Dark Magic

By Lisabet Sarai

[This is a repeat of a post I wrote the last time the Grip topic was "the dark side", back in 2012. When I re-read it, though, I knew it was worth sharing again.]

She's so gullible. Over Thanksgiving dinner (an unexpectedly wonderful feast at an atmospheric inn they'd stumbled upon, tucked away in the hills), he'd dropped hints about magical powers inherited from his Celtic ancestors. She'd swallowed his tale as eagerly as the turkey and the red wine, hanging on his words, focused on his face, wet (he knew) as she anticipated what might occur when they returned to his apartment. Her plump, perennially erect nipples teased him through her turtleneck jersey. His nipples, now, to play with, to torture, though perhaps she didn't think of them that way – not yet.

How had he managed to lure her here? He'd surprised himself with the success of his epistolary seduction. Before, in graduate school, they'd been only slightly more than friends. When he vanquished her at chess (despite the distraction of her bra-less state), there had been flickers of something less innocent in their interactions. Then he'd left, moved west, and one day, on a whim, written her a clever, flirtatious letter, fantasizing all the while about her lush breasts, parted lips and the nicely-rounded ass he'd never seen. He hadn't really expected her enthusiastic response, especially not when he broached topics like spanking, bondage, and melted wax. Clearly he'd been right to trust his intuition more than his intellect.

His bedroom is shadowed, lit by a single candle that spikes the air with patchouli. He hovers over her, weight balanced on his arms, the contrast between his big frame and her petite body making him worry. He wants to hurt her, but not in any way that causes damage. A half year's worth of fantasies – both the ones they've shared and the darker ones he doesn't dare expose – have him achingly hard. He jerks a bit, so his cockhead brushes her tangled pubic curls. They both shiver.

Her cunt draws him, but he resists that magnetic pull a while longer, making her wait for what she obviously wants. Control is difficult but necessary. He hasn't bound her (though there are holes drilled in the bed frame and a coil of rope ready in the bed table drawer). He hasn't marked her yet. Candlelight dapples her fair skin, previews of the stripes he hopes to leave there. Tonight though, there's just her voluptuous, eager body and his, primed by hours of self-abuse (the term seems apt, given the images that obsess him). They could be any pair of new lovers. But of course that's not true. What binds them together is more urgent than mere passion, darker than love.

She does not speak, though he has not enjoined her to silence. Her eyes are wide, riveted to his. When he finally allows himself to enter her juicy depths, she gasps, though he's on the down side of average in size. Still, the fit is tight and sweet – it stokes his fever. Pulling back, he rams into her, letting loose all the frustrations built up in month after month of solitary imaginings. He reads her face as he does, ready to stop if she seems to object. They are, after all, practically strangers, despite the explicit letters and breathless phone calls.

There's no resistance in her, though. She keeps her wrists crossed, arms above her head, exactly where he placed them. The position highlights those outrageous nipples she flaunts with such apparent unconcern. Leaning towards her, he catches one in his teeth. Her body ripples and her back arches, driving him deeper.

Fuck me, her eyes say. Use me. So he does, pounding her with his cock again and again, rough and raw, reveling in the slick grip of her cunt around his impossibly hard dick. His thrusts are brutal, but he hears no complaints. Amazed, almost disbelieving, he understands. She wants this as much as he does.

You're mine, he thinks, exulting in his power. He wills his cock to grow and swell. He wants to fill her completely, stretch her to her limits and beyond, tear her apart. It may be suggestion, but he feels huge inside her. Her eyes are pools of wonder.

It's all that he had imagined - no, better, because she's soaked and hungry and more open than he could have dreamed. Then unexpectedly, reality shifts. Some sort of psychic conduit opens between them. Her emotions flood his senses, her desperate need and her profound surrender. All at once, he really can hear her thoughts, and he knows, with complete certainty, that she can read his.

Mine. Mine!

Yes, yes – please...

Be still.

Her writhing ceases. Her tiny moans quiet. He ravages her with his gigantic cock and she takes it - willing, trusting, grateful.

She is truly his slave, bound by his command, and he is her born master, caring or cruel as it suits him. She has died for love of him, and he's taking his last pleasure from her still-warm corpse. He is the devil and she's the soul he has ensnared and lured into darkness.

