Myths and Metawhores

‘Epona is the Patroness of all journeys, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.’

OBOD: The Order of Bardes, Ovates and Druids.

Life conspires with art, imitates my dreams.

Today I went into the city to buy dancing shoes. My mind was set on black leather, which in terms of costuming care and practicality is sensible and enduring. But it was not to be for the only shoes that met my needs were red, blood red suede. In the story, the shoes that replace the handmade skins are perfect, but the ones I purchased today are not. One is pristine, a scarlet jewel but her sister is faded. My suspicion is that it has sat in the sun, an enticing window decoration amid the tulle and tutus. With a smile I see another advantage to shunning the sunshine hours.

I have long held an affection for flaws. As a child I remember choosing a one eyed toy from the selection of perfection lest no one else would love it as I could. My sense of romance asserts itself in strange ways, and after nailing a generous discount, I took these beautiful shoes off the shelf and into my life.

You see, after a break of three years I am starting to dance again. Here they be dragons but I’m damned if I wait for rescue or reprieve. My body is mended now and the wisdom accrued during time away allows me to let my former companions have their deadly race. It’s time to get back on the horse as they say, but for me the way, the beauty and the beast is elusive and wild. The pathos and sensuality of duende does not reside in the studio, or the shoes but in raw moments where heart and soul are complicit.

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Thankyou Kochanie for evoking Epona and Ice Princess for caressing her thoughts into a dedicated post.

Steeped in eroticism and the soul’s longing for home, The Argentine Tango has been a powerful expression for all those who are looking for a sense of belonging. Belonging to someone, somewhere, something…

- The history of The Argentine Tango, from the BBC site linked below.

Why do I dance?
Why do you want to live?

I wanted Mark Ramprakash and Karen Hardy to win Strictly Come Dancing and they have. Strictly is my Saturday evening addiction and now it’s over for another year I am revisiting moments. Please follow this link, it’s the divine couple perfoming The Argentine Tango.

Remember, 12 weeks ago, this man had never danced in his life. Obsession and passion decipher mysteries as intangible as aroma, dusky kisses and promises reminding us of the fragility of life. I long for beauty and she visits in moments such as these, the music of her voice a tribute to raw craving. The tension in this dance is palpable, seizing and riding your need yet never gratifying it. Dance is about hunger.

You don’t dance, you are danced.
Maybe for that moment, you understand.
You belong to someone.

Merry Christmas my darlings.
May your needs remain barely within your touch, eternally tempting and seducing you.

Nothing feels like coming home. Isn’t that something that just makes you feel warm and content, no matter what has happened in the world outside. Home is welcoming and a place you naturally rest at ease. Now, with me, this sense is heightened by simple indulgence. When you come home, and the house is silent I suggest you walk softly to the bathroom, push the door open quietly for here your waterbaby lies and dreams.

Drenched with lust and tender with the anticipation of your return, I sense you before I hear you. You approach, smiling. Your woman, naked, ripe, restless for you. It’s a threshold that justifies your lust. I need you to consume, envelop, devour me.

Knowing this, you gamble with my devotion to you, demanding a dominion drawn in blood bonds. I can choose to continually isolate myself, and indulge in the illusion of separation or I can unfold into your Mastery.

Warm, wet flesh recreates innocence, invites violation. Taking full possession of my will you wrap strong arms around me, and lift me from the water.

I’m lying on my bed, cuddling into the cool, rough texture of fresh Egyptian cotton linen. I love my bed, my beautiful bed, and I’m simply lying here, gazing out of the window at the azure, blue sky. I know it’s cold outside, but in here it’s warm, and everything is quiet and peaceful.

Close by the window stands a magnificent old tree, and the breeze is gently blowing through its branches, and though I can’t hear it, I can imagine the rustling of leaves. I cast my eyes higher and see a flock of birds. I am momentarily sad as I realize they are preparing to leave for warming climes. Who can blame them, I am tempted. Instead I watch them with a detached ease, as they glide and swoop, twist and turn as one. Behind them I notice fluffy white clouds, that glide by so peacefully.

