“Love of self for self is the creative force of the universe. Desire is the primal energy, and that energy is erotic: the attraction of lover to beloved, of planet to star, the lust of electron for proton. Love is the glue that holds the world together.” 

Starhawk, Witch and Teacher

“We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us towards living in a fundamental way.”

Audre Lorde

“All the evidence indicates that nature people fucked for pleasure. Their purpose was to celebrate sex. Their orgies were acts of sexual worship to the power of sex they felt in themselves and in nature around them. Their religious feasts were characteristically joyous: dancing, feasting, fucking together. The Indians who have been observed in the Americas; the myths that have survived in Europe; the artifacts that exist from all over the world – all attest to the pleasure of what the celebrants were doing. George Scott has rightly observed “that, without exception, the worship of sex by all primitive [sic] races originated in the pleasure associated with coitus, and not in any clearly conceived notion that intercourse would produce children.” Hence it is a misrepresentation for industrialized academics to call such celebrations “fertility rites,” as they usually do.

The orgies were not clumsy attempts to increase the gross national product by people who had a very rude understanding of economic laws. Nature people did, indeed, believe that through such acts their bodies would become stronger, the crops would grow taller, the sun would shine brighter, and the rains would come in profusion when needed. But they believed these things because they had a collective tribal feeling of the power of sex throbbing through the whole of nature; their experience of sex was so open, public, communal and intense that they felt it reverberate through the whole cosmos. In this, they were unlike modern industrialized people who practice sex solely for procreation – privately, in the dark, in isolation, and with guilt.”

Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counter-Culture

“The Jewish peoples – perhaps by way of protest and reaction against the excesses of the surrounding Syrian tribes – insisted on a complete divorce between sex and religion; and that alienation of the two has lasted on down the Christian centuries.

But in much of the old pagan world it was just the contrary. Sexual rituals were an intimate part of religion; and the wonder and glory of sex were a recognised manifestation of divinity.”

Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, 1914

“The consequences of this split, this breaking off of sexuality as sinful, are devastating to gay and non-gay alike. Having a core part of ourselves that we are taught to tightly fear, question and contro, creates a society that is out of touch with a primal force... We are wonderfully made! Yet we are told in church that part of our very selves is sinful. In order to be spiritual, we must deny our bodily needs, and ,most especially, deny our sexual needs.”

Marilyn Bennet Alexander and James Preston, We Were Baptized Too: Claiming God's Grace for Lesbians and Gays. 1996

“When purposeful, spiritual connection is forgotten, the depth of sexual connection often takes it place. Sex points one in the right direction, deep into the self, into the mystery. But sex alone is not the answer to the gay dilemma of the present, the sense of meaninglessness. A sense of spiritual participation in the community of the planet is the answer. For no one else will tell us our purpose. Its discovery must come from ourselves.”

Andrew Ramer, Two Flutes Playing 1997

“Sexuality and spirituality are facilitated by a deep intimacy with one's inner nature, with the physical body, and intimacy with the natural world. This intimacy brings a quality of loving connection and sensitivity to life. It is energetic, spontaneous, and joyful. Sexual or creative energy radiates though all life. Erotic, creative, divine, Goddess energy. Fertile, rich, passionate, abundant energy. There is nothing that is no thing that exists outside of or is untouched by this energy. It is life itself and as such is sacred. The sexual act is but one expression of this energy. We make our sex sacred, in the same way we make any life experience sacred, through our intention.”  

Diane Mariechild, author of Mother Wit and Inner Dance, workshop leader and lecturer on women and Buddhism. 

“Sex, it turns out, is central to what I see in myself and identify as human spirituality. It is, therefore, equally empowered to advance or retard my spiritual development. More sex may lead to a more spiritual life, or it may mitigate against my spiritual goals. Sex approached with more honesty and with an ecstasy-inclined inner adjustment can only lead to clearer spiritual vision. Any soul-to- soul contact between humans awakens spirit, and every degree of awakening is a boon to spiritual development.”

Joseph Bean, Leatherssex Q&A 1996

“… sexual feelings and sexual relationships are potentially a key to transcending the prison of the discrete and separate self…
...precisely because its deepest spiritual function is to melt the boundaries that enforce this separation, sexual love, more than any other relationship, is diminished and debased by its commoditization. For the same reason, sex has an enormous subversive potential. The sharing of self it involves explodes the very basis for the world of separation in which we live, and its associated pleasure hints at the ecstasy awaiting us when we throw off separation’s shackles.
Perhaps that is why repressive political regimes typically exhibit great hostility toward sexual licentiousness—a form of repression that George Orwell identified as a key feature of totalitarianism. Our own society takes a different, more insidious approach to defusing sex’s explosive revolutionary potential, attempting to excise its transcendental core. The husk that remains is, depending on the context, an inconsequential pleasure, a biological function, rank animality, obscene temptation, or a frightening taboo. None of these honors the sacred dimension of sex, which ancient Taoist and Tantric practice saw as nothing less than a gateway to the transcendence of cosmic polarities. Potentially a touchstone for reconnecting with the true unity behind our all-consuming play of individuation, potentially a secret window through the veil of our illusory separateness, sacred sexuality has been reduced to a f*ck.
Of course, whatever we pretend to make of it, sex is far more than this. Its soul-shattering and life-creating potential remain despite the cultural pretense that it is a casual commodity.”

Charles Eisenstein : The Ascent of Humanity

“Our beautiful lovely sexuality is the gateway to spirit. Under all organised religions of the past, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, there has been a separation of carnality, or shall we say of flesh or earth or sex, and spirituality. As far as I am concerned they are all the same thing, and what we need to do as faeries is to tie it all back together again.”

Harry Hay, Radical Faerie

“Who is the sacred slut? The sacred slut is a person, first and foremost, who knows that sexuality is sacred, whose spirituality, whatever it is and however it is expressed, affirms and celebrates the body, and the energies that move through it. The sacred slut knows that sexual energy is a part of, and one of the most powerful manifestations of, the energy that flows through not only their own bodies but the whole universe, all that exists: the life-force, prana, ki, ch'i. ~

Sacred sluts are deeply rooted in their bodies, and connect through them to the earth, the elements, all the sources of creativity and power. Whatever their beliefs about 'the part which endures', they know that for now there is no separation between their souls and their bodies, or between their bodies and their minds. They embrace sexuality as part of the rhythm of their bodies and of the universe, its ebb and flow, its energy and magic. They delight in their sexuality, as they delight in their bodies; the pleasure they can feel, the responses they can give, the energy they can experience.”

From 'Queer Deity, Sacred Slut' by Al Head, this years coordinator of the Queer Spirit Sacred Sexuality Temple.