Yes.

He comes with shout of triumph, pouring his seed into her welcoming heat. Her climax shimmers through her, and he feels that, too, the inevitable welling up of sensation so different from his own sharp release. For an instant he really can't tell which feelings and thoughts are his own and which belong to her.

A spark of fear – a flutter of rebellion – she pulls away from him the tiniest bit, reclaiming her will. The crystalline energy between them clouds. He does not fight the change. No one could bear the intensity of that connection for long. They lie in each other's arms, exhausted and groggy with joy.

The candle gutters and winks out. They sleep. He wakes a bit after dawn to find his bed empty. Did he imagine it all? Was this just another fantasy?

Rubbing his eyes, he wanders out of the bedroom. She is seated at the dining room table, naked in the pearly light of a foggy morning, writing in her journal. Her bowed neck speaks both of submission and strength. He sees that despite her tiny frame, she's anything but delicate.

Barefoot, he steals up behind her, cupping her luscious breasts, twirling her nipples. She leans back with a sigh, her curly locks soft against his bare chest. He nips her earlobe, runs a wet tongue along the line of her jaw.

“What are you writing about, Sarah?” he asks, a bit afraid of the answer.

Her face is luminous as she turns to him.

“Magic.”

Illumination

By Lisabet Sarai

I've always believed that flesh is holy.

Having met others who were not so fortunate, I understand how lucky I was to grow up in a family and religion where sex was not considered a sin. My mom, in particular, was a lusty woman who would sometimes dress provocatively and flirt outrageously. I was never taught to be ashamed of my sexuality.

At the same time, from my earliest years I was fascinated by things of the Spirit. I've written before about my Catholic girlfriend who intended to be a missionary nun. I was her first “convert”, when she baptized me at the tender age of seven, after having been well-schooled about the saints and the sacraments. Later, I was exposed to Hindu mysticism through an aunt who was the disciple of an Indian guru. My few experiences with psychedelics convinced me that, as many Eastern traditions teach, the material world is a thin skin spread over a limitless ocean of spiritual energy. I saw for myself how passionate imagination could shape “reality”, crystallizing new truths out of the formless potentiality of Infinite Mind. Many times in my personal experience, the so-called real world has twisted and reformed itself in response to my heartfelt desires.

For me, sex seemed to confirm the existence of the soul. In many sexual encounters, I felt a sense of connection with my partners that extended far beyond the physical. Perhaps I conflated sex and love, shallow pleasure and deep joy, but regardless, those experiences changed me. During what I like to call my “sex goddess” period (others might simply label me promiscuous), I was simultaneously fucking people right and left and experiencing daily spiritual revelations. As I wrote in my journal during that period:

Where will this all end? Can there be such a thing as living too much in the moment? Have I no “will power”?

How ridiculous! It suddenly occurs to me that tonight's events with E were in fact a straightforward manifestation of my own will, an expression of numerous daydreams, night-dreams and fantasies....

Or am I just an addict? God is giving me what I need. This I must believe. Lord knows I needed G (in the sense: needed for my growth). E too has something to teach me. (And I him.)

I am willing, open to it.. but it is just too much!

Nothing taught me as much about Spirit as my initiation into BDSM. In my early scenes with my Master, I came to a new understanding of faith and trust. When I completely let go of myself, allowing him to take total control, the rewards were limitless. Not just pleasure but true bliss, a sense of deep communion, an acute awareness of the power we wielded together when our bodies, minds and spirits were attuned. It was just a step from here to the notion of submitting to a non-physical Higher Power, because in some sense we are all manifestations of underlying Spirit.

A poem jotted in my journal, from the same era:

Take me, lord.

My hands outstretched,

eager for your chains.

Head bowed,

Long hair hiding my breasts

(only so long as you will it)

Take me.

Let me be

consumed in your flames

of mercy and desire.

Soul of the priestess within me

Naked upon the altar.

Faith incarnate.

Surrender.

Power.

Peace.

