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Sexy Witches

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As sexual politics are complex by their very nature, accusations of rituals involving coercive sex or men in power manipulating their positions for pleasure are unfortunately common. For example, in the 1940s, when Gerald Gardner’s fledgling Wiccan movement was taking shape in the United Kingdom, sex in ritual became codified in new ways. Drawing from the aforementioned sex magic practices of ancient times, Gardner and his cohorts created something called the “Great Rite” to symbolize the union between male and female, god and goddess, in a marriage of polarities. This rite—enacted when the coven was in need of powerful spiritual intervention—was performed as intercourse between priest and priestess before existing coven members, and was also an initiation rite between a priest or priestess and a new coven member. Despite this history, the Great Rite continues to be performed by witches today, albeit most commonly as a metaphorical act in which a chalice receives a ceremonial blade. I find the literal interpretation of the ritual—sexual intercourse between the high priest and priestess—unnecessary, and for me it would be distracting,” says Wiccan priestess Cat Cabral. “One of the most unique things about being in a coven is the sense of intimacy and trust developed over time, so if even one person felt uncomfortable with something, it shouldn’t be done out of respect for the group. But if you are working with people who are completely open and comfortable—as they were in olden times when practical fertility rituals were more common—it could be experienced as the ultimate unification.”

The panoply of options for practicing sex magic is what makes the art so versatile and accessible. Like sex positivity, sex magic need not only be conceived of in ways that compel witchcraft practitioners into joining orgiastic bacchanals—unless, of course, they freely want to. Contrary to pejorative stereotypes that have been percolating since the early modern witch-trials, the secret sex lives of witches can be chaste or wild. They can involve a partner of any gender identity, a roomful of such partners, or not a soul, save for an anointed magic wand. Above all, sexual magic is an energetic exploration of the divine, which, as any witch will tell you, ultimately comes from within.

Evidence of the sacred whore can be found in The Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian laws from circa 1754 BC, and in Greek historian Herodotus’ fifth-century BC Histories. Particulars of sacred whores vary, with some accounts depicting them as capable healers and others suggesting they were merely victims of their patriarchs or simply women who exploited sacred sex for profit. By and large, what is written about sacred whoredom reflects the biases of male writers and the times in which they were writing, rather than representing the first-hand experiences of sacred whores themselves. After all, representations of witches always reveal the beliefs of their beholders. Whether they appear as satanic sluts or astute magicians has everything to do with who controls the discourse. I embarked on a three-year portrait project photographing women around the U.S. who identify as witches. And since my longtime focus as an artist examines facets of female selfhood, I limited myself to female-identifying witches (though I also included trans and genderqueer individuals). I began by researching neo-paganism, Wicca and other cultural currents related to modern witchcraft (like tarot, astrology, spell craft, etc.). With the help of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, I travelled around the country to meet, interview and photograph modern witches. The seed of "Major Arcana: Witches in America" was planted six years ago while I was researching an earlier body of work that examined my family ancestry in New England. I discovered that my 10th great-grandfather presided as one of the central judges in the infamous Salem witch trials. Coincidentally, my eighth great-grandmother, a woman named Mary Bliss Parsons, had been tried for witchcraft in Northampton, Massachusetts, only a few decades prior. While to the modern ear, the record has a definite camp quality about it, there are serious spells contained within it, with Huebner referencing traditional Egyptian magic, Turkish magic, Sicilian magic, and more, from centuries of sex magic practices around the world. During the sexual revolution and the occult revival of the late 1960s, female sex magic practitioners were able to come out of the broom closet like never before. Louise Huebner, designated the “Official Witch of Los Angeles” in 1968 (by an actual L.A. County official, no less), was notoriously vocal about the importance of sex in witchcraft. At a “happening” held at the Hollywood Bowl attended by thousands, Huebner led a mass ritual to heighten the “romantic and emotional vitality” of the city. A year later, she would release an audio recording of psychedelic spellcraft that to this day has occultists poring over bargain bins to find in vinyl form.

Sex is the X factor in witchcraft. Both serious practitioners and characters in witchy lore are known for their abilities to unleash primal desires. Witches use sexual energy to commune, to manifest, to make magic, and—in the case of the Medieval hags described in the 1486 witch-hunting bible the Malleus Maleficarum—even to steal penises. For millennia, sex magic has been a powerful tool in the hands of gifted conjurers, but it has also been a practice slapped with negative distortions by generations of freaked out male historians. As a result, the labyrinthine history of sex in witchcraft is a heady brew of intrigue, transgression, and repression. If you ask most modern witches about working in the sexual realm, they will be sure to include a caveat about due diligence. Many will tell you that actively using sex magic to draw a specific person into your love life can spell trouble. There are plenty of other ways to call in the light of sensual love and connection for yourself, though, and to heighten your own ability to receive pleasure. Performance artist Paige A. Flash suggests getting deep into Kundalini meditation; tarot reader (and BUST columnist) Sonia Ortiz suggests rubbing a sunflower on your vulva to stir your sacral chakra; and healing artist Damali Abrams advises including cinnamon, mango, the herb oatstraw, and jasmine in your kitchen witchery to tap into your sexual power.Sacred sex isn’t always about a pilgrim seeking holy communion in the arms of a priestess, however. And it need not only be through the act of intercourse or masturbation that sex magic occurs. In The Mystical Qabalah, occultist Dion Fortune refers to the less explicit side of channeling erotic energies. “The subtler aspects of sex appear to be entirely lost to the Western world,” she wrote in 1935. “It must suffice to point out that all the more important aspects of sex are etheric and magnetic. We might liken it to an iceberg, five-sixths of whose bulk is below the surface. The actual physical reactions of sex form a very small proportion, and by no means the most vital portion of its functioning. One present-day young witch, E.G. (who wishes to remain anonymous), recently sampled a flying ointment she found on Etsy. The salve was grown and blended by a woman in Spain who says she fertilizes her henbane, mandrake, belladonna, and datura under the full moon with her own menstrual blood. “I had a beautiful experience with it actually,” E.G. told me after trying it. “I was feeling very connected to the energy of the plants, feeling like they were giving me a new lens with which to understand the universe and have this dialogue with the plants, the spirit of the plants, whatever you want to call it.” Just as women who defied sex in the ancient world were later persecuted as witches, modern female sex workers are shamed for using their bodies to survive and thrive in a culture that has never granted them complete bodily autonomy. Nevertheless, the legacy of sacred whoredom is palpably alive today amongst many witch-identified sex workers who are harnessing sex magic in their professional practices. Weaving a spell of seduction, like any spell, requires an intimacy with both the physical and metaphysical realms.

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