My attention drifts back to the tree and I watch as the leaves gently move with the wind. One leaf dances free and loose, and begins a graceful fall…down and down…slowly, softly floating. And although I can’t see this, I know it will come to a composed rest on the soft grass. I settle deeper and deeper into my pillows, feeling more comfortable and serene. The clouds drift, the leaves continue to fall, and I allow myself to relax deeply into the moment.

My eyelids feel heavy and I don’t resist the urge to let my head come to rest on my arms. Gently, I close my eyes, and let myself go.

I feel you near me.
I sense you’re reaching forward and I smile as your warm hand connects with me, tenderly smoothing away the errant hairs that fall about my face, as you caress me in waves…and we are breathing in time, our bodies harmonising with each touch. The warmth of your fingers flows down my neck, relaxing tense shoulders, snaking along my spine…down and down…flowing and relaxing me, and it takes me a few moments to realize that your massage has lengthened to reverently cherish the parts of me that hurt, that ache. What is it about your touch that so easily moves me to tears?

Yet it satisfies and pleases me that you have such command over my flesh. It’s easy to be with you, to be yours completely, and this thought takes me deeper still into pure acceptance…and love.

You took the life I had and gave me another one…and my taste and need for this is great. We must follow our nature, and we are similar creatures, you and I.

The way you lavish attention on me is a gift.
You know me.
You made made me all I am,
you have a lust for pleasure that matches my own.
We need it,
and of course, you want more.
You always want more.

Then I discern how your beautiful rhythm has created a lush, wet heat…
my thighs gently part,
my hips rise.

I lick my lips.
I have so much to say to you, but is it even possible to describe this feeling?

“Hush, now” you whisper.

But I have been so lonely for you.
It’s been a long, long time.

As the vibrant colours of the weekend fade to memory, I interrupt their journey by gently calling them back. I need to live them again and again, and so I ensure their pathway from the velvet box of experiences known is smooth and easy.

You were wonderful and as always kind. Despite the heat of the day and the vibrancy of my attire, I have felt distinctly pale of late. Yet all colours are restored through reintroduction to our vice. Your hand bestowing a heat sharper than sunshine but easily as inflaming as sunburn. And like time in the sun, the longer I lie under your hand, the more tanned my skin becomes.

But not for this wanton girl the sun kisses of gold, no, my rewards are swellings of crimson and the dusky promises of plums and deepest purples. Passively I seek my centre; flesh throbs, heart and mind tenderise. Reaching the point where emotions flower, contentment sighs as each lick of pain pulses…staggers to my brain to be interpreted anew.

Discipline is the most divine undertaking and urged on by your hand, I am possessed with a jubilant grace. My wish is that you’d been there after when the fire of my whipping pierces the cold hollows of my psyche and my rich blood drips with a lesser known peace. You’d treasure the alchemy as much as I, and as the immediacy of the experience fades, my bruises serve as acupressure points for serenity, releasing the evidence of pleasure on warm inner thighs.

Later, I watched rose oil droplets shower like spring rain into my bath. I sank deeply, gasping at the surprise revivification of heat. Indulgently…slowly, I read your story, pausing momentarily to close my eyes allowing blissful eyelid movies to lick their soft way across my internal screen. Beautiful moments savoured in the underbelly, the backside of love.

I do get asked this question from time to time, so when Cyclone opened their post with this curiosity, I thought it best to address in part what it means to me. Below is a re-posting of a piece I wrote almost a year ago which concentrates the essence of the metawhore but lacks detail. Naturally I’ll elaborate on this at some point, and I’ll also be writing a lot more about the exercises eluded to. So please, enjoy this post from the past and trust there is much more to come.