It's hard to explain this if you've never experienced it yourself, but these feelings are not unique to me. In 2006, S.F. Mayfair and I edited an incredible collection entitled Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission. The book is out of print now, but if you can find a used copy, you'll get fresh insight into why I feel that submission can be a sacrament. My contribution to that volume (“Communion”) was explicitly religious, the tale of a fourteenth century nun restored to her lost faith through being scourged and sodomized by a renegade priest. She pays dearly, but gladly, for her illumination. Here's the first paragraph:

When the first flames taste my flesh, I feel no pain. Eyes closed, I attend to the summer dawn: blossoms mingling with the wood smoke, birdsong greeting the sun. Ecstasy wells up inside me even as my robe ignites. Grace, gratitude, glory. I open myself to the agony, let the pain wash over me as the Master taught me.

These themes of surrender and redemption run through much of my erotica. (They're too serious for romance readers.) Here's a bit from another of my short stories, “Higher Power”, about the true nature of magic.

He turned away for a moment, then returned with a leather blindfold. "This will help you to concentrate," he said. I nodded, not daring to speak. I blushed again at my reaction to his brief touch as he slipped the blind over my head. Everything turned velvety black, black as his curtains and his eyes. Now there was nothing but darkness, darkness and his luminous voice.

"Myra, I want you to relax and trust me. Listen to me. Focus on me. Let me fill your consciousness, until you know nothing but me." As he spoke, I thought I felt his fingers, dancing lightly over my body. Yet I could tell from the sound that he was standing several feet away. He began to chant in some language that I did not recognize. His musical voice rose and fell in a soothing rhythm. I felt a stirring of air around me. Little by little, the tension leached from my body. Warmth flowed in like honey to take its place, thick and sweet, coalescing into a dampness between my thighs. I could not understand what he was saying, but his intonations gradually took shape in my mind, whorls and eddies of vibrant color that held me spellbound. I hardly realized it when his incantation ended. Then I smelled sulfur and heard the snap of a match bursting into flame. My fear flared in response.

"Myra," he said softly. I could tell that he was closer now, right beside the chair. "Trust me. There will be no pain." I felt intense heat against the skin of my forearm, smelled paraffin and singed hair. Yet he spoke truly. I felt no pain, only exquisite warmth that began in my extremities and raced toward that swelling center below my belly, which seemed to have become the center of the universe.

"I choose you," he intoned. "I anoint you. I consecrate you to my service." With each phrase, he sprinkled burning wax onto my skin as if it was holy water. I smelled the incense of my childhood, and felt the ancient awe. Yet at the same time my whole self hummed with lust. I was aware that the evidence of my desire leaked from me, staining my business clothing and scenting the air. I did not care. Shame had left me. I hung on to his voice, rising and falling, eagerly awaiting the next blissful, fiery benediction.

Complete bliss. That was what I felt. Then suddenly, there was a giddiness, a disorientation. My body was moving, floating upward. A shard of terror threatened to rend my joy, but his voice knit up the fabric of my concentration. "I choose you, I anoint you. Trust me. Yield to me. I am the One, the One you seek, the One you crave."

I was suspended in his net of words. I understood with new wonder that my body hung unsupported in the air, mysteriously buoyant. I was literally flying. I could still feel the embrace of leather on my wrists and ankles, yet somehow, irrationally, I knew that I hovered several feet above the seat.

Suddenly I comprehended the reality of his power. This was no illusion, no hypnotic suggestion. I knew, with total conviction, that magic truly lived in this man's voice. "Yield to me," he said softly, and touched me between the eyes with one delicate finger. A fireball of an orgasm seized and consumed me. I swear that I smelled burned flesh as I convulsed blindly in the air.

The next thing I knew, I was crying. He was brushing my hair back from my face and speaking some soothing nonsense. I looked into his eyes, excitement flooding through me. "It's real, isn't it? The tricks, the magic? The power?"

He smiled enigmatically. "As real as your submission. As powerful as your concentration." He handed me a glass of water, and my skin tingled at his brief touch. "In any case, Myra, you've got the job." There was mischief in his eyes. "That is, if you want it."

I should mention that I had trouble getting both these stories published. Mixing religion and sex tends to make people nervous, even before you throw BDSM into the mix.

I have to speak and write my own truth, though. For me, sex has been a path to spiritual knowledge. And surrendering to my Master has bestowed on me the paradoxical power to accept and embrace whatever comes, as expressed in this one last excerpt.

