River Goddess

The South Fork of the Yuba River is probably my favorite place on earth. The clear water tumbles over granite worn smooth over hundreds of years of spring run-off from the snow packs in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Aspens and pine trees tower on either bank, and in the late afternoon, when it's hot, their branches are rustled by gentle breezes. I've spent countless hours floating in the placid pools and shooting through the rapids on the Yuba.

After the short, hot hike, I threw off my clothes and hopped into the cool water. It was mid-July, and the water temperature was perfect, cool but not cold. I spent some time swimming from rock to rock, getting reacquainted with the river. After a while, my beloved joined me.

It was a Monday, and there were few people around. We swam a bit upstream to a secluded spot, and found a large, partially submerged rock. He leaned against it to anchor himself against the current. I put my arms and legs around him, and we began to kiss. The feel of the warm sun on my face and the cool water rushing around us was intoxicating. As we continued to kiss, I felt his phallus getting erect. I guided him into me

As we bobbed gently together, buoyed by the water, I called to the river's spirit to come into me. I felt a boundary within me dissolve and became part of the great flow. I felt the power of the water, sometimes a gentle trickle, sometimes an angry, destructive torrent, welling within me, ebbing and flowing like my emotions. The sun, the water, the rock and our bodies were tangled together, separate yet all part of each other. When I finally climaxed, the world began to regain some of its solidity.

We continued leaning against the rock, kissing and looking into each other's eyes. Suddenly, I felt something brush against my cheek. I looked down, expecting to see a broken branch bobbing through the water. Instead, it was a small river snake. Startled, I screamed, and she swam off. When I calmed down a bit, I realized she was saying hello and recognizing me as a kindred spirit. A blessing, indeed.

Scarlet Sanctuary

We’ve run across her a couple of times. At one event, my husband gave her an open heart hug and she started crying and ran for the bathroom. I followed her in there and she mentioned that she had been working with some memories and that my husbands hug was so loving that she just started crying. But, she wasn’t ready to look at the memories and wanted to enjoy the event. I told her that she would know when it was time. She agreed, suppressed the memories and went back to enjoying herself.

I took her out to dinner a couple weeks after that and once again she started crying. The memories had been coming to her in her dreams. I offered to help, but again, she didn’t want to look at it and suppressed the memories.

A few weeks later, we had the Scarlet Sanctuary set up at an event. She said she didn’t want to do it because she knew she would cry. But, decided to give it a try. I anointed her and blessed her before she entered the sanctuary. I helped her undress and get onto the massage table. Soft music was playing in the softly lit room. She was near the last one to be worked on, so there was only one other client in the room on their own table. She closed her eyes and my husband and eyes started the sacred touch. Then, another Priestess came over to help us. Lightly we touched her. Lovingly we touched her. One person at her head, one at her feet. I drifted to her belly. That’s where most women hold their sadness. I started to shiver as the Goddess guided my hands. I could feel the energetic pull to her belly. My hands shook as I gave her Reiki energy and loving energy. Then, I felt my hands start to open her and pull dark energy from her. She started to cry. She not only cried, she sobbed. Heart wrenching sobs. With her eyes closed, she could feel me pulling all that crud out of her and at the same time felt the loving hands stroking her body. She was safe and knew that we were there for her. She sobbed more. We held her and stroked her.

Once I was done with the energy work, I energetically closed her back up and sealed the working with love. She stopped crying. She laid there and received our loving touch. She allowed herself to be loved and comforted. She allowed herself to be healed in anyway we were able to help her.

This is what we do. Through love and loving touch, she was able to go where she needed to go and attempt some healing. She isn’t done. She will still have to work with the memories. But, she has a great head start, knowing that she is a loved individual.

Star power

A few weeks back, we set up our Scarlet Sanctuary at an event and opened the door. The idea of the Scarlet Sanctuary, the way we do it, is simple - we provide loving, compassionate, non threatening sensual touch to anyone that wants to experience it. Everyone, regardless of race or age or size or style, is greeted with Qadishti Eyes of acceptance and that Heinlein sense of "Thou Art God/dess". They are brought inside and intimately led to receive.

