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The Sacred Prostitute

Updated: Jan 28

‘The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine’ is the title of a book by Jungian analyst Nancy Qualls-Corbett, which is in my suggested reading list. It was recommended to me by my psychiatrist to read, and I can see why. In it, she reestablishes the connection between spirituality and unconditional passionate divine love. This may be the solution to many of your relationship problems, and the key to your transformation...


The Sacred Prostitute


When the Goddess of Love was still honoured, the sacred prostitute was virgin in the original sense of the word (one-in-herself), a person of deep integrity whose welcome for the stranger was radiant, self-confident and sensuous. Her raison d'être was to bring the goddess' love into direct contact with mankind. In this union of opposites – the divine masculine and feminine, spiritual and physical - the personal was transcended and the divine entered in. In those days, human sexuality and the religious attitude were inseparable. This has strayed over the centuries, but this book restores the union. This exhilarating book, solidly based on the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, the brilliant psychiatrist and spiritual Master, powerfully illustrates how our vitality and capacity for joy depend on restoring the soul of the sacred prostitute to its rightful place in our conscious understanding. In this book, unlike any other, Qualls-Corbett covers: The Goddess and her virgin; The psychological significance of sacred prostitution; The sacred prostitute in divine feminine and masculine psychology; and no less than the restoration of the soul.




In the book, the terns ‘sacred’ and ‘prostitute’ are reunited, in the present cultural context of mind being separated from matter and spirituality from sexuality. In the foreword by Marion Woodman, author of  ‘Addiction to Perfection’ and  ‘The Pregnant Virgin’, she overviews this unique book. Today, when a man falls in love with his perfect woman, he projects onto her attributes of the divine mother: beauty, goodness, chastity, life-giving unconditional love. She in turn projects onto him attributes of the divine father: loyalty, power, virility, the Rock of Gibraltar at the centre of her life. In the beginning, love and lust are one in their unconscious Garden of Paradise. When reality creeps into that Garden - often after the marriage ceremony - the projections begin to shatter., as they did metaphorically with Adam and Eve, when they tasted the ‘forbidden fruit’ from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the tree of life. The man may feel him-self strangling in the noose of his partner's expectations; her very goodness then evokes his guilt as he fantasises freedom with a "real woman" who can receive him as a "real man." While he loves his "perfect" mother, at the same time he seeks to escape her dark side, the devouring witch to whom he can never give or be enough. He can never achieve external validation from him own mother. She, insecure in her own womanhood and sensing his withdrawal, finds herself clinging like a rejected child to a father who is pulling away. Trapped in their love (or neurotic dependence), one or both may find another, less perfect, partner with whom to have a relationship that is more human, more lusty, with fewer strings attached. This split may hold for a long time. Within the split, however, lie rage and anger, expressed or repressed, and a profound yearning for total union. If consciousness is introduced into the situation, the cause of the disturbance may become clear. In dreams, for example, the woman may suddenly become mother in the marriage bed, the man become father. In bringing their bodies to conscious awareness, women often discover they cannot surrender to sexual penetration. They realise they are either mother to their husband-son, or daughter to their husband-father. In both situations, their body says no to incest. However dearly they may love their husband in spirit, their matter rejects the unconscious relationship. Then a period of celibacy can lead to sexual and spiritual integration. Now, as men are becoming more conscious, their matter is likewise rejecting incest with mother or daughter, and their impotence is propelling them to a new level of relationship in which mature man unites with mature woman. It is a time of intense anguish for both men and women, a time that demands patience, courage and fearless honesty. In her analytic practice, Woodman is constantly faced with dream images that each sex is unconsciously projecting onto the other. Centuries of repressed rage manifest in dreams of cutting off dictators' heads, arms, genitalia. Centuries of grief appear in images of feminine sacrifice on monolithic rocks or dining room tables. The unconscious battle of the sexes is one thing; the conscious battle is far more painful, far more bitter. The rage and grief are in the dreams of both men and women who are becoming conscious of their ravaged femininity.