Ritual

To GCS

They meet, infrequently, to perform the ritual. She waits for him to arrive, heart slamming against her ribs, stomach twisted with nervousness. When he enters, they embrace, awkwardly. It has been so long. She attempts lightness, a joke, a jibe, pretending that she does not know why she is here. Then he gives the sign - a mere eyebrow, arched in a question - and her protective humor slips from her along with her clothing.

The ritual demands much of them, the steps choreographed, but always with room for improvisation. First he binds her, with rope, or silk, or leather, ceiling-hung with thighs spread, or splayed across the bed, or bent double over a hassock. Sometimes he will position her limbs and bind her to stillness with his command alone.

Then he teases her, dabbles his fingers in her wetness, lovingly mocks her sluttishness. She melts at his slightest touch, sinks liquid and helpless into the ritual spirit, moaning just as he intends. She could drown in his rich voice, nuanced and full of power. He pinches her nipples into aching peaks, captures them in clothespins, or cinches them with rubber bands. All the while he strokes her pussy, calls her his pet, muddles the pains and the pleasures besieging her.

Next, he beats her. Here the ritual has many variants, but all with a single purpose: to invoke the purity of her surrender. She writhes under the lash, twists away from the hairbrush, whimpers as his bare palm reddens her buttocks. She does not wish to resist him; her only thought now is to please. But the pain is difficult to endure. Breathe, he says, soothing, encouraging, even as he scourges her. Open yourself. Yield yourself to me once again.

His voice is the key that unlocks her. Some barrier shatters and she floats free, each stroke of the whip an ecstatic kiss. His mind moves with hers now, sharing her agony and her joy. His breath comes in gasps like hers. His organ is granite. Now, come to me, my love, he whispers, entering her front or rear or spraying her marked thighs with his burning seed. She obeys, sliding into climax as he slides inside her, white hot fringed with red streaks of the pain.

Transcendence. Communion. Completion. They do not speak of it as they dress. There is no need for speech when the ritual is complete.

They meet infrequently. Sitting alone, on the plane or the bus taking her homeward, she savors the gaping, twitching sensations in her rear hole, the sharp echo of her stripes as she shifts in her seat, the slickness, still, in her sex. His voice echos in her mind.

Theirs is an old love. She thinks of him daily, imagines his life, her chest swollen with bittersweet aching. He thinks of her less frequently, but when he does, he gnashes his teeth, driven almost to madness because he cannot possess her. Then he recalls her sweet pliancy, her willing debasement, and his lips curve in a smile as he strums on his cock.

The ritual renews them. When she lies in a dentist's chair, or on the surgeon's table, when she wakes in fear in the night, she remembers him. Breathe. Open. Surrender. She relaxes into the fear, trusting as she trusts him.

She is sure that she will think of him, that way, when she surrenders herself into the arms of death. And then, perhaps, their meetings will be more frequent, and the ritual will be perfected.

A Visit To St. Valentine

By Lisabet Sarai 

Our topic for the next two weeks is "Saints Preserve Us". We'll be discussion religious imagery, Christian and other, and how we use it in our fiction.

Bringing religion into erotica is a risky business, because you don't know whether you'll offend your readers. I had one of my stories (Communion) rejected by a publisher because they had a firm policy: no clergy in erotica. It didn't matter that my nun and priest were twelfth century - they were verbotten.

Coming Together: In Vein contains a wonderful story (My Soul to Keep, by Kimber Vale) in which a vampire seduces and turns the priest who took her virginity before he made his vows, and led her to suicide. It's a powerful story, at least partially because in the Christian tradition, spirituality is associated with denial of the flesh - but vampires cannot be denied.

I've always wanted to write an erotic story about Jesus. I'm certain that he must have had that sort of  irresistible charisma that draws and excites both men and women. Not to be disrespectful, but the Messiah must have been as seductive and desirable as today's vampires. Beauty, intelligence and power - how  could he not be desirable?

I haven't dared write that yet. But I've used the New Testament quite a bit in my tales, partly because I believe there's much in common between surrendering to a dominant, and having faith in a deity. Higher Power, my story of a stage magician and his devoted assistant, turns on one of my favorite verses:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. (John 4:18) 

I've come to feel that perfect surrender - perfect trust - would completely eliminate fear - no matter how terrible the external circumstances.

