NOTE: Many think that tantra or Heiros Gamos is about sex. Thinking this is like thinking that the gate that you open to go out for a walk is actually the journey. It isn’t. It is a part of it, yes, but certainly it is not the whole story. The story is about how our energy expands beyond this dimension into a multidimensional reality, which is what and where we exist in ALL TIME. We are not JUST our bodies here. We are much more. But to understand what this more is, you must first understand the light body, the pranic body, and the bliss body. These bodies are in truth part of an integrated whole, aspects of something that most do not experience to their fullest potential while here on earth (we are working on that, though). That is because most people are so focused in their physical senses that they lose sight of the dominion beyond the sensory world. And really, the senses only make up a small part of what you and I are capable of. But it is this ignorance that leads to thinking that tantra is about sex, or that the divine marriage is about sex. It is actually about our capacity to experience bliss, whether incarnate or not. What do you think you will use to experience all the things you are so used to experiencing in the physical when you are no longer made of flesh and bone? Being immortal, we go beyond this one body and time and experience. “Above” us in “larger” dimensions what we call sexual bliss here exists as something that has expanded in dimension and is already something similar to, but distinctly different from physical sexual energy. And lying alongside sexual energy is creative energy, which is not that different in its effects on us. Many creatives can FEEL the bliss that turns sexual when creativity is at its peak. Many have written and spoken about it. Not everyone feels or experiences it, though.
This post is not about sex, and yet in a certain aspect, it is. It is what happens when sexual energy is traced beyond its expected terrain or surround (one which we mistakenly think is THE definition of it as we see it in our world). This is how one energy expands outward like a pyramid into infinity, ever-expanding in scope and power. Hence, by riding the powerful current of creative and sexual energy it is possible to know these realms within, and in so doing, it can illuminate you to who and what you are in a larger context. Yes, it is bliss, but imagine bliss that has been refined and then distilled. This is higher-order energy. We CAN experience this here. He can pull the rug of heaven down and step upon its warp and know its spaces and purposes. We CAN inherit the god and goddess because they exist within us in our multidimensional aspects. To get there, you let go of all that you think you are and just BE. It is a genuine thing, and it can lead you to realization and freedom. The energy itself has the power to move mountains in your world because what moves a grain in the world of a god or goddess is what moves a world in our own. You will see that Thales, the Presocratic philosopher, discerned it right: “All things are full of gods [and goddesses]”
UPDATE: After working on this post, I came across an image of Inanna, mentioned in the following post. Images of her likenesses show up early in the post below. Three days after working on cleaning up the image that I used, I walked into a gallery and found in the basement of this gallery an Inanna sculpture exactly like the ones shown below. Here I had not seen an Inanna image like the ones shown below before and then walk up to one that is thousands of years old from a time when the goddess was revered and worshiped. These things happen all the time, though. Inanna is staging a comeback, I think!
With that in mind, the post….
The pagans of Gaul and Britain had enough in their trove of symbology for us to suspect that they knew about Heiros Gamos. And while they may not have used the same term, there is enough floating around in the form of jewelry, and pictographs for us to suspect strongly that they had a god/goddess duality taking place in their rituals and ceremonies. That the word even exists is itself proof of our awareness that it exists less as an abstraction and more as a collective reality that touches us all. The maxim “as above, so below” applies, which is that as we experience in our world, it is a lower dimensional version of a larger reality. But what is this thing we call Heiros Gamos?
This is a term in Greek, ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία, which means sacred marriage. It has many notable mirrors throughout world culture.
Amongst the Greeks, what we know is that this was a ritual that was played out where two people acted as god and goddess in union with one another. Ti was not necessarily something that had to be acted out physically, since in the realm of the god and goddess, this is a nonphysical reality, so intent and an understanding of higher order energies comes into play. When you hear about the term “energetic sex” you are touching on the spiritual reality of sexual energy as a reality beyond the physical experience. Everything we experience here on our earthly plane has a compliment in other realms. dimensional realities. As above, so below.