Woodman continues, that in addition, sensitive men are facing their personal grief for the patriarchy's betrayal of the feminine. And this is very real. Sensitive women are facing the wall lodged in their own bodies- a wall that stands adamant against penetration and spiritual surrender. The fear of being penetrated, in both sexes, is no less than the fear of penetrating. Many physical illnesses erupt when this fear becomes conscious and cannot be overcome in the life situation. Dream images of creatures that are part human, part animal - terrified creatures that scuttle about the bedroom - leave the dreamer deeply disturbed. The possibility of masculine and feminine uniting in harmony seems to fade into darkness. The light of the sacred prostitute penetrates to the heart of this darkness. As so vividly described by Nancy Qualls-Corbett, she is the consecrated priestess in the temple, spiritually receptive to the feminine power flowing through her from the Goddess, and at the same time joyously aware of the beauty and passion in her human body. Surrendered to the cosmic energies of love, she magnifies the Goddess in physical delight and spiritual ecstasy. She opens the masculine to the potency of penetrating to the divine, and the feminine to the rapture of surrender to it. The mystery of that union dwells beyond the finite bonds of personal love. While contemplating the possibility of healing the split between sexuality and spirituality through connection with the sacred prostitute, modern men and women need also to contemplate the dangers. We are not at the same place in the evolution of human consciousness as were the ancient sacred prostitutes. Centuries of splitting spirit from matter have left us far from either the understanding or the experience of matter as sacred. Daily the Earth is ravaged. Daily the wisdom of the human body is ravaged by the mind. So long as we are unconscious of the divinity inherent in matter, sexuality can be manipulated to fulfil ego desire; the sacred prostitute is not present, nor is the Goddess being invoked. Instead of manifesting as a transformative power that can mediate between wounded instinct and the radiance of the divine, the Goddess is called upon to justify lust and sexual license.


Woodman continues, that light does not come through incessant wallowing in the dark. All our rage, all our bitterness, all our fears, are stepping stones that lead through darkness into light. But they are merely stepping stones. Only from a clear vision of oneness, an experience of genuine unconditional love, can we live our own Truth. Whether this experience is given through another human being or through a solitary connection with the divine, this is the experience that illumines our lives.


In her introduction, Nancy Qualls-Corbett that when the ancient civilisations were destroyed that “No longer did the sacred prostitute, the human woman who embodied the goddess, dance in the temple to excite the communication of body and soul. The temple of the goddess of love, no longer vital, went underground…. Why is women's sexuality so exploited, so debased, when once it was revered. How can men come to know and to value the deeper meaning of femininity? And why is sexuality cut off from spirituality, as if they were opposites?” The author became increasingly aware that in their lives of men and women that sexuality and spirituality were often in conflict, and sometimes both were absent.


As a Jungian analyst the author saw many people who felt they were unloved, or even unworthy of being loved, and many who had altogether lost the capacity to love, which is the ultimate force in the Universe. She saw that the acquisition of material gains or power offered only false hopes of personal fulfilment. She observed that a person's spiritual search through the avenues of organised religion at times resulted in confusion, additional conflict, guilt, and despair. This disease was expressed in different ways: "I feel empty inside, someone would say; or, "My life has no meaning, I'm simply existing"; or,' "My body is dead"; or even, "My soul is dead."


Inevitably, she related these statements to her research, to the questions that nagged at her. She began to see that the pervasive emptiness people complained of could be explained in terms of the loss of the goddess - the one who renews life, brings love, passion, fertility and the sensuous priestess - the human woman who brought the attributes of the goddess into the lives of human beings. The connection to an important layer of instinctual life - joy, beauty, a creative energy that unites sexuality and spirituality - had been lost.


Her observations were not restricted to the consulting room. The proliferation of substance dependency, physical abuse, sexual promiscuity, and living on the fast track in order not to feel the emptiness of one's life - all point to the loss of a vital element in life. Without superficial props, a certain dullness creeps in and we are confronted with the lack of personal resources which could engender a new sense of vitality.


Contemporary men and women, unlike Urbaal of ancient times, no longer have the opportunity to hold tenderly the little image of the goddess or become awe-inspired while viewing the sacred prostitute dancing in the temple, her beautiful body the representation of joy and passion. Without benefit of direct experience, we can know of the sacred prostitute only through reading deciphered cuneiform tablets or ancient manuscripts describing her rituals. She continues that we are disinclined to associate that which is sexual with that which is connected to the gods.