Anyway, as it happens, we're approaching a saint's day, though for most people Valentine's Day has no religious significance. (However, I recommend Simon Sheppard's harrowing BDSM tale "St. Valentine was a Martyr, You Know", which appears, among other places, in my anthology Sacred Exchange.)

I happen to have a piece of short fiction that imagines the origins of Valentine's Day from a religious perspective. Valentine was a Roman in the reign of Emperor Claudius, who embraced the "new religion" and became a priest. His proseletyzing was politically inconvenient and ultimately he was executed for his beliefs.

So how did we get from there to sentimental cards, flowers and boxes of candy? Here's my take.

The Origin of St. Valentine’s Day

The priest Valentinus lay on the straw pallet in his cell. Final rays from the setting sun pierced the slits in the stone walls and made gold streaks on the floor. Valentinus sighed at the thought that this would be the last he would see of the glorious orb. Soon, though, I’ll will be with Christ, in the heart of glory, he reminded himself. Still, his heart was as heavy as the granite enclosing him.

Claudius had just left in a fit of pique, after failing again to make him recant. Despite the emperor’s epithet, “The Cruel”, Valentinus understood that the august ruler respected him, and did not want him to lose his head. It was all political for Claudius; he hadn’t a spiritual bone in his body. The new religion offered too much of a challenge to the state to be tolerated. If the priest would renounce his faith and publicly bow to Jupiter, Claudius would free him in an instant, an example to the self-righteous rabble who followed the new prophet.

Valentinus was a different sort of man. He believed in divine love and ultimate resurrection. His faith had kept him strong and pure for more than fifteen years, since the trip to Ephesus when he had first encountered the True Church. For his faith, he would lose his life. But he would save his soul.

Dusk deepened to full night. The pitch torch smoked and sputtered. Valentinus prayed, there on his back. He knew that his Lord did not require the discomfort of bony knees on a hard floor.

The iron door squealed. Valentine sat up. It was too early for his last supper. A slight feminine figure swathed in white linen slipped into the cell and pushed the recalcitrant door shut behind her. She approached the pallet and removed her outer wrap.

Golden curls tumbled down over her shoulders, brilliant as the vanished sun. A chaplet of myrtle bound her brow. Youth shone in her eyes, but the body he glimpsed under her finely-woven robe was the ripe form of a woman. Ancient desire stirred in him. He suppressed it with the ease of long practice.

“Who are you, lady? Why have you come to disturb my final meditations?”

“Lord Valentinus, I am Lydia, priestess of Juno. The Holy Mother is affronted by your stubborn refusal to pay her homage. Tonight is the festival of Lupercalia. Tonight, maids and youths throughout Rome will be celebrating the marriage of Juno and Jupiter, the rulers of heaven. Yet you languish here, refusing to accept the gift of love, scorning the generosity of the gods.”

“Your gods are not mine, lady. I neither honor nor scorn them. They are irrelevant to me.”

“Relevant enough to take your head.”

“My body is unimportant. Soon enough, my soul will be with God.” Despite his brave words, though, her beauty was working her spell on him. The rod of flesh between his legs grew stiffer by the minute.

Lydia untied the sash that fastened her robe. The diaphanous garment floated to the floor, revealing her lush, perfect body. “I’ve come to offer you Juno’s gifts, nevertheless.” She approached the pallet and took his face in her hands. “I know I cannot change your mind, Valentinus, or make you renounce your faith. But allow me to provide one last taste of the pleasures of earth, before you leave it.”

“No, wait. I am sworn to celibacy...” Valentinus began. Yet he did not resist when she gathered him to her sweet breasts, when she pushed away the ragged cotton robe that covered him and laved his aching nipples with her tongue. He cried out, but did not push her away, when she swallowed the stubborn pillar jutting from his groin. He grabbed her hips and arched into her when she straddled him and settled his shaft in the liquid depths between her thighs.

They moved together, not speaking aloud, but joined in spirit. She is not like the other Romans, realized Valentinus, even as pleasure surged through him in ecstatic waves. She does not care about material things. She is a creature of faith, a true daughter of her gods. I can touch her soul as well as her body.

