She bore him two children. Elinas, the king of Albania, was also out hunting when he stopped at a spring to drink. He heard singing, and discovered the fairy woman Pressina. They were soon wed, and she bore him three daughters which she carried back with her to fairyland. One of the daughters, Melusina, had the appearance of a normal woman six days of the week, but on Saturday became a serpent from the waist downward. She married Raymond, Count of Lusignan, and made him rich and powerful through her magic. Several noble houses of France claim a direct descent from this fairy wife.
These semi-historical legends should not be dismissed as mere fable...
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- PublisherLlewellyn Publications
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 1567187412
- ISBN 13 9781567187410
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Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits
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Llewellyn Publications
(2000)
ISBN 10: 1567187412
ISBN 13: 9781567187410
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Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits
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Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits
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ISBN 13: 9781567187410
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Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits
Published by
Llewellyn Publications
(2000)
ISBN 10: 1567187412
ISBN 13: 9781567187410
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