In the body of psychological thought developed by Carl Jung, images are considered "archetypal." An archetype is a pre-existent form that is part of the inherited structure of the psyche common to all people. These psychic structures are endowed with strong feeling tones. The archetype, as a psychic entity, is surrounded by energy which can activate and transform conscious contents. When the archetype is constellated, that is, activated, the release of that specific energy is recognised by consciousness and felt in the body through the emotions. Thus, for example, when the archetype of the goddess of love is constellated, we are imbued with the vitality of love, beauty, sexual passion and spiritual renewal. Jung wrote that the loss of an archetype "gives rise to that frightful 'discontent in our culture." Without the vital feminine to balance the collective patriarchal principle, there is a certain barrenness and malaise to life. Creativity, Personal Power, and personal development are stifled.


When the Divine Feminine, the goddess, is no longer revered, social and psychic structures become overmechanised, overpoliticised, and overmilitarised. Thinking, judgement, projection, and rationality, all flaws of the ego mind, become the ruling factors. The needs for relatedness, connection, feeling, unconditionally loving, or attending to Nature go unheeded, all essential elements of a spiritual practice. There is no balance, no harmony, neither within oneself nor in the external world. With the disregard of the archetypal image so related to passionate love, a splitting off of values, a one-sidedness, occurs in the psyche. As a result, we are sadly crippled in our search for wholeness and health. This certainly contributes to the spiritual dis-ease of our times, and inhibits our personal and collective transformation.


Most important in finding the relevance of the sacred prostitute to contemporary life were the symbolic images stemming from dreams, visions, and fantasies, and from common life experiences, of modern women and men. The image of the sacred prostitute, which connects the essences of sexuality and spirituality, could be discerned in various ways as she appeared in each individual's unconscious material. It was interesting to see that once the image was made conscious, there was a noticeable change in the person's attitudes.


The psychological orientation of this work is that of the Jungian school of thought, analytical psychology. Dream interpretation is based on the synthetic or constructive approach, in which symbolic expressions of the unconscious are amplified through archetypal images or motifs.


Writers like M. Esther Harding, an early advocate of Jungian thought, view the essence of feminine psychology in sharp contrast to masculine psychology. It is from the works of Harding and other women authors, mediated by Nancy Qualls-Corbett's own experience, that she distilled her image of the essential elements of the feminine nature. Certain terms in this book, such as anima and animus, are more or less unique to Jung's psychology. These are defined as they appear. Where Jung refers to the feminine principle, I Qualls-Corbett chose instead to speak of feminine nature - from Latin natura, meaning birth or the

Universe. "Nature" implies that which is inborn, real, not artificial; that is the meaning that she wished to impart when speaking of the psychic nature of the feminine.


Nancy Qualls-Corbett's conclusions, she warns, are not to be viewed as a definitive statement regarding the nature of women, for she was considering only one aspect:

the instinctive, erotic, dynamic facet of feminine nature. More specifically, she was writing about the positive aspects inherent in the archetypal image of the prostitute, It has two faces, the sacred and the profane. The dark side is readily known; it manifests in the countless mean-spirited ways in which feminine sexuality is misused. The positive aspects are less known, for the sacred elements have been split off.


Stated generally, her purpose was to bring to conscious awareness aspects of feminine nature which have been misunderstood, devalued or lost to the unconscious. In particular, she examined the inter-relatedness of sexuality and spirituality and discussed how each may

bring life to the other. To this end she demonstrates the manner in which the archetypal image of the sacred prostitute can be an active factor in the lives of modern men and women. Finally, she explored ways to redeem this image from the unconscious, so that the sacred prostitute and what she represents psychologically may have a valued place in

contemporary life.


The sacred prostitute, although lost to history in our outer reality, can be a vital, functioning aspect of individual psychic processes. To become conscious of her, to feel her, to allow her expression, adds a new dimension to life - a dimension, as one might imagine, of an

erotic and exhilarating nature. It is this sacred servant of the divine goddess, the goddess of love, who she presents in the book.


This book is best read with your partner.


Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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