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meta- 1. indicating change or alternation. 2.transcending or going beyond.

whore- from the Old Norse hore, akin to the Norse hora, or the Latin carus meaning dear. The Egyptian goddess Hathor was also referred to as Hor, and the women of Aphrodite were Horae. The word for a Hebrew dance, the Hora, means ‘circle’, which might indicate that the word ‘whore‘ originally referred to a dancer, similar to the word ‘hussy‘ (’huzza’ dancers - hussies for women, huzzars for men). Whore also means ‘idolatrous practices or pursuits’, which could easily refer to the worshippers of the Queen of Heaven. Yahweh complained that the people were always ‘whoring’ after other gods. Maybe that really meant ‘Hathor-ing’ after another goddess. Or maybe it referred to Ishtar. ‘the great whore of Babylon’ according to John in Revelation.

(Taken from ‘Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance’ by Iris J. Stewart. A fabulous book that explores women’s spiritual expression through dance.)

It breaks my heart to realise how robbed women are of their integral sexuality; all that has been so misunderstood, misrepresented, devalued and lost, all those delicious aspects of our sexual and sacred nature that we fear, deny and repress. Our language betrays this polarisation as if all a woman may be is crucially defined along this continuum. Does this suggest that ‘good girls’ don’t like or have sex? Of course not, but it does infer as to the type of sex they ‘like’ or ‘have’ or ‘enjoy’. Good girls don’t live and breathe sex, they don’t have sex on the brain, that’s the calling for ‘bad’ girls, dirty girls, sexual girls, sluts, whores and bitches.

The true meaning of the goddess, our very human need for feeling, tender touch, an embrace when one is needed go unheeded. Such expressions are deemed to have an appropriate time and place, and out of this frame are considered indulgent, weak and depraved. But I know they are the saving grace for a society as overmechanized, overpoliticized, policed and public as ours.

So where is the love, the warmth, the connection, the passion……

Living quietly in the thick, inky black juice of the underbelly, the actual belly, of the womb.

The female body has immense power: our sacred pelvis -the sacrum- the sacred. We can be so sexually radiant, so blissful, the full embodiment of love through facing the challenges of societies judgements; overcoming imposed moralities and the ensuing shame and guilt. We can heal our own bodies and psyches, and also heal others with our body, our love and our sex. But tragically from a very early age we learn to feel self-conscious and embarrassed about our sexual organs, relying on euphemisms and innuendo. Rather than been seen as something beautiful, our sexualities are racked with guilt and unease, and so our repressed sexualities manifest in shadow forms such as pornography devoid of intimacy, sexual violence, crass humour and cheap thrills.

It hasn’t always been this way. In times past, women were the guardians of bodily and sexual wisdom and a matrilineal line allowed then to legitimately pass this knowledge onto their daughters without shame or embarrassment. Learning about your body and embracing a flowering sexuality were seen as a rite of passage and were honoured and respected. These philosophies and teachings were holistic and embraced a powerful spiritual element.

When a woman is gifted with a liberating and natural sexual education that allows her to accept her body and herself, she learns a confidence and a deep respect for herself and her sexuality. This self-belief and assurance are key components to sexual radiance and strength. A vital part of such teachings is learning to care for your sexual and reproductive organs. Traditionally, in certain Eastern communities, young girls were taught exercises, ways of voluntarily controlling their circumvaginal muscles that enhanced their health and ensured sexual pleasure for them and their partners. Perhaps the most renowned of these highly skilled women are the pompoir (“pahm-pour”) of Southern India, after whom the practices were named. Pompoir exercises are more familiar to the West as “Kegels” named after the American doctor who rediscovered them in the 1950’s.

There are many benefits to including some basic pompoir exercises in your life because essentially they enhance your lovemaking for they are what you may call the female counterpart to the males thrusting ability. Just as a man needs practice to make love with finesse, likewise a woman needs to train her muscles to become a Queen of Love.