In each dimension, though, things change, while keeping the essence intact. So what do you think that means? Imagine what life is without a body. This might be hard to do since your memory is bounded most often by this one life. However, within your ability to see and know lies a deeper sensing that is possible, and you touch on these realities when you get quiet, become reflective, and also meditate. It is in this world that you can experience the world that is the one most native to your soul. Believe it or not!
Images of Inanna
In the middle east, the sacred marriage was played out between high priestess of the goddess Inanna and most often the king of the Sumerian city/state. There were other temples throughout the Sumerian kingdom that were dedicated to Inanna. The temple of Eanna, meaning “house of heaven” in Uruk was the greatest of these. The temple housed Naditu, priestesses of the goddess.The priestess would choose a man who would represent Dumuzid, who was considered the consort of Inanna, which would take place during the Duruk ceremony, This would take place during the new moon of the Autumn equinox. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros_gamos)
Shepherd God illustration taken from a seal, Ur.
In the Hindu Devadasi tradition, girls were married to a deity and took part in dances and theater which was meant to serve the deity. In Tantric Buddhism, yabyum is performed, it is said, of the male and female together in a form of ecstatic union. While many in the West think that this is referring to literal sexual union, the union that is referred to is something that each person is able to experience in their own bodies first as a result of the union of the opposites through the personality up through the higher self, effectively making it possible for divine force to bath the whole self and being in the rich flow of pranic force. Higher order union is that union that we experience through the soul. It is thus, not contingent upon our being in a body or having sexual union with another person for it to take place.
The Alchemical tradition was also about this same concept, and it may have been by way of Buddhism that the Alchemists were able to fashion a means to relate the material in a more Western flavor. Certainly some of the earliest of documents concerning Alchemy point directly to the source as being old and wide-spread. This points to the fact (I feel) that this form of union is something that is part of the human experience, regardless of one’s belief, culture, or belief system. The union of the opposites occurs within the self first.
But is it possible that this union is more than just within the self? I think that the union must first occur within the self and resolve there for enough time to effect the work necessary to clear the energy channels in the body. Yoga, especially pranayama seeks to cleanse the naddis, those etheric channels of blockages that might cause trouble were they to be charged fully with the action of kundalini, of life force in abundance. I think that this is the next layer, the next stage for us to experience, which is beyond the rather tawdry westernized tantra where its all pretty much about sex and sexual positions. Oh, there is a nod to energy, because, afterall, isn’t that what its all about? I sense, though, that the depth of this experience is one akin to dipping the toe in, rather than swimming. When we allow such a small amount of energy to flow through us, we are attenuating it, which means that it will FEEL very intense, but will itself be a small flow of energy compared to what is possible. It will be more chaotic, and it will be less peaceful. You will see how this will almost always lead to problems between the two people as a result. We judged buy our fruits. So, then, if you want to improve and know there is more, the work dear reader, lies within yourself.
My experience is that yes, this form of union is not only possible, it has happened here in my own life.
I was still quite young when I was with the woman who was my first love. We both had leanings into the spiritual, but our youth and lack of experience had us still quite green. But once while we were together making love, I noticed that her body seemed to….change. She seemed to relax as though she slipped out of herself. Her head fell back. She seemed barely there. She looked upward and away from me. Her eyes sparkled. After a few moments she seemed t come back to herself and asked, “Did you feel that?” I looked at her, wondering. “Yes. I saw all of this light gathering around us, like stars that kept drawing into us closer and closer and this energy built up until I felt we were out amongst the stars and it reached a peak and there was this explosion, and the explosion was of countless stars……and after that, I chased you through space amongst those stars, like we were playing hide and seek.” I felt nothing of the sort.