(Receiving, we discovered, is very hard for some people. For lots of people. Just to lay there and allow yourself to just be, just receive erotic touch, and not feel like you are supposed to do anything).

As it happened, "Everyone, regardless of..." was tested for me personally at this event, as I found myself working on a 'Star'. Now, I do not mean TV Star or a Hollywood Star (although she may be in movies). But in this case, she is a star of the erotic circles. Would you have heard of her? Well, if you run in my circles, then yes, but the fact that I knew who she was, and she was one of the first people I ever saw lecture, was threatening to throw me off balance. Both my own sense of awe at working with her and my own ego (look who I am working on) were observed as possibly causing this to be less than sacred.

Until we got started. Once we got started, it was no longer about her as The Star, nor was it about Me the Qadesh Working with the Star, it was just two people. It just a receiver and a giver. She simply was another human, another person, full of sensual love. I was just a giver, allowing my ego to sleep while I ministered to another of the beutiful beings that inhabit the world.

Beyond that, her response and mine, become a matter like many other sessions, but one too private feeling to post here.

The important thing I took away from this experience is not that everyone is just another person. But instead, something that I was told at the very first sacred sexuality event I ever went to was brought to mind - "Everyone is a star"

Learning Opportunities

The previous few months had been, in a word, challenging. The kink event we’d attended in February ushered in an unprecedented period of transition in my relationships. My mate and I had weathered storms I’d never anticipated, and our girlfriend was experiencing a blossoming that, though beautiful to see, had her fairly involved elsewhere. As we prepared to attend another large kink event, I found myself nervous and unsure of myself. So many situations were still unresolved, so much still hung in the balance, and I was terrified that something I might do, or not do, would tip the scales one way or another. I found the sense of uncertainty overwhelming.

I'd planned to spend Saturday night primarily in the Scarlet Sanctuary (yeah. hiding...and yeah, I know...I'd been hearing "Mother Abbess" from The Sound of Music reminding Maria that "These walls aren't here to hide behind, you have to go face your problems" all week in the back of my head). But sacred touch is something I *know* I can do, a place where I fit (and focusing on loving other people is a really good way to get my mind off myself). My mate and I started off the evening by watching our girlfriend and her new girlfriend scene with their mutual crush, a woman who really knows how to work with energy. Then he walked me to the Scarlet Sanctuary, kissed me, and promised he’d come back for me later. I walked into the “intake area”, and waited until one of the folks running things emerged from the Sanctuary space (not wanting to interrupt the flow of anything going on by just walking in), and let her know I was ready to get started. And immediately found myself in the "aftercare" area, being asked to help someone ground who'd had an emotional reaction to the sacred touch and needed holding. I recognized the lady - she'd been in a class earlier that the four of us (myself, my mate, our girlfriend and her girlfriend) had attended - a class on "releasing control", that turned out to be an extremely good "how to do relationships honestly and openly" kind of class. And I remember this lady talking about polyamory, and that she was having a hard time dealing with the transition in her relationship...and here she was, sobbing in my arms, admitting all the fears that I'd been dancing around with my mate the past few months, and facing something *this* weekend that I was facing (on a slightly different scale) *the following* weekend...needing my help to deal with the very things that had me hiding in the Scarlet Sanctuary in the first place.

Sneaky bitch, that Goddess of mine. *sheepish look* Kind of a dirty trick, but OH I got the message loud and clear.

I forget sometimes that I'm not the only one who gets scared. But I've been given tools to deal with it, and after all this time and all the BAD and all the pain, I've been blessed with wonderful partners who work with me and help me through it, and with all that blessing, I need to share what I know. What I've learned. "Tricks of the trade" of poly relating, so to speak, I guess. And, if I was going to hide out in the Scarlet Sanctuary to get my mind off myself, Mom wasn't going to let me get away with it without making me face my own demons, and helping someone else through the fire (thus helping myself). So I did. And continued - we exchanged e-mail and blog addresses before she left that night. And we've been talking. And it's been helping - both her ('cause she told me so) AND me. In my case, working with her got me out of myself and helped me remember the GOOD stuff, instead of focusing on the fears. Which is what I needed most of all, I think. Not that I still don't have fears – even though my mate and I walked through that particular fire and came through tempered and stronger than ever. But I know my mate loves me, and we're solid, and as I made it through this challenging period, we’ll make it through others when they come along. And as I've been the shoulder for someone who's been hurting, I know I have a host of shoulders to lean on when I need it.