In the words of Tantric teachers, David and Ellen Ramsdale:

“Dependence on male thrusting alone to reach the heights of erotic glory is like trying to win a foot race on one leg”.

Pompoirs are able to fondle, caress, grip, massage, undulate and ripple a mans penis with their vaginal muscles alone. Ancient Tantric and Oriental texts describe ladies with such amazing PC control that they were able, using only their vaginal muscles, to pick up small objects and then thrust them out with great force. Party pieces aside, the real beauty of such skill lies with the ability to achieve orgasm with increased ease and intensity, through a combination of muscular clenching and breathing. A well-toned PC muscle also allows you to lift a man’s penis closer to your G spot.

When we are alienated from our bodies, it’s impossible to experience this level of physical intimacy, to know our own flesh this well. And yet the healing that comes from reigniting this base awareness, and channeling it through our hearts and minds, is truly transcendental.

The physical, psychological and emotional benefits derived along with the sheer pleasure that these exercises bring are secrets lost to most women today. They are lost to me but I have an access point and a vision. I know that women are powerful sacred healers when they embrace the energy and archetype of the sacred whore. And somewhere, somehow that knowledge endures. It belongs to the body, to our bodies, to my body. With that instinctual intuition engaged, I’ll find the pulse and will reconnect to the heritage so denied. I call that energy the metawhore and she is as real to me as my heartbeat and my breathing. It is my devotion to nurture her into full and glorious manifestation.

Ruby-red flesh; ripe, swollen, soft and sweet. Musky juice drenches your lips, lingers deliciously in your mouth. You blissfully feed on this great delicacy.

My darling,

I’m so happy to see you here for I always feel so alive in your presence. Have you ever felt that instantaneous bond with someone? As you read their words, as you allow your eyes to drink in the allure of their flesh and as you identify with their sexual soul, it’s like there is an unseen connection, a knowing that travels back and forth from you to them.

The longer you spend with them, the more the feeling grows, warm and silky like hot, oozing molasses they snake into the silent parts of your mind, softly settling until you realise they gently haunt your thoughts.

This coupling happens immediately, and as you spend time with that person, as you really listen and recognize that you share their values and qualities, beliefs you hold so closely yourself, you feel the bond grow stronger and stronger. Sometimes you instantly know you like and trust them, it’s as if you’ve known them for a long, long time. And the distance and differences between you collapse in the unique beauty of the priceless and timeless connection between you and them.

Barriers dissolve, walls melt and defences relax because you feel so absolutely comfortable, safe and at ease with them, and you are able to imagine a time in the future when you are electrifying close to this person, and you realize that from the first moment you encountered them, you were captivated.

As you connect and respond, the power surges as it races through your veins. It feels good, and it builds, pulsing and pounding as your attachment deepens. Pause now, take a few moments to feel out your own pulse…on your wrist…. or maybe your neck, allow the throb of your own lifeblood to feedback through your fingers…and smile because life is so precious and fragile, and for those vital seconds you held your own life-force consciously close. I’m there with you in those moments, in your blood, on the breeze, in the beam of sunlight that steals through the curtains each morning and beckons you back into the waking world.

Spread your wings and take that joy into your day. Allow your eyes to meet with those of strangers and share your grace. Someone wise once said, you don’t know that your smile won’t save someone’s life in that moment. It matters, it makes a difference and for all you know, that stranger may be me.

I’m 34, and it’s an age I’m very comfortable with. I’m also very comfortable and at home in my flesh, and these two truths fused together in a very simple conversation over the weekend. I was at a dance workshop with people I’d not seen in a while. There was some discussion of a troupe I had once belonged to, where being relatively young and supple, I’d executed certain moves that were visually striking and physically demanding.