Does it mean, though that this kind of experience is just in our own mind? If a tree falls in the forest, will only one person hear it? It is possible, I think. the reason why I say this is because access to soul energy is based on ones own individual willingness or availability to it. Soul energy, which is infinite and unbound by time, exists beyond all time. This is why people like Robert Monroe, who was able to project out of the body, was able to experience countless “versions” of himself from other lifetimes as well as an aspect of himself that was so far advanced that it appeared as a brilliant point of light. But beyond the body, touching on the soul, one inherits infinity and it is there that the potentials can be experienced that belong to the soul. Kundalini, or its action in the body, is what brings prana, but what is prana but soul energy? I know what the Hindus and the Tibetans say about prana (but is not everything at some point or place in its vibratory frequency soul energy…consciousness?)…..but I ask you…..Are we not one with the All? And what makes each of us different? Ego. It is what makes this vast sea able to know itself as all these different things….and yet also know itself as the One. We are both. Its really kind of wonderful when you think about it. You can choose to be One, you can choose to be All. You can choose everything in between. We are this.
Time has shown me that this person was herself an initiate into an order of Isis, which was another temple in Egypt that was connected to heiros gamos. In a memory a few years later, I saw how she had merged with this male energy that was Ra, or was experienced as a solar golden light that came into the temple during a ritual that was performed that was, I believe, initiatory in nature. Already, she had experienced this, her own soul had attained this level of connection at her soul level. As for me? I don’t know. I have no memory of any experience that was of this type. It was not until decades later when I awoke that I felt the golden fire move upward through my body, releasing the force of energy we call kundalini. Perhaps in my own way, sans temples and teachers, I attained it on my own in 2007.
What I do know is that it is possible to feel and know the soul energy of another as an aspect that exists beyond time and space. So this soul energy which I touch in one lifetime is similar to that which I feel in another lifetime. the only thing that changes my own experience are my own blinders or perceptual blind spots that might limit my perceptions in one way or another. When you touch the soul, you touch ALL POTENTIAL, which means you can feel all the way into godhood or goddess level energy were you able to allow yourself to surrender that deeply to contain such a broad experience. I know that from experience, it is possible to do this. That is why liberation and awareness are so huge; you have a god or goddess on your side who can teach you innumerable things, far better than anything I could ever do, and completely fashioned just for you (because it IS you). When Jesus was criticized by the Pharisee’s in John 10:34, he says this:
“The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” 34Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I SAID, YOU ARE GODS ‘? 35“If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),…”
Those awakened are aware of this fact. We each can feel how the self is itself limitless. the only thing that limits us are those blind spots which are induced by way of what these blocks represent in the energy system, the naddi of the Hindu, the meridians of the Chinese practitioners.
The sensible approach seems to perfect ones self and allow cleansing of this energy system to take place. Suggestions are that this is something that can take a decade or longer to complete. I am at year 8 and sense that I have now gotten the bulk of blockages cleared, but have several centers which contain some blocks at different levels of the koshas, which can be thought of as layers or dimensions, within the chakras and the meridian or nadi system. With five layers deep, each nadi system will have five complete passes in order to completely clear and wipe the slate clean. The good news is that the action of kundalini is the thing that makes this incredible amount of work something like a short-cut. But it is also possible to do the work as described in pranayama yoga that involve “locks” that are movements of the core body to help move the blockages in the nadis. Long before I ever learned about these movements, I was performing similar ones with my own body that were not too different.
Deep down, we know. We know and can connect with this limitless self that touches God-dess, the totality. It is here that knowing pours through us, for everything that has been or will ever be, is alive in this same flow of energy that is moving through everything else. Don’t believe me? Open your mind, your heart, and resolve all that divides you. When you achieve the movement of this energy of the universe within you, tell me then what it is that you think.
Union begins within….but union is with all of us. The question is, are we brave enough to do the work that will lead to more substantive experience in this realm? Remember, you can still dip your toe in the universe whilst beginning, but doing the work will allow you to swim deep in its waters.
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Waking The Infinite 