Jalaja Bonheim - Aphrodites Daughters: Womens Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul

Womens Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul

Jalaja Bonheim

Katy Riegel

FIRESIDE

FIRESIDE
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Copyright 1997 by Jalaja Bonheim

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

F IRESIDE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Designed by Katy Riegel

Manufactured in the United States of America

9 10

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bonheim, Jalaja.

Aphrodites daughters : womens sexual stories and the journey of the soul / Jalaja Bonheim.

p. cm.

A Fireside book.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. WomenSexual behavior. 2. Intimacy (Psychology). 3. WomenCommunication. I. Title.

HQ29.B664 1997

306.7082dc21 96-53615

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-83080-3

ISBN-10: 0-684-83080-9

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3499-3

I have felt the swaying of the elephants shoulders from Mirabai, Why Mira Cant Go Back to her Old House. In Robert Bly, News of the Universe. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980. Reprinted by permission.

Marion Woodmans story of ritual for Krishnas birthday from Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1985. Reprinted by permission.

Poetry by Lalla from Lalla: Naked Song. Translated by Coleman Barks. Athens, Ga.: Maypop Books, 1992. Reprinted by permission.

Verse by Hildegard of Bingen from St. Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia; A critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. Edited and translated by Barbara Newman. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989. Reprinted by permission.

Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh from Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace. Berkeley, Ca.: Parallax Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission.

salt and she is dreaming from Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980. Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987. Reprinted by permission.

Poems by Sumangalamata (At last free ) and Mirabai (O friends, I am mad) from Jane Hirshfield, ed., Women in Praise of the Sacred. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Reprinted by permission.

For I am the first and the last from James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3d ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Reprinted by permission.

Deep in love , Even though she was awake , Holy sixth day , and Praise to Vishnu , from W. S. Merwin and Jeffrey Mousaieff Masson, trans., The Peacocks Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India. 1977. Reprinted by permission.

The author wishes to thank Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer for their book Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth; Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New York: Harper & Row, 1983).

My deepest gratitude goes to all the women who recognized the healing potential of this project and dared to share their stories with such courage and honesty. Your stories are the lifeblood of this book, its passion, strength, and vitality. I offer Aphrodites Daughters into your hands as a piece of your own flesh, a spark of your own soul, and a mirror in which to contemplate your own miraculous nature.

Writing this book has been much like giving birthexciting and tedious, terrifying and exhilarating. I was fortunate to have the help and encouragement of a number of good midwives. Special thanks to Sherry Anderson, Betsy Blakeslee, Virginia Logan, Rose Najia, and Rosanne Annoni for their invaluable support and feedback. Gratitude to Natasha Kern for her enthusiasm, faith, and commitment, and to Cindy Gitter for her dedicated editorial support.

Thanks, now and forever, to Skip, beloved soul mate. Your love never ceases to humble, awe, and delight me. Without you, this book would not be.

I have drawn poetry from many sources. Any use of copyrighted material for which I have not obtained permission was inadvertent. Please contact me through my publisher to rectify.

To my father, who gave me his love of books, and my mother, who gave me her love of people.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

Anas Nin

When women get together, they tell stories. This is how it has always been. Telling stories is our way of saying who we are, where we have come from, what we know, and where we might be headed.

We have many different kinds of stories. Some we share without a moments hesitation, like plums from a tree laden with more fruit than we can possibly use. Others are like prize roses that we save for special friends. And then there are the stories we never tell, the ones we pack away in boxes and shove into the very back corner of our psychic basement.

Most women find that their sexual stories fall somewhere between the second category and the third. Well, you may say, isnt that as it should be? Isnt sex a very private matter? Dont we have enough sexual titillation in our society? What good can it do to probe the most intimate nooks and crannies of our life?

My interest in womens sexual journeys is based on my belief that sex is an inherently sacred and soulful force, and that if we look carefully, with an open mind, we will find that our sexual stories yield rich spiritual nourishment. Women have always found sacredness in the midst of the ordinary, harvesting spiritual wisdom from the fields and forests of their everyday embodied experience. Yet, especially in sexual matters, our knowledge has remained largely unspoken, as if we were creatures of the sea who float and turn silently in the depths, graceful but mute. The stories you will find in the following pages reveal what rich treasure lies concealed beneath the blanket of silence. They bear witness to the beauty of the feminine spirit, and to the magnificent flowering of maturity, insight, and soulfulness that sexual experience can elicit in our lives.

We have often been told that our sexual nature has no relevance to our spirituality. I do not believe this is true. Yes, the Great Mystery transcends gender, as it transcends all dualities. Nonetheless, our spiritual paths unfold along very different lines, depending on whether we enter the world in a male or a female body. Our soul (by which I mean the portion of our greater Self that is engaged in a process of blossoming through time and space) does not simply sit in a body like water in a jar. Rather, it merges with the body, so that each permeates the other as the golden color of a sunflower permeates its petals. You cannot separate a sunflower from its color. In the same way, our soul acquires a particular coloring and fragrance by virtue of inhabiting a feminine or a masculine body. The soul of a woman vibrates with a different frequency than that of a man, emits a different quality of light, and sings a different song. Men and women may be headed for the same ultimate destination, but we travel different paths.

I started gathering womens sexual stories in 1994. But in a deeper sense, the foundation for this book was laid during three extended trips I took to India in 1981, 1984, and 1987. There I was first introduced to a playful, erotic god; a voluptuous, sensual goddess; and an ancient tradition of sexual priestesses. India taught me about the many faces and forms of god and goddess and gave me a spiritual education my Western upbringing had failed to provide. Most important, it totally transformed my sense of who I am as a woman and sexual being.