Moonlight crept through the window-slits, painting their skin silver. Their passion rose and fell, smooth and silent as the Tiber rolling toward the sea. Their pleasure crested and ebbed and then climbed again. They never broke the connection. Through the night he remained within her, their limbs entwined, their minds and hearts united.

At last they slept. At dawn came the squeal of the rusty hinges and the guards, unexpectedly gentle when they saw Valentinus and Lydia together. Without shame, ignoring the lustful gaze of the centurions, Lydia rose and donned her robe. “Remember me,” she told the priest, with a final kiss. “It will ease the last pain.”

“And remember me,” said Valentinus, unfazed by his apparent fall from grace. “Here, take this.” He handed her a scroll, his copy of the scriptures. “I know I will not woo you from your gods to my God, but let this be my keepsake.”

“Sign it,” she said, and he did, before the guards led him to the execution ground.

Lydia returned to the temple, rejoicing in the trickle of Valentinus’ seed running down the insides of her thighs. She did not wish to see his final moments. She knew that she would be in his thoughts as the sword came down. She made her obeisance to the majestic gilded image of the Mother before returning to her modest room. There, she unfurled the scroll and read her lover’s dedication.

To my beloved Lydia whom I look forward to meeting in heaven,
For I know that no God or gods would be cruel enough to separate us.
From your devoted Valentine.

Tears fell on the parchment, smearing the charcoal-based ink.

They were tears of joy.

Holy Lust

By Lisabet Sarai


Warning: this post may offend some people with strong, traditional religious beliefs.




He set up his curtain in an alcove of the chapel. I tiptoed into the sanctuary an hour after Matins, hoping to find him available. Cold winter light poured through the arched windows. I could see his feet behind the drapery; I knelt on the floor before him.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been forty days since my last confession.”

“I know your sins, Sister Ursula. You need not recite them.”

I was shocked. “Father...”

“Be silent, Sister. I will tell you your sins. You are proud and vain, knowing that you are gifted with beauty and intelligence beyond those of your sisters. You are rebellious against the discipline of the Order, wishing another, worldly life for yourself. Do I speak truly?”

I bowed my head in shame. “Yes, Father.”

“Furthermore, you have unclean thoughts and desires. Your young body burns with need. You dream of many hands, stroking and caressing your flesh.”

I never recalled my dreams, but as he spoke, I remembered, or imagined, the scenes he described. I felt dampness on my thighs beneath my habit. The ache there was a hundred times stronger than I had ever felt before.

“You feel that you have been abandoned here in the abbey, left to languish here, unnoticed and ultimately alone, for all your days. That is the worst, is it not?”

His perceptiveness astonished me. I had not consciously realized how much I missed the feeling of belonging that I had enjoyed when I was younger.

“Yes, Father. Can you forgive me, Father? Can you give me absolution and peace?”

“I can, but only after you have done penance. Meet me at sixth hour in the stables.”

“I will be there, Father. Thank you. Should I say any prayers?”

I could swear that he laughed to himself. “I will teach you to pray this afternoon.”

The air in the stables was cold, but ripe with animal and vegetable smells. Father Jerome was waiting for me. In his hand was a whip of braided leather. He ran his palm over its length as he watched me approach.

“Kneel before me, Sister Ursula.”

Puzzled but strangely pliant, I followed his instructions, my eyes cast down. The straw tickled my nostrils.

“Sister, the heart of sin is the feeling of separation from God. The remedy is total surrender to His will and a return to communion with Him. Do you understand?”

I nodded, though I hardly grasped what he was saying.

“No, you do not, not yet. But you will. Remove your habit.”

Once again, he shocked me. I looked up, into those azure eyes of his. “Surely, Father, this is not proper...”

“We are all born naked. The flesh is glorious, not shameful. Do as I say.”

He spoke with such authority that I could only believe and obey. Unknotting the cords around my waist, I pulled the bulky wool robe over my head, then folded it neatly and placed it beside me. Now I wore only my rough linen shift, my crucifix, and my wimple and veil. I shivered in the February chill. Yet at the same time my cheeks, my earlobes, my fingers and toes, all grew warm, pulsing with some inner heat. My breasts felt heavy; my tightening nipples scraped against the homespun fabric.

