self-identified as bisexual and that much of his premarital sexual experience was homosexual. John first encountered the Goddess in his early teens when he was learning to meditate. He detailed how he was initially drawn to Buddhism, but his practice was marked with a recurring vision of a female goddess figure whom he identified as the essence of the Earth. In his twenties and thirties he had become involved in a Gardnerian Wiccan coven in Southern England.[1]
John detailed how the coven supported him following the death of
his wife. In particular he spoke of the way in which coven elders
encouraged him to take refuge in the mythopoetic male archetype of the
Horned God as a way of coping with widowhood through a show of
masculine strength and stoicism. However, John came to realize that he
was losing contact with feminine divinity and, by his mid-thirties, he
became disillusioned with his Wiccan practice. He eventually drifted into
solo ritual work, still marked by his Wiccan initiation, but increasingly
shaped by newfound inspirations in neo-shamanism and Celtic mythology
and much more centred around feminine representations of the divine. In
particular, he spoke of masturbatory rites in which he would imagine
Goddess archetypes whilst, as he put it, ‘sacrificing my seed to the
feminine divine.’[2] He pointed to a small roughly hewn stone set beside the
fireplace – a so-called Sheela na gig –, a grinning female figure holding
open with her hands a swollen vulva – as emblematic of this feminization
of his spirituality. John discussed the way in which this marked an
important turning point in his spiritual and sexual life. Spiritually, he talked
about a deepening bond with Mother Earth through his ritual practices
which had led him to lead a more ecologically responsible lifestyle.
Sexually, John discussed his increasing bisexual orientation after his wife’s
death. He became interested in Tantra, even undertaking some training as
a Tantrika in India with some of the insurance money he received after his
wife’s death. Sex became an important expression of his spiritual practices
with sexual magic becoming ever central to his sexual practices and
identity. Female sexual partners brought him closer to what he termed
‘sources of feminine power’. The energies raised in the sexual act were
- ↑ Gardnerian refers to the form of Wicca founded and developed by Gerald Gardner (1886-1964), the originator of Wicca (for example Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today, New York: Citadel Press 2004 [1954]; The Meaning of Witchcraft, San Francisco, CA: Red Wheel/Weiser 2008 [1959]).
- ↑ Note Scott Haldeman, ‘Bringing Good News to the Body: Masturbation and Male Identity’ in Björn Krondorfer (ed.), Men's Bodies, Men's Gods: Male Identities in a (Post-)Christian Culture, New York, NY: New York University Press 1995, 111-24.