During a quick break, I heard one lady complain that her heels hurt and I nodded in agreement. She looked surprised and said ‘but you used to do such amazing things,’ which I did, although they were always challenging and painful truth be told. Then she asked me if I missed that, and I had to say, in all honesty I didn’t. And that was quite a revelation and a relief because it liberated a different sense and story. Relinquishing my place on the front line has enabled me to embrace a more nurturing role, based on community over competition. I’m way out of the main loop but have a circle all of my own. We break rules, challenge assumptions and dance from our heart whilst maintaining a deep respect and hunger for the cultures that kept these dances alive.

Having not danced at such a demanding level for over two years, my body has changed a lot. When I stopped dancing I was physically damaged and emotionally broken, I’d paid a high price and needed healing time away. I didn’t dance at all for a long time and instead cultivated a passion for food. I went from skinny, scrawny and muscular to voluptuous and soft. It’s funny but every time I tell someone how much I loved putting on weight, they smile. It’s such a direct violation of the brainwashing and body fascism endemic in our culture.

This is one of the reasons I adore Middle Eastern Dance so much; it celebrates curves and the wisdom of the body. Middle Eastern Dance also honours maturity, understanding that feminity matures in the body through each phase of the sacred cycle, fostering a choice between wisdom and woe. Many women struggle with the fight between head and flesh. It’s virtually impossible not to internalise visual images of apparent perfection and in so doing, we cut ourselves off from our beauty. It’s so horrible that we carve, starve and hate ourselves in the bartering of illusions and acceptance.

In his excellent essay Beautiful Scars, my friend Chris says:

‘the things that I find important in a lover’s body, are all the things that make her different; the small marks, scratches, scars, freckles, and discolorations that establish a physical history….

…But our bodies are real, and if not for them, nothing else in our lives would be real. They are the only way we have of experiencing the world around us, and thus shape the imaginations and the souls that are placed in such high esteem. It’s the body that manufactures tears when you’re hurting, sends adrenaline pumping through your veins when you’re angry, and makes your cock or clit engorged with blood at the thought of a lover. All these experiences are enhanced, not degraged by the body.’

I urge you to read this piece for I found it deeply moving and very healing. I’ve written before on the multi-lingual nature of the body, the way cells hold memories and touch can free a story. Attuning to this visceral depth, slicing and searching beneath the skin, breathing deeply and allowing emotions to flow creates a primal sanctuary.

Specifically, the moves and motions of belly dance take you deep into the core of your body. Over the years, the devotion to discipline and technique insists that deeper and deeper muscles are recruited; the dance becomes internalised. This happens not only physically, but for many women, on a very intimate level too. This is a profound and very sensual joy that reminds me so much of sex; it’s an abandon born from depth, a freedom from superficial concerns.

When I was 11 years old, I remember a games lesson at school and this visual is forever seared in memory. I was wearing regulation kit; a white top with the school house badge resting on my flat chest and horribly tight navy blue shorts, I hated that outfit. I looked down and for the first time realised that I had a curvy tummy. I looked at the other girls and they were flat stomached, and a wave of self consciousness hit me. That feeling lived with me for over 20 years, until one summer when the power of belly dance met with the sweet words of a lover.

One warm day, after making love, he lay next to me and rested his head on my tummy and said ‘ you know baby, I love your tummy. I never realised how sexy that little pillow could be’. Throughout our relationship, he’d rest gentle fingers on my tummy in a nurturing and protective gesture that reminded me of the way a woman instinctively lays her hand on her belly when pregnant. It’s a soft sign of reverence for the life inside, a soothing connection that’s purely instinctive. To experience it in a different context woke something special in me.

Belly dancing bestows a similar gift and a reminder that our bodies are sacred vessels of creation. I didn’t carry my child to term so I cannot claim to fully understand the sensation or sacrifices that entails but I do bear a slender silvery white streak of pregnancy on my lower abdomen. My tummy button has a teeny, tiny scar from when I was briefly pierced, but I sleep on my stomach and got fed up with the jewel catching. You’d only see these things if you were close to me, and should you rest your head there, I’d execute a cheeky butterfly flutter, a muscular stomach shimmy that would make you bounce gently. The connection with the stomach is so very grounding and I have to say, I absolutely adore soft bellies. A taut torso is fine but I like something that shimmies when you laugh.