Father Jerome paced a circle around me. “How do you feel?” he asked me.

“Embarrassed,” I replied. “And strangely free.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I will beat you now. Not as punishment for your sins, but to teach you to surrender. When you surrender, your sins will evaporate like dew in the morning sun.”

– From “Communion” by Lisabet Sarai

Sex frequently gets a bad rap from religion. In the Catholic tradition, lust or fornication is a “mortal sin”-- a deed so offensive to the Diety that it carries the threat of eternal damnation. In Islam, lust is considered so spiritually dangerous that women are required to cover themselves to avoid becoming objects of temptation and men are forbidden to be in the company of females who are not wives or family members. Judaism takes a more favorable view of sexual pleasure, but only when it is experienced within marriage and supports the continuation of the race.

Obviously the question of what is sinful could generate volumes of opinion, commentary and debate (and has). I'm more interested in the issue of sex as sin from my perspective of an erotic author. I'm quite sure that legions of fundamentalists in the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to label me as damned—evil, corrupt, disgusting, deserving of the worst punishment. I find this extremely non-intuitive since I feel that sex has brought me closer to the Divine—both sex in my writing and in my life.

As I've shared in other posts, I was what many people would consider extremely active, sexually, in my mid to late twenties. When I reread my journal from that period, it seems as though I was constantly involved in new adventures. I had several lovers concurrently (not literally at the same time, but interleaved) and was in love with them all. I could hardly walk down the street without striking up a new relationship. Flirtations quickly flowered into full-scale affairs. After years of being an ugly duckling, it appeared that I had quite suddenly become a pheromone-broadcasting swan.

One fascinating thing about that heady time, also confirmed by my diary, is that fact that I was simultaneously undergoing a kind of spiritual awakening. I'm not talking about a mystical sense of oneness with God...well, not exactly. But the ecstasy I felt in my lovers' arms, the soul-to-soul connection I experienced, seemed to confirm my relatively recent conclusion that there was some sort of Higher (or maybe Deeper) Power, some reality beyond the material. Serendipity, synchronicity, lucid dreams, mind melding—sex and love (which I couldn't really separate) were my gateway into a world of Spirit. My occasional anguished journal entries questioning the wisdom or even the sanity of my behavior were followed by confident, faith-filled conviction that this path of pleasure I was traveling was a spiritual path as much as a carnal one.

My best stories, I think, the ones that people remember, capture the sense of reverence I felt during those years. I'm drawn to D/s scenarios partly because the perfect, trusting release of one's self to the Master comes so tantalizingly close to being a religious experience. When S.F. Mayfair and I edited Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission, we were trying to express this shared vision of sex (and specifically sex that involves power exchange) as ecstatic, transformational, even mystical.

Spirituality doesn't necessarily sell. Sacred Exchange was a commercial flop, though it contains some of the finest literary erotica I've ever encountered. And a lot of my work—these days, in particular, when I'm writing a lot of romance—sidesteps the deeper questions that concerned me back then in favor of titillation and entertainment. This still hasn't altered my underlying belief that, far from being a sin, sex can be a mode of worship.

There have been Christian and Muslim mystics who understood this—who experienced their intense desire for union with the Divine in a sexual manner. And of course sexuality is prominent in the iconography of many non-Western religions. It seems to be mostly the monotheistic religions that arose in what is now the Middle East that loudly condemn sex as sinful.

I have a theory about this. Lust has power. It can be so extreme, so overwhelming, that it distracts from the contemplation and consciousness of God. To live a spiritual life, to walk a spiritual path, means keeping one's focus on the immaterial world of the Eternal Mind. The pleasures of the flesh can blind one to the reality of Spirit. This is the justification for religious celibacy, and I think it makes some sense.

But the monotheistic religions seem to demonize sex out of a kind of jealousy. “Thou shalt have no other God but Me,” it says in the Old Testament. Sex is viewed as sin because it's a sort of competition for people's attention—and a pretty potent one at that.

I admire people who embrace celibacy as a spiritual discipline. However, this is not the only way to approach the Divine. I'm quite certain of this. Purity in lust, total surrender, can work equally well for some people. I have a suspicion that I'm one of them.