So "What have you learned, Dorothy?"

You may try to run away from your problems, but you never really leave your “own backyard” behind. And apparently, when it comes to deity, my mate isn’t the only one who dances with tricksters. :) Mine are just a little less obvious (but a lot less subtle when they wanna be).

Recently, I learned that Craigslist in the US closed down its Erotic Services Category. I didn’t even know that Craigslist had an Erotic Services Category (and yes, I probably should surface from my computer every once in a while and visit the ‘real’ world). For more info you may want to check out the following:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/craigslist-attorneys-general-erotic-services-prostitution.html
While I am not surprised by a privately owned company shutting down anything erotic, I am pleasantly surprised at some of the support that this action has generated.
I have read several letters written by former clients of the service stating why they felt that had legitimate reasons for utilizing such a service. Some of their reasons were shyness, feelings of inadequacy with the opposite sex, adventure, and simple exploration. However, one article in particular would elicit sympathy from even a member of the Moral Majority (or perhaps it SHOULD elicit feelings). This client spoke of his medical condition resulting in facial ticks and tremors and handicapped social skills. To this client, ‘hiring’ a partner relieved the burden of trying to impress a prospective partner. This is turn, removed some of the stressors that, let’s be honest, can affect any sort of interaction for anyone much less someone who feels less than adequate socially due to a medical condition.
Craigslist was bowing to pressure from law enforcement agencies to remove the ease of finding illegal services. But as pointed out by Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, “Prostitution will not disappear” (LAT, May 13, 2009, Business Section). And erotic providers have already begun utilizing alternate advertising sources according to The Washington City Paper, that states that newspaper “sales of adult ads was up 38 percent in the first week of May”, (WIRED, June 2, 2009, Threat Level Online) This statistic is repeated all across the country.
So if the law enforcement officials are saying that prostitution will always be around, and this is supported in part by the proof that sex providers who are just going about their business in a different matter – why, oh why, does the government seek to impose their moral beliefs upon all of society?
I do not apologize for having my own moral compass to which I adhere. This censorship of morals is a major cause of the exaggerated inhibitions that most of our society suffers from. Which is turn, is why there is such an incredible, under-reported need for human touch.
As a Qadishtu, I offer a service: a service of human touch; a service of acceptance; a service that allows me to be a funnel from the Goddess representing her love; and a service that helps heal me as I work to help heal others.

I am proudly a Qadishtu priestess.

Spillover

Sometimes our work as Qadishtu impacts others in ways we may not ever be aware of unless we're lucky enough to have them tell us. I recently was fortunate enough to have that happen.

I have a good friend who I would not perceive has ever paid that much attention to what I do as a Qadishti. We are at many of the same events together and although he knows that I dedicate a large portion of my time to working in our Sacred Touch sanctuary, we have not spent much time talking about that portion of my life. If someone would have asked me what my perception was of what he thought about it, I would have said that he probably found it to be "woo woo" and didn't have much interest in it.

This friend recently returned from an out of state event. During this event he encountered a woman who he began to get to know. He described her as very shy and someone who had difficulty interacting with people. She hugged the walls and did not venture into the crowds.

He had the opportunity to spend time with her one on one and he had a sense of hurt and pain within her. He was able to hold her and stroke her and help her feel loved and accepted. As he was relaying the story to me he said that he was "channeling me". He said "it may not have been sacred touch but I was thinking about you and what you do and it felt very similar." I responded by saying that in my opinion, it was indeed sacred touch. It was exactly what he was doing.

I was filled with gratitude (and a few tears) that someone who I thought didn't really pay much attention to what I do, not only pays attention, but thinks enough of it, that he pulled on that when faced with someone he sensed could use it.

Namaste,
Karen