Our world puts youth on a pedestal, and so unwittingly perhaps confuses inexperience with perfection. Freeze framing bodies in time condemns life and I feel for those girls, the models, the actresses who inhabit streamlined cadavers, skeletal not only in appearance but feeling. Being naturally slim or athletic in build is one thing, and that’s a beauty of it’s own, but punishing your body to satisfy some collective neurosis is terribly sad. As is ironing out, covering up and concealing the secret histories of your flesh. Some body stories are sad or sentimental, others sensual or sexual, or sacred in some way. I think the beauty lies in loving the differences, the flaws and imperfections.

I love my body. I love that it’s imperfect, more cherub than cover girl. I love that it knows secrets and stories whispered only to certain souls, some of which I share with you my dear readers. And if we were together, my fingers would seek out your scars, or those places where you feel shame and I’d kiss you better.

Indulge me in a masturbatory post mortem if you will.

On an average evening, following an average day, I settled into bed with the thought that a climax would melt resistance and permit a deep and restful sleep. It’s a pure enough intention I thought. I was sleepy, and I’m lazy so I reached for the toy nearest to me. My hand rested on my peach vibrating egg. I hate the colour peach with a passion, it sits on that freaky pastel spectrum that scares the shit out of me. The colour aside, this really is a cheap and nasty sex toy. It cost £7 from an indiscreet city sex store, it has long unruly wires and a dodgy connection that typically fails at vital moments; it is, in sum an ugly little fucker. But it does the job well.

Bunching up my pillows, I relaxed back and set the toy to medium. I parted my thighs softly and raised my pelvis to encourage the tender lips of my pussy to pout in soft invitation. I brought the buzzing toy to a rest against my clitoral bud and sank into wanton fantasy; you know, the pure filth erotic lock down variety. So as the egg drones, my mind spins into those dark places where fantasy fuses with memory. Not concerned with intimacy, I invited debauchery.

I don’t come quickly or easily but I do sink into deep erotic intoxication. In this mindless state, I’m as vulnerable as a baby and totally ready to surrender to all pagan pleasures. Normally I would embrace this flow, but this time, I stumbled back to self awareness. I was still ferociously aroused and yet a nagging sensation informed me something was… different. Shaking myself into a semblance of consciousness I tuned into what had pulled me back from the brink of convulsive pleasure. And realised that something damn weird was happening down below.

The toy was pulsing, then ceasing and then would throb back into life. At first I assumed that the connection was acting up again but as my hand went to twiddle with the wire, a dark realisation dawned. My pussy had become a cunni diablo, and was slavishly sucking on the peach plastic like a crazed sinner attempting to appease the devil that inhabited it. My body become the altar, my cunt the sacrificial lamb, and as self pleasure sank into self abuse, the aura of dark divinity filled the room. I know this energy well, and it no longer scares me, instead I revel in it. So I flicked my diabolical imagination to receiving the unintended ritual and cast the spell from the heart of my dark grotto.

Beauty and filth collided as my cunt muscles involuntarily suckled on this shape shifting djinn. I stopped to breathe, I fully relaxed my pussy; the toy fell still and silent. I have strong pc muscles and can move them independently, so I played, pulsing different ones and sure as eggs is eggs, the little toy zoomed back to life. What in the fucking world was this savage synergy? Primitive sexuality took a hold as I obsessively flexed and relaxed in a wicked state of bliss. A few minutes passed before the novelty wore off and the ruthless need to push this black sorcery to its final conclusion seized me. The toy snared my clitoris in an obscene kiss, licking it as if it were the devils teat with flames of hellish ecstasy.

Everything went dark, I may even have momentarily lost consciousness. Lucifer’s kiss opened my eyes.